I take my Saab, four detectives ride in a separate vehicle, and we drive through blizzard conditions back to Helsinki and Linda’s apartment. It’s a dumpy little one-bedroom, but neat and clean. Vintage Bettie Page posters line the walls.
The other detectives know their business. They run long needles through sofas and mattresses, looking for obstructions sewn into them. They tap the walls, looking for plastered-over safes or hidey-holes. They turn appliances over and look inside.
In her bedroom, I go through Linda’s things. I find a small trunk brimming with Bettie Page memorabilia, magazines and movies. I open another box and the rich smell of oiled leather hits me. It’s filled with fetish accoutrements: high-heeled shoes and boots, whips, leather costumes and restraints, ropes and gags.
I boot up her computer. It has a Bettie Page screensaver. It’s chock-full of videos, including what I take to be a complete collection of Bettie Page footage. I take a quick look and find scenarios of abduction, spanking, domination, restraints, slave training with bondage. Page sometimes played a stern dominatrix and sometimes a helpless victim, bound hand and foot.
Then I find Linda’s personal files. Videos she made of herself, reenactments of the Bettie Page movies. Videos of her and Filippov and their sexual role-playing. They have only a few variations on the themes I saw in the video Milo took from here. I see nothing from Rein Saar’s apartment, no images of Jyri or his political cronies, nothing to connect them to the murder. Just personal stuff. I’ll take the computer into evidence, but I’m sure they’ve covered their digital tracks.
I go through Linda’s clothes. She dresses well. I open her underwear drawer. She likes expensive, fetish-variety lingerie. Underneath it, I find her famous big, soft, green double-donged vibrating dildo. I picture her sticking it up Jyri’s ass and laugh, then bag it for DNA testing.
By Linda’s bed, in a desk drawer, I find a family album. It contains pictures of Linda and her mother from Linda’s infancy through the time of her mother’s death. Their correspondence, beginning at the time Marjut entered the mental rest home, is also here, all in original envelopes. The letters from her mother are touching, always assuring Linda that she’s getting better and will be out before long. Then she and Linda will build a new and better life. The final two letters are dated September 9, 1998, Linda’s eighteenth birthday and the last time she saw her mother alive. Both letters are short.
The one to Linda reads: “I love you dear, but what you’ve done is more than I can stand. Please stop. Love, Mom.”
The one to Kultti reads: “You may not remember me, but you told me you loved me once, when I was young. I bore you a daughter named Linda. You’re raping her, your own child. Please stop. Love, Marjut.”
I wonder if Linda saw this letter before her father blew his brains out, or after.
My phone rings. “Vaara.”
“This is Stefan Larsson, the owner of the Silver Dollar.”
“How did you get my number?”
His tone says I’m a moron. “I called information.”
Stupid of me to have it listed. I make a mental note to have it removed from the phone company’s public registry. “What do you want?”
“You’re investigating the death of a patron on my premises. Now you have something else to investigate.”
“What might that be?”
“After two days in jail cells, punishments they didn’t deserve, my bouncers were cleared of responsibility and released. They came back to work. A man wearing a hood attacked them this evening. In one hand, he had a set of keys, a couple sticking out between each of his fingers, and used it to punch them in the face. The beating left terrible puncture wounds. In his other hand he held a box cutter, which he used to stab them repeatedly. It was attempted murder. My bouncers are hospitalized.”