Milo pulls up a chair next to mine so he can see my monitor screen. The autopsy painted a portrait of the crime much as we imagined it: Iisa’s broken bones, torture with a riding crop, cigarette burns, and cause of death-suffocation. But it turns up a major surprise. Several of the burns were inflicted not with a cigarette but are consistent with wounds caused by a drive-stun taser. This suggests that the killer first used the taser to incapacitate Iisa, then enlisted it as a pain compliance tool by inflicting multiple and prolonged shocks.
Time of death was somewhere between six and eight a.m.
“If Iisa was tased,” Milo asks, “then what was the point of hitting her with the frying pan?”
“Maybe to cover up the tasing,” I say, “to make it seem like a crime of passion rather than premeditated. The murderer might have thought the taser burns would go unnoticed because of the multiple cigarette burns.”
Milo looks thoughtful.
Forensics has e-mailed the results from Rein Saar’s shirt. I open up the file. The collar and shoulders were soaked in his own blood, from the blow to his head. His blood makes blood-spatter patterns from the riding-crop beating of Iisa Filippov hard to analyze, in terms of angle and velocity. It will have to be sorted out through DNA analysis and will take at least a few days. His right collar and shoulders bear some spatter, but it could be the result of his lying beside her while the beating took place. The results are inconclusive. Most interesting, though, is that the lower back of the shirt bears a scorch mark that, once again, is consistent with taser burn.
Milo stretches, folds his hands behind his head, and sits back in his chair. “Told you Filippov did it,” he says. “He tased them to knock them out, tortured Iisa and framed Rein Saar.”
I have to admit that, as Saar claims, it seems possible he was left alive in order to frame him. If Saar was convicted of Iisa’s murder, it would close the case and allow the true killer to avoid investigation and walk free. “Let’s go down to the lockup and talk to Saar,” I say.
We go downstairs, walk along the long white corridor and stop at cell S408. Out of politeness, I knock before entering.
“Might be nice if you showed your colleagues the same courtesy as you do your prisoners,” Milo says.
Saar shouts for us to enter and I open the door.
As jail accommodations go, ours are pretty good. The cell has a decent bed, a bench and a small writing table fixed to a wall decorated with creative inmate graffiti. Every cell has a few books in it for entertainment. The prisoners have a gym to work out in, and a canteen where they can buy snacks and smokes. They eat the same food as the staff.
Saar is sitting on the edge of his bed. Washing the shower of blood off has done wonders for his appearance. “Mind if we have a little chat?” I ask.
“Will it help me get out of here?”
“Possibly.”
“Then by all means, let’s chat.”
“I’m going to ask you some personal questions. Would you rather talk here, off the record, or in the interrogation room and have your statement recorded?”
“If we’re going to talk about my sex life,” he says, “let’s keep it between us for now.”
I sit on the bed beside Saar. Milo sits on the bench. “Would you lift your shirt and let me see your back?”
He does it, shows me a nasty burn just above his waist.
“How did you get that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“To be honest, when we talked before, my head hurt so bad and I was so drunk that I didn’t even notice it. Hurts now, though.”
He pulls his shirt down, sits forward with his elbows on his knees.
“Mind if I smoke?” I ask.
“Not if you give me one.”
“You don’t have any?”
“I don’t have any money on me to buy them.”
I take a twenty out of my wallet and give it to him. “You can pay me back. Tell me about you and Iisa-in more detail than before-and about your affair.”
He folds up the bill, unfolds it, puts it in his pocket, thinks how he’s going to spin this. “Iisa was wild,” he says, “loved to party. I wasn’t the only guy she fucked behind Filippov’s back. Just the only steady one. And I had other lovers, too. Like I told you, we had fun. We were comfortable together. Enough so that I gave her a key to my place.”
“Did Iisa use drugs?”