Cold Justice: A Judge Willa Carson Mystery (The Hunt for Justice)

by Diane Capri

  In all our lives together, the more serious the situation, the calmer George got. It’s one of the things that drives me crazy about him. Another man would have been shouting, panicked. In other words, normal. But not George.

  “I do,” I replied.

  “Call the police,” was all he said, as if the call would solve everything. Which, of course, it would not. No one knew better than me that discovering a murder victim led to years of pain for everyone involved.

  But we couldn’t simply leave the scene for someone else to discover, either.

  So I pulled out my cell and made the call while I continued to scan for shooters.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I marched in place, trying to keep warm, which was impossible. Deep breaths drawn in through my nose burned all the way down into my lungs. Sunlight glared off the snow, blinding, even through my reflective sunglasses. Cold-induced tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and trailed warmth down my cheeks, lasting only a moment before all warmth evaporated with the saline.

  George had crossed the two-lane road and was now examining snowmobile tracks on the side nearest the shoreline, opposite our two vehicles. No clue what he hoped to find over there, but I didn’t feel like tromping around and didn’t discourage his explorations beyond reminding him to be careful of the evidence.

  We could have collected the victim and driven him back to town, but there seemed to be little point to that option, and it would have been counterproductive. Crime scene techs should sort this one out fairly quickly. As long as we could avoid a chain-reaction collision until help arrived.

  The 911 operator had assured me that responders were on their way. The first to arrive would probably be from the Michigan State police post in Traverse City, she’d said. When I asked her how long it would take, she’d deflected. I looked at my watch. Only ten minutes had passed since the call and we were about an hour from town. I guessed we probably had fifty minutes of time to kill.

  We remained alone with the body, the cold and the now-screaming quiet.

  Seeking something useful to do that wouldn’t destroy the crime scene, something mundane that would make the scene less real while it kept my circulation going, I looked in the back of the Jeep and found four small plastic orange cones and flares in the emergency kit.

  I walked back from the Jeep to the curve in the road that blocked a traveler’s view of both vehicles and put two cones in the northbound lane. Then, I walked the other two up to the southbound lane, about 100 feet in front of the Toyota. The cones might not have made us any safer, but I felt better doing something. Warmer, too.

  When I returned to the Jeep, George had finished his survey of the snowmobile tracks and the rest of the accident scene.

  “It looks like a rifle shot,” he said, pointing to the shattered driver-side glass.

  “Deer hunters live in this area and just about everyone knows how to shoot a shotgun,” I replied. “But this looks like above-average marksmanship to me.”

  George was a handgun enthusiast. But I knew more about forensic evidence in firearm-related deaths than he did. Besides my personal experience at crime scenes, I’d also heard plenty of expert testimony on the subject.

  “You think the killer shot at the car while it was moving?” he asked.

  The possibility didn’t seem likely to me. Any kind of drive-by shootings were fairly rare in Tampa, but out here they had to be non-existent. Even a highly-trained military sniper preferred not to aim at a random moving target, given a choice.

  “Doubtful. Come on. Let me show you something,” I replied.

  George followed me up the road a little way and around the bend where I pointed to the snow covered pavement in front of the Toyota closer than the spot where I’d placed the orange cones.

  “The wind has been gusting hard. Might have blown the snow over the road there,” George said.

  The road had been plowed clean. At some point yesterday or the day before the sun had heated the blacktop enough to melt any snow that had been left after the plow came through. We’d been lucky enough to drive on good road. Which was one of the reasons we hadn’t slammed into the Toyota. The pavement was fairly dry and mostly clear.

  Everywhere along the blacktop, that is, except the one spot.

  “Look at this.” George walked near the shoulder a little farther north. I followed him. He showed me where tracks indicated a snowmobile had left the snow and pulled onto the dry road, dragging some of the snow that had been on its runners along with it and transferring that snow onto the blacktop.

  George said, “The snowmobile pulled up here and blocked the traveled lane of the highway.” He gestured with his gloved hand.

  “But the Toyota never got this far,” I replied.

  “So you think the snowmobile rider walked back and flagged the Toyota down?” George asked me, as if I had a crystal ball.

  “That doesn’t explain the broken driver-side window and the long-range rifle shot,” I said. I stood where the snowmobile must have been parked and looked south toward the Toyota. “You can’t see the vehicle from here because of the bend in the road and the amount of snow piled up and because it’s white. If it had been a dark color, maybe it would have stood out.”

  I looked at George to see if he understood my meaning. He nodded, but I explained anyway, to be sure. “Not just a lucky shot by some guy taking target practice as the cars went by. The snowmobiler stopped the Toyota intentionally.”

  This was more bone chilling than the frigid cold air surrounding us, but I waited for him to recognize and verbalize the only possible conclusion. He got it fairly quickly.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Which means the snowmobiler knew who was driving the car and wanted to kill him,” he said slowly.

  Hearing it from him didn’t make the truth any better.

  “It looks like a set up. Yes,” I said.

  I looked around again. Unlikely the guy would still be anywhere within fifty miles of us. But I didn’t like standing out in the open like this.

  George bent his knees and lowered his body so that his gaze was even with what must have been the snowmobiler’s sightline. Then he stood and walked over to the snowmobile tracks on the other side of the road again.

  “Let’s not disturb the scene any more than we have already,” I told him, knowing only too well the number of problems a contaminated crime scene would present at the killer’s eventual trial. And there would be a trial if I had anything to say about it.

  Glancing at my watch again, I saw that only twenty minutes had passed since we’d first found the Toyota. I was thoroughly chilled outside by the weather and inside by the cold-blooded murder. Maybe the shock of the entire thing was starting to settle into my bones a little, too.

  Without thinking, I took a deep breath and the cold seared all the way into my lungs again. A hint of pine scented the air and added to the burn.

  George returned to the area where I’d found the snow on the road and looked at it more closely, squatting down to get a better angle. A stronger breeze had kicked up. Clouds of dry snow swirled fine white powder around us now, chafing my face and forcing my hands deeper into my pockets. One of my gloved hands connected with my phone.

  Which reminded me that I should take some photos of the scene before the weather destroyed even more evidence. I removed my gloves to operate the camera and my fingers immediately stiffened as if my warm blood had immediately chilled to pudding.

  The brittle cold had sucked humidity from the air and the snow. Snowmobile tracks on the road itself, if any had been there before we arrived, were blown away. By the time the state police arrived, the tracks would be completely gone, as if they’d never existed at all. No doubt the killer was counting on that very thing.

  I grabbed as many snapshots as I could, blowing on my fingers from time to time to keep the joints flexible. Documenting the crime scene as well as possible under the circumstances.

  George began to walk slowly back toward t
he Toyota until he reached it, then turned and walked forward again. I tagged along, partly documenting everything with the photos and a few minutes of video, and partly to keep warm. It wasn’t until we were at the bend in the road ahead that he stopped again.

  “What’s bothering you?” I asked.

  “From here, I can see the Toyota. But I wouldn’t have been able to put that shot through the side window. The angle’s wrong,” he told me. George has won several marksmanship prizes over the years. If he couldn’t have made the shot, it probably couldn’t be done. At least, not by a recreational deer hunter.

  The implication in his words coiled my stomach into knots. I pulled the parka’s hood over my head, re-gloved and stuffed my hands deep into my pockets to warm up. And to stop the shaking.

  I looked around. The crispness now present in the air further sharpened my awareness. “The snowmobile driver had an accomplice. Two people who wanted this guy dead instead of only one.”

  We remained easy targets, standing out here, I thought again as I looked around once more, but saw nothing unusual that I hadn’t noted before.

  “Maybe.” George continued walking toward the car, looking around on the ground. A fine powder of white snow now dusted wide swaths of the road, while in other spots, the black asphalt was clear. No particular pattern revealed itself. The wind whipped the snow now in gusts that stayed only moments and then blew away.

  George was looking down, walking slowly, one foot in front of the other. I walked behind him, looking backward, still concerned that another car might come along and slam into us, or the shooter might lay in wait, or a thousand other things could happen.

  You never see the bullet that gets you.

  We saw no one. The wide red line on the map suggested this was a busy road, but we had not seen another car for almost thirty minutes. Maybe the shooter had known the area well. Maybe he’d known the roadway would be deserted. Made sense as a working hypothesis, at least.

  My teeth had started to chatter and my nose was running, too. Dying from exposure wasn’t what I’d had planned for our vacation. And I was feeling so cold now that I began to wonder how long it would take me, a thirty-nine-year-old woman, five feet eleven inches tall, warmly dressed, to succumb.

  But then I saw something I’d missed.

  “Willa, let’s wait in the Jeep. I’m freezing,” George said, before he began walking in that direction. He’d apparently satisfied his curiosity. For now.

  I barely heard him.

  About five feet in front of the Toyota, I bent down and stared at the ground.

  “What is it?” George asked, a little irritably, when he walked over to join me.

  I pointed with a gloved hand to a couple of marks in the snow, very faint. “Doesn’t that look like something heavy was placed there and then removed?”

  He looked at the snow where I’d pointed. “Maybe. Like what?” George looked back at the Toyota. Almost immediately, he saw what I’d seen.

  The Toyota’s right front tire was flat.

  “Maybe a board or something with a sharp spike in it. It’s hard to say. But it worked effectively to stop the Toyota,” I replied.

  We hadn’t noticed the flat tire before because we’d been walking along the left side, away from the snow wall on the right shoulder of the road.

  It took George a few long seconds to realize what the flat tire meant. When he figured it out without any further comment from me, the knots in my stomach pulled tighter and I began to shiver so much that when George stood up and turned to face me, he actually noticed.

  “Here. You’re freezing,” he said, wrapping me in a big hug for body warmth.

  Before we could say anything more, the promised Michigan State Police trooper pulled to a stop behind the Jeep.

  I don’t think I’d ever been so glad to see a cop in my life.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Exactly fifty-two minutes after we had called, the state trooper arrived in an old-fashioned navy-blue patrol car with a single red flashing gumball on the top. Must have stopped for donuts.

  Thank God the driver of the car was beyond help when we’d made the call or he’d have died waiting.

  The trooper approached and we introduced ourselves. “I’m Trooper Justin Kemp,” he said, handing George a business card. It was hard to see what he looked like in the blinding sunlight, through my sunglasses, while he wore that big brimmed hat and sunglasses. He seemed friendly enough, though.

  I pulled out my cell and snapped a couple of pictures of the flat tire while George told Kemp what happened and what we’d concluded from our preliminary investigation.

  “Mrs. Carson, Mr. Carson,” Trooper Kemp said as he tipped his old-fashioned hat with the flat, wide brim that shadowed his features more than it should have. “Please don’t take this the wrong way. I mean you no disrespect. But we will conduct our own investigation and analyze our own evidence and come to the conclusions the evidence supports.”

  His attitude got my back up, so I said, “There’s no question about it. There were at least two people involved. And it was a set up. For sure. While we’re standing here, the killers are either getting away or taking aim. Which do you think it is?”

  He replied, “There’s a blizzard on the way according to the weather reports. The forecast says we’ll be walloped with four to five feet of drifting snow before this one passes through. Teams are on the way here now and we need to get this crime scene cleared while we still can.”

  George and I had dealt with police officers many times before. They generally felt they were better at doing their jobs than we were. Sometimes, they were right.

  Sometimes, not so much.

  Today, I was more than glad to leave the young trooper to his work. He was right that the evidence had already begun to deteriorate and a blizzard would make processing the scene impossible. I was cold, and tired, and I didn’t want to stand around out here and argue. I wanted a warm bath and a stiff drink.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  When we didn’t protest, Trooper Kemp said, “I do need to take a tape-recorded statement from you and then I’ll let you go on your way.”

  “We’ll do the recorded statement later, when you’re finished here. We have some questions for you, too.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my official business cards with the raised gold seal issued by the United States government to all Federal District Court judges. “My cell phone number is on the back. We’ll be staying with Marc Clayton, in Pleasant Harbor. You know him, don’t you?”

  “It’s a small community, ma’am. Everybody knows everybody here.”

  He took my card and glanced down to read it and the hat brim completely covered his face. When he looked up, he raised his hand to tip the brim again, slightly more respect in his tone this time when he said, “I’ll stop by this afternoon if weather permits, Judge Carson.”

  “Or we’ll call you,” I promised.

  I hooked my arm through George’s and led him toward the Jeep. The trooper walked with us as if he planned to make sure we went on our way. While I struggled to maneuver myself over the console and into the passenger seat again, George asked, “So you knew the victim, then?”

  Trooper Kemp seemed to be about the same age as the man in the car, maybe thirty-five, maybe a year or five either side. If they were both local, they’d have known each other. He probably shouldn’t have answered, but he must have realized a judge could be trusted and we could hang around all day if he didn’t.

  Kemp said, “His name is Leo Richards. He owns the hardware store in Pleasant Harbor. He’s married to Maureen and he has a little girl.” As George moved toward his seat, Kemp added unnecessarily, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about this until we get a chance to notify the family.”

  “We don’t envy you that job,” George told him as he settled into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition on and the heater to full blast. Maybe the car would warm up again so that we could b
oth thaw out someday.

  We snugged our seat belts a little bit tighter this time and George carefully pulled out and around the Toyota. My desire to take pictures of the snow had evaporated, which was good because the phone’s battery was low and I didn’t want to run it out completely in case we needed to make another call. The phone charger was packed in one of the suitcases. I could charge up once we reached the cottage.

  As we drove north, away from the scene, I glanced into the side mirror. Kemp stood, holding a cell phone to his ear, watching us go, maybe calling in our license plate or something. Two vehicles with flashing lights pulled up behind him. Probably part of his team. When we rounded the first curve, I lost sight of Kemp, but I still wondered who he’d been talking to.

  There was no rush to take my statement. I wouldn’t forget anything about the man with the pink hands and the hole in his head and his brains splashed all over the inside of his frosty vehicle. No chance of that. No chance I’d let this murder remain unsolved, either. It might not be my jurisdiction, but justice is always my job and I liked it that way. Judges are like cops. We’re never off duty.

  “You sure know how to start a vacation,” I said, once my teeth stopped chattering, already thinking about the next steps.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We continued on our way toward Pleasant Harbor in silence. The clean snow had lost its appeal and clouds had moved in to replace the sparkling sunlight just as our vacation’s luster had dulled. We traveled with our separate thoughts for companionship, until a small sign on the right hand side of the road caught my attention.

  “Welcome to Pleasant Harbor. Population 1,202,” I read aloud simply to break the silence. Now only 1,201.

  The first flakes of the promised blizzard began to fall. George flipped the windshield wipers on and stopped at the traffic light.

  Smoke rose from the buildings to our left where U.S. 31 abutted Michigan Highway M-244. Once again, the area seemed deserted. In the summer, a line of traffic stopped here and then filed off in all directions. Not today. The hardy residents were probably huddled inside by their fireplaces, which was where I’d hoped to be by now.