by Diane Capri
COLD JUSTICE:
A Judge Willa Carson Thriller
BY
DIANE CAPRI
Presented by:
AugustBooks
Praise for
New York Times and USA Today
Bestselling Author
Diane Capri
“Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.
Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her.”
Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers
“[A] welcome surprise….[W]orks from the first page to ‘The End’.”
Larry King
“Swift pacing and ongoing suspense are always present…[L]ikable protagonist who uses her political connections for a good cause…Readers should eagerly anticipate the next [book].”
Top Pick, Romantic Times
“…offers tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plot, and loads of Florida atmosphere. Recommended.”
Library Journal
“[A] fast-paced legal thriller…energetic prose…an appealing heroine…clever and capable supporting cast…[that will] keep readers waiting for the next [book].”
Publishers Weekly
“Expertise shines on every page.”
Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Grand Master and Past President
Also by DIANE CAPRI
CLICK HERE for a complete list of Diane Capri Books
(Click each title to buy or download a sample)
The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:
Jack in the Green
Get Back Jack
Don’t Know Jack
Jack in a Box
Jack and Kill
The Hunt for Justice Series:
Fatal Distraction
Fatal Enemy
Due Justice
Twisted Justice
Secret Justice
Wasted Justice
Raw Justice
Mistaken Justice
Cold Justice
Copyright © 2014 Diane Capri, LLC
All Rights Reserved
Published by: AugustBooks
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DianeCapri.com
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Cold Justice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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eISBN:
978-1-940768-11-3
DEDICATION
Thank you to some of the best readers in the world: Lisa Clayton (Marc Clayton), Justin Kemp, and B.C. Griffin (Jeannine Montgomery) for participating in our character naming giveaways which make this book a bit more personal and fun for all of us.
And for Wilhelmina Boersma, trailblazer extraordinaire.
CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Judge Wilhelmina Carson
George Carson
Justin Kemp
Marc Clayton
David Mason
Molly Mason
Leo Richards
Maureen Richards
Randy Trevor
Madeline Trevor
COLD JUSTICE
CHAPTER ONE
Traverse City, Michigan
The DC-9 circled Traverse City’s regional airport, supplying a panoramic view of the Old Mission Peninsula and Grand Traverse Bay area that once had been our playground. Snow covered everything like a cozy comforter and I felt as if I’d been transported from my ordinary palm trees and sunshine world to a magical place.
George and I were a little too old, a little too sophisticated, to be so excited about a winter break. And yet, excited we were. This was our first vacation in years and I was as thrilled as a child who discovers her toys from Santa on a snowy Christmas morning.
We even left our dogs at home, which we almost never did. Harry and Bess, the lumbering Labradors who shared our life, would be fine, but we weren’t sure we’d survive without them. We’d never been away from them before. Both of us had a little separation anxiety already.
Long, empty days stretched before us filled with anticipation and the promise of our favorite gifts. Hot chocolate, warm soups. Heavy sweaters, cozy comforters. Blazing fires in the fireplace. Good books. Good booze. Good cigars. No phones. No television.
Even better, no five-star restaurant for George to manage and no federal court justice for me to dispense. For an entire week. Our first real vacation in way too long.
The mere idea of a vacation had carried us through the last few days of hectic preparations and last-minute hearings.
And now, here we were, about to land.
Everything felt absolutely perfect.
Until things started to go wrong.
My self-induced amnesia began to clear. Memories surfaced, reminding me why I left this place a decade ago. For one thing, I remembered I hate the cold.
Unlike a down comforter, the snow blanket on the ground outside promised bone-numbing temps, sending shivers along my entire body. How could I have overlooked that? I wrapped my hands around my biceps and rubbed. Friction, I remembered, produces heat.
Ribbons of twinkling blacktop below nestled between high snowbanks plowed off to each side.
“At least the driving will be clear,” George said as he peered across me to look out the window from his seat on the aisle.
He knew I hated treacherous driving in blizzards and black ice because a simple flat tire or fender bender carried the threat of chain reaction collisions and hypothermia.
George was a cold weather enthusiast, so all I said was, “True.”
Blacktop roads were the only uncovered ground visible from the plane’s window. Picturesque Traverse City nestled on the south side of the bay, which was recognizable only because I knew where the water should be. The Great Lakes had frozen to a depth of thirty inches this winter under all that snow, too. Record cold temperatures and snowfall combined to create the mountains of white gold that local sk
i resorts depended upon for revenue to support them through the lean summer months. Too much of a good thing, I thought, even as it all sparkled in the sharp winter sunlight.
A few minutes later, the captain delivered a perfect touchdown without sliding on the snow-packed runway and the entire cabin of passengers applauded. I’m not a nervous flyer, but the applause made me uneasy. Landing the plane smoothly was a big part of his job. Nobody applauded in my courtroom when I handled my cases especially well. But I imagined they might erupt in riotous celebration if I rarely managed the feat of handling my job.
Still, we’d arrived at our destination. Travel over. Our vacation officially began and I summoned as much of my prior excitement as I could muster.
We disembarked into the frosty jet way. Loaded down with parkas, boots, gloves and carry-ons, we hurried into the over-heated terminal. We made our way like pack animals to claim luggage and collect the rental.
How had I forgotten the sheer burden of moving around in a winter climate?
Half an hour later, with George behind the wheel of the rented Jeep Cherokee sporting a winter wonderland license plate and me trying to read the yellow highlighted route on the map because GPS was unreliable here, we traveled along the blacktop, skimming through the seven-foot snow tunnel open to the sky and the breathtaking beauty captured me once again.
Or maybe it was the frigid and unrelenting cold that stole my breath away.
Eventually, we reached U.S. 31 North, left Traverse City behind and headed toward Pleasant Harbor, about fifty miles north on the two-lane, according to the map.
We should have been there in about an hour. Ninety minutes tops.
CHAPTER TWO
The road hugged East Bay all the way up. The driving was easy. The day was gorgeous. What’s not to like? I chided myself.
On our left was an unobstructed vista across frozen Grand Traverse Bay toward Old Mission Peninsula. Grape fields and cherry orchards barely poked above the snow. Shanties perched on the ice for fishing and there were a couple of ice boats, sails filled with blasting cold wind, racing back and forth. A recent storm had dipped even the smallest tree branches in ice gloves that sparkled in the sunlight.
We both wore our sunglasses, which seemed silly when the temperature here was exactly one hundred degrees lower than what we’d left at home this morning. According to the Jeep’s thermometer, it was a frosty three degrees outside. Yet the sun’s glare was brighter than back in Tampa.
Snow was piled five feet high on the right side of the road, exposing a view of nothing but a solid white wall outside the passenger window.
I reached over and flipped the fan to maximum and simultaneously pressed the button to lower the window.
George asked, more than a little testily, “I like the cold, but are you trying to freeze me to death?”
“Listening to the quiet,” I told him.
The snow covered everything with a blanket of silence that muffled even the country sounds of the farmland we were driving through now. Except for what could have been snowmobiles in the distance, I didn’t hear a cow or a horse or anything. Blissful silence.
“Well, can you just imagine the quiet?” George snapped. “I’m freezing my ass off over here.”
I would have refused on principle alone, but it was really quite cold. I rolled the window back up, preparing to give him some lip about it, when we rounded a curve in the road and I glanced out the windshield.
“George! Stop!” I yelled and braced for impact.
He slammed on the brakes, both hands on the wheel. A sound like “Yaaaaaa!” exploded from his throat as he pumped the brake pedal.
Something oddly detached in my mind wondered whether pumping the brakes was the right thing to do.
The Jeep slewed into the oncoming traffic lane. George wrestled with the steering wheel and got back on track, but we continued to slide. Finally, the Jeep stopped.
Mere inches before we’d have slammed into the rear of the white Toyota SUV sitting dead still in the middle of our northbound traffic lane.
If we hadn’t been wearing our seatbelts, we’d both have been thrown into the windshield. As it was, we were jerked back like snapped rubber bands. Fortunately, the airbags didn’t deploy, although I wondered why not while my heart pounded like a thundering herd of wild buffalo in my chest and the sound amplified in my ears.
A few moments of silence enveloped the Jeep inside and out as we gathered our senses and discovered that we were not hurt.
The fluffy down parka I wore over a heavy wool sweater padded me enough that I might avoid a dandy seatbelt-shaped bruise across my torso tomorrow.
Otherwise, we were shook up, but fine.
“What the hell?” George eventually asked. His tone implied actual curiosity, a bit of his trademark composure returning. “There’s not a sign of a taillight or a flasher on that vehicle.”
The Toyota hadn’t moved since I’d first glimpsed it. I could see no brake nor tail lights nor flashers of any kind, either.
And the engine was off.
If there had been snow on the road, the white Toyota would have been all but invisible. As it was, the blacktop beneath its wheels had provided enough contrast for me to see it. Thank God.
George flipped on the Jeep’s flashers and unbuckled his seatbelt.
“Where are you going?” I asked him, still checking to be sure I hadn’t broken any bones, trying to calm my heartbeat which was still pounding “Wipeout” in my head.
Without answering, he opened the door and stepped out onto the center of the road. “George?”
“I’ll be right back. The driver may be in trouble here,” he said, in what turned out to be the understatement of the century.
CHAPTER THREE
We hadn’t seen another vehicle for a while, and leaving the Jeep in the middle of the travel lane didn’t seem wise. The snow wall on the right shoulder left us no choice. If another vehicle slammed into the Jeep, I didn’t want to be sitting inside it. Time to get out while I still could.
After a couple of tries, I realized we were so close to the snow wall on the right that I couldn’t open the passenger door wide enough to exit. Swell.
I wiggled around and lifted one long leg and ridiculously huge boot over the console in the middle of the Jeep’s front seat, straddling the gearshift for a few moments before I managed to get the other leg over.
There are plenty of times when being almost six feet tall is a real handicap. Climbing around inside of vehicles while dressed like a Laplander was one of them.
Eventually, I managed to get myself out through the driver’s side door and joined George where he was standing, stock still, at the Toyota. His gaze focused straight ahead.
The first thing I noticed was the driver.
A man. Thirty-five, maybe forty. Impossible to guess his height or weight because of his position and attire. He was dressed in heavy winter gear like we were, except his hands were bare of gloves and very pink with cold.
His head was bowed and he slumped forward slightly, held in place by his seat belt. Maybe he’d had a heart attack or a stroke or something. Maybe he would be okay.
Why wasn’t George trying to get into the car and help the guy?
My gaze rested on the Toyota’s windows and I recognized the whole problem.
Involuntarily, my breath sucked in with a vacuum-like roar in the silence.
The driver’s side window was shattered but still in place. The passenger side window was blown out, but a few shards remained, covered with blood and flesh and bone. And gray matter that could only have been the driver’s brain. Some of the smaller grisly bits had already frosted over in icy crystals. The rest was probably embedded in the snow bank opposite where we stood.
My joy in this magic world had shattered, too, just like the glass on the Toyota’s windows. Nerves hummed along my body unrelated to the frigid cold. Warnings I didn’t heed.
The scene was surreal. A murder in the middle of nowhere,
nobody around, the Toyota and its occupant blending with the pure sparkling snow but sticking out, too. Unmistakably murder.
The area felt sinister to me now, menacing. I looked around for the shooter, even as I knew he was probably long gone. If he were nearby, watching, he’d wear camouflage to make him invisible. Either way, I didn’t see him. Which made things worse instead of better.
I’d seen gunshot wounds to the head that weren’t fatal, but I could tell even from a distance that this wasn’t one of them. Still, to be sure, I opened the door, pulled off my glove, reached through and touched his cold and bright pink flesh above his carotid artery to confirm.
He felt frozen, almost, which made me wonder how long he’d been sitting here, dead or alive. The interior of the Toyota smelled like blood and frost. Or maybe my imagination conjured those odors because as cold as he was, the smells should have already dissipated.
I stepped back and re-gloved. The temperature was way too cold for unprotected flesh to be exposed very long without frostbite.
“Do you have your cell phone?” George asked me, his question grabbing my gaze from the evidence spatter.