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

by Diane Capri

  The microwave dinged. I pulled out the cup and took a sip of the heated coffee and burned my tongue. “Crap!” I drew a cold glass of water and swished it around in my mouth, which seemed to help my scalded tongue not one whit.

  Kemp looked at his watch. “Judge Trevor is expecting us. We can talk about the rest in the car. Are you going dressed like that?”

  Which is when I looked down and noticed I was wearing my pajamas under my cardigan. Now how the hell had that happened? George. Obviously. I hoped.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, as I ducked into the bedroom to slip into my jeans again. It took me only a few seconds to dress in the warmest clothes I owned. I ran a quick toothbrush around my teeth and finger-combed my pixie-cut. I looked again for a note from George, but found none. In three minutes, I was ready. George says I’m fast, for a girl.

  I snagged my parka, gloves, and my miniscule purse and dropped my phone into my pocket, wishing I’d remembered to stick it on the charger before my nap. When I returned to the front door to don the hideously huge boots, Kemp was waiting.

  “Do you have any theories about who shot Richards?” I asked him with my hand on the knob and before we opened the door to the blasting snow once more.

  “Prevailing theory is the guy the media has been calling the snow sniper.”

  I halted at the threshold with the door open and the howling wind rushing through, snow swirling around my body. “The what?”

  “Let’s go. I’ll tell you about him in the car.” Kemp gave me a little push on the shoulder which made me plant my feet inside the cottage.

  “I’m driving my own car,” I said.

  He laughed and pressed my shoulder forward again knocking me slightly over the threshold where I planted my feet more firmly. He pulled on his gloves. “That’ll be some trick. Even if you could navigate in this blizzard. Which I doubt.”

  I didn’t budge. “I’ve got four-wheel drive and I’ve driven in blizzards before, Kemp.”

  He sobered quickly at my steely tone and fierce stare and unrelenting stubbornness. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure you do and you have. But not today. Because your vehicle’s already gone.”

  I whipped my head around to peer through the white stuff. Sure enough, the driven snow covered everything. Trees, shrubs, trash cans. Everything that is except the missing Jeep.

  George Carson. Where the hell did you go?

  Kemp gave me a little shoulder nudge again and this time, I stepped out into the storm. He followed me and pulled the cottage door closed. Then he moved around in front of me and led the way to his cruiser, which was now as snow-covered as everything else.

  Kemp opened the passenger door and I slipped inside. He closed me snuggly within the cold cruiser and trudged around the front and slipped in behind the wheel. Now that he’d secured me inside the car, he honored his promise to tell me more without prompting. “I’m not sure how Leo Richards was involved with the snow sniper. Maybe there was no relationship between the two at all. As far as we can tell, the sniper killed the other three victims randomly. One thing I just found out a few minutes ago, though.”

  He fired up the ignition and waited for a bit of warmth before he flipped on the wipers. They struggled to move the heavy snow aside. Maybe he didn’t have a snowbrush. “We got the quick and dirty preliminary ballistics report back on the bullet used to kill Leo Richards.”

  Those quick reports could be wrong. But they could rule out possibilities and narrow the search for the murder weapon. I reached to fasten my seat belt. I was colder than I’d been in years and when I managed to get warm again, I vowed to stay as far away from snow as humanly possible for the rest of my life. Of course, I’d vowed that before and here I was. “What did the ballistics establish?”

  “The gun that killed Leo Richards was not the gun used on any of the snow sniper’s other victims,” he said, reaching his arm out the window and catching the wiper to knock the snow off.

  “Did you tell Judge Trevor about that report?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Just before I knocked on your door. Doesn’t mean the guy owns only one gun, though, you know?” he replied, half a second before he flipped the fan up to full blast on the defroster. After that, all conversation was lost in the wind.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the time we headed out of the cottage driveway, we could almost see through the tiny clear space on the bottom of the windshield.

  Kemp concentrated on his driving and I thought about what to ask first when we could turn the blasting fan down low enough to hear each other. I wanted to know about the snow sniper and why he was a suspect when the ballistics were wrong on the murder weapon and whether Kemp had any leads and when the sniper would be arrested and a zillion other questions.

  But I didn’t want him to lose concentration while driving on the snow and black ice my experience said was probably underneath it. So I held my tongue and looked at the slowly passing landscape while I made my mental interrogation list.

  The world outside the vehicle resembled a snow globe, everything shaken upside down and filled with the blizzard. The town was picturesque and remote and the pristine white snow covered everything ugly underneath.

  What rot lay under the beautiful blanket of false serenity falling softly all around me, making travel difficult and clarity impossible? This was a place where a man could disappear for an entire year and no one mourned or seemed to care. Pleasant Harbor was not so idyllic after all.

  Snow continued to fall steadily and Kemp had trouble keeping us between the ditches even in the four-wheel drive vehicle and even without my distracting questions. So my inquisition was delayed.

  I pulled out my cell phone, which hadn’t rung since we arrived here. Not even once. Today was Tuesday and my courtroom should have been in full swing in the Florida sunshine. My assistant, Augustus, had promised not to call me with trivial questions, but I hadn’t believed him. He’d never honored that promise before. There was no reason to think he’d start doing so now.

  I pulled off one of the clumsy gloves to glance at the phone’s screen. One missed call. Okay. At least I wasn’t completely out of touch. The call was from George’s cell. He’d left a voicemail. I pushed the button and held the phone to my ear.

  The signal had been weak and the message was garbled and cut off too soon. I listened to it three times before I was able to make out a few words that sounded maybe like “…Sorry I didn’t leave a note…. Couldn’t sleep…. Back soon.”

  Otherwise, nothing.

  I pushed the redial and got a lot of empty air. I tried the internet browser to look up media coverage of the snow sniper, but couldn’t connect to that, either. No signals. Which wasn’t surprising I guess, given the abominable weather.

  I dropped the phone back into my pocket and returned my gaze to peering outside at the blinding white trail ahead of Kemp’s squad car.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I didn’t realize I’d asked aloud until he replied.

  “Classic misdirection, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?” He held the wheel in a tight grip at the nine and three positions. His body leaned forward as if getting closer to the windshield would improve visibility outside. The cruiser’s headlights seemed to make matters worse because they simply illuminated the heavy snow, but Kemp might have thought they made the cruiser more obvious to others and we needed them to avoid a collision or something.

  Before I had a chance to ask another question, he raised his voice to say, “The snow sniper is a rather fanciful moniker, but the media types do like to give these killers a handle. The short of it is that we’ve had three murders in Mid-Michigan before this one, all three had similar characteristics and all were committed by the same weapon. This one is either a change in the killer’s method and weapon or it’s a copycat.”

  “Copycat seems the most logical since the ballistics don’t match, doesn’t it?” I was almost shouting to be heard over the blasting fan and the struggling windshield wipers.

&nbs
p; “Probably. There are other differences, too.”

  “Such as?”

  “One thing is the snow sniper has targeted victims from a longer range using a rifle. This one seemed like a rifle shot, but it wasn’t. This murder was very up close and personal. And this is the first victim we’ve found dead in a vehicle. The others were exposed to the shot. One snowmobiler, a cross-country skier, and a woman at a car wash. Fewer logistical issues when the victim isn’t surrounded by a steel enclosure.”

  “I take it these details were withheld from the media? Otherwise, how would a copycat think he could make so many changes and get away with them?”

  “I’m a cop, not a mind reader.” Kemp might have shrugged, but inside the heavy jacket it was hard to tell. “The good news is that we identified the snow sniper a couple of days ago, but we were still collecting evidence and hadn’t arrested him yet. If he killed Richards, then the bad news is another man is dead and we’re all looking damn stupid right now. The somewhat better news is that the Richards murder gave us the probable cause we needed to get tight warrants. There’s a team on the way to pick him up in Grand Rapids now. So we should know soon enough whether he also owns the Leo Richards murder weapon.”

  “But you think the snow sniper didn’t kill Richards. Aside from wishful thinking, got any evidence?”

  Kemp said nothing. Neither did I. He’d answer my question or I wouldn’t say another word.

  The silence lasted until we finally reached the Pleasant County Courthouse. We’d traveled the three-mile distance in about half an hour, according to the digital clock in the dash. Not bad, considering the road conditions.

  When Kemp pulled into the parking lot, I was relieved to see a county snow plow. Kemp slid into a plowed parking space and turned off the ignition, creating an abrupt and unnerving quiet inside the cabin.

  Silently, I pried my hands apart, flexed my shoulders and stretched my neck from side to side, trying to return some blood flow to my severely cramped muscles.

  After a moment, Kemp said, “Ready to go?”

  I said nothing and didn’t move.

  He tried to nudge me along. “We’re already late. Judge Trevor will explain everything to you when we get inside.”

  “Tell me why you don’t think the snow sniper killed Leo Richards or I’m not going in there. You know the answer. He knows, too. And I don’t. We level that playing field right now.”

  “Actually, you know everything Judge Trevor knows. You’re already on that level playing field. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t move.

  Kemp pulled off his glove and wiped his face with his hand while he thought things through. His research on me must have given him a few examples of exactly how stubborn I can be because as the silence lingered, he took me at my word.

  “The murder weapon was a Desert Eagle 50 caliber handgun. Reported stolen last year. It’s a match. No doubt about it. That’s the weapon that killed Leo Richards this morning.”

  There was more. I could feel it. “A match to what? And what’s the rest of the story?”

  He didn’t say. I didn’t budge.

  Kemp sighed. Weary, maybe. Resigned at least. “The weapon was registered to David Mason.”

  “That’s your big secret? David Mason, the chef at Eagle Creek Cafe? His stolen gun was the murder weapon?”

  “That’s the one. Now let’s go.” Before I could ask any more questions, Kemp left the cruiser, closing me alone inside. I saw him pulling his gloves over his hands.

  After snugging up my gloves, I opened the door and stepped into the blizzard again. Why the hell had I ever thought this frozen white stuff was the least bit romantic?

  My boots landed onto a layer of new snow over the hard pack. The wind nearly knocked me over. My hair became covered with snowflakes in just a brief moment and the icy flakes pelted my face. I flipped up the parka’s hood and turned my head down in self-defense.

  Kemp walked around the back of the vehicle. I could hear his boots crunching on the snow beside me, but I’d have had to turn my entire body to see him with the parka’s hood up. He didn’t lock the cruiser, probably because he was afraid the locks would freeze. Or maybe he figured if any fool was willing to come out in this storm to steal the damn thing, they could have it.

  “The entrance is this way, Judge.” He steadied me by a tight grip on my arm and we made our way cautiously around the building. Kemp pulled hard on the handle of the glass door, sweeping a foot of snow off the entranceway as the door’s rubber flashing scraped the concrete and it pivoted open.

  I rushed inside and he followed.

  After we stamped and dusted off, without another word Kemp led the way down a corridor to our left. We passed two large dark wood doors over which the words “Courtroom A” were posted in brass letters.

  The next doorway had white opaque glass on the top half and wood on the bottom half. The kind of doors you see in old movies from the 1940s. Black letters stood out boldly on the white opaque glass. Judge Randy Trevor, Pleasant County Circuit Judge.

  Kemp rang a small doorbell to the right. A female voice spoke through the intercom above the button.

  “Yes?”

  “Trooper Justin Kemp to see Judge Trevor.”

  A buzzer sounded and Kemp ushered me through another door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We entered into a roomy reception area. The woman who had answered the buzzer sat behind an antique wood desk. Although the building and the office furnishings were old-fashioned, her desk held a thoroughly modern telephone system and better computer equipment than I’d had in Tampa’s old federal courthouse before I was allowed to move into newer quarters.

  Judge Trevor’s secretary, though, could have come from central casting for the same 1940s movie that furnished the office. She looked as if she had been sitting at this very desk since the building was constructed. She was probably sixty years old, but she looked ninety.

  She had blue-gray hair, worn in a style that required a once weekly visit to the salon for a shampoo and set. Glasses so old-fashioned they were trendy framed her eyes, giving her the look of a startled cat. Her white cardigan was held around her shoulders by a sweater clip of plastic pearls. She wore a floral perfume that was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t name because my sense of smell was now frozen.

  The entire effect was surreal, as if I’d stepped back in time when I crossed that last threshold. I almost expected an old film star to come out of the door to the Judge’s chambers any second.

  “Hello, Sue,” Kemp said in a sweeter tone than I’d heard him utilize until now. “This is Judge Wilhelmina Carson, from Florida. She’s staying over at Marc Clayton’s guest cottage. We need to see Judge Trevor.” Why it was necessary to share all of this information with Sue was beyond me, but I was the guest here.

  Sue Evans didn’t greet me cheerfully or kindly or in any other way. I might have been invisible for all of the attention she paid to me.

  “He’s on the phone. Have a seat,” she said, barely taking her gaze from the computer screen. I stood near enough to her desk to see she was reading newspaper accounts of the snow sniper’s kills. I read over her shoulder, glad that she had enlarged the print about two-hundred percent.

  The headline was “Snow Sniper Kills Third Victim at Bayside Carwash.” The photographs were winter scenes. Both were exterior views of a do-it-yourself wash stall. A silver mini-van was parked just outside the stall, doors and hatch open, near the coin-operated vacuum cleaner. The vacuum hose rested inside the mini-van’s open back hatch. Something dark had stained the carpet, probably blood.

  The victim’s picture was a grainy formal portrait probably made by an old camera using film. I couldn’t read the screen as well as I needed to, but I made out that the victim was shot by a rifle and died instantly. Her identity was withheld pending notification to the family.

  One shell casing had been located, but police weren’t sure whether the casing was relevant at the time.

&n
bsp; Two other shootings were rapidly summarized at the end. One victim was a man sitting on a snowmobile in a parking lot of a convenience store. The other was a woman who had been cross-country skiing. Her body hadn’t been discovered for several hours because of her remote location.

  Sue must have felt me leaning behind her because she turned and glared at me before she picked up the phone receiver and said, “Trooper Kemp and Judge Carson are here to see you.”

  A booming, disembodied male voice I recognized even after all these years responded, “Send them in.”

  Sue inclined her head toward a wooden door on the other side of a latched wood gate. A long buzzer sounded as Trooper Kemp took my elbow again and guided me through. I was beginning to feel like I’d fallen into another world, somehow. A place too quiet, too old, with too many secrets.

  When we entered his chambers, Judge Randy Trevor was moving from behind his desk, making his way toward us.

  “Willa! It’s so good to see you!” Instead of offering to shake hands, he leaned in for a big hug and a tight squeeze that I could barely feel through the parka. He greeted me as if I was a long-lost best friend, when we had only been co-workers a long time ago. I’d never received a warmer greeting from a colleague, including him, even back when we actually knew each other. All of which made me feel suspicious instead of welcomed. What was going on here?

  The amenities dispensed with, seated behind his desk with Kemp and me across from him, Judge Trevor got right to the point. “Thanks for coming, Willa. When I saw Justin this afternoon, and he told me you were here, I asked him to see you.”

  “So he said,” I replied.

  Kemp had removed his big brimmed hat. Close-cropped red hair and pink scalp, a small nose, freckles across the bridge, a good smile and a pleasant demeanor emerged from the brim’s shadow. He seemed wholesome. Under better circumstances, I thought I’d like Justin Kemp quite a lot.