Cold Justice: A Judge Willa Carson Mystery (The Hunt for Justice) (3 page)

George began to walk slowly back toward the 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 both 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.

Many times we’d turned right at this intersection to continue on toward Mackinaw City and then to romantic getaways on Mackinac Island. But today, we’d turn left to downtown Pleasant Harbor.

The light turned green and we travelled a bit farther into town before George said, “Looks pretty much the same as the last time we were here, don’t you think?”

“It’s hard to tell with the snow covering everything, but I don’t see very many new buildings, if that’s what you mean.” I wanted conversation, but discussing the town or the weather seemed so banal now. I didn’t feel like socializing. My thoughts continued to return to the murder as if a video loop replayed in my head. There was something else about it that was odd, but what was it?

“What if we take a short ride through town and head to Eagle Creek Cafe? It’s late, but we might still get lunch.” I didn’t say anything. “Or we could go directly to the cottage now, if you’d rather get unpacked.” More silence. “Willa?” He took his right hand off the steering wheel, where it had been firmly planted since we’d returned to the Jeep, and placed it over mine in my lap. His gloved fingers intertwined with mine.

I said, “I’ve seen murder victims before. I just didn’t expect to find a gruesome one this afternoon.”

“I know.”

“The landscape looked soothing, so pristine and beautiful.”

“I know.”

“A man murdered in a tiny, peaceful hamlet shakes your faith.” That was my problem. I kept forgetting that the gun lobby is right about some things. It is people who kill people. Environment didn’t change basic human nature.

“Confining humans in a small space as harsh as this one and expecting them to peacefully coexist is probably too much to ask for.” George squeezed my fingers a little tighter to signal that he needed his hand back. I let him go and felt immediately bereft.

Snow was falling faster now. He increased the wiper speed.

Something more about the crime scene still niggled at the back of my brain. But it disappeared around the corners whenever I almost grasped it. The best thing was to treat it like a timid kitten and wait until it came far enough into the open to seize it.

George had turned the Jeep onto Main Street. “Let’s get some lunch. We can meet up with Marc and maybe find something else to talk about for a while,” he said.

“You just want to get to Marc and talk shop, don’t you? Have you forgotten you’re on vacation?”

He laughed and said, “Have you forgotten you’re on vacation, too?”

“Fair point.” After that, I sat with my thoughts.

We traveled over the drawbridge on the west end of Main Street, which was perpetually down in the winter since the river froze and no boats could pass through anyway. The snow had been plowed from the grates of the bridge and the Jeep’s tires chirruped as we passed over.

George turned right and traveled along the winding street that followed the shoreline, the frozen edge of Lake Michigan stilled now in ice hard enough to drive snowmobiles across. On the left side of the street sat stately nineteenth-century mansions from a bygone era when the town was ruled by lumber barons.