Cold Justice: A Judge Willa Carson Mystery (The Hunt for Justice) by Diane Capri Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    “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