Read Cold Justice: A Judge Willa Carson Mystery (The Hunt for Justice) for Free Online Page A

for plans.
    I laid down next to George on the bed and snuggled up for warmth, though. In a few minutes, he was snoring.
    When I closed my eyes, I could still see Leo Richards’ body slumped over the steering wheel of his Toyota, with a gaping hole in his head through which his life had blasted out.
    I imagined the young widow and the young fatherless daughter in mourning.
    They’d know by now. Someone would have delivered the horrible message that daddy would not be coming home. Their vague images solidified into vivid pictures behind my heavy eyelids. The stuff nightmares are made of.
    George slept and eventually I must have dozed off until a solid, continuous pounding on the cottage door pulled me back to the land of the living.
    My eyes popped open and I gave my head a quick, negative shake. I moved a little bit closer to George, but the space next to me was empty and the sheets were cold.
    Several more knocks suggested that whoever was at the door wasn’t about to leave and George wasn’t answering the summons for some reason.
    I pushed myself out of bed, slipped my feet into shoes, pulled my sweater tighter around my body and noted George’s absence from the tiny abode as I made my way to the front door.
    “Where the hell did he go?” I said to the empty room. I took a quick look around, but I didn’t see a note.
    I pulled back the curtain and peeked out to see the blizzard was now causing a near white-out.
    A Michigan State Trooper stood on the porch poised to knock again. I yanked the door open and a strong gust pelted my body with icy snow.

CHAPTER TWELVE

    “Ma’am,” Trooper Kemp said. He was covered in snow, holding two tall hot cups in black gloved hands. He tipped his head in a gesture of respect and raised one of the cups in my direction. “May I come in? I brought the best coffee in town. I heard you were a caffeine addict.”
    “Heard from whom?” I asked as I stepped out of the way.
    When Kemp was inside and we were snugged up against the elements again, I opened my coffee and he opened the second cup for himself. The double whiff made me swoon. Someone in this town knew how to brew, thank God.
    “You must be feeling a little like Typhoid Mary right at the moment,” he said after a suitable time for savoring. I looked at him blankly. “You show up here for the first time in ten years and somebody ends up dead.”
    I said nothing.
    His tone was light, teasing. “Does this happen everywhere you go? Or just in Pleasant Harbor?”
    My gaze narrowed. So he’d been investigating me. Which is what I should have been doing to him and the victim instead of sleeping. While it was true that I’d had more brushes with murder than most judges, I was in no mood for his humor. I wanted some answers and I wanted them now.
    “You’ve figured out who I am, I take it?”
    “Yes ma’am, I have, United States District Judge Wilhelmina Carson. And I also know you have no jurisdiction here.” He simply stated the facts. His tone had not turned to belligerence. Yet. But I could feel him going in that direction, which was fine with me. Bring it on.
    The jousting restored my equilibrium a bit, although my brain remained fogged with sleep. “All right, then you know that I am not involved in any crimes.”
    “Never thought you were.”
    “So tell me what’s going on. I think I have a right to know, don’t you?”
    “Last time we met, I’d have said no, you don’t have a right to know. You’re a citizen here, like everybody else. You’re not even a witness. Nothing but a bystander who found a body. So I’d have said you were entitled to exactly nothing.”
    Hard to argue with the facts. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
    “But that was before I talked to Judge Trevor.” He flashed a canary-eating grin.
    The caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet so it took me half a beat longer than it should have to make the connection.
    Randy Trevor.
    I’d forgotten he was a judge here now. He was a couple of years