Isolated Judgment Read online

  Isolated Judgment

  By Jonathan Watkins

  The case gets personal for Detroit-based legal—and romantic—partners Darren Fletcher and Issabella Bright when they’re hired to solve a gruesome murder on a remote private island

  Bright & Fletcher are summoned to Wailing Isle, the sprawling private estate of one of Michigan’s most legendary—and reviled—retired judges, Bernard Prosner. Judge Prosner’s troubled nephew has turned up dead, run through with what appears to be a sword straight out of Braveheart. But is the ailing magistrate more interested in Darren and Issabella finding the killer...or keeping the whole thing off the record?

  From the nearby small town of Put-In-Bay, Michigan, to the student housing of Ann Arbor, Darren and Izzy uncover a web of lies and loyalty so deep it dates back to World War II. But when Darren alone solves the case, he’ll do anything to bring down the evil mastermind behind it all...anything except reveal the truth to the woman he loves.

  Book three of Jonathan Watkins’s Bright & Fletcher Mysteries

  70, 500 words

  Dear Reader,

  It’s officially 2016! In the publishing world, we’ve been talking in terms of 2016 for over a year by the time it gets here, due to the amount of time some books are scheduled in advance. So for us, 2016 already feels like it’s been around for quite some time. And, of course, we absolutely already have 2017 and 2018 in our planners, and even though it messes with our brains to be thinking in terms of 2018, it’s great news for you since it means there will always be new books to read!

  This January, as always, we start our Carina Press release schedule as we mean to continue the year—with a mix of science fiction, historical, male/male and suspense romance, as well as a romantic mystery and an urban fantasy thrown in.

  A kidnapping forces an ex-CIA operative back into the violence of a Colombian cartel, where he finds the wife he believed dead to be very much alive—and hiding a dangerous secret in this romantic suspense novel by Edie Harris. Pick up Crazed: A Blood Money Novel this January, and then catch up on her other romantic suspense titles, Blamed and Ripped.

  The Carina Press acquisitions team bonded over our love of A Duchess in Name, a historical romance from Amanda Weaver that kicks off her Grantham Girls trilogy. A wild passion unexpectedly blossoms out of the arranged marriage of the Earl of Dunnley and American heiress Victoria Carson, but will the lies that bound them in marriage finally tear them apart?

  It’s time for another installment of the kick-ass and romantic male/male space opera series Chaos Station from Kelly Jensen and Jenn Burke. In Inversion Point, Zander and Felix have to find a way to face their doubts and preserve their love—while preventing another galaxy-wide war.

  Are you ready for a mystery with a side of romance? When Detroit criminal defender duo Issabella Bright and Darren Fletcher are summoned to the island estate of a retired judge, a deadly chain of events is set in motion—one involving murder, stolen World War II treasures and a conspiracy of revenge that stretches all the way to Chicago, where Darren’s brother Luther wields their family’s power with cold, ruthless precision. Buy Jonathan Watkins’s Isolated Judgment, or go back to where the Bright & Fletcher mystery series began with Motor City Shakedown and Dying in Detroit.

  Whoever said “violence is a last resort” never had a Minotaur for a best friend. We’re pleased to welcome back Joshua Roots with his newest urban fantasy, Paranormal Chaos. Warlock Marcus Shifter has been sent on the most dangerous mission of his career: travel to the remote Minotaur nation and convince them not to abandon the tenuous peace agreement between the humans and the paranormals.

  Coming in February 2016: A male/male new-adult romance from K.A. Mitchell, Nico Rosso begins a thrilling new romantic suspense series with a hero you will love, we introduce new author Anna del Mar with her sexy romantic suspense, Lauren Dane re-releases a fan favorite, and so much more!

  In the meantime, I wish you the very happiest of years as we travel into 2016. May your year be blessed with nothing but good books, memorable characters, and many, many happy-book-sigh moments as you read the last page.

  As always, until next month, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  For Carrie.

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Excerpt from A Devil’s Bargain by Jonathan Watkins

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jonathan Watkins

  About the Author

  About the Bright & Fletcher Mystery series

  About The Epherium Chronicles series

  About Death at China Rose

  About the Dylan Scott Mystery series

  About the Tough Justice series

  Copyright

  O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?

  The sedge has withered from the lake,

  And no birds sing.

  —excerpted from La Belle Dame Sans Merci

  by John Keats

  Prelude

  Ludolf Bohm ached, but that didn’t keep him from his evening patrol of the grounds.

  He was eighty-three years old. Even if he chose to lie in bed all day, he knew he’d still ache. But then he’d only have a television to stare at, and there was nothing on anymore that he wanted to watch. What did he care about little famous girls who lived their lives on television or the crude sitcoms with jokes he didn’t appreciate?

  Daniel says they’re ironic. Stupid boy. Stupid middle-aged boy says we live in an “age of irony” now. What does he know?

  The pudgy fool had announced it like the concept was foreign to Ludolf—as if there had been no such thing as irony in Vienna or in Europe or anywhere else in the world except here and now in the States. No, what passed for entertainment on the televisions in America today was not irony. It was just noise and insults and naked people. Better, he knew, to walk the lawn a final time before bed. Age had hunched his shoulders and ruined his hearing, but it had not taken his legs from him—yet.

  Bundled against the autumn chill in a heavy flannel coat and thick denim trousers, he was primarily on the lookout for the crumpled cigarette butts Daniel refused to stop flicking wherever he pleased, as if the manicured grounds of the estate Ludolf had tended all his adult life was now nothing more than an ashtray for the fat-bellied man-child. He had already bent down and plucked three of them from the ground, slipping them into his trousers pocket, when he saw the thing that should not have been there.

  Ludolf stopped his slow, unhurried patrol of the estate and considered the triangular sliver of glass at his feet. It was several inches long and translucently green, like the glass they had used to bottle Coca-Cola before the world stopped making charming things.

  He straightened and peer
ed around into the thickening darkness of evening. To his right, the main house of Bernard Prosner’s family estate rose up out of the hard, clay-thickened earth. Ludolf had coaxed and nourished that inhospitable soil until it relented and accepted the even carpet of grass he’d sown. The mansion’s three stories of windows were dark, but for one that was lit on the northeast corner, where Ludolf knew Bernard was reading himself to sleep. To Ludolf’s left, the lawn sloped away until it met the line of elms and beech that ringed the outer edges of Wailing Isle. And beyond them, the static-yawn of Lake Erie threw itself against the rocky shore of the little island.

  Ludolf stared at the sliver of glass a moment longer before straightening and fixing his eyes—which had not failed him nearly so much as his hearing had—on the dark one-story structure that stood several yards ahead of him in the shadow of the mansion’s height.

  Daniel, he thought as he walked forward, the name as sharp and sour as a curse word in his mind. What have you done, boy? What have you broken now that you will leave for Ludolf to repair?

  He came to a stop just outside the little greenhouse, and he needed to go no farther. One of the large panes of glass-wall was shattered. It was scattered in hundreds of pieces across the grass at his feet, spilling out from the structure like a crystalline wound. The heavy, earth-rich smell of the greenhouse’s interior wafted out at him as he took in the sight.

  No more. I’ll go to Bernard tomorrow. Tell him the fool must go. No more coddling. You cannot coddle a man who already has gray hairs on his chin.

  Ludolf was turning to go to the shed on the other side of the house, where he would retrieve a tarp and set about patching up what he knew was just the latest in Daniel’s blunders. He pulled up to a sudden stop. Something had moved. In the tree line, something was rushing, a pale blur among the black trunks and brush.

  “Daniel?” he called, before he could think better of it.

  The pale blur froze, and Ludolf knew it had heard him—knew, somehow, that it was looking at him. It broke from the tree line and raced up the lawn, faster than any man. Ludolf backpedaled until he was pressed against the greenhouse, his shoes crunching on the shards scattered in the grass. An irrational fear seized hold of him.

  But then the pale, loping streak reached him and it was only Sam. The scream in Ludolf’s throat died unsounded, and his blunt features bunched up in a mixture of relief and exasperation. He felt ludicrous and unmanly.

  “Dummer hund.” He exhaled in a chiding hiss and reached out to run a gnarled workman’s hand over the dog’s head. “You’re too old for that. Who are you to run around like a banshee in the woods when Ludolf can only shuffle like a bag of bones? You should know...better...was ist los?”

  Sam was huffing heavily from exertion, his purple-spotted tongue lolling ridiculously out the side of his mouth. As Ludolf scratched the lab’s ears, he saw that Sam’s muzzle was dark and wet, as if he had stained it with dirt while rooting around in the woods.

  “You think to chase rabbits, still? There are no rabbits on the Judge’s island, Sam. I think I tell you this too many times, yeah?”

  Ludolf touched Sam’s snout with his other hand, finding it sticky and warm. He held his fingers up to his eyes. It wasn’t dirt at all; Sam’s snout was coated in blood.

  The old groundsman straightened and stared down the slope of lawn at the march of trees from where Sam had materialized. The big yellow dog was not hurt, he knew. Sam was excited and thumping his tail happily against the corner of the greenhouse. He peered up at Ludolf expectantly, as if anxious to share some wonderful thing with his friend.

  Go to bed and watch television, Ludolf told himself.

  He craned his neck and stared up at the ivy-thick wall of the house behind him. The Judge’s light was still on, though he could not know if Bernard had yet fallen asleep or if he was still reading.

  Ludolf frowned in the darkness and turned to scowl at Sam.

  “What have you pulled me into? Nothing profitable, I know.”

  Sam ran in two tight circles and sat back down on his haunches.

  A few minutes later, Ludolf had retrieved a large orange flashlight from the work shed. He paused at his broad, cluttered workbench while Sam padded the cement floor and huffed steam into the chill September air. Ludolf plucked a long Phillips head screwdriver up from the bench and wedged it down into his back trouser pocket. It was no real weapon, but having it with him was enough of a reassurance that he felt ready to proceed out into the darkness.

  Finally, he reached up into one of the coffee cans on a shelf above the workbench. He brought the can down and removed a half-empty pint of whiskey from it. Ludolf took three long, eager swallows from the bottle, his Adam’s apple bobbing as the warmth flooded into him. He gasped after the last pull, recapped the empty bottle and stashed it back inside the can.

  “You be quiet, Sam,” he whispered, though the dog had made no objection. “I work. A man my age, still working like I do. I earn a little sip, don’t I?”

  Sam had no answer, so Ludolf set out from the shed, bolstered and more at ease.

  Squirrels were nearly the only game Sam was afforded on the little scallop of land that was Wailing Isle. The yellow lab was equally fond of charging at birds, but as far as Ludolf knew, Sam had never actually succeeded in catching one before it flew out of reach. The squirrels were another matter. A few had, in fact, fallen under Sam’s trampling charge—though mostly they evaded him and taunted the consternated dog from the safety of tree limbs he couldn’t hope to reach, no matter how vigorously he leapt and twisted in the air beneath them. As they entered the tree line, Ludolf looked down at his old friend and said, “If you broke my greenhouse chasing one of those black eichhornchen, I will be very cross.”

  Sam was not distracted by any of the sounds or smells that usually sent him barreling away into the brush. He settled into a routine of bounding straight ahead of Ludolf until he was at the very outer edge of the flashlight’s reach. Then, as if he knew that the old caretaker was relying upon his guidance, Sam would loiter while Ludolf slowly picked his way across the uncertain ground and caught up.

  The sound of the lake crashing against the shore grew louder as the pair made their way, growing into a thrumming presence that was nearly physical. Ludolf swore once when a low-hanging limb smacked against his eyes, and he had to stop for a moment until the tears cleared enough that he could see again. Sam plodded ahead and, just like that, disappeared down the sharp ridge of dirt where the woods ended and the thin beach began.

  Oh no.

  The flashlight found Daniel seemingly of its own accord. Ludolf stopped at the lip of earth that hung over the beach, knowing full well he could not manage the descent in this darkness. Lake Erie was a black eternity beyond the sliver of white sand. It rushed against the huge rocks that thrust up out of the water on either end of the beach and blew spraying plumes of mist up into the air.

  Down below, Sam traipsed excitedly around Daniel’s corpse, his paws kicking up sand. The yellow Labrador barked and whined and cast frantic glances at Ludolf, perplexed that the old man hadn’t rushed down to celebrate with him over the rare find sprawled out on the beach.

  Ludolf sucked wind in through his nose, trying to steady himself. He aimed the flashlight over Daniel’s body, and the air caught in his chest. His legs grew loose and rubbery under him, so that he had to reach out with his free hand and place it against a tree trunk for support.

  Someone had driven a sword through Daniel. It was sunk into the dead man’s chest nearly to the hilt, pinning him to the earth. Sam leapt about. The lake waters rushed in and out. Ludolf did not know how long he stood there, transfixed and uncomprehending.

  Then he was stumbling back through the woods, the beam from his flashlight lurching crazily in front of him. He fell twice, but would not feel the cramping ache of it in his wrists and knees until much
later. Anxiety was riding him.

  He reached the lawn and stopped, heaving for breath. His hands shook with an adrenaline palsy. The sword buried in Daniel’s torso was still a physical image in his eyes, its black negative floating in his vision like an exclamation point. He blinked against it and stared up at the house.

  There, in the single lit window, was the silhouette of the Judge in his wheelchair.

  Chapter One

  Deputy Dan Finch fixed his gunslinger’s implacable stare on the inmate he’d come to collect.

  “Fletcher,” he barked through the bars.

  The wrinkled mass that was poured over the narrow cell’s cot shifted, groaned then fell still again. Finch’s scowl deepened and his gray eyes narrowed.

  “Fletcher!”

  “G’way...”

  “On your feet.”

  The inmate rolled over, and Finch could see Darren Fletcher’s raw, red-rimmed eyes peeking open. One long-fingered hand appeared from under the wrinkled suit coat Darren was using as a blanket. He ran that hand over his face and scrubbed at his whiskers. A gargantuan yawn shuddered up out of him.

  “Finch? Jesus, what time is it?”

  “Just shy of three in the morning. Get on your feet.”

  Darren moved with a sluggish, shaky-limbed lethargy. His long legs swung down and he managed to get himself in a sitting position. He pulled the sorry-looking suit coat around him like an old woman securing her shawl, and peeked up from beneath a tangled mop of dark curls.

  “Three in the morning? That’s a material breach of our agreement.”

  Finch shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He was a lean, compact man with thick, muscled forearms. Every one of his sixty years showed in the lines of his face, but he had the limber, easy grace of a man much younger.

  “We don’t have no agreement,” he growled.

  Darren yawned again and shook his head.

  “Not explicitly, no. An implied contract. ’’Course of business. Custom of trade. Follow?”