“Yes, and we talked about Revelations,” Marcelle said. “He liked one passage in particular. Revelations 21:4. I looked it up when I got back home. It didn’t make much of an impression on me then, but after I knew he was dead, I looked it up again. I even memorized it in Brad’s honor-at least I tried to. It goes something like this: God shall wipe away all their tears; there shall be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain because the former things are passed away.
“Do you think he knew he was going to die, Sheriff Brady? Do you think he had some kind of premonition?”
“Maybe,” Joanna said.
But right then it seemed far more likely to her that Brad Evans wasn’t seeing his own death in those words. He was, instead, seeing his supposedly murdered daughter inexplicably alive. Still, if he had made such an earth-shattering discovery, wouldn’t he have been shouting it from the rooftops rather than making oblique Bible-based comments about it to his landlady? Whom else would he have told? Or perhaps he himself wasn’t yet fully convinced and he hadn’t confided in anyone while he waited to make some kind of confirmation. That might be where the camera and the stealth photos came in.
“Did he seem sad or unhappy?” Joanna asked.
“Not at all,” Marcelle replied. “In fact, I’d say he was the exact opposite of sad. When he said grace before we ate, I remember him thanking God for the many blessings in his life-including me. I took that as a compliment.”
“I’m sure you were a blessing in his life,” Joanna said.
Marcelle nodded and dabbed at teary eyes with her already sodden hanky. “I hope I was,” she murmured and then frowned. “And he said something else-that he was grateful for second chances.”
“What kind of second chances?” Joanna asked.
“He didn’t say, not specifically, but I hoped it meant he had met a woman-a woman who was as nice as he was. It’s hard living alone, you know. I miss my Roger so much, and I had been praying for Brad to find someone who would make his life less lonely.”
“So you’re pretty sure the last time you saw him was Tuesday?” Joanna asked.
Marcelle nodded. “Wednesday was his day off. On Thursday I had an early-morning appointment with my dentist, so he might have been there and he might not, but not seeing him for a day or two at a time wasn’t all that unusual, either-not unusual enough for me to think about reporting him as missing. Brad often went out at night-to meetings and such. He was very involved in AA, you know. He must have been quite a drinker at one time, but I never saw any sign of liquor once he moved into my apartment. As I said, he was a very nice man, and I’m going to miss him.”
Ted Chapman appeared at Joanna’s elbow. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but Mrs. Womack’s ride is here. So anytime you’re ready to go…”
“I’m ready to go right now,” Marcelle said, getting to her feet. “I’ve monopolized Sheriff Brady for far too long. Very nice meeting you,” she added. “I hope you find out who did this.”
“So do I,” Joanna replied.
As Marcelle tottered away with Ted Chapman at her side, Joanna turned to survey the rest of the room. Most of the inmates were gone by then. The two that remained were gathering up paper plates and plastic glasses and clearing off the refreshment table under the watchful eyes of two of the suit-clad jail ministry honchos.
Joanna walked up and introduced herself. One of the men was Rich Higgins, the human resources guy Ted Chapman had called. The other was Dave Enright, who identified himself as the executive director.
“Are you making any progress?” Dave asked, once he realized who Joanna was.
“Some,” she said. “But not much. We’re checking his phone and credit-card records to see if we can track what he was doing or who was in contact with him in the days before his death.”
“That would include his cell-phone records?” Rich Higgins asked.
“I’m not sure we knew he had a cell phone,” Joanna said. “I know we’re checking his home number. If my investigators had discovered a billing for a cell phone, I’m sure they would have included that in their request for phone company records.”
“There wouldn’t be a billing in his name,” Rich told her. “Our company cell phones are an in-kind contribution from one of the cell-phone-service providers. They provide the phones and the service both, so there is no individual billing as such.”
“Do you happen to have that number?” Joanna asked.
“Sure do.” Rich Higgins unsnapped a cell-phone case from his belt and scrolled through a list of numbers. “Here it is,” he said.
As Rich read off the number, Joanna jotted it down. Once she was out of the prison and back in her vehicle, she called Frank Montoya.
“How was the funeral?” he asked.
“About what I expected. Got to talk to Bradley’s landlady and to a couple of his jail ministry colleagues, which is why I’m calling. Have you had a chance to check Bradley Evans’s phone and credit-card records?”
“The phone was easy,” Frank said. “I don’t know why he even bothered to have one. From what I could see, he hardly used the damned thing.”
“I know why,” Joanna said. “He had a cell phone somebody else was paying for.” She gave Frank the number. “What about credit-card usage?”
“Nothing after he disappeared,” Frank answered. “The last time it was used was on Wednesday. He had lunch at Denny’s in Sierra Vista on Tuesday. From the size of the bill, I’d say he ate alone. On Wednesday he bought a camera from a Walgreen’s on Fry Boulevard.”
“Maybe he spotted her somewhere in Sierra Vista,” Joanna mused, more to herself than to Frank.
“Spotted who?” Frank asked. “What are we talking about?”
Joanna had forgotten that Frank had been stuck at the board of supervisors meeting when she had made her latest discovery. “I think Bradley Evans must have run into Leslie Markham, realized she had to be his dead wife’s daughter, and decided to take the pictures as a form of verification.”
“Are you serious?”
“Go to the evidence room and check the box on the Lisa Evans homicide,” Joanna told him. “Take a look at the picture of Lisa Evans on her driver’s license and compare it with Leslie Markham’s photos from the website. Call me back and tell me what you think.”
Joanna was halfway back to the Justice Center when the phone rang.
“Whoa!” Frank exclaimed. “These two women could be twins. So what’s going on? Are you saying Lisa Marie Evans handed her baby off to someone else and then faked her own murder? Are you thinking maybe the wife’s alive and well somewhere while her husband spent twenty-plus years of his life in the slammer for killing her?”
“It’s a possibility,” Joanna said. “Meanwhile, the baby’s adoptive father happens to be Judge Lawrence Tazewell.”
Frank whistled. “As in the Arizona Supreme Court Justice?”
“One and the same. Not only that, according to Leslie Markham, he’s currently being considered as a nominee for a federal judgeship.”
“Which might explain why, once Bradley Evans got too close to the truth, someone felt obliged to knock him off.”
“Yes, it might,” Joanna agreed. “Especially considering how the FBI seems to be very good at turning up all that old dirty laundry. Dave Hollicker is taking Lisa’s bloodstained purse to the crime lab in Tucson so they can try running DNA tests on it. If someone was faking a murder, who knows where the blood came from?”
“Is DNA testing possible on a sample that old?” Frank asked.
“We’ll see,” Joanna agreed. “But we can also go at this from the other direction. I want to collect DNA samples from Leslie Markham and from Lisa’s mother as well. We should be able to tell from that whether or not those two women are related. A DNA match won’t tell us if Lisa Evans is still alive, but it’ll be a step in the right direction.”
“How do you plan on obtaining those other samples?” Frank asked.