J.A. Jance - Dead Wrong

“Frank isn’t here,” Joanna said. “I need this now.”

While she waited, she tracked down Dave Hollicker and handed him the bagged purse.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Lisa Marie Evans’s bloodstained purse,” she said. “I want you to run it up to the DPS crime lab in Tucson.”

“Today?” Dave asked. “Casey and I have been working on evidence we gathered from Jeannine’s crime scenes-”

Joanna cut him off. “Yes, today,” she said. “And I want results ASAP. Ask if they can extract a DNA sample from the old bloodstains. I also want them to check for fingerprints. I don’t know if they’ll be able to spot any old ones. I know for sure that mine are on it from handling it recently, so they’ll need to run mine for elimination purposes.”

“But why the big rush?” Dave objected. “This homicide is decades old.”

“That’s just it,” Joanna said. “I have some new information that suggests maybe that ‘decades old’ homicide never happened.”

Ten minutes later she was on her way to Douglas with the newly scanned copy of Lisa’s license in the same envelope with her collection of Leslie Markham’s photos. It took a while for Joanna to clear security to get into the prison unit. By the time she was admitted to the chapel, the service was already under way. Ted Chapman, officiating, nodded to her as she slipped into the last row of folding chairs.

Bradley’s memorial service wasn’t particularly well attended. There were a dozen or so prisoners and three suit-and-tie-clad men Joanna assumed to be some of Brad Evans’s colleagues or supervisors from the jail ministry. The other attendee was an elderly white-haired Anglo woman who sat apart from the others and sobbed inconsolably into a lace-edged handkerchief. Listening to the grieving woman, Joanna decided she must be some heretofore unidentified relative of Bradley Evans who had managed to show up in time for his funeral.

Joanna tried to pay attention to what was being said, but her mind was going at breakneck speed. The striking resemblance between the long-presumed-dead Lisa Marie Evans and Leslie Markham presented Joanna with a startlingly new possible scenario. What if Lisa had somehow faked her own murder and allowed her husband to go to prison for it? Did that mean Lisa herself still was alive? And how was it that her daughter had been raised as Leslie Tazewell?

And if Bradley Evans had spent the better part of a quarter of a century believing that both his wife and daughter were dead, what would have been his reaction when he suddenly encountered living breathing proof to the contrary?

Joanna remembered all too well her own sense of shock, amazement, and disbelief when, a few years earlier while she had been sitting in a hotel lobby in Peoria, Arizona, a man who looked exactly like the ghost of her long-deceased father walked toward her. The spooky resemblance had been easily explained once she learned that the man was actually her brother, Bob Brundage, the baby her parents had given up for adoption years before their marriage and long before Joanna’s birth.

Joanna now knew that the similarities between D. H. Lathrop and his son went well beyond mere looks. Bob sounded like his father both when he spoke and when he laughed. He walked and carried himself in the same fashion. Bob Brundage now was an exact replica of D. H. Lathrop at the time of his death.

Joanna could easily empathize with everything Bradley Evans must have felt upon first encountering Leslie Markham, either in person or in a photograph. It seemed likely that he might well have questioned what he had seen, and doubted his own perceptions. In order to quiet those doubts he might have decided to photograph Leslie so he could examine the pictures at leisure. Perhaps he was searching for proof one way or the other. Either Leslie Markham was his daughter or she wasn’t.

But Joanna knew that there were other tools available that would be far more reliable than a few surreptitiously taken photos. And even if an examination of the bloodstained purse failed to yield a usable sample, there were other available avenues of investigation. Mitochondrial DNA, passed from mother to daughter, could prove definitively whether or not Leslie Tazewell Markham really was Lisa Marie Evans’s daughter. The only difficulty was figuring out a way to make that testing possible.

“… he was someone who knew he had done wrong and who took full responsibility for his actions,” Ted Chapman was saying. “He had repented and believed the Lord God Almighty heard his prayers and granted him forgiveness. It was in that state of God-given grace that he was able to turn his life around and start helping others. If Bradley were here and able to speak for himself, I know he would be the first to forgive those who trespassed against him. And I hope that we can, too. Let us pray.. •”

But who were those trespassers? Joanna wondered. Obviously, first on the list would be the person who had murdered the poor man. But if Lisa Marie hadn’t died at her husband’s hand, what about the person or persons who had conspired to rob Bradley Evans of twenty-plus years of his life by letting him rot in prison? Yes, Joanna’s department needed to find out who had murdered the man, but if he had been wrongfully convicted, then they needed to do more than simply identify and punish his killer. There was the moral obligation of clearing an innocent man’s good name.

“Warden Howard has kindly granted us the use of the rec room next door,” Ted Chapman announced. “Anyone who wishes to do so may gather there for a time of fellowship and recollection. Punch, coffee, and cookies will be provided by the jail ministry.”

Joanna paused at the door of the chapel long enough for Ted to introduce her to the men in suits who were, just as she suspected, jail ministry people. When she went into the rec room, the elderly woman was standing at the refreshment table trying to juggle a styrofoam cup of coffee and a paper plate of cookies along with her walker.

“Here,” Joanna said, “let me help carry something.”

Gratefully, the woman passed her the coffee and cookies, then made her way to a nearby cafeteria-style table and dropped onto the bench seat. “Thank you so much,” she said. “The basket holds my purse, but the cookies and the coffee would have dropped right through.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Joanna asked.

“Help yourself.”

Joanna went back to the refreshment table and snagged a cup of punch and a single cookie. “Are you a relative?” she asked as she returned to the table.

“Oh, heavens no,” the woman said. “No relation at all. I’m Marcelle Womack, Brad’s landlady for the past three-plus years. He was far more of a son to me than my own son is. Always helping me around the house. Always fixing things. Always so polite and understanding and never too busy to take the time to listen to an old lady flapping her jaw. I’m going to miss him so very much. So very, very much. You look familiar,” the woman added. “Who are you, one of Brad’s friends?”

Joanna reached into her pocket and produced one of her business cards. “I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady,” she explained as the woman held the card at arm’s length and squinted at it.

“Yes, I suppose you are,” Marcelle agreed. “That’s why you look familiar. I must have seen your picture in the paper or on TV Why are you here?”

“My department is investigating Mr. Evans’s murder.”

“That’s right,” Marcelle said. “I’ve seen how that works in the crime shows on television-the detectives always come to the victim’s funeral looking for suspects.”

“More likely looking for information,” Joanna said.

“I already talked to one of your detectives,” Marcelle said. “The big one with the bushy eyebrows.”