Dead Wrong

Chapter 7

When Joanna arrived at the conference room the next morning, her homicide team was already assembled. They were studying a collection of color snapshots scattered across the conference-room table. “I’ve already mentioned that Ernie will be taking a few days off at the end of this week and maybe the beginning of the next,” Frank told Joanna as people came to order. “I’ve let everyone know that Debbie’s going to be working as a detective for the next little while.”

Joanna was relieved that the announcement about Ernie’s upcoming absence had already been handled. Nodding, Joanna went straight to the task at hand. “What about the pictures?” she asked. “I think we’ll need several copies of each of these,” Frank said. “Enough to go around, and enlargements, too. Eight-by-tens at least. Then we may be able to use Photo Shop to enhance the images so we can figure out where these were taken.”

“You’re right,” Ernie agreed. “We should all have copies, but it isn’t going to take some high-tech computer program to see what we need to see.” Ernie tapped one of the photos with a thick forefinger. “Look at the background on this one. If those aren’t the Huachuca Mountains, I’ll eat my hat.”

Joanna picked up the photo and studied it herself, looking beyond the woman pushing the grocery cart to the undulating wall of mountains looming behind her.

“I think you’re right, Ernie,” she agreed. “If I’m not mistaken, we’re going to find this was taken in the parking lot of that Fry’s grocery store out on Highway 92.”

“Do you want me to check on that?” Debbie asked. “I could take copies of a couple of the photos out there. If the woman is a regular customer, one of the clerks or carryout people will recognize her.”

If it’s not already too late, Joanna worried. What if Bradley Evans had already done his worst before someone got to him?

“Good thinking,” Joanna said. “We need to know who she is and why Evans was following her around snapping photos.”

Joanna glanced around the table, settling on the Double Cs. “Do we have a viable suspect in this case?” she asked.

Ernie shook his head. “Not yet,” he said as Jaime Carbajal nodded in agreement.

“All right then,” Joanna said. “That brings us back to Evans himself. What do we know about him so far?”

“Evans may have been a loner, but his landlady thought he walked on water,” Jaime conceded. “That’s why she was so adamant about not letting us into his place without a search warrant. The guy didn’t smoke or drink; paid his rent on time; never gave her any trouble; didn’t have women spending the night; and helped out occasionally with little jobs around the house. When it comes to renters, it doesn’t get any better than that. So either Evans really was a good guy or else he was really good at creating a screen so people thought he was a good guy.”

“Which is it?” Joanna asked.

Jaime Carbajal shrugged. “The jury’s still out on that,” he said. “We need to see if we can track down Bradley’s credit-card use and telephone records. Frank will be focusing on that. Credit-card receipts will help us track his movements in the days before he died. So will his phone calls. In the meantime, Ernie and I will spend most of today interviewing people at the prison down in Douglas. We know Ted Chapman’s opinions about Bradley Evans. Personally, I’d like to see if there are any dissenting ones. If he had something going with the girl in the pictures, maybe he confided in one or more of the people he was working with at the prison.”

Joanna nodded. Thumbing through her stack of paperwork, Joanna settled on one that dealt with Bradley Evans’s vehicle. “All right,” she said. “Let’s talk about his truck for a minute. Were you able to figure out when it showed up on that vacant lot?”

“Not the exact hour and minute,” Jaime responded. “But we do know that it was sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. We talked to the two guys who are selling the vehicles that were parked on either side of Evans’s Ford. According to them, the truck definitely wasn’t there on Friday. One of them, Rick Gomez, remembers seeing it for the first time around ten on Saturday morning, when he came by to meet up with someone who was interested in buying his Toyota.”

“There’s a lot more presence technology out there nowadays than there used to be,” Joanna said. “We should probably check out traffic security videos from neighboring businesses. One of those might have caught the pickup and / or driver on tape.”

“We can try,” Jaime said, “but I wouldn’t count on it. People use that particular lot for a reason. It’s not in the center of town, it’s been vacant for years, and it belongs to an absentee landowner. The lot itself has no security cameras at all.”

“What about neighbors?” Joanna asked.

Jaime shrugged. “There are a couple of gas stations, but not much else. We can ask to see their tapes, and who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Joanna turned her attention to Casey Ledford. “What’s going on with fingerprints?”

“Not much,” Casey replied. “All the prints I found inside the truck appear to belong to the victim and nobody else. The big difference is that the prints on the gearshift, steering wheel, and door handle have all been smudged or even obliterated.”

“So the last person to drive the vehicle was wearing gloves?” Joanna asked.

Casey nodded. “That would be my guess.”

“What about the prints you lifted from the exterior?”

“I didn’t find any prints at all inside the camper shell or the bed of the pickup,” Casey said. “There were signs that the bed of the pickup had been scrubbed out pretty thoroughly. The total absence of prints there would mean whoever cleaned it was wearing gloves-and probably not because he or she was worried about chapped hands. As for the unidentified prints on the exterior? The ones I found were mostly on the doors and side windows as well as on the liftgate on the camper shell and on the back of the pickup. All of those would be consistent with someone trying to catch a glimpse of the vehicle’s interior to see what kind of condition it was in.”

“In other words, innocent shoppers,” Joanna said.

Casey nodded.

“What about the primer?” Joanna asked. “Do we know if Bradley Evans himself was in the process of rehabbing the truck?”

“No,” Jaime said. “I asked about that, and his landlady said no way. She claims the pickup was still a dingy red when she saw it sometime last week. She couldn’t swear exactly when that was, but she says she saw it almost every day. And that makes sense. Evans’s apartment is a converted garage out behind the landlady’s house. The carport next to it is carved out of her backyard and is fully visible from her kitchen window.”

“So it’s possible the primer was added in an effort to keep us from finding it,” Joanna concluded.

“Make that delay our finding it,” Ernie said. “Whoever did it must have known we’d find it eventually.”

“How much primer would it take to cover a pickup like that?” Joanna asked.

“To cover it properly, it would have taken several cans more than our guy used,” Jaime said. “If you ask me, this was a crappy, half-assed job.”

“Because whoever did it was in a hurry?”

“Either that or because they had no idea what they were doing,” Ernie Carpenter said.

He turned to Debbie. “While you’re out in Sierra Vista talking to the Fry’s clerks, maybe you should also check with auto-parts stores in the area to find out if anyone purchased a supply of primer this past weekend.”

Joanna was gratified that Ernie was making sure Debbie had something useful to do-that she was being treated like a member of the team. As Debbie jotted a reminder to herself into a small spiral notebook, Joanna turned to her crime scene investigator, Dave Hollicker.

“What about the blood samples you found in the bed of the pickup?” she asked. “Any word on those?”

“They’re blood, all right,” Dave answered. “But we don’t know whose. Doc Winfield has already forwarded Evans’s blood and tissue samples to the Department of Public Safety Crime Lab in Tucson. They’re the ones who can give us a comparison in the shortest amount of time. I can take the new samples up there myself or I can send them. Which do you prefer?”

“By all means take them,” Joanna said. “And do it today. Let’s get this case moving.”

Frank shot a questioning look in her direction. He didn’t say anything aloud, but she knew what he was thinking. Why? What’s the big rush? And how much more is it going to add to this year’s expenditures?

With budgetary constraints always in mind, those were entirely legitimate questions, and Joanna didn’t have any ready answers-at least not the kind of reasonable answers that her chief deputy wanted or would understand.

In the days before Jenny was born, Joanna remembered throwing herself into a frenzy of housecleaning and nest-building-scrubbing the refrigerator and cleaning and rearranging all her kitchen cupboards. In light of her current position, wanting Bradley Evans’s homicide solved prior to the baby’s birth was probably a variation on that same theme. Solving a case amounted to a sworn law enforcement officer’s equivalence of nest building. From Joanna’s point of view, it was infinitely preferable to cleaning a refrigerator.

“Has anyone talked to Ted Chapman since we found out about this latest development?” Joanna asked, nodding toward the photographs still spread across the table. “Maybe he’ll know something about this and the photos will turn out to be totally harmless.”

“I doubt that will be the case,” Ernie said.

To be honest, Joanna doubted it, too.

Jaime glanced at his watch. “Sorry to rush this,” he said. “Ernie and I are due to meet up with the second in command at the Douglas prison in about forty-five. Since Ted’s usually around the jail here somewhere, we can probably catch up with him once we finish the Douglas interviews.”

With little additional discussion, the homicide team packed up their collection of photos and left the conference room. As soon as they were gone, a grim-faced Frank reached into a file and brought out a single paper which he slid across the table to Joanna. “Take a look at this,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Read it,” Frank urged. “It came off the fax machine as I was on my way into the briefing. It’s about one of those UDAs they picked up east of Douglas the other night.”

The words top secret and confidential were written in huge black letters across the cover sheet. Inside was what appeared to be a routine incident report, but as Joanna read it, she felt a sudden chill. One of the illegal crossers, a young unidentified male of Middle Eastern origin, had been apprehended by Border Patrol agents. While searching the surrounding area, the officers had discovered a backpack stuffed with fifteen thousand dollars in American currency, a collection of fake IDs and phony passports, a laptop computer, and three working cell phones.

“Yikes!” Joanna exclaimed.

Frank nodded. “That’s what I say.”

“If they picked him up the night before last, how come we’re only just now hearing about it?” she asked.

“The way the feds operate, I’m surprised we’re hearing about it at all,” Frank returned. “And I don’t think we would be, if they didn’t need our help. Border Patrol is asking us to beef up patrols all along the southern sector.”

Over the months since 9/11, there had been rumors of the Border Patrol apprehending illegal crossers who didn’t fit the usual profile of UDAs simply looking for work. It was thought that some of the arrests had included possible terrorist operatives, but all the rumors in the world hadn’t been enough for the federal government to bring to bear the kind of focused attention border issues clearly merited. Evidently this latest bust was one that might finally succeed in attracting Washington’s attention, but until that happened, it would be up to the severely understaffed Border Patrol and outmanned local law enforcement agencies to fill in the gap.

“And we will give them help,” Joanna declared. “As much as we can spare and maybe even some we can’t. Is any of this being made public?”

Frank shook his head. “Homeland Security wants to see how much information they can glean from the cell phones and the computer before anyone knows the bad guy has been picked up. So, yes, they want our help, but they also want us to keep it quiet.”

“Okay,” Joanna said with a nod. “It makes sense. That way we do the work and they get the credit.”

Frank nodded. “You’ve got that right,” he said.

When the briefing was over, Frank started toward the door. He paused in the doorway. “I assume this means Billy and Clarence O’Dwyer are still off our surveillance list for the time being?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Joanna said.

“Jeannine Phillips isn’t going to like it,” Frank cautioned.

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “I told her yesterday that we wouldn’t be able to divert any more patrol officers to San Simon.”

“How’d she take it?” Frank asked.

“Medium,” Joanna said. “Which is to say she wasn’t thrilled.”

Frank looked relieved. “I’m glad you told her,” he said. “I don’t think Jeannine likes me very much.”

“She likes you well enough,” Joanna observed. “You’re just not her type.”

Returning to her office, Joanna had barely picked up the first piece of mail when a shaken Ted Chapman appeared in her doorway.

“I ran into Jaime Carbajal and Ernie Carpenter out in the parking lot,” Ted said. “The very idea of Brad stalking someone is utterly ridiculous. I can’t believe it!”

“Ernie showed you the photos?”

“Yes, but this makes no sense at all.”

“The photos were taken from a disposable camera that had Mr. Evans’s fingerprints all over it,” Joanna pointed out. “According to Casey Ledford, his were the only prints on the camera, so he would most likely be the one who took the pictures.”

Ted shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Even so,” he said wearily, “Brad simply wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Did you recognize the young woman?” Joanna asked. “Do you have any idea who she might be?”

“None whatsoever!”

“Someone he might have dated in the past?” Joanna suggested.

“No,” Ted answered. “If Brad had been dating someone, I’m sure he would have mentioned it to me. Besides, the young woman in the picture looks to be in her twenties. She would have been far too young for him.”

“Older men and younger women do happen,” Joanna said.

“In the movies, maybe,” Ted said. “Or if the old guy has bundles of money, but that’s not the case with Brad. He may have had a job and a paycheck, but I can tell you from personal experience that the pay scale for members of jail ministries is only one click above flipping burgers. If I didn’t have my military retirement, Ginny and I wouldn’t be able to make it. Someone who looks like that girl did wouldn’t throw herself at an ex-con who’s just barely getting by.”

“Maybe she corresponded with him while he was in prison,” Joanna offered. “Suppose once Brad was released from prison, he found out his pen pal had moved on. Maybe she was dating someone else or had even gotten married. What if he wasn’t ready to accept that?”

“No,” Ted said. “You’ve got to believe me. Brad wasn’t like that, but that’s not why I came to talk to you just now.”

“Why did you?”

“I understand Dr. Winfield is ready to release Brad’s body, but so far no one has come forward to claim it.”

Joanna thought back to Anna Marie Crystal’s profoundly negative reaction upon learning that Bradley Evans, her former son-in-law, had listed her as his sole next of kin. It didn’t seem likely that she’d be rushing to the morgue to take charge of his body.

“That’s not too surprising,” Joanna said.

“No,” Ted agreed. “I suppose not. But since no one else is going to claim the body, I’d like to. I’ve talked to people at the prison down in Douglas. The warden there is willing to let me officiate at a memorial service inside the Papago Unit. That way some of the inmates Brad was working with will be able to attend. Of course, if there’s any need or interest, I suppose I could do a second service outside the prison as well, although, since the unit is a minimum security facility, the warden might allow a few members of the public to attend the prison service as well.”

“You’d do that?” Joanna asked.

“He was a friend of mine,” Ted said. “Yes, I would. That’s what friends are for.”

“All right,” Joanna said. “I’ll call the ME and see what he says.”

Moments later Joanna was on the phone explaining the situation to her stepfather. “Since we haven’t been able to locate any other relatives,” George Winfield said, “I suppose that would be fine. What mortuary?”

“Cochise Mortuary and Funeral Home,” Ted replied in answer to George’s relayed question. “They’re in Douglas. On G Avenue.”

“I know where they are,” George said. “Have Mr. Chapman stop by. Once he signs the necessary paperwork, I’ll call the funeral home and get things under way.”

“Thank you,” Ted said to Joanna once she was off the phone. “This means a lot to me. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” she returned. “But are you all right?”

Ted sighed. “I’m disappointed,” he admitted. “If this stalking thing turns out to be true, I can’t help feeling that Brad betrayed the trust I put in him. I pride myself on being a good judge of character. Maybe I’m losing my touch.”

“I doubt that,” Joanna said. “Maybe Brad Evans was really good at pulling the wool over people’s eyes.”

But Ted Chapman was in no mood to give himself a break. “Even so,” he said, getting up to leave, “I should have seen through it.”

Joanna’s phone was ringing again before Ted Chapman was all the way out the door. “I forgot,” George Winfield said. “I meant to apologize for dumping all that stuff on you the other day without so much as a by-your-leave, but with Don and Margaret there, I didn’t want to go into it.”

“It’s all right, George,” she said. “Better late than never. Don’t worry about it.”

“You know how your mother is,” George continued. “Once she gets the bit in her teeth, there’s no stopping her. We’ve been talking about cleaning out the garage ever since we got married. This weekend we finally went to work on it, and now Ellie wants it all done yesterday. I’m sure some of the stuff has been lying around collecting dust for decades. But not anymore, and now that we’ve started the process…” He paused. “Now she wants it all done immediately, if not sooner.”

“Sounds pretty familiar,” Joanna said with a sympathetic laugh.

“Some of the boxes she had set aside for you and Jenny are filled with knickknacks. If you don’t want them, I wouldn’t blame you at all, but when it comes to the diaries…”

“What diaries?” Joanna asked.

“Your father’s diaries,” George answered. “Several boxes were full of books. They were up in the rafters of the garage. When I started bringing them down, your mother knew what was inside without even having to look. She claimed they were just a bunch of worthless old books and that I should take them out to the dump and get rid of them. She was so adamant about it that it piqued my curiosity. When she went into the house, I unsealed one of the boxes and what did I find? Your father’s diaries.”

“My father kept diaries?” Joanna asked.

“Volumes of them, Joanna,” George returned. “As soon as I saw them, it occurred to me that maybe you or your brother or Jenny might want to take a look at them. If you want to get rid of them yourself later, fine. But bearing all that in mind, I loaded those boxes into the back of the van along with everything else. Instead of taking them to the dump, I dropped them off at your place on Sunday along with the things Ellie actually wanted you to have. The problem is…”

He paused uneasily.

“You don’t want me to let on to Mother that I have them,” Joanna said.

“Exactly,” George Winfield breathed. “Ellie would be terribly upset if she found out that I had gone against her express wishes.”

“Don’t worry,” Joanna said with a laugh. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’ve lived with Eleanor long enough to know when to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t even know my father kept diaries. It will be wonderful for me to have a chance to look at them. So thanks. Sometimes I think you know me better than my mother does.”

Once Joanna got off the phone, she sat at her desk marveling and reliving the stab of memory that had assailed her when she had glimpsed her father’s handwriting on the evidence log in Lisa Marie Evans’s file.

D. H. Lathrop had been gone for a very long time. Sometimes Joanna wondered if what she remembered about him was real or if it had been filtered and changed somehow through the hero-worshiping eyes of his unsophisticated daughter. For instance, when she had recalled that fragmentary memory of him sitting hunched with pen and paper at the kitchen table, she had assumed he’d been laboring over some mundane piece of job-required paperwork. Now, though, it seemed possible-likely, even-that he’d been writing in a diary.

Had Joanna’s father grappled with his natural adversary, the written word, in order to leave pieces of himself behind for those who followed? Had he wanted or expected whatever he had written there to survive him? Had he imagined that someday a grown-up Joanna might read his words and somehow come to understand her father’s hopes and dreams and aspirations? Had D. H. Lathrop ever, in his wildest dreams, thought that the son he and Eleanor had given up for adoption might someday come back into their lives and be able to study the diaries, thus learning about the biological father who would otherwise forever be a stranger? And what about Jenny and this as-yet-unborn grandchild? Could the diaries shed light on the existence of a man they had never met? Now, through George Winfield’s kindness, all those things were possible.

For a moment Joanna considered picking up her cell phone and sharing this amazing news with Bob Brundage, her long-lost brother whose out-of-wedlock birth had predated their parents subsequent marriage by a number of years. Given up for adoption as a newborn, he had come looking for his birth parents years later, and only after the deaths of both his biological father as well as his adoptive parents. Eleanor had welcomed him and his wife, Marcie, with open arms.

Joanna scrolled through the stored numbers in her cell phone until she located Bob Brundage’s name and number, but she paused before pressing the “talk” button. Joanna had told George Winfield that she wouldn’t betray his secret in preserving the diaries, but what about her brother? Bob hadn’t grown up at odds with Eleanor Lathrop. Joanna knew all about keeping things from her mother. For her it had been a matter of survival-as necessary as breathing. What if Joanna told Bob, and he somehow let slip to their mother what George had done?

No, Joanna told herself firmly, putting the phone back down. Let sleeping dogs lie.

She picked it back up a moment later, however, and called home. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a very smart man?” she asked Butch when he answered.

“Not recently,” he said.

Hurriedly she explained what George had done. “So it’s a very good thing you didn’t let your mother get her hands on any of those boxes.”

“George was acting funny,” Butch said. “It made me think something was up. But I’m glad the boxes are safe and sound.”

“And how are things on the home front?” Joanna asked.

“Quiet. Mom and Dad unhitched their Tracker and went out sightseeing this morning. They told me not to plan on cooking dinner. They want to take us out.”

“Where to?”

“Someplace nice was what I was told, so I’ve made reservations at the restaurant at Rob Roy Links.”

“Sounds good,” Joanna said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

With that she went back to work. She stayed glued to her desk until almost two o’clock dealing with a slew of end-of-the-month reports.

Finally Kristin showed up in her doorway. “I thought you had a doctor’s appointment,” she said, pointing at her watch.

With a dismayed glance at the clock on her office wall, Joanna bounded out of her chair. “Thanks,” she said. “I was so engrossed that I would have missed it.”

While sitting in Dr. Tommy Lee’s waiting room, Joanna found her head lolling back. The next thing she knew, Sugie Richards, Dr. Lee’s receptionist, was shaking her awake.

“Sheriff Brady. Sheriff Brady. Are you all right?”

Embarrassed, Joanna looked around the room to see if anyone else had noticed. Obviously several people had.

“I’m fine,” she said impatiently. “It’s nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t fix.”

“Well, it’s time for you to come in now,” Sugie said. “The doctor’s ready to see you. Come on in and put on a gown.”

With people still staring at her, Joanna got up and waddled into the examination room. “How are things?” Dr. Lee asked when he appeared in the doorway several minutes later.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m tired and cranky and ready to be done carrying this baby. Other than that, I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are,” Dr. Lee agreed.

His examination was perfunctory. “A few more days,” Dr. Lee said at last. “It won’t be long now.”

That’s easy for you to say, Joanna thought. Your mother-in-law isn’t parked in your driveway waiting for this damned kid to put in an appearance.

“You can get dressed now,” the doctor added. “Then we’ll talk-Stuffed back inside the confines of her maternity uniform, Joanna went into Dr. Lee’s office and took a seat beside his desk.

“You seem a little stressed,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Butch’s parents are here,” she said.

Dr. Lee studied her face. “Is that all?”

She remembered her panicked call to Marianne. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

“Tell you what?”

“If something was wrong with the baby,” Joanna said in a rush. “I mean, if there were pieces missing or if something wasn’t working right.”

“Of course I would,” he assured her with a smile. “I would have told you long before this. Whatever would have made you think I wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Joanna answered wanly. “I guess I just needed something to worry about.”

“We doctors call it third-trimester paranoia,” he said with a smile. “Believe me. That kind of thinking is completely normal.”