Dead Wrong

“Warden Howard has kindly granted us the use of the rec room next door,” Ted Chapman a

Joa

“Here,” Joa

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?” Joa

“Help yourself.”

Joa

“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?”

Joa

“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,” Joa

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

“That would be Ernie Carpenter.”

“Right. Carpenter was his name. I told him everything I knew, but he wasn’t very happy with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I made him go get a search warrant before I’d let him into Brad’s apartment. I wasn’t about to let him in without one. You know how those things work. Police treat ex-cons like dirt even though they’ve paid their debt to society.”

“Ernie did mention something about that,” Joa

“I told the detective that Brad was a very nice man, but a very lonely one. All alone in the world.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“I saw him leave home on Wednesday morning. I could see his carport from my kitchen window. I often saw him drive off in his pickup truck on his way to work when I was sitting at my kitchen table having my morning coffee. But the last time I talked to him would have been Tuesday night.”

“And why was that?”

“I took him some soup-navy-bean soup. The back wall of my kitchen is also the back wall of his apartment. So whenever I cooked something that smelled good-like soup or stew-I always took him some. It didn’t seem fair for him to come home from work and have to smell the food without being able to eat any of it.”

“So you took him soup?”

Marcelle nodded. “In one of those new Ziploc containers.”

“And was there anything out of the ordinary about your visit? How did he seem?”

“He was just the regular Brad, sitting there reading his Bible. If I hadn’t brought him the soup, he might not have remembered to eat. He was like that sometimes. He’d just get all caught up in his Bible study and forget about eating. He asked me if I wanted to sit with him and share some of his soup. I knew he would, you see, so I brought plenty for both of us. Wait until you get to be my age. You’ll see that it’s no fun eating alone.”

“You ate di

“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,” Joa

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?” Joa

“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,” Joa

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?” Joa

“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?” Joa

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 Joa

“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,” Joa

As Marcelle tottered away with Ted Chapman at her side, Joa

Joa