Dead Wrong

“Are you making any progress?” Dave asked, once he realized who Joa

“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,” Joa

“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?” Joa

“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, Joa

“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,” Joa

“Nothing after he disappeared,” Frank answered. “The last time it was used was on Wednesday. He had lunch at De

“Maybe he spotted her somewhere in Sierra Vista,” Joa

“Spotted who?” Frank asked. “What are we talking about?”

Joa

“Are you serious?”

“Go to the evidence room and check the box on the Lisa Evans homicide,” Joa

Joa

“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,” Joa

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,” Joa

“Is DNA testing possible on a sample that old?” Frank asked.

“We’ll see,” Joa

“How do you plan on obtaining those other samples?” Frank asked.

“I’m not sure,” Joa

“How come?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t like the way he treated Leslie, for one thing. But there’s something about him that doesn’t ring quite true. It gave me a fu

“Okay,” Frank said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

By the time Joa

“Still in Tucson, as far as I know. How come?”

Joa

“Ready to take a run out to Sierra Vista?” she asked.

“In a minute,” he said. “We need to wait for the end of this print job. When you see it, you’re not going to believe it.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Once I got off the phone with you, I decided to do some research into Judge Lawrence Tazewell’s background. What do you suppose he was doing in February of 1979?”

“I have no idea.”

“He was serving as a Cochise County Superior Court judge.”

“You don’t mean…?”

“Yes,” Frank said, picking up the sheaf of computer printouts and handing them to Joa

“And now he’s an Arizona Supreme Court justice who’s a possible presidential nominee for a seat on the federal bench. I didn’t think things could get any worse.”

“Guess again, boss,” Frank said. “They just did.”

Chapter 14

“Where are we going?” Frank asked once they were in his Crown Victoria. “A

“Lisa’s mother?”

“Right,” Joa

“No,” Frank said. “But I can find it.” While he adjusted his portable Garmin GPS, Joa

It was a mostly laudatory piece with several color photographs of Judge Tazewell and his wife, Sharon. One showed them posing arm in arm on the patio of their home, with Camelback Mountain looming in the background. Another showed them standing in a living room next to a white grand piano with a huge oil painting of the Grand Canyon covering the wall behind them. There were mentions of the Tazewells both as participants and movers and shakers in various social and charitable events. Clearly they were members in good standing of the Paradise Valley and greater Phoenix social scene.

Lawrence Tazewell, a man who had come from humble begi