Part 3 — Devon Was Watching
The name on the emergency contact card taped to Miss Inezs refrigerator belonged to her grand-nephew Devon, thirty-four, living in Gulfport. She had not seen him since the funeral of her husband. Devon had paid the camera service every month, and he had watched her morning routine over a video stream.
Miss Inez put her hand over her mouth and said, He sends me a card at Christmas. Marcus gently explained that the card was how Devon had gotten her address. He had also gotten her bank number, the code to her fireproof safe, and her emergency contact details by taking the place of the real contact.
It was not Kendras scheme. She was the aide the agency had sent in March, and Devon had approached her in the spring with an offer. A few hundred dollars a month to install two new alarms and keep the old woman comfortable with them. She took it. She said she was told it was a safety program.
Kendra drove off that day because she was frightened, but she did not go far. She came to the sheriffs office that evening of her own accord, with the receipts of Devons payments on her phone, and sat in the lobby until Marcus came out to speak with her.
Her statement was long and honest. She had never taken a dollar from Miss Inez herself, and the ATM withdrawals on Highway 61 were Devon, driving up from Gulfport with a copied card. He used the video to see her enter the PIN, and the safe code, and when she left the house for an hour.
Devon was arrested at his apartment on a Thursday morning, with two laptops and a spreadsheet of three other women on his list. He faced charges of wire fraud, identity theft, unlawful surveillance, and exploitation of an elderly person. Kendra received a reduced charge for cooperating fully.
The bank returned all eleven withdrawals plus the fees, and the court ordered Devon to repay the rest. A smoke alarm that blinks the wrong color is a very small thing, and it brought down a scheme that had been running through her ceiling since April.
The agency apologized in writing, replaced Kendra with a licensed aide who had been vetted twice, and offered Miss Inez a year of free service. She accepted the aide, and she accepted the pecan pie the new woman brought, after tasting a slice.
I put in real smoke alarms myself the next Tuesday. White ones, name-brand, with a test button that pushed in. I tested them with a lighter and a bit of paper, and both of them shrieked so loud that Miss Inez laughed until she had to sit down.
She patted my hand and said, Hollis, I never felt watched by an honest light before. Then she wrote my name on the church prayer list, between her sisters and her cat, and told me she meant it.
