I felt. I didn’t want to scare away this good news. “That’s terrific,” I said, trying to sound unsurprised. “I’m pleased to hear that and I have to say I’m extremely grateful that you’ve looked at the evidence in this case thoroughly and honestly.”
“Well, confirming that McMillian had nothing to do with this wasn’t that hard,” Taylor replied. “Why would a drug kingpin live in the conditions he was living in and work fifteen hours a day cutting timber on difficult terrain? What we were told by local law enforcement about McMillian didn’t make much sense, and the story Myers told at trial definitely made no sense. I still can’t believe a jury ever convicted him.”
Cole spoke up. “You’ll be very interested to know that both Hooks and Hightower have admitted that their trial testimony was false.”
“Really?” I couldn’t hide my surprise at this.
“Yes. When we were asked to investigate this case, we were told that you should be investigated because Hooks had said that you had offered him money and a condo in Mexico if he changed his testimony.” Taylor was dead serious.
“A condo in Mexico?”
“On a beach, I think,” Cole added nonchalantly.
“Wait, me? I was going to give Bill Hooks a beach condo in Mexico if he changed his testimony against Walter?” It was difficult to contain my shock.
“Well, I know it must sound crazy to you, but believe me there were people down there who were raring to get you indicted. But when we talked to Hooks, it didn’t take very long before he not only acknowledged that he’d never spoken to you and that you had never bribed him, but he also admitted that his trial testimony against McMillian was completely made up.”
“Well, we’ve never had any doubts that Hooks was lying.”
Cole chuckled. “We started polygraphing people, and things fell apart pretty quickly.”
Bernard asked the obvious question, “Well, what happens now?”
Taylor looked over at his partner and then at us. “Well, we’re not completely done. We’d like to solve this crime, and we have a suspect. I’m wondering if you might be willing to help us. I know you’re not trying to get anybody on death row, but we thought you might at least consider providing some help to identify the real killer. People will be a lot more accepting of Mr. McMillian’s innocence if they know who really committed this crime.”
While it was ridiculous to think that Walter’s freedom depended on the arrest of someone else, I had imagined that a successful investigation might get to this—and I couldn’t dispute that even if an ABI investigation cleared Walter, people would still think he’d gotten away with murder until the actual killer was identified. We had long ago concluded that finding the real murderer might be the most effective way to free Walter, but without the power and authority of law enforcement officers, we were limited in what we could discover.
We did have a strong theory. Several witnesses had told us that around the time of the crime, a white man had been seen leaving the cleaners. We had learned that before her death, Ronda Morrison had been receiving menacing calls and that there was a man who had been avidly and inappropriately pursuing her—stopping by unannounced at the cleaners, maybe even stalking her. We had not initially been able to identify this strange man.
But we did have our suspicions. We had been contacted by a white man who seemed intensely interested in the case. He would call wanting to talk at length about what we were investigating. He would hint at having information that could help us, but he was coy and slow to share anything concrete. He repeatedly told us that he knew that McMillian was innocent and he would help us prove it. Eventually, after several calls and hours of conversation, he claimed to know where the murder weapon, which had never been recovered, might be located.
We tried to get as much information out of him as we could. We also checked his background. He told us that he’d had some conflicts with another man in town and that the more he talked the more he blamed this other man for the shooting death of Morrison. When we investigated this theory, we weren’t impressed. The other man didn’t match the eyewitness descriptions of the person seen leaving the cleaners, and he didn’t have our caller’s history of stalking, violence against women, and preoccupation with the Morrison murder. We began to think that our