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Some of this sounded a little rote, like he’d talked about it a few too many times. “Did any of this come out at your trial?”
“No. I told my attorney about me and Pete, but he warned me to keep quiet about it because he was sure if the jury knew I was gay I’d get convicted for sure.”
I thought about that for a moment. Lydia might be able to use that to make a case for ineffective counsel, but it wouldn’t have been considered an unreasonable strategy at the time.
“Are you sure it was Pete who gave you the signal?”
“I’ve thought about that too. A lot. I don’t think he’d have told anyone about us. And I don’t know how else anyone would have known the signal.”
“You make it sound like he was very comfortable with his sexuality.”
“Well, he was. His family wouldn’t have been, and he knew that. He didn’t want to hurt them.”
“In your letter you said the gun was wiped clean of fingerprints. Did they connect you to the gun in some other way?”
“They had a witness who said he sold it to me.”
This was new information. “Tell me about that.”
“They had this guy we went to school with. Andy Showalter. Everybody thought he was harmless. I mean, he liked drawing Nazis and shit. He got a gun. He said he sold it to me.”
“Was it a World War II gun?” I asked, guessing at the Nazi connection.
“No, it was more like a Saturday Night Special. I don’t know much about guns. Honestly, I don’t even remember seeing it until the trial.”
I nodded. “Just to verify, he didnotsell you a gun.”
“No. I don’t remember ever speaking to him.”
“Was the gun registered to him?”
“No. The gun was stolen. He claimed he bought it on the street.”
“Did they provide a motive for the killing?”
He frowned, obviously unhappy. “Yes. They said it was over a girl. Pete’s fiancé.”
“So you think Pete might have had a fiancé? To please his family? That might be why he wasn’t calling you back.”
“That’s not what happened. I asked my friend to pretend to be Pete’s fiancé.”
“You did what?” He was telling me he created the motive they used to convict him.
“Her name is Anne Whittemore. We went to high school together. We were all kind of friends. Well, she was my friend mainly. I asked her to lie. Given what my attorney said, given what Pete would have wanted, it seemed the right thing to do.”
“Did she know what was going on between the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“And she testified that Pete was her boyfriend?”
“Fiancé.”
“You didn’t fight back, did you?”
He shook his head. “I was too upset. It was all just awful.”
“Tell me more about Pete. He has sister, doesn’t he?”
