Graham ignored my next few calls when I tried him in the morning. I gave calling after 5pm a shot and got him on the first ring.

We set up our next meeting at his office on-campus. I’ll fast-forward you through the unimportant first 25 minutes of one-sided conversation which touched on night crawlers, routes to Memphis, and Michael Oher not actually being a nice guy.

ME: Was the first appeal you pursued something you, or your lawyer, decided to do?

GRAHAM: You asked me about John Cole last time, at The Filling Station?

ME: I did.

GRAHAM: I actually knew John.

ME: You did? How?

GRAHAM: He worked subcontract on a project I worked on in Batesville a few years before all the bullshit. Good guy.

ME: How good of a guy?

GRAHAM: Honest, hard-working, kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back. He wouldn’t lie to you.

You can hear me trip over my own tongue for a few moments on the tape.

ME: Would you still say that if you knew that he was asked about the Oxford swimming hole killings and swore he didn’t do it?

GRAHAM: I’m just saying what I’m saying.

ME: So you knew John though?

GRAHAM: Drinking, fishing buddy. He lived in Batesville, Mississippi, for like nine months. I don’t think most people know that.

ME: I certainly didn’t. What year?

GRAHAM: 1993.

ME: Are you playing games with me?

GRAHAM: Ah nah…if I was playin games with you I would be saying stuff like, Bill Clinton did it! Aha!

ME: Okay.

GRAHAM: Clinton wasn’t bad though, just couldn’t keep his dick out of the wrong place. Still can’t, from what I hear over in D.C.

Graham was the master of the misdirection. He clammed up about the case again.

I chewed on Graham’s information for a while. He was a caustic bastard. He had the personality of an aging punk singer even though he was a tone deaf country boy from Mississippi who probably thought The Sex Pistols were some kind of male nude revue.