Stone shakes his head. “I’d seen it before. Hoover liked having leverage over people. Particularly people in government. Leo Marston came from a powerful political family. His father had tremendous influence in both Mississippi and Washington. Over the next year, I learned that Hoover used the leverage of the Payton murder to force Leo’s father to influence the 1968 presidential election by trying to swing Mississippi’s electoral votes away from George Wallace to Richard Nixon, who was a protégé of Hoover’s. It was also clear in 1968 that Leo himself was destined for higher office. Director Hoover and Leo Marston developed a mutually beneficial relationship that flourished from Payton’s death in 1968 until Hoover’s death in 1972.”

Judge Franklin is shaking her head in amazement.

I can’t believe that Livy or Sims did not object to Stone’s last statements, but they probably assumed—rightly, I suspect—that Judge Franklin meant to hear him out no matter what.

“So,” I summarize, trying to bring it all into perspective for the jury, “J. Edgar Hoover was willing to bury conclusive evidence of a civil rights murder in order to strengthen his own political influence. How did you react to this?”

“Not well.”

“Please be specific.”

“I began drinking. It affected my work. I cheated on my wife. She divorced me, took my daughter from me. I was eventually dismissed from the Bureau.”

A fragment of Ike’s confession in the pecan-shelling plant comes to me from the ether. “Did you ever make any attempt to right what you considered the terrible wrong that had been done in the Payton case?”

Surprise flashes in Stone’s eyes. “Yes.”

“How?”

“I had retained a copy of the incriminating tape. About a year after the murder, when I knew no official action would ever be taken against the killers, I called Ike Ransom. He’d been hired as a police officer by then, just as Presley had promised.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I played him my copy of the tape. Then I hung up.”

“What did you think Ransom would do after hearing that tape?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I hoped that he might take direct action.”

“You hoped he would kill Presley and Marston?”

Stone’s face remains impassive. “The thought entered my mind.”

“Mr. Stone, when you described these events to me two days ago, you didn’t mention Ike Ransom. Why?”

He looks at the rail, his eyes filled with something like grief. “I felt some sympathy for Ike Ransom, despite what he’d done.”

“Sympathy for a murderer?”