Chapter 4: The Investigation Reopens
By midnight the governor had issued a temporary stay of execution. The district attorney’s office, facing the sudden possibility of having convicted an innocent man, moved quickly. Detectives who had closed the case five years earlier were pulled back in. The original crime scene photos were re-examined. The blood evidence that had seemed so conclusive was sent for re-testing.
Margaret Cole was interviewed for six hours. She denied everything until the photograph and Chloe’s recorded statement were played. Then she asked for a deal.
Lila Cole was alive.
She had staged her own death after discovering Gavin’s affair with a woman from his office. The plan had been simple: fake the murder, frame Gavin, collect on life insurance, and disappear with a new identity. Margaret had helped her. They had used blood from a prior hospital visit and a neighbor paid to give false testimony. Lila had been living quietly in a small town two hours away, working under a new name and watching from a distance as her husband was sentenced to die.
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The motive, Margaret finally admitted, had been money and revenge.
Gavin sat in his cell and listened to the updates from the guards who could no longer treat him as a dead man. For five years he had screamed his innocence. Now the state was forced to listen.
