Q: You stopped and got out at the Zeigler store?

A: Yeah, right.  I stopped and got out.

Q: And you found out then it was Charlie Mays?

A: Right.  But I didn't tell people—they didn't know I was with Mays when he went up there.  And I ain't telling any of the peoples that was standing around that I was with him.

Q: You didn't?

A: No, I didn't.

Q: You didn't tell the police there, did you?

A: No, I didn't.

Hadley had pried loose at least five inconsistencies in Thomas's story.

According to the route that Thomas drew, Charlie Mays had reached the rear lot of the Winter Garden Inn by driving his van over or through a two-foot wall of concrete block which separates the Tucker Buildings property from the motel.

1.     On Christmas Eve, Tommy Zeigler's shirt was rust colored.  His pants were red-and-blue check, with the dark stain that Edward Williams noted.  They were not light-colored clothes.

2.     Thomas claimed to have seen a car parked in the driveway where everyone else—including Edward Williams, Curtis Dunaway, the Fickes, and Tommy Zeigler himself—agrees that Zeigler's pickup spent the entire evening.  Thomas directly contradicted Williams, who claimed that he parked his pickup truck behind Zeigler's, and who saw no cars except the one that Zeigler was driving.

3.     Thomas claimed that Zeigler brought a box out of his garage.  Williams would testify that Zeigler's hands were empty.

4.     Williams claimed that Zeigler drove into the garage and ran into his house when he arrived with the two passengers.  Thomas's testimony was that Zeigler parked in the driveway and walked into the garage, but did not enter the house.

The afternoon deposition with Edward Williams was mostly uneventful.  Hadley did elicit some new details of the incident that had convinced Williams that Zeigler wanted to take his life.  Williams said that he had parked the truck beside the hallway door, that he had stopped to urinate, and that Zeigler had gone into the store ahead of him.

Williams said he had walked up the dark hallway, opened the door to the showroom, and found Zeigler standing with his back turned, several feet away.

"He turned and he had this thing, holding it, like a cloth something he had on it.  He come to me.  He snapped it and it snapped three times....I saw a thing