. >> right, but if you look at thomas clayton's conduct, he never mentioned michael beard.body says, "michael beard should be an immediate suspect." he never mentioned michael beard to the police. to me, that's -- there's a reason for that. >> as they prepared for trial, investigators kept digging. they discovered a flurry of calls and texts in the weeks leading up to the crime. >> clayton was contacting beard, saying, "hey, we have to meet. he was getting him a bicycle, so he was having these clandestine meetings. >> investigators also pulled surveillance footage from outside tom's business. they believed this was video proof of a conspiracy. that's beard, they say, in a red truck that tom loaned him just hours before the murder. and that's tom following in his green servpro truck. >> also know that during that time period beard turned his phone off, turned it on, turned it off again. >> why do you think he did that? >> well, the inference to be drawn from that is that he has guys are not naive. they know that there's a possibility of being tracked with their phones. >> th