Alvin Melleth

In fact, it sounds like Montoya might not even know who Greg is.

The DA's office is on the second floor of the courthouse, so we take the elevator up to a waiting area.

There's a flat-screen TV playing the show Cake Wars.

Greg announces himself to a receptionist, and we sit.

Greg has invited us here, but he's not completely sold yet on being followed around with microphones, or maybe not sold enough to let us tape him ambushing the next district attorney of El Paso.

So I'm just gonna tell you what happens next.

We wait for about 10 minutes, and then a figure sweeps by, a sort of boyish young man in a suit, trailed by an aide.

And Greg leaps from his chair, and I realize, this is Montoya.

The mood turns cringey very fast.

Montoya apparently does know who Greg is, after all, and says pretty quickly, sorry, but we're not gonna get involved.

They don't have the bandwidth.

That's the word he uses.

Greg says, couldn't we just talk for five minutes?

Montoya says he has another meeting.

Greg says he came all the way from Wisconsin.

And Montoya gets blunt, says, I'm telling you, it's not happening.

So Greg changes tack, talking faster now, diving right for the bullet points.

There's DNA from someone else.

The execution date is just a few months away.

They're talking over each other now, like they're performing monologues from two different plays.