The Confession (17 page)

Screw it, he said to himself. I’m talking.

He typed an e-mail for Robbie Flak. He described himself, leaving all possible phone numbers and addresses along the way. He described his encounter with an unnamed parolee who once lived in Slone, and did so at the time Nicole disappeared. This parolee has a lengthy criminal record, a violent one, and was once arrested and jailed in Slone. Keith had verified this. The man confessed to the rape and murder of Nicole Yarber and gave plenty of details. Her body was buried deep in the hills south of Joplin, Missouri, where this parolee grew up. The only person who can find the body is the parolee himself. Please call. Keith Schroeder.

An hour later, Keith left his office and drove back to Anchor House. No one had seen Boyette. He drove downtown and had another quick lunch with Matthew Burns. After some debate, and a bit of cajoling, Matthew pulled out his cell phone and called Flak’s office. Keith heard
him say, “Yes, hello, my name is Matthew Burns, and I am a prosecutor in Topeka, Kansas. I would like to speak to Mr. Robbie Flak.” Mr. Flak was unavailable.

“I have some information about the Donté Drumm case, specifically the identity of the real killer.” Mr. Flak was still unavailable. Matthew then gave his phone numbers, cell and office, and invited the receptionist to visit the Web site for the City of Topeka, Office of the City Attorney, to verify his legitimacy. She said she would do this.

“I’m not some nut, okay? Please have Mr. Flak call me as soon as possible. Thank you.”

They finished lunch and agreed to alert each other if a call came from Texas. Driving back to the office, Keith was relieved to have a friend, an attorney at that, willing to lend a hand.

———

By noon, the streets of downtown Slone had been blocked and barricaded, and routine traffic had been diverted elsewhere. Dozens of church buses and vans were double-parked around the courthouse, but the police were not writing tickets. Their orders were to maintain a presence, keep the peace, and, by all means, do nothing to provoke anyone. Emotions were high. The situation was tense. Most of the merchants closed their shops, and most of the white folks disappeared.

The crowd, all black, continued to grow. Hundreds of students from Slone High School skipped out and arrived in packs, already rowdy and anxious to be heard. Factory workers brought their lunch boxes and ate while they milled around the courthouse lawn. Reporters took photos and scribbled notes. Camera crews from Slone and Tyler bunched together near the podium on the front steps of the courthouse. At 12:15 p.m., Mr. Oscar Betts, president of the local NAACP chapter, stepped to the microphones, thanked everyone for coming, and quickly got down to business. He proclaimed the innocence of Donté Drumm and said his execution was nothing more than a legal lynching. He blistered the police in a scathing condemnation, calling them “racist” and “determined to kill an innocent man.” He ridiculed a judicial system that
would allow an all-white jury to pass judgment on an innocent black man. Unable to resist, he asked the crowd: “How you supposed to get a fair trial when the prosecutor is sleeping with the judge?” “And the appeals courts said it was okay?” “Only in Texas!” He described the death penalty as a disgrace—an outdated tool of revenge that does not deter crime, is not used fairly, and has been abandoned by all civilized countries. Almost every sentence was followed with applause and shouting as the crowd grew louder. He called on the court system to stop the madness. He mocked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. He called the governor a coward for not stopping the execution. He warned of unrest in Slone and East Texas and perhaps even the entire nation if the state went forward with the execution of an innocent black man.

Betts did a masterful job of raising emotions and tensions. When he finally wound down, he changed course and asked the crowd to behave, to stay off the streets tonight and tomorrow night. “We gain nothing by violence,” he pleaded. When he finished, he introduced the Reverend Johnny Canty, pastor of the Bethel African Methodist Church, where the Drumm family had worshipped for over twenty years. Reverend Canty began with a message from the family. They were thankful for the support. They remained strong in their faith and were praying for a miracle. Roberta Drumm was doing as well as could be expected. Her plans were to travel to death row tomorrow and be there until the end. Reverend Canty then asked for quiet and began a long eloquent prayer that started with a plea for compassion for the family of Nicole Yarber, a family that had endured the nightmare of the death of an innocent child. Just like the Drumm family. He thanked the Almighty for the gift of life and the promise of eternity for all people. He thanked God for His laws, the most basic and most important being the Ten Commandments, which included the prohibition “Thou shalt not kill.” He prayed for those “other Christians” out there who take the same Bible and twist it and use it as a weapon to kill others. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Canty had worked on his prayer for a long time, and he delivered it
slowly, with perfect timing, and without notes. The crowd hummed and swayed and offered hearty “Amens” as he plodded along, no end in sight. It was far more a speech than a prayer, and Canty savored the moment. After praying for justice, he prayed for peace, not the peace that avoids violence, but the peace yet to be found in a society in which young black men are incarcerated in record numbers, in which they are executed far more often than those of other races, in which crimes committed by blacks are deemed more grievous than the same crimes committed by whites. He prayed for mercy, for forgiveness, for strength. Like most ministers, Canty went on too long and was losing his audience when he suddenly found it again. He began praying for Donté, “our persecuted brother,” a young man snatched from his family nine years ago and thrown into a “hellhole” from which no man escaped alive. Nine years without his family and friends, nine years locked away like a caged animal. Nine years serving the time for a crime committed by someone else.

———

From the window of a small law library on the third floor, Judge Elias Henry watched and listened. The crowd was under control as the reverend prayed, yet it was the restlessness that frightened the judge.

Slone had known little racial discord over the decades, and the judge took most of the credit for this, but only when talking to himself. Fifty years earlier, when he’d been a young lawyer struggling to pay his bills, he’d taken a part-time job reporting and writing editorials for the
Slone Daily News
, then a prosperous weekly that was read by all. Now it was a struggling daily with a lower readership. In the early 1960s, the newspaper was one of the few in East Texas that recognized the fact that a sizable portion of the population was black. Elias Henry wrote occasional stories about black sports teams and black history, and though this was not well received, it was not openly condemned. His editorials, though, managed to rile up the whites. He explained in layman’s terms the true meaning of
Brown v. Board of Education
and criticized the segregated schools in Slone and Chester County. The newspaper, through the
growing influence of Elias and the declining health of its owner, took bold stands in favor of voting rights for blacks, as well as fair pay and fair housing. His arguments were persuasive, his reasoning was sound, and most of those who read his opinions realized he was far smarter than they were. He bought the paper in 1966 and owned it for ten years. He also became a skilled lawyer and politician and a leader in the community. A lot of white folks disagreed with Elias, but few challenged him publicly. When the schools were finally desegregated, at the end of a federal gun barrel, white resistance in Slone had been softened after years of crafty manipulation by Elias Henry.

After he was elected judge, he sold the paper and assumed a loftier position. From there, he quietly but firmly controlled a judicial system that was known to be tough on those who were violent, strict on those who needed guidance, and compassionate to those who needed another chance. His defeat by Vivian Grale led to a nervous breakdown.

The conviction of Donté Drumm would not have happened on his watch. He would have known about the arrest not long after it occurred. He would have examined the confession and the circumstances surrounding it, and he would have called in Paul Koffee for an unofficial meeting, just the two of them with the door locked, to inform the DA that his case was rotten. The confession was hopelessly unconstitutional. It would not get to the jury. Keep looking, Koffee, because you have yet to find your killer.

Judge Henry looked at the throng packed tightly around the front of the courthouse. Not a white face anywhere, except for the reporters. It was an angry black crowd. The whites were hiding, and not sympathetic. His town was split, something he thought he would never see.

“God help us,” he mumbled to himself.

———

The next speaker was Palomar Reed, a senior at the high school and vice president of the student body. He began with the obligatory condemnation of the death sentence and launched into a windy and technical diatribe against capital punishment, with heavy emphasis on the Texas
version of it. The crowd stayed with him, though he lacked the drama of the more experienced speakers. Palomar, though, soon proved to have an incredible knack for the dramatic. Looking at a sheet of paper, he began calling the names of the black players on the Slone High School football team. One by one, they hurried to the podium and formed a line along the top step. Each wore the royal blue home jersey of the Slone Warriors. When all twenty-eight were packed shoulder to shoulder, Palomar made a shocking announcement: “These players stand here united with their brother Donté Drumm. A Slone Warrior. An African warrior. If the people of this city, county, and state succeed in their illegal and unconstitutional efforts to kill Donté Drumm tomorrow night, these warriors will not play in Friday’s game against Longview.”

The crowd exhaled in one massive cheer that rattled the windows of the courthouse. Palomar looked at the players, and on cue all twenty-eight reached for their shirttails and quickly yanked off the jerseys. They threw them at their feet. Under the jerseys, each player wore an identical white T-shirt with the unmistakable image of Donté’s face. Under it, in bold lettering, was the word “INNOCENT.” The players puffed their chests and pumped their fists, and the crowd drowned them in adoration.

“We will boycott classes tomorrow!” Palomar yelled into the microphone. “And Friday, too!

“And there will be no football game on Friday night!”

———

The rally was being broadcast live on the local channel, and most of the white folks in Slone were glued to their televisions. In banks and schools and homes and offices, the same muted utterances were heard:

“They can’t do that, can they?”

“Of course they can. How do you stop them?”

“They’ve gone too far.”

“No, we’ve gone too far.”

“So, you think he’s innocent?”

“I’m not sure. No one’s sure. That’s the problem. There’s just too much doubt.”

“He confessed.”

“They never found the body.”

“Why can’t they just stop things for a few days, you know, a reprieve or something like that?”

“Why?”

“Wait till after football season.”

“I’d prefer not to have a riot.”

“If they riot, then they’ll be prosecuted.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“This place is going to explode.”

“Kick ’em off the team.”

“Who do they think they are, calling the game off?”

“We got forty white boys who can play.”

“Damn right we do.”

“Coach oughtta kick ’em off the team.”

“And they oughtta arrest ’em if they skip school.”

“Brilliant. That’ll throw gas on the fire.”

At the high school, the football coach watched the protest in the principal’s office. The coach was white, the principal black. They stared at the television and said nothing.

At the police department, three blocks down Main Street from the courthouse, Chief of Police Joe Radford watched the television with his assistant chief. The department had four dozen uniformed officers on the payroll, and at that moment thirty were watching nervously from the fringes of the rally.

“Will the execution take place?” the assistant chief asked.

“Far as I know,” Radford answered. “I talked to Paul Koffee an hour ago, and he thinks it’s a go.”

“We might need some help.”

“Naw. They’ll throw a few rocks, but it’ll blow over.”

Paul Koffee watched the show alone at his desk with a sandwich and chips. His office was two blocks behind the courthouse, and he could
hear the crowd when it roared. For him, such demonstrations were necessary evils in a country that valued the Bill of Rights. Folks could gather lawfully, with permission of course, and express their feelings. The same laws that protected this right also governed the orderly flow of justice. His job was to prosecute criminals and put the guilty ones away. And when a crime was grave enough, the laws of his state directed him to extract revenge and seek the death penalty. This he had done in the Drumm case. He had no regrets, no doubts, not the slightest uneasiness about his decisions, his tactics at trial, or the guilt of Drumm. His work had been ratified by seasoned appellate judges on numerous occasions. Dozens of these learned jurists had reviewed every word of the Drumm trial and affirmed his conviction. Koffee was at peace with himself. He regretted his involvement with Judge Vivian Grale, and the pain and embarrassment it had caused, but he had never doubted that her rulings were right.

He missed her. Their romance had cracked under the strain of all the negative attention it created. She ran away and refused any contact. His career as a prosecutor would soon be over, and he hated to admit that he would leave office under a cloud. The Drumm execution, though, would be his high-water mark, his vindication, a shining moment that the people of Slone, or at least the white ones, would appreciate.