parking lot near her car. She agreed to get in. They drove around Slone, then into the countryside. He wanted sex, she said no. They were finished. He tried to force himself on her and she fought back. He forced her into sex, but it wasn't enjoyable. She scratched him, even drew blood. The attack turned ugly. He flew into a rage, began to choke her, and he couldn't stop, didn't stop until it was too late. Then he panicked. He had to do something with her. He yelled at her back in the rear of the van, but she never responded. He drove north, toward Oklahoma. He'd lost track of time, then realized that dawn was approaching. He had to get home. He had to get rid of her body. On the Route 244 bridge over the Red River, at approximately 6:00, on the morning of December 5, he stopped the van. It was still dark, she was still very dead. He tossed her over and waited until he heard the sickening splash below. He cried all the way back to Slone.
For three hours, Kerber coached him, prodded him, corrected him, cursed him, reminded him to tell the truth. The details had to be perfect, Kerber kept saying. At 8:21 a.m., the video camera was finally turned on. A wiped- out, stone-faced Donte Drumm sat at the table with a fresh soft drink and doughnut in front of him, visible so that their hospitality could be shown.
The video ran for seventeen minutes, and would send him to death row.
Donte was charged with abduction, aggravated rape, and capital murder. He was taken to a cell where he promptly fell asleep.
At 9:00 a.m., the chief of police, along with the district attorney, Mr. Paul Koffee, held a press conference to announce the Nicole Yarber case had been solved. Sadly, one of Slone's former football heroes, Donte Drumm, had confessed to the murder. Other witnesses verified his involvement. Sympathies to her family.
The confession was attacked immediately. Donte recanted and his attorney, Robbie Flak, went public with a scathing condemnation of the police and their tactics. Months later, the defense lawyers filed motions to suppress the confession, and the suppression hearing lasted for a week. Kerber, Morrissey, and Needham testified at length, and their testimony was hotly challenged by the defense. They steadfastly denied using threats, promises, or intimidation. They specifically denied using the death penalty as a means to frighten Donte into cooperating. They denied verbally abusing the suspect or pushing him to the point of exhaustion and collapse. They denied that Donte had ever mentioned a lawyer, or that he wanted to terminate the interrogation and go home. They denied any knowledge of his father's presence at the station and his desire to see his son. They denied the fact that their own polygraph tests showed clear evidence of truthfulness, but instead testified that the results were 'inconclusive,' in their opinions. They denied any trickery with the alleged statement of Torrey Pickett. Pickett testified on Donte's behalf and denied telling the police anything about an affair between Donte and Nicole.
The trial judge expressed grave concerns about the confession, but not grave enough to exclude it from the trial. She refused to suppress it, and it was later shown to the jury. Donte watched it as if he were watching a different person. No one has ever seriously questioned the fact that it guaranteed his conviction.
The confession was attacked again on appeal, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously affirmed the conviction and death sentence.
When Keith was finished, he left the table and went to the bathroom. He had the feeling that he had just been interrogated. It was well after midnight. Sleep would be impossible.
CHAPTER 8
By 7:00 on Tuesday morning, the Flak Law Firm was bustling with a frantic, nervous energy one might expect from a group of people fighting both the clock and some very long odds to save a man's life. Tension was palpable. There were no smiles, none of the usual smart-ass remarks from people who worked together each day with the absolute freedom of saying anything to anyone at any time. Most of those present had been around six years earlier when Lamar Billups got the needle at Huntsville, and the finality of his death had been a shock. And Billups had been a nasty character. His favorite pastime had been beating up people in bar fights, preferably with pool cue sticks and broken bottles, and the state finally got fed up with him. On his deathbed, his last words were 'See you in hell' and away he went. He was guilty, and never made a serious claim otherwise. His murder had been in a small town sixty miles away, hardly noticed by the citizens of Slone. He had no family, no one for the firm to be acquainted with. Robbie disliked him immensely, but clung rigidly to the belief that the state had no right to kill him.
The State of Texas versus Donte Drumm was a far different matter. Now they were fighting for an innocent man, and his family was their family.
The long table in the main conference room was the center of the storm. Fred Pryor, who was still in Houston, was on the speakerphone, giving a quick update on his efforts to flip Joey Gamble. The two had spoken by phone late Monday night, and Gamble was even less cooperative.
'He kept asking about perjury and how serious a crime it is,' Pryor said, his voice at full volume.
'Koffee's threatening him,' Robbie said, as if he knew it to be true. 'Did you ask him if he's talking to the district attorney?'
'No, but I thought about it,' Pryor replied. 'I didn't, because I figured he would not divulge that.'
'Koffee knows he lied at trial, and he's told the kid that we'll make a last-minute run at him,' Robbie said. 'He's threatened him with a prosecution for perjury if he changes his story now. Wanna bet on that, Fred?'
'No. Sounds about right.'
'Tell Joey the statute of limitations has run on perjury. Koffee can't touch him.'
'You got it.'
The speakerphone was switched off. A platter of pastries hit the table and attracted a crowd. Robbie's two associates, both women, were reviewing a request for a reprieve from the governor. Martha Handler sat at one end of the table, lost in the world of trial transcripts. Aaron Rey, with his jacket off and both pistols visible and strapped to his shirt, sipped coffee from a paper cup as he scanned the morning newspaper. Bonnie, a paralegal, worked at a laptop.
'Let's assume Gamble comes through,' Robbie said to his senior associate, a prim lady of undetermined age. Robbie had sued her first plastic surgeon twenty years earlier when a face-lift produced a result that was less than desirable. But she had not given up on the corrective work; she had simply changed surgeons. Her name was Samantha Thomas, or Sammie, and when she wasn't working on Robbie's cases, she was suing doctors for malpractice and employers for age and race discrimination. 'Get the petition ready, just in case,' he said.
'I'm almost finished with it,' Sammie said.
The receptionist, Fanta, a tall, slender black woman who had starred in basketball at Slone High and would have graduated, under different circumstances, with both Nicole Yarber and Donte Drumm, entered the room with a handful of phone messages. 'A reporter from the Washington Post called and wants to talk,' she said to Robbie, who immediately focused on her legs.
'Is it someone we know?'
'Never seen the name before.'
'Then ignore.'
'A reporter from the Houston Chronicle left a message at 10:30 last night.'
'It's not Spinney is it?'
'It is.'
'Tell him to go to hell.'
'I don't use that language.'
'Then ignore.'
'Greta has called three times.'
'Is she still in Germany?'
'Yes, she can't afford a plane ticket. She wants to know if she and Donte can get married through the Internet?'
'And what did you tell her?'
'I said no, it's not possible.'
'Did you explain that Donte has become one of the most eligible bachelors in the world? That he's had at least five marriage proposals in the past week, all from Europe? All kinds of women, young, old, fat, skinny, the only
