by John Grisham
and trying to open his eyes.
"Who is it?" he growled.
"Wake up, Robbie, it's Fred. Got some interesting stuff here."
Robbie managed to rouse himself, at least to the next level. "What is it, Fred?" DeDe was already flipping to the other side. Robbie smiled at her fine rear end under the satin sheets.
Fred said, "Had another drink with Joey. Took him to a strip club. Second night in a row, you know. Not sure my liver can take much more of this project. I'm sure his cannot. Anyway, got the boy drunk as a pissant, and he finally admitted everything. Said he lied about seeing the green van, lied about the black person driving the damned thing, lied about everything. Admitted he was the one who called Kerber with the fake tip about Donte and the girl. It was beautiful. He was crying and carrying on, just a big blubbering fat boy knocking back beers and talking trash to the strippers. Said he and Donte were once good buddies, back in the ninth and tenth grades when they were football stars. Said he always thought the prosecutors and judges would figure things out. Can't believe it's come down to this. He's always thought the execution would never happen, thought Donte would one day get out of prison. Now he's finally convinced that they're gonna kill him, so he's all tore up about it. Thinks it's his fault. I assured him that it is. The blood will be on his hands. I really beat him up. It was wonderful."
Robbie was in the kitchen looking for water. "This is great, Fred," he said.
"It is, and it's not. He refuses to sign an affidavit."
"What!"
"Won't do it. We left the strip club and went to a coffeehouse. I begged him to sign an affidavit, but it's like talking to a tree."
"Why not?"
"His momma, Robbie, his momma and his family. He can't stomach the idea of admitting that he's a liar. He's got a lot of friends in Slone, and so on. I did everything I could possibly do, but the boy is not willing to sign on."
Robbie downed a glass of tap water and wiped his mouth with a sleeve. "Did you tape it?"
"Of course. I've listened to the tape once, about to go through it again. There's a lot of background noise--you ever been to a strip club?"
"Don't ask."
"Really loud music, a lotta rap shit and stuff like that. But his voice is there. You can understand what he's saying. We'll need to enhance it."
"There's no time for that."
"Okay. What's the plan?"
"How long is your drive?"
"Well, at this lovely time of the day, there's no traffic. I can be in Slone in five hours."
"Then get your ass on the road."
"You got it, Boss."
An hour later, Robbie was in bed, flat on his back, the dark ceiling doing strange things to his thought process. DeDe was purring like a kitten, dead to the world. He listened to her breathe heavily and wondered how she could be so untroubled by all of his troubles. He envied her. When she awoke hours later, her first priority would be an hour of hot yoga with a few of her dreadful friends. He would be at the office screaming at the telephone.
And so it had all come down to this: a drunk Joey Gamble confessing his sins and baring his soul in a strip club to a man with a concealed mike that produced a scratchy audio that no court in the civilized world would take heed of.
The fragile life of Donte Drumm would depend on the eleventh-hour recantation by a witness with no credibility.
PART TWO
THE
PUNISHMENT
CHAPTER 16
Lost in the frenzy of the departure was the issue of money. When he paid six bucks for Boyette's feast at the Blue Moon Diner, Keith realized he was low on cash. Then he forgot about it. He remembered it again after they were on the road and needed gas. They stopped at a truck stop on Interstate 335 at 1:15 a.m. It was Thursday, November 8.
As Keith pumped gas, he was aware of the fact that Donte Drumm would be strapped to the gurney in Huntsville in about seventeen hours. He was even more aware that the man who should be suffering through his final hours was, instead, sitting peacefully only a few feet away, snug inside the car, his pale slick head reflecting the overhead fluorescent lights. They were just south of Topeka. Texas was a million miles away. He paid with a credit card and counted $33 in cash in his left front pocket. He cursed himself for not raiding the slush fund he and Dana kept in a kitchen cabinet. The cigar box usually held around $200 in cash.
An hour south of Topeka, the speed limit increased to seventy miles per hour, and Keith and the old Subaru inched upward to seventy-five. Boyette so far had been quiet, seemingly content to sit crouched with his hands on his knees and stare at nothing through the right-side window. Keith preferred to ignore him. He preferred the silence. Sitting next to a stranger for twelve straight hours was a chore under normal circumstances. Rubbing shoulders with one as violent and weird as Boyette would make for a tense, tedious trip.
Just as Keith settled into a quiet, comfortable zone, he was suddenly hit with a wave of drowsiness. His eyelids snapped shut, only to be reopened when he jerked his head. His vision was blurred, foggy. The Subaru edged toward the right shoulder, then he moved back to the left. He pinched his cheeks. He blinked his eyes as wildly as possible. If he'd been alone, he would have slapped himself. Travis did not notice.
"How about some music?" Keith said. Anything to jolt his brain.
Travis just nodded his approval.
"Anything in particular?"
"It's your car."
Yes, it was. His favorite station was classic rock. He cranked up the volume and was soon thumping the steering wheel and tapping his left foot and mouthing the words. The noise cleared his brain, but he was still stunned by how quickly he had almost collapsed.
Only eleven hours to go. He thought of Charles Lindbergh and his solo flight to Paris. Thirty-three and a half straight hours, with no sleep the night before he took off from New York. Lindbergh later wrote that he was awake for sixty straight hours. Keith's brother was a pilot and loved to tell stories.
He thought about his brother, his sister, and his parents, and when he began to nod off, he said, "How many brothers and sisters do you have, Travis?"
Talk to me, Travis. Anything to keep me awake. You can't help with the driving, because you have no license. You have no insurance. You're not touching this wheel, so come on, Travis, help me out here before we crash.
"I don't know," Travis said, after the obligatory period of contemplation.
The answer did more to lift the fog than anything by Springsteen or Dylan. "What do you mean, you don't know?"
A slight tic. Travis had now shifted his gaze from the side window to the windshield. "Well," he said, then paused. "Not long after I was born, my father left my mother. Never saw him again. My mother took up with a man named Darrell, and since he was the first man I ever remembered, I just figured Darrell was my father. My mother told me he was my father. I called him Dad. I had an older brother and he called him Dad. Darrell was okay, never beat me or anything, but he had a brother who abused me. When they took me to court the first time--I think I was twelve--I realized that Darrell was not my real father. That really hurt. I was crushed. Then Darrell disappeared."
The response, like many of Boyette's, raised more mysteries than it solved. It also served to kick Keith's brain into high gear. He was suddenly wide-awake. And he was determined to unravel this psycho. What else was there to do for the next half day? They were in his car. He could ask anything he wanted.
"So you have one brother."
"There's more. My father, the real one, ran off to Florida and took up with another woman. They had a houseful of kids, so I guess I have outside brothers and sisters. And there was always this rumor that my mother had given birth to a child before she married my father. You ask how many. Pick a number, Pastor."
"How many are you in contact with?"
"I wouldn't call it contact, but I've written some letters to my brother. He's in Illinois. In prison."
What a surprise. "Why is he in pris
on?"
"Same reason everybody else is in prison. Drugs and booze. He needed cash for his habit, so he broke into a house, wrong one, ended up beating a man."
"Does he write back?"
"Sometimes. He'll never get out."
"Was he abused?"
"No, he was older, and my uncle left him alone, far as I know. We never talked about it."
"This was Darrell's brother?"
"Yes."
"So, he wasn't really your uncle?"
"I thought he was. Why are you asking so many questions, Pastor?"
"I'm trying to pass the time, Travis, and I'm trying to stay awake. Since I met you Monday morning, I have slept very little. I'm exhausted, and we have a long way to go."
"I don't like all these questions."
"Well, what exactly do you think you're about to hear in Texas? We show up, you claim to be the real murderer, and then you announce that you really don't like questions. Come on, Travis."
Several miles passed without a word. Travis stared to his right, at nothing but the darkness, and lightly tapped his cane with his fingertips. He had shown no signs of severe headaches for at least an hour. Keith glanced at the speedometer and realized he was doing eighty, ten over, enough for a ticket anywhere in Kansas. He slowed down and, to keep his mind going, played out the scene in which a state trooper pulled him over, checked his ID, checked Boyette's, then called for backup. A fleeing felon. A wayward Lutheran minister aiding the fleeing felon. Blue lights all over the road. Handcuffs. A night in jail, maybe in the same cell with his friend, a man who wouldn't be the least bit bothered by another night behind bars. What would Keith tell his boys?
He began to nod again. There was a phone call he had to make, and there was no good time to make it. The call was guaranteed to engage his mind at such a level that sleep would be forgotten momentarily. He removed his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Matthew Burns. It was almost 2:00 a.m. Evidently, Matthew was a sound sleeper. It took eight rings to rouse him.
"This better be good," he growled.
"Good morning, Matthew. Sleep well?"
"Fine, Father. Why the hell are you calling me?"
"Watch your language, son. Look, I'm on the road headed for Texas, traveling with a man named Travis Boyette, a nice gentleman who visited our church last Sunday. You may have seen him. Walks with a cane. Anyway, Travis here has a confession to make to the authorities in Texas, a small town called Slone, and we're dashing off to stop an execution."
Matthew's voice cleared quickly. "Have you lost your mind, Keith? You've got that guy in the car?"
"Oh yes, left Topeka about an hour ago. The reason I'm calling, Matt, is to ask for your help."
"I'll give you some help, Keith. Free advice. Turn that damned car around and get back here."
"Thanks, Matt, but look, in a few hours I'll need you to make a couple of phone calls to Slone, Texas."
"What does Dana say about this?"
"Fine, fine. I'll need you to call the police, the prosecutor, and maybe a defense lawyer. I'll be calling them too, Matt, but since you're a prosecutor, they might listen to you."
"Are you still in Kansas?"
"Yes, I-35."
"Don't cross the state line, Keith. Please."
"Well, that might make it rather difficult to get to Texas, don't you think?"
"Don't cross the state line!"
"Get some sleep. I'll call you back around six, and we'll start working the phones, okay?"
Keith closed his phone, punched voice mail, and waited. Ten seconds later it buzzed. Matthew was calling back.
They were through Emporia and bearing down on Wichita.
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Nothing prompted the narrative. Perhaps Boyette was getting sleepy himself, or maybe he was just bored. But the more he talked, the more Keith realized he was listening to the twisted autobiography of a dying man, one who knew no sense could be made of his life, but wanted to try anyway.
"Darrell's brother, we called him Uncle Chett, would take me fishing, that was what he told my parents. Never caught the first fish, never wet the first hook. We'd go to his little house out in the country, had a pond out back, and that's where all the fish were supposed to be. Never made it that far. He'd give me a cigarette, let me taste his beer. At first I didn't know what he was doing. Had no idea. I was just a kid, eight years old. I was too scared to move, to fight back. I remember how bad it hurt. He had all sorts of kiddie porn, magazines and movies, sick stuff he was generous enough to share with me. You cram all that garbage into the head of a little boy, and before long he sort of accepts it. I thought, well, maybe this is what kids do. Maybe this is what adults do to kids. It looked legitimate and normal. He wasn't mean to me; in fact, he bought me ice cream and pizza--anything I wanted. After each fishing trip, he would drive me home, and right before we'd get to my house, he would get real serious, sort of mean and threatening. He would tell me that it was important for me to keep our little secret. Some things are private. He kept a gun in his truck, a shiny pistol. Later, he would show me how to use it. But at first, he would take it out and place it on the seat, then explain that he loved his secrets, and if they were ever revealed, then he would be forced to hurt someone. Even me. If I told anyone, he would be forced to kill me, and then kill whomever I told, and that included Darrell and my mother. It was very effective. I never told anyone.
"We kept fishing. I think my mother knew, but she had her own problems, primarily with the bottle. She was drunk most of the time, didn't sober up until much later, until it was too late for me. When I was about ten or so, my uncle gave me some pot, and we started smoking together. Then some pills. It wasn't all bad. I thought I was pretty cool. A young punk smoking cigarettes and pot, drinking beer, watching porn. The other part was never pleasant, but it didn't last long. We were living in Springfield at the time, and one day my mother told me we had to move. My dad, her husband, whatever the hell he was, had found a job near Joplin, Missouri, where I was born. We packed in a hurry, loaded everything into a U-Haul, and fled in the middle of the night. I'm sure there was some unpaid rent involved. Probably a lot more than that--bills, lawsuits, arrest warrants, indictments, who knows. Anyway, I woke up the next morning in a double-wide trailer, a nice one. Uncle Chett got left behind. I'm sure it broke his heart. He finally found us and showed up a month or so later, asked me if I wanted to go fishing. I said no. He had no place to take me, so he just hung around the house, couldn't take his eyes off me. They were drinking, the adults, and before long they got into a fight over money. Uncle Chett left cussing. Never saw him again. But the damage was done. If I saw him now, I'd take a baseball bat and splatter his brains across forty acres. I was one screwed-up little boy. And I guess I've never gotten over it. Can I smoke?"
"No."
"Then can we pull over for a minute so I can smoke?"
"Sure." A few miles down the road, they pulled in to a rest stop and took a break. Keith's phone buzzed again. Another missed call from Matthew Burns. Boyette wandered away, last seen drifting into some woods behind the restrooms, a cloud of smoke trailing him. Keith was walking across the parking lot, back and forth, back and forth, trying to pump the blood, with one eye on his passenger. When Boyette was out of sight, gone in the darkness, Keith wondered if he was gone for good. He was already tired of the trip, and if there was an escape at this point, who would care? Keith would drive back home, wonderfully alone in the car, and face the music with his wife and get an earful from Matthew. With some luck, no one would ever know about the aborted mission. Boyette would do what he'd always done--drift here and there until he either died or got himself arrested again.
But what if he hurt someone? Would Keith share criminal responsibility?
Minutes passed with no movement from the woods. A dozen 18-wheelers were parked together at one end of the parking lot, their generators humming as their drivers slept.
Keith leaned on his car and waited. He'd lost his nerve, and
he wanted to go home. He wanted Boyette to stay in the woods, to go deeper until there was no turning back, to simply disappear. Then he thought of Donte Drumm.
A puff of smoke wafted from the trees. His passenger had not escaped.
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