Confessions of an Innocent Man

by David R. Dow

  I looked through the peephole. Moss and Stream were sitting in their cells, talking. I opened the door and said, I’m not sure how much longer I have. I gave my lawyer a letter confessing to kidnapping you, and detailing how I did it and where you are. If she doesn’t hear from me for more than twenty-four hours, she will remove the letter from her safe and read it.

  Stream said, You’re sure about that?

  I looked at my phone. I said, I’ll be right back.

  I climbed the stairs, pausing on every floor to see if I had a signal. Not until I got completely aboveground was there service. I sent a text to Detective Pisarro. It read, On one out of two occasions, Detective, you showed impressive instincts, and it included GPS coordinates for the silo’s trapdoor. I left the phone on the ground and went back down.

  Moss said, Is everything all right?

  I said, Redundancy.

  I closed my eyes, I am not sure for how long, and when I opened them I said, You ever have an Etch A Sketch? One of those kids’ games where you use two knobs to draw a picture and then shake the machine to erase it and start over again?

  Moss said, I loved my Etch A Sketch.

  I said, From the time I was a little kid, I could press my eyes closed really hard, and it was like erasing whatever bad thing was happening. I’d open them, and everything would be better. I’d forgotten all about it until the day Tieresse proposed marriage.

  I asked Moss where she and her husband had gone on their honeymoon. She said, I like spas. Harvey likes crowds. So we went to Vegas.

  I said to Stream, You?

  He said, Neither of my marriages is anything I want to revisit.

  I told them about North Dakota.

  Stream said, There’s a Minuteman missile launch site in Cooperstown. Seems ironic given our predicament.

  I hadn’t known that. It felt like it meant something. I turned and looked at the digital clock, counting down the seconds.

  I said, I was really looking forward to sharing more cakes with you. Did you know I already picked the flavors?

  Moss said, Yes, you told us.

  My breathing was very shallow but didn’t feel labored. I might have even felt a bit better. Tieresse told me with her melanoma she felt her very worst right before she entered remission.

  I said to Stream and Moss, Maybe I’ll be the one person who beats the odds. Somebody has to. But in case I’m not the guy, it’s time for plan b. I’ve reached the point I either need to kill you or let you go.

  They looked at me with alarm. I said, Relax. I had to watch a video to learn how to load a gun. I still don’t know how to shoot it. I placed the keys to the padlocks on the floor beside me.

  I said, I’m not exactly sure what I was hoping to accomplish. Maybe I achieved it.

  I looked at Stream. I said, Although in your case, probably not.

  I muted the TV. Stream cracked his knuckles. Moss stood from her chair, which continued to rock without her. I said, When I gave this place a trial run, and the TV and lights went off, it was like being buried alive. No light, no sound. I found it peaceful. I feel that way now.

  Moss said, Mr. Zhettah?

  My eyes burned and felt heavy. I looked at Stream. I said, My best friend wants nothing before he dies except to reconcile with his daughter. I hope things work out with your son. I said to Moss, Please tell your husband I apologize to him and wish I had been smart enough to think of another way, and she said, I will do that.

  My eyelids fell shut, then flickered open, and through the matted lashes I saw the two of them, standing there, pressed against the bars. Stream was still scared, but Moss was not. I slid the keys into their cells.

  I said, When I am gone, you can use those to let yourself out. My lawyer might have already opened her safe. Detective Pisarro is probably on his way. And I’m going to leave the vault door open when I head back up.

  They were watching me carefully, but neither was fearful any longer. I took another breath and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them I said, Goodbye, Your Honors. Hah. Your Honors. Even now I amuse myself. My laugh turned into a spasm. I felt a cauldron tip in my gut.

  Clutching the railing, I slowly climbed the stairs. I heard no sound or activity from below. I considered calling down to reassure them it was not a trick, but there wasn’t any hurry. They’d come up when they were ready. I went inside the house and grabbed the box of Tieresse’s ashes from the counter. I walked into every room and opened every closet door. I put one of Tieresse’s dried roses in my pocket. Then I turned on all the lights and walked outside. I smelled verbena and cudweed and maple blowing in on the western wind.

  She was already there, sitting in the plane. She was wearing the same yellow sundress she’d had on the day I met her. I wanted to say, I remember that dress. I climbed in next to her and handed her the flower. I felt her mouth brush my ear and she whispered, Where to, amor? A tiny fleck of salt glistened on her lower lip. A thick purple scar ran down her left cheek. I said, I think we’ve waited long enough, and I set a direct flight plan to Cooperstown, North Dakota, five hundred nautical miles away. She smiled, and I gasped as the scar on her face disappeared. She said, I want you to do something for me, amor, something you did for me once before very near to this place. Will you do it? I wanted to say, Of course, my love, I’ll do anything, but I was tired, so very tired, so I simply nodded my head.

  And before she could ask I closed my eyes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When I was in graduate school, I studied with the great historian Edmund S. Morgan. Professor Morgan used to warn his students about gonna-historians. A gonna-historian is a historian who is gonna write this book and gonna write that book, but who never actually writes any book. I was heading firmly in the direction of becoming a gonna-novelist until my course was altered by my wise, smart, and supportive agent, Simon Lipskar. He believed in this book when it was still only an idea, and his steady encouragement is a major reason it exists.

  Simon arranged for me to talk to John Parsley. After a few minutes of our first conversation, I knew I wanted to work with John and his team at Dutton. I’ve been fortunate in my life as a writer to have had several truly wonderful editors. None is better than John. To him, Cassidy Sachs, the copy editors, the fact-checkers, the artists, and the rest of the Dutton team: Thank you.

  I’m lucky to be able to park myself among two very different yet equally supportive sets of colleagues: the faculty and staff in the history department at Rice and at the University of Houston Law Center. I am especially grateful to Dean Leonard Baynes and Associate Dean Greg Vetter at UH, and to Carl Caldwell, Alida Metcalf, and Lora Wildenthal at Rice, for their steady support of my work. I also have the benefit and honor of working with a superb team of lawyers at both the Texas Innocence Network and the Juvenile and Capital Advocacy Project, including Christina Beeler, Katya Dow, Cassandra Jeu, Jeff Newberry, and Ingrid Norbergs. Charlette Jefferson and Lillian White provide unsurpassed administrative help.

  I realize that the scene in Amadeus where Salieri discovers that Mozart’s manuscripts have no erasures is made up, but I still think of it every time I begin to count the number of people who made this book better. My wonderful and wonderfully loyal friends who freely shared advice, encouragement, insights, and occasional browbeating, include: Seth Chandler, my brothers Mark Dow and Stuart Dow, Abby Schusterman Dow, Jon Liebman, Deborah Musher, Sandy Guerra Thompson, and Ron Turner. I relied most of all on the keen eye and keener sensibility of Katya Dow, whom I’m also lucky to be able to call my wife. Our son, Lincoln, was more helpful than any high school kid should be when talking with me about the ethics of Inocente’s conduct and the mechanics by which he carried out his plan. Inocente’s familiarity with Pirkei Avot is a result of numerous energetic conversations around the Shabbat dinner table of my youth, presided over by my mom and dad, who knows pretty much the entire text, as well as
the commentary, by heart.

  I’m not going to express an opinion about whether Twain was right to urge authors to write what you know, or whether Twain even actually said it. What I will say is that while I do know a fair amount about capital punishment, this book is a novel, and so far as I am aware, Inocente, Sargent, Moss, Stream, and all the rest exist only in its pages.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center and the Rorschach Visiting Professor of History at Rice University. As the founder of the Texas Innocence Network and the Juvenile and Capital Advocacy Project, Dow and his team of lawyers, students, and interns have represented more than one hundred death row inmates in their state and federal appeals. Recognized internationally as an authority on capital punishment, Dow’s TED talk on the death penalty has been viewed more than three million times. Dow has addressed aspects of his work in two previous memoirs, including The Autobiography of an Execution and Things I’ve Learned from Dying. He lives with his wife, their son, and their two dogs in Houston, Texas, and Park City, Utah. Confessions of an Innocent Man is his first novel.

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