John Grisham - The Innocent Man

It was amusing, Annette thought, all this attention. As a kid and a teenager, Ronnie had craved the spotlight, demanded it, and now forty years later cameras were recording every move.

Enjoy the moment, she kept telling herself. A month earlier he'd been locked up in a mental hospital, and they were not sure he would ever get out.

They slowly made their way back to the Yankee dugout and killed some time there. As Ron absorbed the magic of the place for a few final minutes, he said to Mark Barrett, "I just got a taste of how much fun they were having up here."

Mark nodded but could think of nothing to say.

"All I ever wanted to do was play baseball," Ron said. "It's the only fun I've ever had." He paused and looked around, then said, "You know, this all sort of washes over you after a while. What I really want is a cold beer."

The drinking began in New York.

From Yankee Stadium, the victory lap stretched to Disney World, where a German television company paid for three nights of fun for the entire entourage. All Ron and Dennis had to do was tell their story, and the Germans, with typical European fascination with the death penalty, recorded every detail.

Ron's favorite part of Disney World was Epcot, at the German village, where he found Bavarian beer and knocked back one stein after another.

They flew to Los Angeles for a live appearance on the Leeza show. Shortly before airtime, Ron sneaked away and drained a pint of vodka. Without most of his teeth, his words were not crisp to begin with, and no one noticed his slightly thick tongue.

As the days passed, the story lost some of its urgency, and the group-Ron, Annette, Mark, Dennis, Elizabeth, and Sara Bonnell- headed home.

The last place Ron wanted to be was Ada.

He stayed with Annette and began the difficult process of trying to adjust. The reporters eventually went away.

Under Annette's constant supervision, he was diligent with his medications and stable. He slept a lot, played his guitar, and dreamed of becoming famous as a singer. She did not tolerate alcohol in her home, and he seldom left it.

The fear of being arrested and sent back to prison consumed him and forced him to instinctively glance over his shoulder and jump at any loud noise. Ron knew the police had not forgotten about him. They still believed he was somehow involved in the murder. So did most folks in Ada.

He wanted to get out, but had no money. He was unable to hold a job and never talked about employment. He hadn't had a driver's license in almost twenty years and wasn't particularly interested in studying a driver's manual and taking tests.

Annette was arguing with the Social Security Administration in an effort to collect the back payments for his disability. The checks stopped when he went to prison. She finally prevailed, and the lump sum award was $60,000. His monthly benefits of $600 were reinstated, payable until his disability was removed, an unlikely event.

Overnight, he felt like a millionaire and wanted to live on his own. He was also desperate to leave Ada, and Oklahoma, too. Annette's only child, Michael, was living in Springfield, Missouri, and they hatched the plan to move Ron there. They spent $20,000 on a new, furnished, two-bedroom mobile home, and moved him in.

Though it was a proud moment, Annette was worried about Ron living by himself. When she finally left him, he was sitting in his new re-cliner watching his new television, a very happy man. When she returned three weeks later to check on him, he was still sitting in his recliner with a disheartening collection of empty beer cans piled around it.

When he wasn't sleeping, drinking, talking on the phone, or playing his guitar, he was loitering at a nearby Wal-Mart, his source for beer and cigarettes. But something happened, an incident, and he was asked to spend his time elsewhere.

In those heady days of being on his own, he became fixated on repaying all those who'd loaned him money over the years. Saving money seemed like a ridiculous idea, and he began giving it away. He was moved by appeals on television-starving children, evangelists about to lose their entire ministries, and so on. He sent money.

His telephone bills were enormous. He called Annette and Renee, Mark Barrett, Sara Bonnell, Greg Wilhoit, the Indigent Defense System lawyers, Judge Landrith, Bruce Leba, even some prison officials. He was usually upbeat, happy to be free, but by the end of every conversation he was ranting about Ricky Joe Simmons. He was not impressed by the DNA trail left by Glen Gore. Ron wanted Simmons arrested immediately for the "rape, rape by instrumentation and rape by forcible sodomy and murder [of] Debra Sue Carter at her home at 1022 1/2, East 8th Street, December the 8th, 1982!!" Every conversation included at least two recitations of this detailed demand.

Oddly enough, Ron also called Peggy Stillwell, and the two developed a cordial relationship by phone. He assured her he had never met Debbie, and Peggy believed him. Eighteen years after losing her daughter, she was still unable to say good-bye. She confessed to Ron that for years she'd had a nagging suspicion that the murder was not really solved.

As a general rule he avoided bars and loose women, though one episode burned him. Walking down the street, tending to his own business, a car with two ladies stopped and he got in. They went out for a round of barhopping, the night grew long, and they retired to his trailer, where one of his companions found his stash of cash under his bed. When he later discovered the theft of $1,000, he swore off women altogether.

Michael Hudson was his only friend in Springfield, and he encouraged his nephew to buy a guitar and taught him a few chords. Michael checked on him regularly and reported to his mother. The drinking was getting worse.

The booze and his medications did not mix well, and he became extremely paranoid. The sight of a police car provoked serious attacks of anxiety. He refused to even jaywalk, thinking the cops were always watching. Peterson and the Ada police were up to something. He taped newspapers over the windows, padlocked his doors, then taped them, too, from the inside. He slept with a butcher's knife.

Mark Barrett visited him twice and slept over. He was alarmed at Ron's condition, his paranoia and drinking, and he was particularly worried about the knife.

Ron was lonely, and terrified.

Dennis Fritz wasn't jaywalking, either. He returned to Kansas City and moved in with his mother in the little house on Lister Avenue. When he had last seen it, the house had been surrounded by a dejected SWAT team.

Months after their release, Glen Gore had not been charged. The investigation was plodding along in some direction, and as Dennis understood things, he and Ron were still suspects. Dennis flinched at the sight ofa police car. He watched his back whenever he left the house. He jumped when the phone rang.

He drove to Springfield to visit Ronnie and was startled by the extent of his drinking. They tried to laugh and reminisce for a couple of days, but Ronnie was drinking too much. He wasn't a mean drunk, or an emotional one, just a loud and unpleasant one. He would sleep until noon, wake up, pop a top, have a beer for breakfast and lunch, and start playing his guitar.

They were driving around one afternoon, drinking beer and enjoying their freedom. Ron was playing his guitar. Dennis was driving very carefully. He did not know Springfield, and the last thing he wanted was trouble with the cops. Ron decided they should stop at a certain nightclub where he would somehow talk his way into a gig that night. Dennis thought this was a bad idea, especially since Ron was not familiar with the club and didn't know the owner or bouncers. A heated argument ensued, and they made their way back to the trailer.