John Grisham - The Confession

“I don’t doubt it, Matthew.”

He put the phone in his pocket, and a few minutes later the Subaru left Kansas and entered Oklahoma. Keith was driving eighty miles an hour. He was also wearing his clerical collar, and he’d convinced himself that any decent trooper wouldn’t ask too many questions of a man of God whose crime was nothing more than speeding.

CHAPTER 17

The Drumm family spent the night in a budget motel on the outskirts of Livingston, less than four miles by car from the Allan B. Polunsky correctional facility, where Donté had been locked up for over seven years. The motel did a modest trade with the families of inmates, including the rather bizarre cult of death row wives from abroad. At any given time, around twenty condemned men were married to European women they could never actually touch. The weddings were not officially sanctioned by the state, but the couples nonetheless considered themselves married and carried on to the fullest extent possible. The wives corresponded with each other and often traveled together to Texas to see their men. They stayed at the same motel.

Four had eaten at a table near the Drumms late the night before. They were usually noticeable, with their thick accents and suggestive clothing. They liked to be noticed. Back home they were minor celebrities.

Donté had rebuffed all offers of matrimony. During his final days, he turned down book deals, requests for interviews, marriage proposals, and the chance to make an appearance on Fordyce—Hitting Hard! He had refused to meet with both the prison chaplain and his own minister, the Reverend Johnny Canty. Donté had given up on religion. He wanted no part of the same God so fervently worshipped by the devout Christians who were hell-bent on killing him.

Roberta Drumm awoke in the darkness of room 109. She had slept so little in the past month that her fatigue now kept her awake. The doctor had given her some pills, but they had backfired and made her edgy. The room was warm and she pulled back the sheets. Her daughter, Andrea, was in the other twin bed, only a few feet away, and seemed to be sleeping. Her sons Cedric and Marvin were next door. The rules of the prison allowed them to visit with Donté from 8:00 a.m. until noon on this, his final day. After their last farewell, he would be transported to the death chamber at the prison in Huntsville.

Eight in the morning was hours away.

The schedule was fixed, all movements dictated by a system famous for its efficiency. At 5:00 that afternoon, the family would report to a prison office in Huntsville and then take a short ride in a van to the death chamber, where they would be herded into a cramped witness room just seconds before the drugs were administered. They would see him on the gurney, tubes already in his arms, listen to his final words, wait ten minutes or so for the official declaration of death, then leave quickly. From there, they would drive to a local funeral home to retrieve the body and take it home.

Could it be a dream, a nightmare? Was she really there, awake in the darkness contemplating her son’s final hours? Of course she was. She had lived the nightmare for nine years now, ever since the day she’d been told that Donté had not only been arrested but also confessed. The nightmare was a book as thick as her Bible, every chapter another tragedy, every page filled with sorrow and disbelief.

Andrea rolled from one side to another, the cheap bed squeaking and rattling. Then she was still and breathing heavily.

For Roberta, one horror had been replaced by the next: the numbing shock of seeing her boy in jail for the first time, in an orange jumpsuit, eyes wild and scared; the ache in her stomach as she thought about him in jail, locked away from his family and surrounded by criminals; the hope of a fair trial, only to suffer the shock of realizing it was anything but fair; her loud and unrestrained sobbing when the death sentence was announced; the last image of her son being led from the courtroom by thick deputies so smug in their work; the endless appeals and fading hopes; the countless visits to death row, where she watched a strong, healthy young man slowly deteriorate. She lost friends along the way and she really didn’t care. Some were skeptical of the claims of innocence. Some grew weary of all the talk about her son. But she was consumed, and had little else to say. How could anyone else know what a mother was going through?

And the nightmare would never end. Not today, when Texas finally executed him. Not next week, when she buried him. Not at some point in the future, when the truth was finally known, if ever.

The horrors add up, and there were many days when Roberta Drumm doubted she had the strength to get out of bed. She was so tired of pretending to be strong.

“Are you wake, Momma?” Andrea asked softly.

“You know I am, honey.”

“Did you sleep any?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Andrea kicked off the sheets and stretched her legs. The room was very dark with no light filtering in from the outside. “It’s four thirty, Momma.”

“I can’t see.”

“My watch glows in the dark.”

Andrea was the only one of the Drumm kids with a college degree. She taught kindergarten in a town near Slone. She had a husband and she wanted to be at home, in her bed, far away from Livingston, Texas. She closed her eyes in an effort to fall asleep, but only seconds passed before she was staring at the ceiling. “Momma, I gotta tell you something.”

“What is it, honey?”

“I’ve never told anyone this, and I never will. It’s a burden I’ve carried a long, long time, and I want you to know it before they take Donté.”

“I’m listening.”

“There was a time, after the trial, after they’d sent him away that I began to doubt his story. I think I was looking for a reason to doubt him. What they said sort of made sense. I could see Donté fooling around with that girl, afraid of getting caught, and I could see her trying to break up and him not wanting to. Maybe he sneaked out of the house that night when I was asleep. And when I heard his confession in court, I have to admit it made me uneasy. They never found her body, and if he threw her in the river, then maybe that’s why they’ll never find her. I was trying to make sense out of everything that had happened. I wanted to believe that the system is not totally broken. And so I convinced myself that he was probably guilty, that they probably got the right man. I kept writing to him, kept coming over here to see him and all, but I was convinced he was guilty. For a while, it made me feel better, in some strange way. This went on for months, maybe a year.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Robbie. You remember that time we went to Austin to hear the case on direct appeal?”

“Indeed I do.”

“It was a year or so after the trial.”

“I was there, honey.”

“We were sitting in that big courtroom, looking at those nine judges, all white, all looking so important in their black robes and hard frowns, their airs, and across the room was Nicole’s family and her big-mouthed mother, and Robbie got up to argue for us. He was so good. He went through the trial and pointed out how weak the evidence was. He mocked the prosecutor and the judge. He was afraid of nothing. He attacked the confession. And he brought up, for the first time, the fact that the police had not told him about the anonymous phone caller who said it was Donté. That shocked me. How could the police and the prosecutor withhold evidence? Didn’t bother the court, though. I remember watching Robbie argue so passionately, and it dawned on me that he, the lawyer, the white guy from the rich part of town, had no doubt whatsoever that my brother was innocent. And I believed him right then and there. I felt so ashamed for doubting Donté.”