The Confession: A Novel

by John Grisham

  "Sure. The press is following the case. Any last-minute motions and appeals will be reported."

  "So, my mother will read in the newspaper that I'm now saying I lied at trial. I'll be admitting that I'm a liar, that right?"

  "Yes, but what's more important here, Joey? Your reputation or Donte's life?"

  "But you said it's a long shot, right? So, chances are I'll admit to being a liar and he still gets the needle. Who wins that one?"

  "He damn sure doesn't."

  "I don't think so. Look, I gotta get back to work."

  "Come on, Joey."

  "Thanks for lunch. Nice meetin' you." And with that, he slid out of the booth and hurried out of the restaurant.

  Pryor took a deep breath and stared at the table in disbelief. They were talking about the affidavit, then the conversation ended. He slowly pulled out his cell phone and talked to his boss. "Did you get all that?"

  "Yep, every word," Robbie said.

  "Anything we can use?"

  "No. Nothing. Not even close, really."

  "I didn't think so. Sorry, Robbie. I thought at one point he was ready to snap."

  "You did all you could, Fred. Nice job. He's got your card, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Call him after work, say hello, just remind him you're there and ready to talk."

  "I'll try to meet him for a drink. Something tells me he tends to overindulge. Maybe I can get him drunk and he'll say something."

  "Just make sure it's being recorded."

  "Will do."

  CHAPTER 5

  On the third floor of St. Francis Hospital, Mrs. Aurelia Lindmar was recovering from gallbladder surgery and doing well. Keith spent twenty minutes with her, ate two pieces of cheap, stale chocolate mailed in by a niece, and managed to make a graceful departure when a nurse popped in with a syringe. On the fourth floor, he huddled in the hallway with the soon-to-be widow of Mr. Charles Cooper, a stalwart member of St. Mark's whose bad heart was finally giving out. There were three other patients Keith needed to see, but their conditions were stable and they would live until tomorrow, when he would have more time. On the second floor, he tracked down Dr. Herzlich, who was eating a cold sandwich from a machine and reading a dense text as he sat alone in a small cafeteria.

  "Have you had lunch?" Kyle Herzlich asked politely as he offered a chair to his minister. Keith sat down, looked at the puny sandwich--white bread with a thin slice of some brutally processed meat in the middle--and said, "Thanks. I had a late breakfast."

  "Fine. Look, Keith, I've managed to snoop a bit, got as far as I can go, actually, you do understand these things?"

  "Of course I do. And I did not intend for you to pry into private matters."

  "Never. Can't do it. But I've asked around, and, well, there are ways of gleaning some of the facts. Your man has been here at least twice in the past month, lots of tests, and the tumor thing checks out. Not a pretty prognosis."

  "Thanks, Doctor." Keith was not surprised to learn that Travis Boyette was telling the truth, at least about his brain tumor.

  "Can't say any more than that." The doctor managed to eat, read, and talk at the same time.

  "Sure, no problem."

  "What's his crime?"

  You don't want to know, Keith thought. "A nasty one. Career boy, long record."

  "Why's he hanging around St. Mark's?"

  "We're open to the public, Doctor. We're supposed to serve all God's people, even those with criminal records."

  "I suppose. Anything to worry about?"

  "No. He's harmless." Just hide the women and girls, and perhaps the little boys too. Keith thanked him again and excused himself.

  "See you Sunday," the doctor said, his eyes glued to a medical report.

  ------

  Anchor House was a square, boxlike building of red brick and painted windows, the type of structure that could be used for anything, and probably had been since it was hastily constructed forty years earlier. Whoever built it had been pressed for time and saw no need for involving the architects. At 7:00 on Monday evening, Keith entered from the sidewalk off Seventeenth Street and stopped at a makeshift front desk where an ex-con was monitoring things. "Yes, sir," he said without a trace of warmth.

  "I need to see Travis Boyette," Keith said.

  The monitor looked to his left, to a large open room where a dozen or so men were sitting in various stages of relaxation and gazing at a very loud, large television, enthralled with Wheel of Fortune. Then he looked to his right, to another large open room where a dozen or so men were either reading battered paperbacks or playing checkers and chess. Boyette was in a wicker rocker, in a corner, partially hidden behind a newspaper. "Over there," the man said, nodding. "Sign here."

  Keith signed in and walked to the corner. When Boyette saw him approach, he grabbed his cane and scrambled to his feet. "Didn't expect you," he said, obviously surprised.

  "I was in the neighborhood. Got a few minutes to talk?"

  The other men were taking casual note of Keith. The checkers and chess went on without interruption.

  "Sure," Boyette said, glancing around. "Let's go to the mess hall." Keith followed him, watching the left leg as it paused slightly with each step, causing the shuffle. The cane jabbed the floor as they clicked along. How awful would it be, Keith asked himself, to live each minute with a grade-four tumor between your ears, growing and growing until your skull seems ready to crack? As miserable a person as he was, Keith couldn't help but feel sorry for him. A dead man.

  The mess hall was a small room with four long folding tables and a wide opening at the far end that gave way to the kitchen. The cleanup crew was making a racket back there, slinging pots and pans and laughing. Rap music came from a radio. It was the perfect cover for a hushed conversation.

  "We can talk here," Boyette said, nodding at a table. Crumbs of food were scattered about. The thick smell of cooking oil hung in the air. They sat down across from each other. Since they had nothing in common but the weather, Keith decided not to waste time.

  "Would you like some coffee?" Boyette asked politely.

  "No, thanks."

  "Smart move. Worst coffee in Kansas. Worse than prison."

  "Travis, after you left this morning, I went online, found the Web site for Donte Drumm, and spent the rest of the day lost in that world. It's fascinating, and heartbreaking. There are serious doubts about his guilt."

  "Serious?" Boyette said with a laugh. "There should be serious doubts. The boy had nothing to do with what happened to Nikki."

  "What happened to Nikki?"

  A startled look, like a deer in headlights. Silence. Boyette wrapped his hands around his head and massaged his scalp. His shoulders began to shake. The tic came and went and came back again. Keith watched him and could almost feel the agony. The rap music thumped mindlessly from the kitchen.

  Keith slowly reached into his coat pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it and slid it across the table. "Recognize this girl?" he asked. It was a copy of a black-and-white photo printed from the Web site, a photo of Nicole Yarber, posing in her cheerleader outfit, holding a pom-pom, smiling with all the innocence of a sweet seventeen-year-old.

  At first, Boyette did not react. He looked at Nikki as if he'd never seen her before. He stared at her for a long time, then the tears came without warning. No gasps, no sobs, no apologies, just a flood of moisture that ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin. He made no effort to wipe his face. He looked at Keith, and the two men stared at each other as the tears continued. The photo was getting wet.

  Boyette grunted, cleared his throat, and said, "I really want to die."

  ------

  Keith came back from the kitchen with two cups of black coffee in paper cups, along with some paper towels. Boyette took one, wiped his face and chin, and said, "Thanks."

  Keith resumed his seat and said, "What happened to Nikki?"

  Boyette seemed to count to ten before saying, "I've
still got her."

  Keith thought he was prepared for every possible answer, but in fact he was not. Could she be alive? No. He'd spent the past six years in prison. How could he keep her locked up somewhere? He's crazy.

  "Where is she?" Keith asked firmly.

  "Buried."

  "Where?"

  "Missouri."

  "Look, Travis, these one-word answers will keep us here forever. You came to my office this morning for one reason, and that was to finally confess. But you couldn't muster the courage, so here I am. Let's hear it."

  "Why do you care?"

  "That's pretty obvious, isn't it? An innocent man is about to be executed for something you did. Maybe there's time to save him."

  "I doubt it."

  "Did you kill Nicole Yarber?"

  "Is this confidential, Pastor?"

  "Do you want it to be?"

  "Yes."

  "Why? Why not confess, then make a full admission, then try to help Donte Drumm? That's what you should do, Travis. Your days are numbered, according to what you said this morning."

  "Confidential or not?"

  Keith took a breath, then made the mistake of taking a sip of coffee. Travis was right.

  "If you want it to be confidential, Travis, then it is."

  A smile, a tic. He glanced around, though they had yet to be noticed by anyone else. He began to nod. "I did it, Pastor. I don't know why. I never know why."

  "You grabbed her in the parking lot?"

  The tumor expanded, the headaches hit like lightning. He grabbed his head again and weathered the storm. His jaws clenched in a determined effort to keep going. "I grabbed her, took her away. I had a gun, she didn't fight much. We left town. I kept her a few days. We had sex. We--"

  "You didn't have sex. You raped her."

  "Yes, over and over. Then I did it, and buried her."

  "You killed her?"

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "Strangled her with her belt. It's still there, around her neck."

  "And you buried her?"

  "Yes." Boyette looked at the photo, and Keith could almost see a smile.

  "Where?"

  "South of Joplin, where I grew up. Lots of hills, valleys, hollows, logging trails, dead-end roads. She'll never be found. They never got close."

  A long pause as the sickening reality settled in. Of course, there was a chance he was lying, but Keith could not force himself to believe that. What could he possibly gain by lying, especially at this stage in his miserable life?

  The kitchen lights went out and the radio was turned off. Three burly black men made their exit and walked through the mess hall. They nodded and spoke politely to Keith, but only glanced at Travis. They closed the door behind themselves.

  Keith took the copy of the photo and turned it over. He uncapped his pen and wrote something on it. "How about a little background, Travis?" he said.

  "Sure. I have nothing else to do."

  "What were you doing in Slone, Texas?"

  "Working for a company called R. S. McGuire and Sons, out of Fort Smith. Construction. They had a contract to build a warehouse for Monsanto, just west of Slone. I hired on as a laborer, just a grunt, crappy work, but it's all I could find. They paid me less than minimum wage, in cash, off the books, same as the Mexicans. Sixty hours a week, flat rate, no insurance, no skill, no nothing. It won't be worth your time to check with the company, because I was never officially employed. I was renting a room in an old motel west of town, called the Rebel Motor Inn. It's probably still there. Check it out. Forty bucks a week. The job lasted five or six months. One Friday night I saw the lights, found the field behind the high school, bought a ticket, and sat with the crowd. Didn't know a soul. They were watching football. Me, I was watching the cheerleaders. Always loved the cheerleaders. Cute little butts, short skirts, dark tights on underneath. They bounce and flip and throw each other around and you see so much of them. They want you to see. That's when I fell in love with Nicole. She was there for me, showing it all. I knew from the first moment that she was the one."

  "The next one."

  "Right, the next one. Every other Friday, I'd go to the games. I never sat in the same place twice, never wore the same clothes. Used different caps. You learn these things when you're tracking someone. She became my whole world, and I could feel the urges getting stronger and stronger. I knew what was about to happen, but I couldn't stop it. I can never stop it. Never." He took a sip of coffee and grimaced.

  "Did you see Donte Drumm play?" Keith asked.

  "Maybe, I don't remember. I never watched the games, didn't notice anything but Nicole. Then, suddenly, no more Nicole. The season was over. I got desperate. She drove this hot little red BMW, the only one in town, so she was not too hard to find, if you knew where to look. She liked the usual hangouts. I saw her car parked at the mall that night, figured she was at the movies. I waited and waited. I'm very patient when I have to be. When the parking space next to her car became vacant, I backed into it."

  "What were you driving?"

  "An old Chevrolet pickup, stole it in Arkansas. Stole the tags in Texas. I backed into the parking space so my door was next to hers. When she walked into the trap, I jumped her. I had a gun and a roll of duct tape, and that's all I ever needed. Not a sound."

  He rattled off the details with an unaffected detachment, as if describing a scene from a movie. This is what happened. This is how I did it. Don't expect me to make sense of it.

  The tears were long gone. "It was a bad weekend for Nikki. I almost felt sorry for her."

  "I don't really want those details," Keith said, interrupting. "How long did you stay in Slone after you killed her?"

  "A few weeks, I guess. Through Christmas, into January. I was reading the local paper, watching the late-night news. The town was in a frenzy over the girl. Saw her mom cry on television. Real sad. Every day there was another search party, with a television news crew chasing after it. Fools. Nikki was two hundred miles away, sleeping with the angels." He actually chuckled at the memory.

  "Surely, you don't think this is funny."

  "Sorry, Pastor."

  "How did you hear about the arrest of Donte Drumm?"

  "There was a little greasy spoon near the motel, and I liked to go there for coffee early in the morning. I heard 'em talking, said a football player had confessed, a black boy. I bought a newspaper, sat in my truck, read the story, and thought, What a bunch of idiots! I was stunned. Couldn't believe it. There was a mug shot of Drumm, nice-looking kid, and I remember staring at his face and thinking that he must've had a screw loose. Why else would he confess to my crime? Kinda pissed me off. The boy had to be crazy. Then the next day his lawyer came out strong in the paper, yelling about how the confession was bogus, how the cops tricked the kid, overwhelmed him, broke him down, wouldn't let him out of the room for fifteen hours. That made sense to me. I've never met a cop I could trust. The town almost blew up. The whites wanted to string him up on Main Street. The blacks felt pretty strongly the boy was getting railroaded. Things were tense. Lots of fights at the high school. Then I got fired and moved on."

  "Why were you fired?"

  "Stupid. Stayed too long in a bar one night. The cops busted me for drunk driving, then they realized the truck and tags were stolen. I spent a week in jail."

  "In Slone?"

  "Yep. Check it out. January 1999. Charged with grand larceny, drunk driving, and whatever else they could throw at me."

  "Was Drumm in the same jail?"

  "Never saw him, but there was a lot of talk. Rumor was they'd moved him to another county for safety reasons. I couldn't help but laugh. The cops had the real killer, they just didn't know it."

  Keith made notes, but had trouble believing what he was actually writing. He asked, "How'd you get out?"

  "They assigned me a lawyer. He got my bond lowered. I bailed out, skipped town, and never went back. I drifted here and there and then got arrested in Wichita."


  "Do you remember the lawyer's name?"

  "You still fact-checking, Pastor?"

  "Yes."

  "You think I'm lying?"

  "No, but it doesn't hurt to check the facts."

  "No, I don't remember his name. I've had a lot of lawyers in my life. Never paid 'em a dime."

  "The arrest in Wichita was for attempted rape, right?"

  "Sort of. Attempted sexual battery, plus kidnapping. There was no sex, didn't make it that far. The girl knew karate. Things didn't go the way I planned. She kicked me in the balls and I puked for two days."

  "I believe your sentence was ten years. You served six, now you're here."

  "Nice job, Pastor. You've done your homework."

  "Did you keep up with the Drumm case?"

  "Oh, I thought about it off and on for a few years. I figured the lawyers and courts would eventually realize they had the wrong boy. I mean, hell, even in Texas they have higher courts to review cases and such. Surely, somebody along the way would wake up and see the obvious. Over time, I guess I forgot about it. Had my own problems. When you're in max security, you don't spend a lot of time worrying about other people."

  "What about Nikki? You spend time thinking about her?"

  Boyette did not respond, and as the seconds limped along, it became obvious that he would not answer the question. Keith kept scribbling, making notes to himself about what to do next. Nothing was certain.

  "Do you have any sympathy for her family?"

  "I was raped when I was eight years old. I don't recall a single word of sympathy from anyone. In fact, no one raised a hand to stop it. It went on. You've seen my record, Pastor, I've had several victims. I couldn't stop. Not sure I can stop now. Obviously, sympathy is not something I waste time with."

  Keith shook his head with a look of disgust.

  "Don't get me wrong, Pastor. I have a lot of regrets. I wish I hadn't done all those terrible things. I've wished a million times that I could be normal. My whole life I've wanted to stop hurting people, to somehow straighten up, stay out of prison, get a job, and all that. I didn't choose to be like this."

  Keith deliberately folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into his coat pocket. He screwed the cap onto his pen. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at Boyette. "I guess you're willing to sit by and let things run their course down in Texas."