As soon as he heard the news about Donté Drumm’s arrest, Robbie made a few frantic phone calls, then took off to the black section of Slone, a neighborhood he knew well. He was accompanied by Aaron Rey, a former gang member who’d served time for drug distribution and was now gainfully employed by the Flak Law Firm as a bodyguard, runner, driver, investigator, and anything else Robbie might need. Rey carried at least two guns on his person and two more in a satchel, all legal because Mr. Flak had gotten his rights restored and now he could even vote. Around Slone, Robbie Flak had more than his share of enemies. However, all of these enemies knew about Mr. Aaron Rey.
Drumm’s mother worked at the hospital, and his father drove a truck for a lumber mill south of town. They lived with their four children in a small white-framed house with Christmas lights around the windows and garland on the door. Their minister arrived not long after Robbie. They talked for hours. The parents were confused, devastated, furious, and frightened beyond reason. They were also grateful that Mr. Flak would come and see them. They had no idea what to do.
“I can get myself appointed to handle the case,” Robbie said, and they agreed.
Nine years later, he was still handling it.
———
Robbie arrived at the station early on Monday morning, November 5. He had worked on Saturday and Sunday and did not feel at all rested from the weekend. His mood was gloomy, even foul. The next four days would be a chaotic mess, a frenzy of events, some anticipated and others wholly unexpected, and when the dust settled at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, Robbie knew that in all likelihood, he would be standing in a cramped witness room at the Huntsville prison, holding hands with Roberta Drumm as the State of Texas injected her son with enough chemicals to kill a horse.
He’d been there once before.
He turned off the engine of his BMW but could not unfasten his seat belt. His hands clutched the steering wheel as he looked through the windshield and saw nothing.
For nine years, he had fought for Donté Drumm. He had waged war as he had never done before. He had fought like a madman at the ridiculous trial in which Donté was convicted of the murder. He had abused the appellate courts during his appeals. He had danced around ethics and skirted the law. He had written grating articles declaring his client’s innocence. He had paid experts to concoct novel theories that no one bought. He had pestered the governor to the point that his calls were no longer returned, not even by lowly staffers. He had lobbied politicians, innocence groups, religious groups, bar associations, civil-rights advocates, the ACLU, Amnesty International, death-penalty abolitionists, anybody and everybody who might possibly be able to do something to save his client. Yet the clock had not stopped. It was still ticking, louder and louder.
In the process, Robbie Flak had spent all his money, burned every bridge, alienated almost every friend, and driven himself to the point of exhaustion and instability. He had blown the trumpet for so long that no one heard it anymore. To most observers, he was just another loudmouthed lawyer screaming about his innocent client, not exactly an unusual sight.
The case had pushed him over the edge, and when it was over, when the State of Texas finally succeeded in executing Donté, Robbie seriously doubted if he could go on. He planned to move, to sell his real estate, retire, tell Slone and Texas to kiss his ass, and go live in the mountains somewhere, probably in Vermont, where the summers are cool and the state does not kill people.
The lights came on in the conference room. Someone else was already there, opening up the place, preparing for the week from hell. Robbie finally left his car and went inside. He spoke to Carlos, one of his longtime paralegals, and they spent a few minutes over coffee. The talk soon turned to football.
“You watch the Cowboys?” Carlos asked.
“No, I couldn’t. I heard Preston had a big day.”
“Over two hundred yards. Three touchdowns.”
“I’m not a Cowboys fan anymore.”
“Me neither.”
A month earlier, Rahmad Preston had been right there, in the conference room, signing autographs and posing for photos. Rahmad had a distant cousin who’d been executed in Georgia ten years earlier, and he had taken up the cause of Donté Drumm with big plans to enlist other Cowboys and NFL heavyweights to help wave the flag. He would meet with the governor, the parole board, big business boys, politicians, a couple of rappers he claimed to know well, maybe even some Hollywood types. He would lead a parade so noisy that the state would be forced to back down. Rahmad, though, proved to be all talk. He suddenly went silent, went into “seclusion,” according to his agent, who also explained that the cause was too distracting for the great running back. Robbie, always on the conspiracy trail, suspected that the Cowboys organization and its network of corporate sponsors somehow pressured Rahmad.
By 8:30, the entire firm had assembled in the conference room, and Robbie called the meeting to order. At the moment he had no partners—the last had left in a feud that was still tied up in litigation—but there were two associates, two paralegals, three secretaries, and Aaron Rey, who was always close by. After fifteen years with Robbie, Aaron knew more law than most seasoned paralegals. Also present was a lawyer from Amnesty Now, a London-based human rights group that had donated thousands of skilled hours to the Drumm appeals. Participating by teleconference was a lawyer in Austin, an appellate advocate furnished by the Texas Capital Defender Group.
Robbie ran through the plans for the week. Duties were defined, tasks distributed, responsibilities clarified. He tried to appear upbeat, hopeful, confident that a miracle was on the way.
The miracle was slowly coming together, some four hundred miles due north, in Topeka, Kansas.
CHAPTER 3
A few of the details were confirmed with little effort. Dana, calling from St. Mark’s Lutheran and just going about her business of following up on those kind enough to visit their church, chatted with the supervisor at Anchor House, who said that Boyette had been there for three weeks. His “stay” was scheduled for ninety days, and if all went well, he would then be a free man, subject, of course, to some rather stringent parole requirements. The facility currently had twenty-two male residents, no females, and it was operated under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. Boyette, like the others, was expected to leave each morning at 8:00 and return each evening at 6:00, in time for dinner. Employment was encouraged, and the supervisor usually kept the men busy in janitorial work and odd, part-time jobs. Boyette was working four hours a day, at $7 an hour, watching security cameras in the basement of a government office building. He was reliable and neat, said little, and had yet to cause trouble. As a general rule, the men were very well behaved because a broken rule or an ugly incident could send them back to prison. They could see, feel, and smell freedom, and they didn’t want to screw up.
About the cane, the supervisor knew little. Boyette was using it the day he arrived. However, among a group of bored criminals there is little privacy and an avalanche of gossip, and the rumor was that Boyette had been severely beaten in prison. Yes, everybody knew he had a nasty record, and they gave him plenty of room. He was weird, kept to himself, and slept alone in a small room behind the kitchen while the rest bunked down in the main room. “But we get all types in here,” the supervisor said. “From murderers to pickpockets. We don’t ask too many questions.”
Fudging a bit, or perhaps a lot, Dana breezily mentioned a medical concern that Boyette noted on the visitor’s card he’d been kind enough to fill out. A prayer request. There was no card, and Dana asked for forgiveness with a quick petition to the Almighty. She justified the small and harmless lie with what was at stake here. Yes, the supervisor said, they’d hauled him to the hospital when he wouldn’t shut up about his headaches. These guys love medical treatment. At St. Francis, they ran a bunch of tests, but the supervisor knew nothing more. Boyette had some prescriptions, but they were his business. It was a medical matter and off-limits.