At the funeral home, the body was taken to a prep room. Mr. Hubert Lamb and his son Alvin, owners of Lamb & Son Funeral Home, Slone, Texas, were waiting. They would embalm the body at their place in Slone, on the same table where they had prepared Riley Drumm five years earlier. But Riley had been an old man of fifty-five when he passed, his body shrunken and decayed, and his death had been anticipated. It could be explained. His son’s could not. As men who dealt in death, constantly handling corpses, the Lambs figured they had seen it all. But they were taken aback by the sight of Donté lying peacefully on the gurney, his face content, his body undisturbed, a young man of twenty-seven. They had known him since he was a boy. They had cheered for him on the football field and, like all of Slone, expected a long, glorious career. They had whispered and gossiped with the rest of the town when he was arrested. They were stunned by the confession, and quick to believe Donté when he immediately recanted. The Slone police, and Detective Kerber in particular, were not trusted on their side of town. The boy was tricked; they beat a confession out of him, just like in the old days. They watched with frustration as he was tried and convicted by a white jury, and after he was sent away, they, like the rest of the town, half expected the girl’s body to show up, or maybe even the girl herself.
With the help of two others, they lifted Donté from the gurney and gently placed him in a handsome oak casket selected by his mother on Monday. Roberta had paid a small deposit—she had burial insurance—and the Lambs were quick to agree to a full refund if the casket became unnecessary. They would have happily forgone the use of it. They had prayed they would not be where they were at that moment—collecting the body, then driving it home, then preparing for a painful wake, memorial, and funeral.
The four men wrestled the casket into the Lamb & Son hearse, and at 7:02 Donté left Huntsville and headed home.
———
The Fordyce—Hitting Hard! set was in a small “ballroom” in a cheap chain motel on the fringe of Huntsville. Reeva and Wallis were perched on director’s chairs and made up for the cameras while Sean Fordyce stomped around in his usual manic mode. He’d just “jetted” in from an execution in Florida, barely made it to Huntsville, but so glad he did because the Nicole Yarber case had become one of his best ever. In preliminary chitchat, as the technicians worked frantically on the sound, the lighting, the makeup, the script, Fordyce realized that Reeva had not yet heard about the appearance of Travis Boyette. She had been inside the prison, preparing for the big event, when the story broke. Instinctively, he decided not to tell her. He would save it for later.
The post-execution interview was the most dramatic segment of his show. Catch ’em just minutes after they’ve watched the bastard die and they might say anything. He snapped at a technician, cursed a cameraman, yelled that he was ready to go. A final dusting of powder on his forehead, then an instant change of demeanor as he looked at the camera, smiled, and became a man of great compassion. With tape running, he explained where he was, gave the time, the hour, the gravity of the moment, then he walked to Reeva and said, “Reeva, it’s over. Tell us what you saw.”
Reeva, a Kleenex in each hand—she’d gone through a box since lunch—dabbed her eyes and said, “I saw him, for the first time in eight years, I saw the man who killed my baby. I looked him in the eyes, but he would not look at me.” Her voice was strong, no breakdown yet.
“What did he say?”
“He said he was sorry, and I appreciate that.”
Fordyce leaned in closer, frowning. “Did he say he was sorry for killing Nicole?”
“Something like that,” she said, but Wallis shook his head and glanced at his wife.
“You disagree, Mr. Pike?”
“He said he was sorry for what happened, not sorry for anything he did,” Wallis grunted.
“Are you sure?” Reeva fired back at her husband.
“I’m sure.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Tell us about the execution, the dying,” Fordyce pleaded.
Reeva, still pissed at Wallis, shook her head and wiped her nose with a Kleenex. “It was much too easy. He just went to sleep. When they opened the curtains, he was already on the little bed in there, all strapped down, looking very much at peace. He made his last statement, then he closed his eyes. We couldn’t tell anything, nothing, no sign that the drugs had been administered, nothing. He just went to sleep.”
“And you were thinking about Nicole and how horrible her death must have been?”
“Oh, God, yes, exactly, my poor baby. She suffered greatly. Just terrible …” Her voice choked and the camera zoomed even closer.
“Did you want him to suffer?” Fordyce asked, prodding, prompting.
She nodded vigorously, her eyes closed. Fordyce asked Wallis, “What changes now, Mr. Pike? What does this mean for your family?”
Wallis thought for a second, and while he was thinking, Reeva blurted, “It means a lot, knowing he’s dead, knowing he’s been punished. I think I’ll sleep better at night.”
“Did he claim to be innocent?”
“Oh yes,” Reeva said, the tears gone for the moment. “Same old stuff we’ve been hearing for years. ‘I’m an innocent man!’ Well, now he’s a dead man, that’s all I can say.”
“Have you ever thought that he might be innocent, that someone else might have killed Nicole?”
“No, not for a minute. The monster confessed.”
Fordyce pulled back a little. “Have you heard of a man named Travis Boyette?”
A blank face. “Who?”
“Travis Boyette. At 5:30 this afternoon, he went on television in Slone and claimed to be the killer.”
“Nonsense.”
“Here’s the tape,” Fordyce said, pointing to a twenty-inch screen off to the right. On cue, the video of Travis Boyette appeared. The volume was high; the rest of the set was perfectly still. As he talked, Reeva watched closely, frowning, almost smirking, then shaking her head no. An idiot, a fraud. She knew who the killer was. But when Boyette pulled out the class ring, shoved it at the cameras, and said he had kept it for nine years, Reeva’s face turned pale, her jaw dropped, her shoulders slumped.
Sean Fordyce may have been a noisy proponent of the death penalty, but like most cable screamers he never let ideology get in the way of a sensational story. The possibility that the wrong man had just been executed would undoubtedly strike a blow against capital punishment, but Fordyce couldn’t have cared less. He was smack in the middle of the hour’s hottest story—number two on CNN’s home page—and he planned to make the most of it.
And he saw nothing wrong with ambushing his own guest. He’d done it before, and he would do it again if it produced great drama.
Boyette vanished from the screen.
“Did you see the ring, Reeva?” Fordyce boomed.
Reeva looked as though she’d seen a ghost. Then she collected herself and remembered that everything was being filmed. “Yes,” she managed to say.
“And is it Nicole’s?”
“Oh, there’s no way to tell. Who is this guy and where did he come from?”
“He’s a serial rapist with a rap sheet a mile long, that’s who he is.”
“Well, there. Who can believe him?”
“So you don’t, Reeva?”
“Of course not.” But the tears were gone, as was the spunk. Reeva appeared confused, disoriented, and very tired. As Fordyce moved in for another question, she said, “Sean, it’s been a long day. We’re going home.”