The waitress arrived with a platter of sizzling quesadillas, all for Joey. Pryor took his taco salad and asked for more tea. After a few generous bites, Joey said, “So who killed her?”
“Who knows? There’s no proof she’s even dead.”
“They found her gym card and student ID.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t find her body. She could be alive for all we know.”
“You don’t believe that.” A gulp of the margarita to wash things down.
“No, I don’t. I’m sure she’s dead. Right now it doesn’t matter. We’re racing against time here, Joey, and we need your help.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Recant, recant, recant. Sign an affidavit telling the truth. Tell us what you really saw that night, which was nothing.”
“I saw a green van.”
“Your friend didn’t see a green van, and he walked out of the mall with you. You didn’t mention anything to him. In fact, you didn’t say anything to anybody for over two weeks, then you heard the rumor that her gym card and student ID had been found in the river. That’s when you put together your fiction, Joey, that’s when you decided to nail Donté. You were outraged because she would prefer a black guy to you. You called Kerber with the anonymous tip, and all hell broke loose. The cops were desperate and stupid and couldn’t wait to pursue your fiction. It worked perfectly. They beat a confession out of him, only took them fifteen hours, and, bingo! it’s front-page news—‘Donté Drumm Confesses.’ Then your memory works a miracle. You suddenly remember that you saw a green van, just like the Drumms’, moving suspiciously around the mall that night. What was it, Joey, three weeks later when you finally told the cops about the van?”
“I saw a green van.”
“Was it a Ford, Joey, or did you just decide it was a Ford because that’s what the Drumms owned? Did you really see a black guy driving it, or was that just your imagination?”
To keep from responding, Joey stuffed half a quesadilla into his mouth and chewed slowly. As he did so, he watched the other diners, unable or unwilling to make eye contact. Pryor took a bite, then pressed on. His thirty minutes would be gone soon enough.
“Look, Joey,” he said in a much softer tone, “we can argue the case for hours. I’m not here to do that. I’m here to talk about Donté. You guys were friends, you grew up together, you were teammates for, what, five years? You spent hours together on the football field. You won together; you lost together. Hell, you were co-captains your senior year. Think of his family, his mother and brothers and sister. Think of the town, Joey, think how bad things will get if he’s executed. You gotta help us, Joey. Donté didn’t kill anybody. He’s been railroaded from the beginning.”
“Didn’t realize I had this much power.”
“Oh, it’s a long shot. Appeals courts are not too impressed with witnesses who suddenly change their minds years after the trial and hours before the execution. You give us the affidavit, we’ll run to court and scream as loud as possible, but the odds are against us. We gotta try, though. At this point, we’ll try anything.”
Joey stirred his drink with the straw, then took a sip. He rubbed his mouth with a paper napkin and said, “You know, this is not the first time I’ve had this conversation. Mr. Flak called me years ago, asked me to stop by his office. This was long after the trial. I think he was working on the appeals. He begged me to change my story, tell his version of the truth. Told him to go to hell.”
“I know. I’ve been working on the case for a long time.”
After demolishing half of the quesadillas, Joey suddenly lost interest in lunch. He shoved the platter away and pulled the drink in front of him. He stirred it slowly and watched the liquid spin around the glass.
“Things are a lot different now, Joey,” Pryor said softly, pressing. “It’s late in the fourth quarter, the game’s almost over for Donté.”
———
The thick maroon fountain pen clipped inside Pryor’s shirt pocket was in fact a microphone. It was entirely visible, and next to it was a real pen with ink and a ballpoint in case writing was required. A tiny, hidden wire ran from Pryor’s shirt pocket to the left front pocket of his slacks, where he kept his cell phone.
Two hundred miles away, Robbie was listening. He was in his office with the door locked, alone, on a speakerphone that also recorded everything.
“You ever see him play football?” Joey asked.
“No,” Pryor answered. Their voices were clear.
“He was something. He roamed the field like Lawrence Taylor. Fast, fearless, he could wreck an offense all by himself. We won ten games when we were sophomores and juniors, but we could never beat Marshall.”
“Why didn’t the bigger schools recruit him?” Pryor asked. Keep him talking, Robbie said to himself.
“Size. He stopped growing in the tenth grade, and he could never get his weight above 220. That’s not big enough for the Longhorns.”
“You should see him now,” Pryor said without missing a beat. “He weighs about 150, gaunt and skinny, shaves his head, and he’s locked up in a tiny cell twenty-three hours a day. I think he’s lost his marbles.”
“He wrote me a couple of letters, did you know that?”
“No.”
Robbie leaned closer to the speakerphone. He’d never heard this.
“Not long after he was sent away, when I was still living in Slone, he wrote to me. Two, maybe three letters. Long ones. He went on about death row and how awful it is—the food, the noise, the heat, the isolation, and so on. He swore he never touched Nikki, never got involved with her. He swore he was nowhere near the mall when she disappeared. He begged me to tell the truth, to help him win his appeal and get out of prison. I never wrote him back.”
“You still have the letters?” Pryor asked.
Joey shook his head. “No, I’ve moved around so much.”
———
The waitress appeared and removed the platter. “Another margarita?” she asked, but Joey waved her off. Pryor leaned forward on his elbows until their faces were two feet apart. He began, “You know, Joey, I’ve worked on this case for years. Spent thousands of hours, not only working, but thinking, trying to figure out what happened. Here’s my theory. You went nuts over Nikki, and why not? She was cute as hell, popular, hot, the kind of girl you want to put in your pocket and take home forever. But she broke your heart, and nothing is more painful for a seventeen-year-old. You were devastated, crushed. Then she disappeared. The entire town was shocked, but you and those who loved her were especially horrified. Everyone wanted to find her. Everyone wanted to help. How could she simply vanish? Who snatched her? Who could harm Nikki? Maybe you believed Donté was involved, maybe not. But you were a wreck emotionally, and in that state you decided to get involved. You called Detective Kerber with the anonymous tip, and from there everything snowballed. At that moment, the investigation took a wrong turn and no one could stop it. When you heard the news that he’d confessed, you figured you’d done the right thing. Got the right guy. Then you decided that you wanted a little piece of the action. You concocted the story about the green van, and suddenly you’re the star witness. You became the hero to all those wonderful people who loved and adored Nicole Yarber. You took the stand at the trial, raised your right hand, told something that was not the whole truth, but it didn’t matter. You were there, helping your beloved Nikki. Donté was led away in shackles, taken straight to death row. Maybe you understood that he would one day be executed, maybe you didn’t. I suspect that way back then, when you were still a teenager, you could not appreciate the gravity of what’s happening now.”