The Confession Read Online Free

Fathers slept with their guns on their nightstands. Little children were watched closely by their parents and babysitters. Preachers reworked their sermons to beef up their slant against evil. The police gave daily briefings for the first week, but when they realized they had nothing to say, they began skipping days. They waited and waited, hoping for the lead, the unexpected phone call, the snitch looking for the reward money. They prayed for a break.
    It finally came sixteen days after Nicole disappeared. At 4:33 a.m., the home phone of Detective Drew Kerber rang twice before he grabbed it. Though exhausted, he had not been sleeping well. Instinctively, he flipped a switch to record what was about to be said. The recording, later played a thousand times, ran:
    Kerber: “Hello.”
    Voice: “Is this Detective Kerber?”
    Kerber: “It is. Who’s calling?”
    Voice: “That’s not important. What’s important is that I know who killed her.”
    Kerber: “I need your name.”
    Voice: “Forget it, Kerber. You wanna talk about the girl?”
    Kerber: “Go ahead.”
    Voice: “She was seeing Donté Drumm. A big secret. She was trying to break it off, but he wouldn’t go away.”
    Kerber: “Who’s Donté Drumm?”
    Voice: “Come on, Detective. Everybody knows Drumm. He’s your killer. He grabbed her outside the mall, tossed her over the bridge on Route 244. She’s at the bottom of the Red River.”
    The line went dead. The call was traced to a pay phone at an all-night convenience store in Slone, and there the trail ended.
    Detective Kerber had heard the hushed rumors of Nicole seeing a black football player, but no one had been able to verify this. Her boyfriend adamantly denied it. He claimed that they had dated on and off for a year, and he was certain that Nicole was not yet sexually active. But like many rumors too salacious to leave alone, it persisted. It was so repulsive and so potentially explosive that Kerber had thus far been unwilling to discuss it with Nicole’s parents.
    Kerber stared at the phone, then removed the tape. He drove to the Slone Police Department, made a pot of coffee, and listened to the tape again. He was elated and couldn’t wait to share the news with his investigative team. Everything fit now—the teenage love affair, black on white, still very much taboo in East Texas, the attempted breakup by Nicole, the bad reaction from her scorned lover. It made perfect sense.
    They had their man.
    Two days later, Donté Drumm was arrested and charged with the abduction, aggravated rape, and murder of Nicole Yarber. He confessed to the crime and admitted that he’d tossed her body into the Red River.
    ———
    Robbie Flak and Detective Kerber had a history that had almost been violent. They had clashed several times in criminal cases over the years. Kerber loathed the lawyer as much as he loathed the other lowlifes who represented criminals. Flak considered Kerber an abusive thug, a rogue cop, a dangerous man with a badge and gun who would do anything to get a conviction. In one memorable exchange, in front of a jury, Flak caught Kerber in an outright lie and, to underscore the obvious, yelled at the witness, “You’re just a lying son of a bitch, aren’t you, Kerber?”
    Robbie was admonished, held in contempt, required to apologize to Kerber and the jurors, and fined $500. But his client was found not guilty, and nothing else mattered. In the history of the Chester CountyBar Association, no lawyer had ever been held in contempt as often as Robbie Flak. It was a record he was quite proud of.
    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.