The Flak Law Firm became the destination for those who considered themselves even remotely slighted by society. The abused, the accused, the mistreated, the injured, they eventually sought out Mr. Flak. To screen the cases, Robbie hired young associates and paralegals by the boatload. He picked through the net each day, took the good catches, and tossed the rest away. The firm grew, then it imploded. It grew again, then it broke up in another meltdown. Lawyers came and went. He sued them, they sued him. The money evaporated, then Robbie won big in another case. The lowest point of his colorful career happened when he caught his bookkeeper embezzling and beat him with a briefcase. He escaped serious punishment by negotiating a thirty-day misdemeanor jail sentence. It was a front-page story, and Slone hung on every word. Robbie, who, not surprisingly, craved publicity, was bothered more by the bad press than by the incarceration. The state bar association issued a public reprimand and a ninety-day suspension of his license. It was his third entanglement with the ethics panel. He vowed it would not be his last. Wife No. 2 eventually left, with a nice check.
His life, like his personality, was chaotic, outrageous, and in constant conflict with itself and those around him, but it was never dull. Behind his back, he was often referred to as “Robbie Flake.” And as his drinking grew worse, “Robbie Flask” was born. But regardless of the turmoil, of the hangovers and crazy women and feuding partners and shaky finances and lost causes and scorn of those in power, Robbie Flak arrived at the train station early each morning with a fierce determination to spend the day fighting for the little people. And he did not always wait for them to find him. If Robbie got wind of an injustice, he often jumped in his car and went searching for it. This relentless zeal led him to the most notorious case of his career.
———
In 1998, Slone was stunned by the most sensational crime in its history. A seventeen-year-old senior at Slone High, Nicole Yarber, vanished and was never seen again, dead or alive. For two weeks, the town stood still as thousands of volunteers combed the alleys and fields and ditches and abandoned buildings. The search was futile.
Nicole was a popular girl, a B student, a member of the usual clubs, church on Sunday at First Baptist, where she sometimes sang in the youth choir. Her most important achievement, though, was that of being a cheerleader at Slone High. By her senior year, she had become the captain of the squad, perhaps the most envied position in school, at least for girls. She was on and off with a boyfriend, a football player with big dreams but limited talent. The night she disappeared, she had just spoken to her mother by cell and promised to be home before midnight. It was a Friday in early December. Football was over for the Slone Warriors, and life had returned to normal. Her mother would later state, and the phone records bore this out, that she and Nicole spoke by cell phone at least six times a day. They also averaged four text messages. They were in touch, and the idea that Nicole would simply run away without a word to her mom was inconceivable.
Nicole had no history of emotional problems, eating disorders, erratic behavior, psychiatric care, or drug use. She simply vanished. No witnesses. No explanations. Nothing. Prayer vigils in churches and schools ran nonstop. A hotline was established and calls flooded in, but none proved credible. A Web site was created to monitor the search and filter the gossip. Experts, both real and fake, came to town to give advice. A psychic appeared, unsolicited, but left town when no one offered to pay. As the search dragged on, the gossip seethed nonstop as the town talked of little else. A police car was parked in front of her home twenty-four hours a day, ostensibly to make the family feel better. Slone’s only television station hired another rookie reporter to get to the bottom of things. Volunteers scoured the earth as the search spread throughout the countryside. Doors and windows were bolted. 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 County Bar Association, no lawyer had ever been held in contempt as often as Robbie Flak. It was a record he was quite proud of.