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“What’s the favor, Keith?” Dr. Herzlich asked, as if he were staring at his wristwatch.

“If you’re in a rush, we can talk later.”

“No, go ahead.”

“Anyway, he claims to have been diagnosed with a brain tumor, a bad one, glioblastoma. Says it’s fatal, says he’ll be dead soon. I’m wondering how much of this you can verify. I’m not asking for confidential info, you understand? I know he’s not your patient, and I don’t want anyone to violate procedures here. That’s not what I’m asking. You know me better than that.”

“Why do you doubt him? Why would anyone claim to have a brain tumor when he really doesn’t?”

“He’s a career criminal, Doctor. A lifetime behind bars and all that, probably not sure where the truth is. And I’m not saying I doubt him. He had two episodes of severe headaches in my office, and they were painful to watch. I’d just like to confirm what he’s already said. That’s all.”

A pause, as if the doctor were looking around for eavesdroppers. “I can’t pry too deep, Keith. Any idea who the doc is here?”

“No.”

“All right. Give me a name.”

“Travis Boyette.”

“Got it. Give me a couple of hours.”

“Thanks, Doctor.”

Keith hung up quickly and returned to Texas. He continued with the factual summary:

Nicole disappeared on Friday night, December 4, 1998. She had spent the evening with girlfriends at a cinema in the only mall in Slone. After the movie, the girls—four of them—ate pizza at a restaurant that was also in the mall. Entering the restaurant, the girls chatted briefly with two boys, one of whom was Joey Gamble. Over pizza, the girls decided to meet at the home of Ashley Verica to watch late-night television. As the four girls left the restaurant, Nicole excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Her three friends never saw her again. She called her mother and promised to be home by midnight, her curfew. Then she vanished. An hour later, her friends were concerned and were making calls. Two hours later, her red BMW was found where she’d left it in a parking lot at the mall. It was locked. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of anything wrong, no sign of Nicole. Her family and friends panicked, and the search began.

The police immediately suspected foul play and organized a massive effort to find Nicole. Thousands volunteered, and through the days and weeks that followed, the city and county were scoured as never before. Nothing was found. Surveillance cameras at the mall were too far away, out of focus, and of no benefit. No one reported seeing Nicole leave the mall and walk to her car. Cliff Yarber offered a reward of $100,000 for information, and when this sum proved ineffective, he raised it to $250,000.

The first break in the case came on December 16, twelve days after her disappearance. Two brothers were fishing on a sandbar in the Red River near a landing known as Rush Point, when one of them stepped on a piece of plastic. It was Nicole’s gym membership card. They poked through the mud and sand and found another card—her student ID issued by Slone High. One of the brothers recognized the name, and they immediately drove to the police station in Slone.

Rush Point is thirty-eight miles due north of the city limits.

The police investigators, led by Detective Drew Kerber, made the decision to sit on the news about the gym membership and ID cards. They reasoned that the better strategy was to find the body first. They conducted an exhaustive, though futile, search of the river for miles east and west of Rush Point. The state police assisted with teams of divers. Nothing else was found. Authorities as far away as a hundred miles downriver were notified and asked to be on the alert.

While the search of the river was under way, Detective Kerber received an anonymous tip implicating Donté Drumm. He wasted little time. Two days later, he and his partner, Detective Jim Morrissey, approached Donté as he was leaving a health club. Several hours later, two other detectives approached a young man named Torrey Pickett, a close friend of Donté’s. Pickett agreed to go to the police station and answer a few questions. He knew nothing about the disappearance of Nicole and was not concerned, though he was nervous about going to the police station.

“Keith, it’s the auditor. Line two,” Dana announced through the intercom. Keith glanced at his watch—10:50 a.m.—and shook his head. The last voice he wanted to hear at the moment was that of the church’s auditor.

“Is the printer full of paper?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she fired back. “I’ll check.”

“Please load it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Keith reluctantly hit line two and began a dull but not extended discussion of the church’s finances through October 31. As he listened to the numbers, he pecked away at his keyboard. He printed the ten-page factual summary, thirty pages of news articles and editorials, a summary of the death penalty as practiced in Texas, Donté’s account of life on death row, and when informed that the printer was out of paper, he clicked on Donté’s Photo Gallery and looked at the faces. Donté as a child with parents, two older brothers, one younger sister; Donté as a small boy wearing a choir robe in church; various poses of Donté the linebacker; a mug shot, front page of the Slone Daily News; Donté being led in handcuffs into the courthouse; more photos from the trial; and the annual file photos from prison, beginning in 1999 with a cocky glare at the camera and ending in 2007 with a thin-faced, aging man of twenty-seven.

When the auditor was done, Keith walked to the outer room and sat down across from his wife. She was sorting through the copies he’d printed, scanning them as she went. “Did you read this?” she asked, waving a stack of papers.

“Read what? There are hundreds of pages.”

“Listen,” she said, and began to read: “The body of Nicole Yarber has never been found, and while this might thwart prosecutions in some jurisdictions, it did not slow things in Texas. In fact, Texas is one of several states with a well-developed case law allowing prosecutions in murder cases where there is no definitive proof that a murder has indeed taken place. A dead body is not always required.”

“No, I did not get that far,” he said.

“Can you believe it?”

“I’m not sure what to believe.”

The phone rang. Dana snatched it and abruptly informed the caller that the minister was unavailable. When she hung up, she said, “Okay, Pastor. What’s the plan?”

“There is no plan. The next step, the only step I can think of right now, is to have another talk with Travis Boyette. If he admits he knows where the body is, or was, then I’ll press him to admit the murder.”

“And if he does? What then?”

“I have no idea.”

CHAPTER 4

The investigator trailed Joey Gamble for three days before he made contact. Gamble wasn’t hiding, nor was he hard to find. He was an assistant manager at a mammoth auto parts discount warehouse in the Houston suburb of Mission Bend, his third job in the past four years. He had one divorce under his belt and perhaps another on the way. He and his second wife were not living together and had retreated to neutral corners where the lawyers were waiting. There wasn’t much to fight over, at least not in assets. There was one child, a little boy with autism, and neither parent truly wanted custody. So they fought anyway.

The file on Gamble was as old as the case itself, and the investigator knew it by heart. After high school, the kid played one year of football at a junior college, then dropped out. He hung around Slone for a few years working at various jobs and spending most of his spare time in the gym, where he ate steroids and built himself into a hulking specimen. He boasted of becoming a professional bodybuilder, but eventually grew tired of the work. He married a local girl, divorced her, moved to Dallas, and then drifted to Houston. According to the high school yearbook, Class of 1999, he planned to own a cattle ranch if the NFL thing didn’t work out.