Dempster.
“You recognize this, Judge?” he asked.
“It’s Tammy’s locket,” Dempster said with a gasp. He had given his twelve-year-old daughter the locket last Christmas, and she was never without it.
“And this,” he said, putting a wide gold wedding band down. Inside the wedding band were the names “Bob & Lil.”
“Lil’s wedding band,” Dempster said with a sinking feeling. “What have you done with my family?”
“You make the right decision tomorrow, and your wife and daughter will be fine,” Mason said.
“Please, don’t hurt them.”
Mason chuckled. “Like I said, Judge, that’s all up to you.”
Dempster went home to find his wife and daughter missing. There was a note on the receiving table in the foyer.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOU WIFE AND KID ALIVE AGAIN CUT MY BROTHER FREE
Dempster did not sleep a wink that night, and when he showed up in court the next day, he was exhausted from lack of sleep and sick with worry. As the courtroom filled, he looked out over the gallery and saw Mason and the two men who had come to visit him on the previous night. Mason held up a ribbon that Dempster recognized as having come from his wife’s hair, then smiled at Dempster, a sick, evil smile.
Dempster fought back the bile of fear and anger, then cleared his throat and addressed the court.
“Last night, while going over the transcripts, I found clear and compelling evidence of prosecutorial misconduct,” he said.
The prosecutor had been examining his notes prior to his summation, but at Dempster’s words he looked up in surprise.
“What?” the prosecutor said. “Your Honor, what did you say?”
“Therefore, I am dismissing all charges against the defendant. Mr. Mason, you are free to go.”
“What?” the prosecutor said again, shouting the word this time at the top of his lungs. “Prosecutorial misconduct? Judge, have you lost your mind? What are you talking about?”
“Are you crazy, Judge?” someone shouted from the gallery, and several others also shouted in anger and surprise.
“This court is adjourned!” Dempster said, banging his gavel on the bench. Getting up, he left the courtroom amid continued shouts of anger.
“Judge, what happened?” his clerk asked when he returned to his chambers.
“I have to go home,” Dempster said.
“Is something wrong?”
“My wife and child,” Dempster said without being specific. “I must go home.”
Dempster’s house was four blocks from the courthouse, and he half-ran, half-walked, calling out as he hurried up the steps to the front porch.
“Lil! Tammy!”
Pushing the door open, Dempster stopped and gasped, grabbing at the pain in his heart when he saw them. His wife and daughter were on the floor of the parlor, lying in a pool of dark, red blood. They were both dead.
“No!” he cried aloud. “No!”
The Missouri Supreme Court offered condolences to Dempster for the loss of his wife and daughter, even as they removed him from the bench and disbarred him. After that, Dempster had no choice but to leave town. He took a train to St. Louis and there boarded a train heading west. He had no particular destination in mind, settling in Purgatory because he felt that the name of the town brought a sense of poetic justice to his own situation. As he explained in a letter he wrote to his brother; “If I could have found a town named Hell, I would have settled there.”
Dempster forced the memories away, returning to the present—a run-down office in a flyblown town. He looked at the broken bottle and the whiskey stain—which had become symbolic of his life. In the beginning the drinking seemed to help ease the pain, but as time went by the whiskey, which had once helped him by temporarily blotting out the memory, took over his soul. The man who had once been the odds-on favorite for appointment to the Supreme Court of Missouri was no more. That man would never be back.
Dempster put his head down on his desk and sobbed until his throat was raw and his tears were gone.
“Dear God,” he said. “I cannot get any lower than this. I want to die, but I don’t have the courage to kill myself. Take me, now. Please, dear God, help me beat this or take me now.”
Incredibly, Dempster’s “prayer of relinquishment” had an almost immediate effect. A sense of calm came over him, a peace that passed all understanding, and he knew what his first step had to be on the long road to recovery.
Getting paper and pen from his desk, Dempster wrote a letter.
