“Fellas, here comes Crack,” Goodman said from the window.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Goff asked. “Are we going to pay the taxes this week, or refuse?”
Montgomery ran his hand through his hair, then let out a long, frustrated sigh. “We’ll pay them,” he said. “Right now, we have no other choice. But I don’t intend to go on paying them. We’re going to put a stop to this. There is no way I’m going to let this go on forever.”
“How are we going to stop them?” Bascomb asked.
Montgomery shook his head. “I don’t know yet,” he answered. “That’s what we are going to figure out, as soon as we get organized.”
At the same time Joel Montgomery and a few other citizens of the town were holding their meeting, Robert Dempster was sitting in a darkened room in the back of his office. A half-full whiskey bottle was on his desk in front of him, and he reached for it—drew his hand back, reached for it again, and again drew his hand back.
His head hurt, his tongue was thick, his body ached in every joint, and he had the shakes.
He reached for the bottle again, picked it up, and filled his glass, though he was shaking so badly that he got nearly as much whiskey on the desk as he did in the glass. Putting the bottle down, he picked up the glass and tried to take a drink, but the shaking continued, and he couldn’t get it to his mouth. He put the glass down, leaned over it, took it in his lips, then tried to lift the glass that way, but it fell from his mouth and all the whiskey spilled out.
In a fit of anger, Dempster grabbed the bottle and threw it. The bottle was smashed against the wall and the room was instantly perfumed with the aroma of alcohol.
“No!” he shouted in anger and regret.
He leaned his head back, then pinched the bridge of his nose.
Robert Dempster had not always been an alcoholic. In fact, he had once been a productive member of society, a husband, father, and vestryman in his church. As he sat in the dark room, his body rebelling against the denial of alcohol, he began to remember, though they were not memories he wanted to revisit. In fact, he drank precisely so he wouldn’t have to remember, but despite his best efforts, those memories, unbidden though they might be, came back to fill his brain with pain—a pain that was even worse than the pain of alcoholism.
“No,” he said aloud, pressing his hands against his temples, trying to force out the memories. “No! Go away!”
Benton, Missouri, five years earlier
Judge Dempster was studying the transcripts of the third day of a trial that, on the next day, would hear the summations before being remanded to the jury. The sound of a slamming door in a distant part of the Scott County Courthouse echoed loudly through the wide, high-ceilinged halls like the boom of a drum. Dempster paid no attention to it as it was a familiar sound. He should have paid attention to it, because while it was a familiar sound during the day, it was not a normal sound for ten o’clock at night.
“Hello, Judge,” someone said, interrupting Dempster’s reading.
Looking up, Dempster saw three men. All three had been regulars in the courtroom during the trial, but he only knew the name of the one who spoke. That man’s name was Carl Mason, and he was the brother of Jed Mason, the defendant in the trial. Jed Mason was being tried for murder in the first degree.
“Mason,” Dempster said.
Mason didn’t wear a beard, but neither was he clean-shaven. He had yellow, broken teeth and an unruly mop of brown hair.
“Nobody is supposed to be in here at this hour. How did you get in?” Dempster asked.
“You need to have the lock fixed on the front door,” Mason replied with a chuckle. “It didn’t cause us any trouble at all.”
“You have no business here.”
“Well now, Judge, that ain’t the way I see it,” Mason said. “The way I see it, my brother is goin’ to get hisself hung if this here trial don’t come out like it’s supposed to. So I figure I got the right of a lovin’ brother to be here.”
“You are welcome in court tomorrow for closing arguments,” Dempster said. “I think we will also have a verdict tomorrow.”
“What will that verdict be?” Mason asked.
“Well, Mr. Mason, I have no way of knowing what the verdict will be.”
“Sure you do. You’re the judge, ain’t you?”
“Yes, of course, I’m the judge.”
“Then see to it that my brother gets off.”
“Mr. Mason, I don’t think you understand. I am bound by the decision of the jury. If they find your brother guilty of murder, I will have no choice but to pronounce sentence on him.”
“Yeah? And what would that sentence be?” Mason asked.
“That he be hanged by the neck until dead,” Dempster said.
“That ain’t goin’ to happen,” Mason insisted.
“It very well may,” Dempster replied. “As I told you, it is up to the jury.”
Mason shook his head. “You better find some way to make it be up to you. If you don’t…” Ominously, Mason stopped in mid-sentence.
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Mason?”
“You?” Mason said. He shook his head. “No, Judge, you ain’t the one I’m threatening. I’m threatening them.”
“Them?”
Reaching into his pocket, Mason pulled out something gold and shiny, then lay it on the desk in front of 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.