by Amy Stewart
“I suppose that’s reasonable,” I said, although I wasn’t sure it was.
“Well, we do what we can. And we keep a sharp eye out for anyone the sheriff is looking for and hold them if we have to.”
“That’s fine,” Sheriff Heath said. “We’ve got to catch this one.”
Mr. Fulton looked at the envelopes again. “Is this the fellow who ran out on you at the hospital?”
“That’s him,” the sheriff said.
“Who’s the damn fool who let him get away?”
Sheriff Heath paused. “The only thing that matters is getting him back.”
“IF YOU CAN be bothered to think about your other duties, Miss Kopp,” the sheriff said as we drove back to the jail, “then I wonder if you would turn your attention to Mrs. Monafo.”
“As long as the female inmates are locked up, I don’t see how they take priority over von Matthesius.” I was wound up over those letters and couldn’t think about anything else.
“Providencia Monafo won’t be locked up much longer,” Sheriff Heath said. “Detective Courter is working on an order for her release. If it weren’t for the carelessness and ineptitude of the court clerks, he’d have it by now.”
“But I’m sure she’s telling the truth. Of course she was aiming at her husband. It makes perfect sense. Is he going to charge someone else with the crime?”
“He’s working on it. The husband’s a likely candidate, as are just about any of the boarders who can’t account for their whereabouts at the time of the shooting.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that husband of hers in jail,” I said.
“But not for a crime he didn’t commit.”
We had to slow down for a line of schoolchildren crossing the street hand in hand, all in identical mackinaw coats. Sheriff Heath drummed on the steering wheel while we waited.
“I’ve had plenty of inmates plead their innocence and beg for their release, but this is the first one who wants to be found guilty. Still, Mr. Courter can’t ignore those witnesses. They could go to the papers and claim he disregarded their testimony. He knows that.”
The children crossed the road and we drove on. It was clear to me that Sheriff Heath hadn’t any idea what to do about Mrs. Monafo. I also couldn’t trust Detective Courter to run any sort of competent investigation into the question of why her account was so at odds with that of the witnesses.
Henri LaMotte would tell me to start over at the beginning. “We’re not far from the boarding-house,” I said. “Let’s have another look.”
In a few minutes we were back in Garfield. We parked on Malcolm across the street from the house and, finding the door unlocked, slipped inside and crept down the stairs to the Monafos’ basement apartment. No answer came to the sheriff’s knock, so he gave the door a push with his shoulder and it fell open.
The flat was, if anything, more squalid than the last time we’d seen it. I would not have believed that Mrs. Monafo exerted any sort of beautifying influence over her surroundings, but in her absence the place had disintegrated such that it had more in common with a lean-to under a bridge occupied by hoboes than a landlady’s flat. There was a stench even more appalling than what I’d remembered from my last visit, and it appeared that no effort at all had been made to scrub away the blood stain that was Saverio Salino’s last mark on the world.
“At least we know her husband’s gone,” I said. “No one would live in this filth.”
“I’ve seen people living in worse.”
We heard—or rather felt—footsteps on the stairs above us and froze.
“I’ll go see who it is,” the sheriff said. “I don’t know who’s been interviewed in this building. Look around and see if you can find anything Courter might’ve missed. Letters or . . .”
He mumbled the rest as he ran up the stairs. I examined every corner of the apartment but found no letters and no places where a letter would be kept even if one were to arrive. There was no desk, no bookshelf, and no place for pen or paper. They hadn’t a lamp to read by nor a chair to sit on. There were only piles of filthy clothes beyond mending, soiled dishes beyond washing, and furnishings too broken and moth-eaten to use. There was not, in fact, anything in the whole place that shouldn’t have been taken outside and burned.
I saw nothing that contradicted what we knew so far. What evidence could I possibly be expected to find that would prove that Providencia had shot the man? The plain fact of her standing over a pool of blood with a recently discharged pistol seemed evidence enough to me.
Footsteps struck back down the stairs and Sheriff Heath’s face appeared in the doorway. “Didn’t you hear me?” he called out impatiently.
“No. When?”
“I yelled down twice for you to come up and help me with these fellows. They only spoke Italian and I wanted to question them before they drove off.”
“I was right here. But I don’t speak Italian anyway,” I said, making my way back to the door.
“Can’t you get by with French, or pick up a few words?”
I followed him up the stairs. “Are you asking me to learn a fourth language so I might be of better service to the sheriff’s department?”
“That’d be fine, Miss Kopp.”
20
THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO but wait for a response to Reverend Weber’s letter. Every day I awoke with a weight on my chest. I was starting to grind my teeth together and my jaw ached from it. I begged the sheriff to send me out on patrol with the other deputies, but he refused.
“There’s not much point in having them out marching around to train stations and hotels,” he said. “Von Matthesius doesn’t want to be seen. We’re not just going to stumble across him on the street. It’s a waste of their time and it would be a waste of yours, but we haven’t any other leads so I keep them at it.”
What he didn’t say was that he had to keep up the appearance of a vigorous investigation because he was being investigated himself. The patrols were nothing but a bit of theater and a way to stall for time.
I wouldn’t have known that the inquest had begun, except that I happened to walk past the sheriff’s office one afternoon in the middle of November and heard a familiar voice. It was John Ward, the attorney who had, for a short time, represented Henry Kaufman when he threatened us a year ago. The door was slightly ajar, but I didn’t dare get too close once I understood what they were discussing.
“The justices in this county don’t know the law! I’ve seen you go around and instruct them as to their own duties,” Mr. Ward was saying. “It’s no wonder they’ve no idea what to do with you. Why, you could just tell them that no such law exists, and then sit back and wait ten or twenty years while they try to look it up for themselves. You’ll be retired before they get around to bringing charges against you.”
“The county prosecutor has put the matter before them quite plainly,” Sheriff Heath said. “It’s apparent to me—and to Mrs. Heath—that they have their sights on putting me in jail. It’s been three weeks and they’re ready to start the inquest. I’m going to need you in the courtroom with me every day, and that’s not all. My bondsmen want to know how I intend to hold on to this office and it’s time to give them an answer. You and I will sit down with them tomorrow.”
“I’d still like to speak to the guard who let this von Matthesius slip out,” Mr. Ward said. “If we could make a complaint of drunkenness against him or find evidence that a bribe was paid, we might have—”
Cordelia’s voice interrupted. “My husband is protecting one particular individual in his employ at the expense of his family’s safety and reputation, not to mention his own personal liberty. I believe that it would be quite possible to put up a good defense on the grounds that the guard was ill-equipped and incompetent.”
“Well, that describes half the prison guards in New Jersey,” John Ward said. “We need something more uncommon than shiftlessness.”
“What about—”
Now it was Sheriff Heath’s
turn to interrupt his wife. “I won’t allow it. The sheriff has full charge of the jail and its inmates. Whatever happens is my responsibility. I won’t put it off on a guard. I’ve heard what you have to say on the matter, Cordelia, and I’ve made my decision.”
But Cordelia wouldn’t be quieted. “How do you think it’s going to look when they find out that the ladies’ matron was put on guard duty, for which she was naturally incapable? If you can’t show good judgment about a simple matter of posting a guard, you’ll never be elected to another office in this county.”
“Did you say—” Mr. Ward put in, but the sheriff ignored him.
“The ladies’ matron has been the only one to make an arrest in this case,” he said quietly, “making her far more competent than anyone else in my employ, and you would know that if you would just listen to the facts.”
“I know all I need to know,” she said. “You’ve stood by her and the rest of us be damned. I won’t tolerate the idea of a husband of mine going so willingly to a jail cell over that woman.”
There was a scuffling of chairs. Cordelia was about to run out of the room. I backed down the hall as she yelled, “I hope she’s—” and the last word was lost as she slammed the door and ran back to the sheriff’s apartment, little sobs burbling out of her throat as she went.
Around the corner, out of sight, I leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor, my knees against my chin. The corridor smelled of ammonia and camphor from the soft soap we used to wash the floors. Behind it was the lingering odor of sassafras that reminded me of candy stores. We used it in the summer to cover the stench of a poorly ventilated prison, but the scent hung around all year, faintly green and now intimately familiar to me. If I lost my job, I would even miss that smell.
Surely there was nothing special about the way Sheriff Heath was defending me. He would do the same for any of his men, no matter the consequences. He had a way of championing a noble cause even when it worked against him. I’d seen him do it when he argued for a jail physician, and when he had to defend the cost of a gold tooth for an inmate whose gums were so rotten that ordinary rubber teeth wouldn’t hold. He insisted on uniforms for prisoners when he saw how shabby their clothes were, and started holding church services on Sunday and organizing a jail library. All of it required a fight with the Board of Freeholders, and he took up those fights eagerly, with little regard for gossip and newspapers. This was no different.
But Cordelia didn’t see it that way. She was too terrified to think straight. The poor woman probably got a case of nerves the day she moved into the jail and never shook it off. She had no neighbors, nor friends that I knew about, and I’d never seen her husband show her much sympathy. With no one in her corner, it had all become too much for her.
I knew what she would do behind that door. As long as her husband stayed away—and he would, after that performance—she’d crawl into a closet like Aunt Adele did and take to her bottle.
She’d like nothing more than to see me disappear. For just a minute I considered it. I could have left and never returned. But that wouldn’t make up for what I’d done. Nothing would, but bringing von Matthesius back.
THE INQUEST WENT FORWARD, but I knew little about it. Sheriff Heath persuaded a judge to hold the proceedings behind closed doors so that the newspapers couldn’t print anything that might endanger our search for von Matthesius. He was at the courthouse most days, for a few hours at least, but never spoke about it.
I kept myself busy at the jail. Martha Hicks had served her time and been released. She made a teary and wide-eyed promise to me that she would not resume her thieving ways. I had my doubts—she’d been running a long-standing and profitable scheme wherein she stole hosiery and sold it in her sister’s dress shop—but I wished her well. Ida Higgins had also been turned loose after the man confessed to setting the fire and her testimony against him was no longer required.
A new girl, Frieda Burkel, had been arrested for assaulting a visitor to her home, but it looked like the charges were to be reversed and the visitor charged with assaulting her. Apparently a former beau walked right into her house without knocking and tried to kiss her after three years away in the navy. She broke a milk bottle over his head, having failed to recognize him or to remember that he had been her beau. The man stumbled and pulled her to the ground with him. When the police arrived, they were covered in the blood issuing forth from his fairly shallow and harmless head wound. Still, they’d both been delivered to us. I worked on getting her released on the grounds that a virtuous woman was practically obligated to break something over a man’s head if he came in uninvited and stole a kiss.
It seemed to me that the police were getting more eager to arrest young girls now that they knew the jail had a matron. They hadn’t any idea what to do with wayward females, but we couldn’t do much for them, either. We were an institution of correction, not a charity house. Once we had von Matthesius in hand again, I would speak to the sheriff about it.
Calls kept coming in from police officers on the lookout for our fugitive. We wasted a great deal of time running to and from New York to have a look. An officer on street patrol said he spotted him in Long Island but couldn’t catch him. We spent a full day canvassing the street where he’d been seen, but turned up empty. A report came in from Brooklyn that someone matching von Matthesius’s description had been going in and out of an apartment building. The police kept the building under watch for two days and then, despairing of ever finding him again, decided to just round up every man of his age and general build in the vicinity. We rushed to the station to have a look at them, but none were von Matthesius.
After nearly two weeks of this, an Officer Weisenreider telephoned from the East Twenty-Second Street station to say that he had our man and we needed only to come and get him. It was after midnight when he called, but the sheriff and I rode out together, each of us agreeing that we wouldn’t be able to sleep until we had him in hand. When we arrived we were presented with a Polish man of about seventy-five who spoke no English but, for reasons we never understood, nodded vigorously every time someone said the name von Matthesius to him. A translator had to be called in to make sure he didn’t know anything about our fugitive or his relatives. He did not.
“Are you sure you don’t want him?” the officer asked, as if an elderly Polish man might be of some use to us.
“That’s generous, but no,” the sheriff said. We rode back to Hackensack in disappointed silence.
Finally, one morning around the first of December, the postmaster appeared unannounced at the jail. Sheriff Heath called me down to his office so we could both hear what he had to say.
Mr. Fulton was waiting in front of the fireplace, bouncing on the balls of his feet with the air of the cat who had swallowed the canary. Sheriff Heath came down the hall from his living quarters, looking grimmer than I’d ever seen him. I didn’t dare ask what was bothering him.
As soon as the sheriff was settled behind his desk, Mr. Fulton said, “The New York police keep a man assigned to the general delivery window as a matter of practice. On any day of the week, they have a list of a dozen or so fugitives and con men who might be expecting a letter. What a city, eh?”
“It is quite a city,” the sheriff said wearily.
“Well, the way it works,” Mr. Fulton continued, obviously enjoying himself, “is that the police put an officer in view of the postal clerks at the window. They’ve rigged up a hand signal to let the officer know if any suspicious letter is being claimed. And today, someone came in for your letter!”
He clasped his hands together in satisfaction. We waited in silence for the rest. When it didn’t come, I said, “You mustn’t leave us in suspense, Mr. Fulton. Has our man been arrested?”
“What? Oh, no. That’s what I came to tell you. He sent a messenger to get the letter. He knew better than to turn up himself. The officer chased the messenger across the street and into a subway station, but would you believe the train doors
closed just as he was about to leap into the car and nab him?”
Sheriff Heath sighed and shut his eyes against the image. “I do believe it.” He spoke in a distracted manner that was entirely unlike him, and I wondered what could have been disturbing him more than the matter at hand.
“The officer wouldn’t really have grabbed him on the street like that, would he?” I asked. “Surely he intended to follow the messenger and find out where he was taking the letter. He could have gone straight to von Matthesius.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Fulton, even more delighted with this version of the story. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Did the messenger know he was being chased, or did he just happen to slip into the subway station ahead of the police officer?” I asked.
“I didn’t think to ask,” Mr. Fulton said, a note of wonder in his voice at all the possibilities. “I only just heard from the postmaster in New York and rushed right over. Here, I have the name of the officer. You can speak to him yourself.”
He handed the sheriff a slip of paper. Sheriff Heath stared blankly at it for a minute. His head seemed to clear and he said, “When did this happen?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“I wish you’d just telephoned. We should have had someone at the church with Reverend Weber by now.”
Mr. Fulton’s mouth dropped open. “Sheriff, it took no more than—”
Sheriff Heath held up a hand to silence him and turned to me. “Bring Deputy English down. We’ll put him at the church. The letter promised money, so we have to hope someone will turn up to collect it. “
“Couldn’t I go?” I asked.
“No.”
