by Amy Stewart
“But—”
He jumped to his feet and said sharply, “Miss Kopp. I thought we agreed that you’d stay here and do your job.”
“But he’s my—”
“It’s December, and I’ll have him waiting outside on a twelve-hour shift. It’s guaranteed to be cold, damp, and pointless.”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“You will mind, once you’ve been there all day,” Sheriff Heath snapped. Mr. Fulton shrank back into a corner, shocked. “He’s been on the run for six weeks and we all want him caught. That doesn’t mean we all have to wait in the bushes in the freezing cold for a messenger who might not come for days, if he shows at all. He must know it’s a trick. Go and get English.”
When I didn’t move, he said, with his eyes down and his hands knotted together, “Please do not be insensible to the fact that I am answering some rather difficult questions at the courthouse right now. English is the man for this job.”
I didn’t have to guess at his meaning. This was too important a post to assign to me. I ran out of the room, my face burning. When I found Deputy English, I could barely get the words out.
At some point in the middle of the afternoon Sheriff Heath left suddenly, telling no one where he was going. A few minutes later I knew at last what had been worrying him. From the fifth-floor window I saw Cordelia Heath and the children leave the residence and walk over to the courthouse, where they stood with suitcases and hatboxes until an auto came to the curb and took them all away.
21
IF I’D BEEN TOLD, only a month or two earlier, that I would be responsible for an escaped prisoner, criminal charges being filed against the sheriff, the dissolution of his marriage, and several guards and deputies at risk of losing their places, I might never have left the house again. In one careless moment I had set into motion a carnival of disasters, each more spectacular than the last.
I couldn’t bear it. I wondered how any of our inmates managed the weight of their own regrets. Some of them regretted nothing, or claimed not to, but surely a few of them sat in their cells and let their misdeeds gnaw away at them as mine did.
But unlike our inmates, I was free and at liberty to do something about my troubles. All day I paced and fretted over that letter. Sheriff Heath had put his worst man on the case and seemed not to know it. I’d had misgivings about English all along, and not just because of his treatment of me. He was arrogant and careless and dismissive of the sheriff’s ideas. I didn’t trust him to do the job, and I knew that if the messenger got away, we wouldn’t have another chance. The fact that I had already failed at guard duty—catastrophically so—didn’t enter into my way of thinking about it. If there was a man to be caught, I would catch him. I had no doubt of it.
I also knew that if I’d done as Sheriff Heath asked and stayed in my place, I never would have captured Felix. It occurred to me that listening to Sheriff Heath might not be the way to capture this man.
That night, after supper and lights-out, I told the guards I was going home. Instead I marched right through downtown and over to Reverend Weber’s church. I found Deputy English crouching between two overgrown shrubs behind the rectory. When he saw me he jumped and raised a finger to his lips.
“I’m taking your place,” I whispered.
Deputy English squinted at me, his face nothing but a long dark shadow. “You couldn’t possibly. Go on away from here before you frighten the messenger boy.”
I looked around and saw no other place to hide. He’d taken the only available shrub. How was I to make him leave? I said the only thing that came to me.
“Sheriff Heath sent me to take the night shift. You’re to go home.”
“You’re lying.”
I was lying, but I took offense at the accusation anyway. “I’m to relieve you, and if you won’t let me, I’ll have no choice but to go back to the jail and return with the sheriff, who has better things to do than explain his decisions to you.”
In the dark I could make out a row of white teeth. Deputy English had a mean-spirited grin that was always more of a threat than a smile.
“Even Sheriff Heath isn’t so boneheaded as to put you in charge of this. Someone might have to make an arrest tonight. Are you expecting the old minister to do it?”
“Have you forgotten that I made the only arrest in this case?” I showed him the revolver in my pocket and the handcuffs looped to my skirt, just under my coat.
The deputy snorted and leaned around the corner of the rectory to get a look at the street. Finally he emerged from behind the shrub, brushing away leaves and spider webs, and stood right in front of me, toe to toe, so close that his nose nearly touched mine. His face brought to mind some small rodent I disliked: a hard-toothed beaver or a greedy little squirrel.
“I don’t know why the sheriff hired you, and I don’t know why he kept you on after you let an inmate walk right out of the hospital. But plenty of us have ideas about it.”
I held my breath. I wasn’t about to answer to that kind of accusation. I’d never stood so still.
“So you can stay here and wait for the messenger, Miss Kopp. The sheriff sent me in a motor car, but there’s no reason to leave that for you, is there?”
He knew I couldn’t drive. I’d assumed the messenger would arrive by train, but with a sinking feeling it came to me that he could, of course, come in an auto, and I’d have no way of following him.
“And I’ll stop in at the jail on my way home to let the sheriff know how good it was of him to send a replacement for the night. How does that sound?”
That didn’t sound very good to me. It wouldn’t take English any time at all to get back to the jail. Sheriff Heath could be here within the hour. I’d let myself be propelled by rage and frustration and hadn’t thought about what would happen if the sheriff found out I was here before the messenger arrived. But I saw nothing to do but stand my ground.
“Go and tell him. It doesn’t matter.”
He paused for just a second longer, so close that I could feel his breath on me, and then he turned abruptly and walked away, his hands in his pockets, whistling a little melody. A few minutes later I heard his engine fire and rumble down the street.
I stood listening to a train whistle off in the distance, and to the shuffling of leaves in the trees in the little graveyard behind the church. After just a few minutes my fingers were numb and I was fighting the urge to stamp my feet against the cold. In the solitary dark my sense of outrage dissipated and I wondered if Sheriff Heath had been right. This siege could go on for days. How long did I think I’d last?
I couldn’t stay outside all night, I knew that. I tapped quietly on the rectory door and Reverend Weber opened it just wide enough to look at me.
“I’ll be inside the church,” I said. “Is there a door to the rectory in there?”
He nodded.
“Keep it unlocked.”
He twisted himself around to meet my eyes. His arm wobbled atop his cane in such a way that his whole body shook. “Gute Nacht,” he said, his voice raspy and faint, and closed the door gently in my face.
The poor man had agreed only to write a letter. He never agreed to this.
Inside the church, I pulled a chair over to the rectory door. I opened it to check that it was unlocked and peeked through a small passageway to the sitting room where the reverend sat alone. Then I removed my hat so I could lean against the wall and listen for any sound on the other side of the door. After a few minutes I opened it just once more and reminded the reverend to speak clearly, but not so loudly that it would raise suspicion. He waved his hand at me, wearily.
Over the next few hours there was no sound but the faint tick of my watch and the sighs and moans issuing forth from the old man as he shifted in his chair on the other side of the door and tried to stay awake. He kept a light on. I heard him shuffling the pages of a newspaper. Outside, the branches of an elm tree creaked when the wind picked up. Twice I heard a man whistle as he walk
ed by. To keep myself alert I paced the length of the church and stood at the high and narrow window looking out at the darkened neighborhood. The warm lights in the houses grew dim one after another, the neighbors either falling into untroubled sleep, or sitting up with their predicaments as I was.
Deputy English would have spoken to Sheriff Heath by now. I sat in the dark and looked down the long empty rows of pews and wondered at my own arrogance. The sheriff was fond of saying that Cordelia hadn’t been elected to any public office and had no say in the running of his department. The same was true of me. I had no right to send his deputy away. English could have stood his ground, but he couldn’t resist leaving me here, where I wasn’t supposed to be, and going to tell Sheriff Heath what I’d done. At least I knew that I’d been right about him. He didn’t care about catching von Matthesius and was too easily persuaded to abandon his post.
Still the sheriff didn’t come. He might have gone after Cordelia. He could have been standing on her mother’s porch, begging her to come home. There was nothing for me to do but to wonder about it, and to sit like a condemned woman awaiting my fate.
It was nearly midnight when I heard the scrape of the church door and jumped to my feet. Sheriff Heath walked noiselessly up to me, took me roughly by the elbow, and pulled me through the pews to the other side of the room, as far from the rectory door as we could be.
“I won’t tolerate this.” He wouldn’t even look at me.
“He was my prisoner. I should be the one to bring him in.” I said it even though I no longer quite believed it myself.
“Damnit! You don’t even figure into it.” His eyes were fixed on some point over my shoulder. When he did look at me, it was the blank stare of a stranger. “My wife is at her mother’s over this. I’ve got a lawyer trying to keep me out of jail.”
He did blame me. Of course he did. I had the sensation of falling to the floor, but somehow I was still standing, frozen, mute.
“Bergen County won’t see another lady deputy for years because of this mess. And they probably won’t see a Democratic sheriff again, either. Try to think about someone other than yourself, Miss Kopp. And don’t ever tell one of my deputies what to do.”
He would have sent me home at that moment—or he would have tried—but through the rectory door we heard the reverend call out.
“I’m coming!” the old man shouted, in exactly the sort of desperate and overly loud voice I’d warned him against. We both rushed to the door to listen.
I caught a glimpse of a dark figure through the window. From his shape I could tell it wasn’t von Matthesius. He was shorter, and rounder, and he had the voice of a Brooklyn-born boy.
“You got a package for me?” he said when the reverend opened the door.
“Yes, please come in.” He persisted in using a booming, theatrical voice, which must have been the way he delivered his sermons. I cringed and held my breath. Sheriff Heath had his hand on the door. “Are you a friend of Dr. von Matthesius?”
“Sure,” the boy said.
“And your name is?”
“The messenger boy.”
“I didn’t catch that.” The reverend’s voice floated even higher.
Something was knocked over or kicked around and the boy said, “Where is it?”
“What’s that?” Reverend Weber hollered.
“The package! The envelope. The bag. Whatever you have. Go and get it.”
The reverend mumbled his answer and shuffled around the room. Something slid across the floor and there came the sound of a club striking the wall.
“Why’d you do that?” the reverend said.
“To get you moving! You’re the one who sent for me. Now, where the devil is the money?”
I had the uncomfortable impression that the reverend was stalling on my account. He was supposed to hand the envelope over and let the man go. Keeping him there was of no help to us. The sheriff pulled his revolver and held it down at his side. I did the same.
“Why, it’s just a small envelope and I thought I put it right here, but let me look, Mr.—what did you say your name was?”
Now the club landed somewhere else and something—a lamp, a mirror—shattered. If the reverend didn’t stop this nonsense, we’d have to run in and ruin the whole operation.
“Here you are! Here you are! Now just go!” There were tears behind his voice.
The club thundered again and then came the sound I’d been dreading: a strong and solid fist landing a punch on the old man. He must have fallen and knocked over a chair, because there was a clatter and a moan, and the boy ran out the door and down the street.
“Stay with him,” Sheriff Heath told me, and went in chase of the messenger. It took everything in me not to run after him.
Inside the rectory, the reverend was in a heap on the floor and bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he was alive and already struggling to stand. I pressed my handkerchief against his head and helped him into a chair.
“Gehen Sie!” It meant, “Go on!”
I told him I had to stay with him. He waved me out.
The door stood open, a gaping black hole that led away from the church, away from Hackensack, away to wherever von Matthesius was hiding. A wind picked up and rattled the door a little, and a few orange leaves flew inside.
It was impossible to resist. I slammed the door behind me and ran down the street after Sheriff Heath.
22
THE BOY WAS BOARDING a train for New York by the time I stumbled, wheezing and red-faced, into the station. Sheriff Heath stood in the doorway to the ticket office with his back to me, talking in a low voice to the station agent, the two of them framed in the orange light of a single lantern. The messenger seemed not to have noticed him. I stayed out of the way and watched the sheriff step into the car after the boy had boarded.
When the whistle sounded I climbed to the platform and hopped aboard the following car just before the train started to move. There were only a few sleepy travelers on board. If I stood at the front, I could just see through the window into the car beyond, where Sheriff Heath and the messenger had their backs turned. In this way I watched the two of them, unnoticed, as the train rattled into the city.
In New York I got off behind them and trailed them out of the station and onto Seventh Avenue. Even at this late hour there were people about, and hacks looking for fares, and porters carrying trunks. The weak light of a few lampposts was all we had to see by. It would be easy to lose the boy. There were plenty more like him, solitary figures in dark coats rushing away from the station.
When I came up alongside Sheriff Heath, he didn’t turn to look at me but spoke quietly, out of the side of his mouth. “Deputies generally do what the sheriff tells them, or they find themselves in another line of work.”
“If I can’t catch him, I don’t deserve any line of work.”
He snorted at that and broke into a run to keep up with the boy. I matched his pace. We slowed when we were about half a block behind him.
“If you’d like to try following a sheriff’s orders just once,” he said under the cover of a sudden clatter of horses’ hooves as several old wagons rolled past us, “then you may go back to the station, and send a police officer to help me. I could have used English, if you hadn’t sent him away.”
Before I could answer, the boy paused to look into a shop window and we skidded to a stop ourselves. I realized with a start that it was soon to be Christmas. Each window down the block showed a winter scene: a fairy-tale castle nestled in a cloud of cotton batting, miniature carolers carved of wood and holding out wrapped presents instead of songbooks, and a little porcelain doll sitting in front of a fire clutching a kitten with a bow around its neck.
Sheriff Heath was panting in the thin winter air. There was something frantic about the way he was adjusting his hat, fidgeting with his pockets, fingering the button beneath his collar. He turned to speak, undoubtedly about to order me away again, but the boy started walking and we had to h
urry to catch up.
He took the most indirect and meandering route through the city he could’ve possibly contrived, sticking to narrow streets where the shops had all been shuttered for hours, where wide faceless buildings held box factories and printing presses by day but looked entirely abandoned by night. He never again stopped or slowed down. More than once he crossed in the middle of an avenue without any regard for the drivers of motor cars and carriages who couldn’t see ten feet in front of them, forcing us to chase after him and risk our own limbs. It was too hurried a pace for conversation, but the sheriff kept trying to wave me away and I kept ignoring him. It was too late for me to abandon the chase. He needed me, not a New York officer who didn’t know what we were after.
The boy stopped again and bent down, perhaps to tie a shoe, and we backed up into a stack of crates outside a grocery.
The sheriff started again on his harangue but I said, “You wouldn’t go home. If you’d been the one who let him get away, you wouldn’t ever go home.”
He took his hat off and I thought for a minute he would smack me with it. But he slicked his hair back and shoved the hat down on his head and said, “I’d do what the sheriff told me to do. I was a deputy for four years, and do you think—”
Then the boy was off again, walking much faster this time, crossing Fifth Avenue and making his way into the slums on the East Side of town. There were young men huddled in tight knots on the corners, rubbing their hands together over the meager spark of an ashcan, and girls in moth-eaten coats shivering in doorways. The sidewalks were so uneven and riddled with broken and half-open cellar doors that I had to lift my skirts to see where I was stepping.
At last the boy stopped in a doorway down on Second Avenue and felt around in his pockets for a key. Sheriff Heath pulled me into the darkened window of a Polish bakery a few doors away. He kept me so close that I could feel his mustache against my ear. “It’s your fault if he runs. Catch him no matter what.”
“Of course,” I said, but he looked desperate and uncertain as he let go of me and ran noiselessly across the street.
