by Amy Stewart
She was staring at me so closely that I felt as if I were under some kind of spell. One eye squinted intently while the other opened even wider, calling for my response.
“What did you do, lady?”
I WENT DOWN to Sheriff Heath’s office and was about to raise my hand to knock when I heard John Courter’s voice inside.
“Because I got tired of waiting!” Courter was saying. I leaned against the door frame and listened. Sheriff Heath spoke in a quieter voice and I couldn’t hear everything he was saying.
“. . . if we release her now . . .” was the only phrase I caught from the sheriff.
“I don’t see any other way.” Courter was shouting. “Mrs. Monafo’s either lying or covering up for somebody, and if she won’t tell us who it is, she’s not of any use to us. You aren’t of much damn use either, between this mess and that fugitive you’ve got running around.”
He said something else in a low voice I couldn’t hear, and the sheriff replied, “I’ve got all my men out searching. What would you have us do?”
Next came a silence and the sound of something dropping onto a desk or table. “Bob, it’s been a week. We both know that von Matthesius is gone for good. The Freeholders have called in your bondsmen. I can speak for the rest of the prosecutor’s office when I say that we won’t wait much longer to start an inquest.”
“We’ll get him,” the sheriff said quickly.
“Make plans for your family,” Detective Courter said. “They can’t stay here if you’re in a jail cell upstairs—and you will be. Can’t Cordelia go to her mother? You should start thinking about it.”
Something else slammed down on the table and a chair slid across the floor. “Unless you’ve got business with this department, go on out of here. Have your papers drawn up if you want Mrs. Monafo released. I’m her jailer, and I don’t let her go without an order.”
They were coming for the door. I ducked around the corner, near the sheriff’s residence, and waited until I heard Mr. Courter leave with a guard.
When I returned, Sheriff Heath was leaning against his office door, his head down and his shoulders slumped. He turned when he heard my footsteps. “You heard Courter.”
“Some of it.”
“It sounds like he tried a little funny business with Mrs. Monafo this morning. I told him to let you have another try, but he’s not interested in my ideas on the running of my own jail.”
“I just spoke to her,” I said. “I believe her. I don’t know what to say about Detective Courter’s witnesses, but I think she’s telling the truth.”
16
THE MOOD AT THE JAIL WAS GRIM. All the deputies and most of the guards had been out searching for long hours at a stretch and ignoring all but the most pressing of their other duties. Everyone worried that von Matthesius had already slipped aboard a ship or taken a train out West, where we would never find him.
The New York City police officer sent out to look for Dr. Rathburn found no trace of him at his home or office. Even his receptionist was gone. Sheriff Heath went back the next day to question the manager and the cloakroom girl at Murray’s, but learned nothing of significance.
The Rutherford police had very little in their files that could help us. A few names turned up in von Matthesius’s correspondence, mostly other doctors in California and Texas where he had once lived. Sheriff Heath had already wired the police in those cities and asked them to make inquiries, but nothing came of it. While I was gone, the investigation had been running in circles: train stations, hotels, saloons, shipyards, and back to Felix’s apartment and the shops in that neighborhood, all of it leading nowhere.
The deputies and guards were kinder to me than I’d expected them to be. They all knew that I was the one who let von Matthesius get away, thanks to Thomas English, who made it his business to tell. But I’d won their admiration by going out on my own and bringing Felix back. It was more than anyone else had done, English included. Fortunately, Sheriff Heath kept English out of the jailhouse and away from me. He was mostly assigned to watch train stations, a dull but essential post.
Still, there was unease among us. Deputy Morris confided in me that the men all feared for their jobs. If Sheriff Heath was jailed over the von Matthesius escape, a new sheriff would be appointed to serve until the next election, and it was becoming apparent that the Freeholders would put forth a man of the opposing political party.
“And you know who the Republicans want to see in the sheriff’s office,” Morris muttered. I shook my head. Norma kept up with politics, but I hadn’t any idea.
“John Courter. He’s next in line when the party hands out favors.”
I couldn’t imagine a petty, small-minded, vindictive man like Detective Courter serving as sheriff.
“There’s talk of a trial already,” Morris added, “and if the prosecutor wants to make it a public inquest, there’s little Sheriff Heath could do to stop it.”
“You mean that my name would be brought out. Everyone would know.”
“I’m sorry, miss.”
I could only imagine what my brother would say—both about the scandal and my failure to provide for us as I’d insisted I could. Finding another position would be impossible, once the truth was told in the papers. I wondered if I could find a post somewhere far away—Chicago, maybe, or Denver. Were we to flee again because I’d brought shame on my family? How often would I have to run to get away from my own mistakes?
Sheriff Heath had banned any talk of the recriminations that might come his way as a result of von Matthesius’s escape. “If the sheriff’s department was in need of a fortune-teller, I would go down to Palisades Park and hire one,” he had taken to telling the men. “And if any of you have mystical gifts you’ve been concealing, kindly use them to tell me where our prisoner’s been hiding.”
But none of us knew, and Felix wasn’t telling. He sat in his cell, mulishly silent, refusing to even lift his head and look at us. This was his revenge: if he had to be caught, he would say nothing, and make the fact of his arrest useless.
We put him in an interviewing room and worked on him for hours, but nothing came of it. In the detective stories in the Sunday papers, the witnesses are all too eager to give up what they know and point the police in the right direction. It appeared that our witness hadn’t read the papers. His silence was of the brooding, snorting, red-faced, stormy variety, but he was silent nonetheless. He did ask at one point whether the sheriff had charged him with a crime. We reminded him that we didn’t need to charge him. We could hold him as a witness until von Matthesius was found.
“Or you could tell us where he is,” the sheriff said, “and we might let you go.”
When he refused to answer or even look at us, the sheriff just shrugged and said that he hoped Felix enjoyed his time at the jail. “I’ve got an extra fifty cents a day to feed witnesses, so you’ll get a little butter on your bread until we get around to filing formal charges for harboring a fugitive and make you an inmate of this institution.”
He had nothing to say to that, so the sheriff added, “Usually I don’t make the witnesses do any chores, but I think a little honest labor might clear your mind and help ease you into your jail sentence. We’ll give you some floors to scrub. How does that sound?”
It must have sounded fine, because Felix didn’t even raise his head to object.
Although he wouldn’t talk, he couldn’t stop us from having a picture made of him to send to police departments. The sheriff put a call out to all the reporters in town, inviting them to make their own pictures and to run them in the papers.
Deputy Morris brought Felix downstairs for the portrait session. Sheriff Heath asked me to come along in case the reporters had any questions about how Felix was caught. I didn’t like the idea of stepping into a roomful of reporters and wasn’t sure I should be credited with his capture. It would have been easy enough to say that a deputy made the arrest and leave it at that. But he insisted that his department had
nothing to hide and that it would only be worse if we tried to conceal anything—so I went.
I did remember to keep my promise to Carrie. She received the same invitation the other reporters did. I had to put a hand over my mouth to keep from smiling when I walked in and saw her there, standing in the back, one smartly dressed lady reporter among two dozen cigar-smoking newspapermen.
The sheriff’s office wasn’t large—it was only big enough for his desk and a long oak table around which his deputies sometimes gathered—but the reporters crowded in congenially. Their presence had the odd effect of making the room seem bigger, not smaller. A haze of smoke hung over them and there was a convivial rumble of conversation, like men gathered at a saloon. The sheriff’s desk had been pushed out of the way and a canvas curtain hung against the wall in imitation of a portrait studio. His camera was already situated atop its three-legged stand.
In the corner, Sheriff Heath was talking to a steely-haired man in a police uniform. The two of them turned at once when Morris and I arrived with Felix, and Sheriff Heath gave a sharp whistle that silenced the room.
“Gentlemen, and ladies, I’d like you to meet Felix von Matthesius, the brother of the fugitive and the man who we believe assisted in his escape from the hospital one week ago, on October 22. Miss Kopp is the one who made his capture, with the assistance of four fine officers of the New York Police Department.”
“Is it Miss Kopp or Deputy Kopp?” called Carrie from the back, to a rumble of laughter from the men.
Sheriff Heath took it as a perfectly ordinary question. “Miss Kopp has been serving as matron here at the jail and has proven herself quite able in the field as well. This is her first arrest and it won’t be her last. She’ll get her badge, but the first business of the sheriff’s office is to catch criminals and jail them. We ask your help in that today.”
I turned away from the crowd, having been made uncomfortable by the attention, and saw Deputy English standing in the doorway with a guard. I hadn’t seen him since that night in front of Felix’s apartment. He and the guard were whispering at one another furiously. Any excitement I might have felt over the mention of a badge turned sick and sour at the sight of him.
Sheriff Heath didn’t notice any of this. “Let’s take our photographs. I remind you that the prisoner is answering no questions. I will explain what we’re looking for, and he will remain silent—unless he’d like to tell us where he’s hidden his brother.”
Felix’s wrists were chained behind his back, so he couldn’t raise his hands to shield his face. He kept his chin tucked defiantly down on his chest and turned away from the cameras as Deputy Morris brought him to the front of the room.
Once his feet were planted on the marks the sheriff had made on the floor, the deputy shook him by the arm and told him to look up. He would not. Sheriff Heath handed Deputy Morris a yardstick and said, “Felix, you’ll lift your chin up or we’ll do it for you.”
Deputy Morris put the yardstick under his chin and gave it a gentle tap. At last Felix raised his eyes to the room of reporters and gave them a squint-eyed glare that lasted just long enough for Sheriff Heath to make his picture. While he was winding the film, he invited the other reporters to come up. A few of them had cameras on stands waiting in the corners of the room. They brought them forward and a whole row of photographers took their pictures.
When it was over, the sheriff turned to the reporters and said, “Boys—ah, ladies and gentlemen—the police chief and I”—and here he gestured to the man next to him—“we’re asking for the public’s help in naming any lodgings or other places frequented by this man in the last month. If anyone has seen him going out of any boarding-house, saloon, dining hall, or other place of business, they should come forward and tell about it without delay. We believe he’s been helping to conceal the fugitive, Herman Albert von Matthesius, whose portrait has already appeared in your papers. I remind you that he is a convicted criminal and considered dangerous.”
He gave a description of the fugitive, which the reporters took down, and then Deputy Morris grabbed Felix by the elbow and led him out of the room. A tall, thin man with a sparse beard stood and asked, “Does the sheriff have any other leads in the case?”
“The sheriff always has other leads,” came the answer, “but today we need your help with this one.”
“Is it common practice for prisoners to fake an illness to get released to the hospital?” asked a jowly old man from the back of the room.
“Certainly not. I’ve spoken with doctors at the hospital and we now believe von Matthesius chewed the glass from a broken light bulb to make us think he was coughing blood, and probably swallowed soap and any manner of injurious liquids to make himself appear ill. It was a carefully calculated escape attempt, and one that would have failed had the Board of Freeholders allowed me a jail physician as I’ve requested.”
A rotund man with a face the color of a boiled ham struggled to his feet and said, “If you fail to capture this fugitive, will you be sleeping in the same cell he once had, or have you chosen another for yourself?”
That brought a general grumble from the reporters, but Sheriff Heath raised his hands to silence them. “I appreciate the Hackensack Republican’s interest in my living quarters, but I’m perfectly comfortable in the sheriff’s apartment and intend to remain there. Does anyone have a question about our hunt for the fugitive?”
“How was the capture made?” shouted Carrie from the back. Her mouth was painted carmine red and twisted in the most delighted grin.
Sheriff Heath looked over at me. “Miss Kopp spotted him coming out of Murray’s Restaurant in New York City, where she had tracked him after several days of dogged detective duty. She tackled him herself and didn’t hesitate to do it. It was quick work on her part and it is exactly this sort of thinking that we hope to encourage by putting word out to the public through your newspapers. Now go on, all of you, and get something in the morning edition.”
17
LATER THAT NIGHT I went down to the kitchen for supper. The work crew had just gone upstairs and the floor was still damp and smelled of washing powder. The four enormous coffee urns that fueled the jail from dawn to dusk had been scrubbed and left on their sides to dry. The mop was draped over the sink. A pair of rubber gloves dangled from its handle.
A light bobbed inside the pantry and I could hear someone shifting around inside. I expected to find a guard, looking for whatever the cooks had left out for us, but it was Cordelia Heath in an apron, slumped down on a footstool in the corner. There was a flat little bottle in her hand and the unmistakable sweet and spoiled odor of brandy spirits.
She pushed the bottle under her apron when she saw me, but we both knew what I’d seen. Her nose was swollen and pink and the drink had dulled her eyes. She took hold of a shelf and pulled herself to her feet.
“Evening, Mrs. Heath,” I said.
“Miss Kopp.” She glanced at me and bent down over the boxes of onions and potatoes in the pantry as if she were inspecting them. “You keep turning up.”
She stumbled against the wall and kicked the stool out from under her feet. I saw her reach for her apron to make sure the bottle was secure, a gesture that looked habitual.
I hated to ask the question, but felt obligated to. “Are you ill? Is Mr. Heath at home? I could go—”
She turned and glared at me. “Where is Mr. Heath? You know more about my husband’s whereabouts than I do.”
“I haven’t seen him tonight.”
I thought about asking the guards if he could be summoned. I wasn’t sure which was worse: leaving her alone in this state or calling attention to it by alerting the sheriff. Every family had its secrets, but the Heaths didn’t get to hide away in the countryside like we did. They had no choice but to live here, where every member of the sheriff’s department could watch their doings.
She shuffled the boxes around, searching for something. “I’m only looking for what’s mine. We don’t eat the prisone
rs’ food.”
“Of course you don’t, ma’am,” I answered, although I saw nothing wrong with the food from the jail kitchen.
“The grocer delivers my order now along with all the other provisions.” She wiped a strand of hair from her forehead. “Because naturally I can’t shop for myself anymore.” At last she slid a crate off the shelf and balanced it on her hip, then jutted her chin up at me in the manner of a woman defending herself against an accusation.
She seemed to want some response, so I said, “It must be difficult to go out with the children so young. I’m sure Grayce is a help.”
“Grayce!” Her voice hit a high and wobbly note as she laughed. “Grayce’s brother made her quit after what happened. And do you think I can find any kind of cleaning girl at all, once it was in the papers that the inmates harass the maids?”
“Well, I . . .”
“Nor can I go to market myself, the way we’re talked about in this town.” She set the crate down and began rummaging through the boxes of sugar and flour on a high shelf. “If I even show my face out there, I face an inquisition from anyone who . . . Oh, here it is.”
She put a box of cornstarch in her crate and turned back to me. “It hasn’t been in the papers, but everyone knows it was you who let him escape.”
“Everyone?” I hadn’t realized it was all over town. I should have known.
“When my father served on the Board of Freeholders, there was a sheriff who wanted to bring in a lady guard. Daddy said he couldn’t, on the grounds that a lady can’t stop a crook from escaping, and isn’t that a guard’s responsibility?”
“We’ll get him.” I didn’t bother to point out that I was the only one who had made an arrest in the case. She was in no mood to hear it.
A strand of hair had come loose and hung between her eyes. She squinted at me when she spoke, her voice shrill and tight. “It’s the worst thing that can happen to a sheriff. I believe you know why. Some people resign in disgrace after a thing like that.”