“She kept repeating, ‘They will understand, they will know it was for the best.’ On and on, several times.”
His voice grew in strength, as though the significance of what he was saying was giving him courage. She sat straight, shoulders tense and aching, mouth dry.
“And then . . . and then she said to me, ‘Johnny, forgive me. I killed them.’”
The room exploded in gasps, shouts, the judge banging his gavel again and again.
And then, finally, Johnny looked at her, just for a moment, and his jaw was set and his eyes were dead.
Ruth stood with her fists clenched, her eyes fixed on the man on the witness stand, and she screamed as though they were the only two people in the room.
“Johnny! How could you? It isn’t true! You know it isn’t true! Johnny—you of all people! You said you loved me! How could you?”
18
The judge called for a recess and Pete made his unsteady way into the hallway. Paced the corridor. Picked at his cuticles. Wondered what the hell he could do for her.
His mouth was dry and there was a line for the water fountain, so he found another one down the hall. As he was drinking, he became aware of two men walking by, heads bent, voices low. One of them had Devlin’s slow parade-ground tread.
Pete turned the water off and brought his handkerchief up to his face. Remained stooped over as though he was just wiping his mouth.
He heard “. . . just about finished. And by tomorrow she will be.”
And Quinn’s nervous tone. “Tomorrow, sir?”
“Tomorrow, Lena Gobek will be giving her testimony.”
He waited until they’d turned a corner and then he stood and tried to think about where he’d heard that name before. It took him ten minutes and a walk around the block, but he got there. He left a note with the bailiff for Scott, asking him to call him that night, and then he got in his car.
At home, he pulled out his old files and dug through them until he found her. He read back through his notes and then played the beginning of the interview he’d recorded with her. Lena Gobek was just a neighbor. She was no one.
Then he began to remember, and let the tape play all the way through.
He remembered a small apartment, the curtains closed against the sun. Lace tablecloths, a china cabinet, a doll in an old-fashioned costume on a chair in the corner.
He remembered a well-built woman with a thick Polish accent. Dyed red hair, a shapeless dress, swollen feet in slippers. She’d offered him tea and pressed slices of dry seed cake on him, which had stuck to the roof of his mouth.
She’d talked about her husband a lot. How they’d met just after the war when he came into her father’s restaurant.
“His dark wavy hair, his serious eyes. He was just like Gregory Peck.”
She’d described how her husband had courted her and how romantic he was. Had smiled as she said this. Touched her throat and traced her fingers along her collarbone.
“The wedding was wonderful, Mr. Wonicke. Here is my album—see? My dress. The cake. That’s Mama with my sister. And the meal at my father’s restaurant after the church was beautiful. Perhaps not quite what it would have been before the war, but then nothing was the same. Everyone was making the best of things: that’s what they said on the radio. Paul and I were no different from Joan Fontaine and William Dozier, not really. And we had champagne—oh, that was exciting! Papa managed that. I never had champagne before—I’d only seen it in movies. I felt like Myrna Loy.
“And then we moved here, to this apartment. That was in September. September, 1946. And Paul had his job, and I made us a home. And we waited for children, but God decided not to bless us with little ones, and we had to make our peace with His decision. It was not an easy time. Not easy.