“Can you tell he’s running for office?” Carrie whispered.
“I should’ve guessed,” Constance muttered. It gave her a sinking feeling to think of him building a campaign on morality crimes that rarely amounted to anything.
“Congress passed the Mann Act so that we could put a stop to this scourge within our own borders,” Detective Courter continued. “But the laws are of no use unless the violators are caught, punished, and paraded before the public as a warning to sinister forces from a decent society. Every day I speak to fathers who say they would go to any length of hardship and privation rather than allow their daughters to go into the cities to work or to study. Who can blame them, when even the ordinary ice cream parlor—or a steamboat on the Hudson—may be used as a spider’s web for her entanglement?”
Reporters were shouting out questions now, demanding the name of the steamboat and any other particulars involving ice cream parlors that Mr. Courter might wish to divulge. He waved them away and continued with his speech, which had taken on the cadence of a sermon and no longer had anything in the way of a press conference about it.
“This is why I’ve invited Mrs. Headison from over in Paterson to be here today.” Mr. Courter turned and gestured to Mrs. Headison, who stood and nodded at the audience. “Mrs. Headison does fine work in Paterson by looking out for wayward girls. Seventeen young women have been sent to the reformatory on her watch, and she hasn’t been on the job a full year. Imagine what could be done if we had someone here in Hackensack to do it.”
Constance’s mouth fell open. Sheriff Heath gave her a sharp jab. “Steady,” he whispered. It was just one word, but it was enough to make her compose herself. John Courter was trying to rattle her. She wouldn’t allow it.
He wasn’t finished. “There are some things so far removed from the lives of ordinary, decent people as to be simply unbelievable by them. The white slave trade now plying its ghastly business right here in Bergen County is one of those incredible things. Mothers and fathers, I put you on notice that you are placing your girls in danger if you’re too trusting of them. You must all be on guard against threats to your daughters’ virtue, which may strike wherever she goes, be it a train station, a secretarial school, or a place of amusement. The prosecutor’s office has vowed to close down every vice resort and disreputable house in Bergen County.
“Our prosecution of Anthony Leo is only the beginning. We believe that through his arrest, we’ve uncovered a white slave ring operating along the Hudson River, and we will be working with the New York authorities to break it up. Who knows how many other victims like Miss Davis we might discover? We will restore this once-peaceful county to safety and security, and we want you, the public, to hold us to account as we do.”
After such a speech Constance wanted nothing more than to escape that room and go outside to take in some clean, cold air. She noticed that Carrie never did write down a word.
“I’ve heard this speech before,” Carrie muttered. “And you notice that he didn’t say a thing about the actual case, because he doesn’t have one. It’s not much of a story.”
“This is a press conference,” Constance said. “You’re free to write it up.”
“It’s garbage, and there’s a girl’s name attached to it. I won’t. The others will.”
“You’re not going to get far in crime reporting if you don’t want to put a wronged girl’s name in the paper,” Constance said, although she was relieved.
As the reporters shuffled past, a few of them gathered around the sheriff to ask if Anthony Leo was in jail and whether he was allowed visitors. Sheriff Heath calmly refused to answer a single question and said that he was only there as a spectator. Mrs. Headison was still at the front of the room, speaking quietly to Mr. Courter, which was just as well, as Constance hadn’t anything civil to say and would rather not be forced to try.
Carrie, Sheriff Heath, and Constance walked together back to the jail. As soon as the metal door closed behind them, Carrie said, “This isn’t a criminal case. It’s a political campaign.”
“I wouldn’t mind that if there wasn’t a girl in jail over it,” Constance said.
They were in a narrow corridor of cement floor and whitewashed brick. Their words made an echo as they walked.
“Can’t you do one of your tricks in front of a judge and spring her loose?” Carrie asked.
“It isn’t a trick,” said Sheriff Heath. “The girl has to be willing to help herself, and so far, this one hasn’t been. If she was forced, she’d better say so, and quickly. I don’t like this talk about men coming around in the evenings, even if Leo did force her into it. There’s not a judge in New Jersey who would set her free if she had that kind of history. They’d want her in a reformatory, at least.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Carrie asked Constance. “It’s not as unusual as it might sound. A girl doesn’t have a dime for her own lunch, so she lets a man take her to a restaurant. Then he invites her to walk through the park, and?—”
“That’s enough!” Constance said. “I think we all understand the situation.”
“I’m trying to say that sometimes she doesn’t know she’s done anything wrong. He buys her dinner and theater tickets, he gives her a bracelet. They’re just little gifts, but the girl gets used to it, and she gives something in return.”
She turned to Sheriff Heath, who had grown suddenly very interested in watching his feet as he walked. “Excuse me, Sheriff.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“It’s only that I see it all the time in New York. These girls don’t have their own money. Of course the men are going to pay for things, and if a girl wants to have any kind of a life at all, she’ll let him. Are you sure Minnie didn’t just slip into that sort of . . . arrangement?”
They both turned at once to look at Constance. A scandal along those lines would ruin this girl. Even being cast as the victim in a white slave case would cast a cloud over her life. Her parents would never take her back in either case. And who would marry her, or give her a job, if they knew?
“She insists it was only her and Tony,” Constance said. “But it wouldn’t do her any good to say otherwise, would it?”
“I’m afraid not,” the sheriff said.
They were met at the door to Sheriff Heath’s office by a bailiff of the court. He handed the sheriff an envelope.
“Transport orders,” he said. “Minnie Davis has been transferred to the state reformatory in Trenton.”
26
“THEY CAN’T PUT her in a reformatory. She hasn’t had a trial.” At the very idea of it, Constance thought her heart might come out of her chest. Had she done nothing for this girl?