“He didn’t, ma’am. He didn’t know where I worked.”
Constance took a step back and looked her over. “Tell me something. Is there any truth to your mother’s accusation? Have you been staying out late at dance halls and movie palaces, or going around with a different man every night? Have you done anything at all that would give the judge cause to lay a charge of waywardness against you?”
Edna gave an embarrassed little smile, thinking of Delia and the others, and shook her head. “No, ma’am. Mrs. Turnbull will tell you. The other girls will, too. I’m the dullest one in the house.”
“You’re not dull,” Constance said. “You only wanted to work, and to pay your own way. Is that right?”
Edna nodded. She seemed to Constance to be a modest and serious girl who wouldn’t know what to do inside a dance hall.
“My mother doesn’t think I should be allowed to go away on my own,” Edna said, “but I never knew she went to the police over it.”
“Your mother isn’t the one to decide,” Constance assured her. Constance’s own mother had tried to keep her from working, but that was before there were lady telephone operators and women reporters, much less female deputy sheriffs. It was a different age now. Parents had even less cause to try to keep their daughters from doing as they pleased.
What she didn’t want to tell Edna was this: A judge will decide. And the judge won’t be shown the facts, because no one will bother to go and gather them.
This was precisely the problem. The prosecutor’s office was in charge of proving that a crime had taken place, and that the arrest was proper. For evidence they would present Edna’s mother, who would say whatever mothers said when they wished to complain about their daughters.
But who would put up a defense for Edna? She couldn’t afford an attorney. The prosecutor wouldn’t bother to disprove the charges. In fact, the prosecutor’s office seemed to be growing ever more fond of these cases, and liked to see them written up for the papers. It showed that they were doing something about immorality and vice.
The fact that the charges had no merit mattered little to anyone?—except the girl accused.
That’s why Constance made a rather rash promise, one that she had no authority to make and no means to carry out. “Edna, I believe I’ll go myself to speak to your landlady and to the superintendent at the factory. The judge will listen to what I have to say about it.”
Constance had a very definitive way of speaking and tended to state a thing as fact even if she wasn’t entirely sure about it. Her job demanded this sort of bravado: one could never hesitate in front of an inmate. As far as she knew, she had no authority to intervene in a criminal charge or address the judge on an inmate’s behalf. But something had to be done for the girl, and she was impatient to do it herself.
“Leave it to me,” she told Edna, “and try not to worry over it.”
“I’m not worried,” Edna said. In truth, she wasn’t. Upon passing into the custody of Deputy Kopp, Edna felt a great good fortune come over her. She’d never seen such a formidable-looking woman, ?and she knew that any woman who took on such unusual work would surely be sympathetic to Edna’s case.
In fact, she wondered if Deputy Kopp had considered war-work herself and thought she might like to ask her about it. Here was a woman who wore a revolver as easily as a string of pearls, commanded a powerful voice that could bark out an order, and possessed the disposition to go along with it. With a name like Kopp, she might well be German, but Edna suspected that her loyalties resided in New Jersey and not with the Kaiser.
She was about to burst forth with all of this when Constance said, “Now, Edna, I’m going to put you in a quiet and clean cell and bring you something hot for lunch. I’ll go out to Pompton Lakes this afternoon. This entire mess will make a good story that you can tell your friends when I take you home tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! You don’t mean that I’m to spend a night in jail?” A note of panic rose in Edna’s voice. She planted her feet and refused to take another step unless she was towed, which Constance could have done but didn’t.
Edna had never even spoken to a police officer, much less been arrested by one. She couldn’t say with any certainty that she’d so much as seen the county jail before today. How was she to survive a night behind bars, surrounded by vagabonds, drunks, and criminals?
Constance bent down awkwardly to look Edna in the eye. The girl’s lips were starting to waver and she looked as though she might cry.
“Listen to me. I’m your friend in this. I’m going to get you settled, and then I’ll go right to work on setting you free. There’s no law against having a job and living on your own.”
“The officer didn’t seem to know that.” Now the tears did come, in a rush of dread and shame.
“But the judge will. I’ll see to it. I’m going to speak to the sheriff right now, and he’ll be on your side, too. You can’t lose, can you, with the two of us in your corner?”
Edna didn’t know a thing about the sheriff, but what choice did she have? “I suppose not.”
With that, Edna went along trustingly to her jail cell, and Constance went to tell Sheriff Heath that she had just decided upon a series of improvements to the way criminal justice was carried out in Bergen County.
3
IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL for Sheriff Heath to be rousted out of bed in the middle of the night over a train accident, a country house robbery, or some other calamity. He rarely enjoyed anything like a full night’s sleep, and he carried eggplant-hued shadows under his eyes to prove it. He spent mornings in his office, reading the mail and attending to business, which is where Constance found him after she settled Edna in her cell.
His office was a plain room with nothing adorning the wall but a fire insurance calendar. There was a glass-fronted bookcase, a desk for him, and an oak table that was always piled with inmate records, correspondence, and case files. Across from his desk sat two battered old chairs for visitors. On the other side of the room was a little blue-tiled fireplace that he kept kindled all winter long, making it easily the most hospitable place in the jail.
She walked in and went to stand in front of the fire, intending to launch immediately into the subject of Edna Heustis’s future, but she was derailed over a newspaper story.
“I’ve just had a look at Miss Hart’s latest,” he said, rustling the paper in her direction. “She paints quite a picture of Hackensack’s girl sheriff.”
“Wasn’t that the idea?”