“We have tried many methods,” Henry Cruger said, “and nothing has resulted so we have decided to use publicity. I hope to make the face of my daughter familiar to people, that every father and mother in America can be a detective.”
By March 1, a new assistant district attorney, John T. Dooling, had been assigned to the investigation. Dooling, a young-looking man with thick black hair parted on the side, had uncovered several new pieces of information that had the potential to jump-start the case. Dooling had discovered that Ruth had gone ice-skating—alone—at Van Cortlandt Park and Central Park more frequently than anyone knew. This was in direct opposition to what Henry Cruger was telling the press. Dooling, who was convinced that Cocchi had just gone to ground to avoid anti-Italian sentiment, sent an open letter to him through the press. Dooling promised Cocchi that if he ever came back, he would be treated fairly by the police.
These stories that were coming out of the district attorney’s office began to fray the edges of that smiling photograph of Ruth. Dooling had uncovered another story: several Sundays before she had disappeared, Ruth had an incident on her way to church. As she walked alone to Sunday school, Ruth kept tight to the sidewalk. At the intersection of 127th Street and Riverside, she saw a man sitting on the steps of a walk-up. He was very well dressed. He had a black mechanical car, gurgling at the curb. As she passed, the man smiled at Ruth.
“Would you like to go for a ride in my motorcar?” he asked.
Ruth didn’t say anything and kept walking, even faster now, but she felt his eyes on her. She told her father and her best friend about it that night, after supper, but she couldn’t remember much. She couldn’t remember anything about his face. She just knew that his clothes were rich and he had a smooth voice.
Dooling was also looking for the “young man,” as he was called, who was seen by Rubien, the taxicab driver. Dooling said that an informant, who wished to remain anonymous, had placed this man’s information in the hands of the Fourth Branch. This was the clue that had always been the most provocative. The readers of the papers knew that “young man” had always been code for “suitor.” There was another story of a similar young man who apparently hung around Teachers College at night and who had accosted two women. He would approach women and ask them to dinner. “He would say, ‘How do you do, Miss Smith?’ When the young woman replied that she was not Miss Smith, he said: ‘You’re not, well you certainly are very like her,’ and thereupon attempted to strike up a conversation which ended up in an invitation to dinner.”
These stories, and what they suggested, made many of Ruth’s friends angry. The Crugers’ pastor, Reverend Pattison, managed to get a five-minute appointment with Police Commissioner Woods. After waiting, Pattison was finally admitted to Woods’s office, and they talked for over an hour. Pattison defended Ruth’s reputation and tried to convince Woods that she had fallen afoul of evil. Woods didn’t agree—he was 95 percent sure that Ruth had eloped. But Woods admitted that he would never dismiss the possibility of that other 5 percent. Pattison was surprised at that.
Similarly disgusted with the police and with what he was reading in the papers about Dooling’s so-called discoveries, Henry met with the district attorney, a thin man named Edward Swann. With his approval, Henry then offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to his daughter’s whereabouts. The district attorney’s office would handle the incoming clues. Swann had been thinking about offering a reward anyway.
From then on, Mr. Cruger made a trip to Mr. Dooling’s office every single night. He came armed with the letters that each day’s mail had brought to his home. Henry Cruger looked noticeably older to his friends and acquaintances; his friends could see it in his eyes and cheeks. All he could do was push forward. His daughter had now been missing for over a week.
When he returned home on the night of February 22, Henry Cruger once again took a call from his favorite reporter from the Evening World. When the reporter asked him what he thought of the state of the investigation, Henry didn’t hold back.
“The police of New York City and the reporters of police news of all the New York newspapers and news bureaus have been digging, picking, gossiping, guessing, pretending, and hinting in the chance of finding a defect in the girl’s reputation on which they might put the blame for her disappearance, and they have found not one sliver of scandal; not even a surreptitious note in a Sunday School book or a wave of the hand from a window, or a meeting with a boy at which anybody and everybody was not welcome.”
“It is a test,” offered the reporter, writing about Henry, “with pride swelling up above his troubled grief and worry … to which he would not care to put any young girl’s station; but he cannot help being proud to the tips of his fingers of the way Ruth’s reputation has stood it.”
“Even if she had not stood that test so beautiful,” Henry added, “even if the meanest and nastiest guesses about her were true, she is my own dear girl and I would want her and I don’t want her a bit more than her mother and sisters want her. And nothing else is going to count until we find her or know what has become of her.” He felt like telling the cops to all go to thunder. But he didn’t. He knew that to let yourself go was easy, but to keep hold of yourself was hard.
“My girl Ruth must not be a lost girl,” Henry said. But as he looked at the black-and-white photo of his daughter, staring up from the newspapers, he couldn’t help feeling like the whole city had already turned her to stone.
5
These Little Cases
June 1905
A long line of people unwound itself from the open door at 269 Madison Street. Men twirled their hats and women pulled their thin knit shawls around their shoulders. As the people slowly moved forward, their eyes lingered on a golden sign hung near the door. Those who knew English read JUSTICE FOR THOSE OF LIMITED MEANS FOR MODERATE FEES. Those who could not just marveled at the gold. Ever since the office had opened on June 1, 1905, everyone in the neighborhood knew this was the place to get good, honest legal help.
When they finally reached the waiting room inside, they saw plush chairs and inviting walls painted in soft green and white. There were gay prints on the walls and fresh curtains at the windows. When the owner of the firm was in her office, people in the waiting room could see her through the open door, seated at her desk or moving between stacks of papers in a flutter of black clothing. Her office had high-backed chairs and deep red walls. Her desk had a lamp on it and was covered in inkwells and knickknacks. Hanging heavily on the wall behind her was a painting of Mother Mary, holding a swaddled baby Jesus, her right hand pointing up to an imagined sky just above the gilded frame.
In a corner of the little office was a framed card on the wall with a quote from Kipling. It read:
No one shall work for money,
No one shall work for fame,