When they left the hotel at eight, Grace gave Kron the bulk of the files she had on the Cruger case. There were hundreds of typewritten pages. Kron took the papers home and studied them all night long, making big blue pencil marks over promising leads. In the morning, he blinked his eyes, took an icy shower, and ate breakfast. Before leaving, Kron kissed his wife Estelle and three young daughters good-bye. Kron stared at his oldest for a few more moments.
The air was warm outside for late April. Kron’s apartment was in the west eighties, so he decided to walk to Forty-second Street through Central Park. He wanted to get the facts straight in his mind before he reached Grace’s office. Ruth Cruger had left her fashionable apartment house at 180 Claremont Avenue on February 13 to pick up her newly sharpened ice skates at Cocchi’s store on 542 West 127th Street. She was never seen again. What Kron couldn’t figure out was how a girl of eighteen could disappear in broad daylight in such a crowded section of the city. Three days later, Cocchi—who had been cleared of any wrongdoing by police investigators—also disappeared. Walking along, Kron watched kids already playing in the fountain as their parents laughed outside the immobile stone rim. They were holding on for dear life, screaming as their clothes got soaked.
When Kron arrived at Grace’s office, he found her already talking to Henry Cruger. When Grace introduced Kron, with no small amount of the usual hyperbole, Henry’s eyes pleaded at him from under his bushy eyebrows.
“Mr. Kron,” he said. “Won’t you find my little daughter? Someone is keeping her—she would never stay away—she would never have gone away.”
“We hope to, Mr. Cruger,” Kron replied, through his thick Hungarian accent. He continued with a lie meant to make the man—the father—feel better. “Just remember that of all the thousands of girls who disappear every year, over ninety-eight percent are located.” Kron managed a persuasive smile.
“Yes,” Henry cried, “but where?”
Kron had no immediate answer.
Henry again insisted that his Ruth had no love affairs, was quite fond of her family, and would not have stayed away without any communication. Henry repeated his fears that Ruth had been kidnapped by a passing motorist or met with an accident and was in a hospital unable to identify herself. Or it was possible that, since it had been a bitterly cold day, she had stopped in some doorway to warm herself and had come to harm there? Cellars, vacant lots, and flats in the section were searched. When no further clue had been revealed after forty-eight hours, Commissioner Woods, at Henry’s insistence, sent out a general alarm. Since then, there had been countless dead-end rumors and vague tips, and the fear that there was still something waiting for them in all that melting ice.
Once Henry left, Grace and Kron mapped out a plan. Grace would investigate Ruth Cruger while Kron would try to learn more about Cocchi.
“Kronnie,” she said, “you are the only man I can trust to dig up the real facts. There is something crooked behind the whole thing.” Kron had sensed that, too. There had to be something that everyone else had missed.
Grace’s part of the investigation required leaving the office because this was not a legal case. Not yet. They had to be discreet. So Grace put her black hat on and searched vacant lots and old buildings by herself. She spoke with Ruth’s classmates at Wadleigh High School and friends of hers from church. She also talked to Seymour Many and some of the Columbia boys whom the police had already questioned. But Grace had heard enough to support her initial feelings about Ruth Cruger’s character. Ruth had been going out occasionally (and secretly) with some college students, but she was not, as the police were saying, a “wayward girl.” Grace was unsure about much of this case. But she was getting very sure of that.
That is how Grace found herself at Cocchi’s shop, staring at nothing she felt was probably something. Grace walked casually because she knew no one would look twice at her if she behaved normally. Her black hat shielded her face and allowed her to blend in. Satisfied with her investigation of the store, she moved down the street. A few doors down from the shop, she met a garage man and asked about Cocchi.
“There’s something phony about that guy,” the mechanic said. “Cocchi kept his shop closed for three days after that girl disappeared.” He thought about it a minute. “Mind you, now, I’m not saying a word, but he put a sign up ‘Closed for Repairs’ and he kept the door locked.”
The man also said that Cocchi had hired a twelve-year-old neighborhood boy named Herbert Roemmele to work for him before and after school hours. Grace asked if this boy had been working with Cocchi when Ruth Cruger went missing. The man thought a minute and said that was the day the boy was fired. Grace found the boy easily; he lived only a block or so away. Grace didn’t have any children of her own, but her sister did, so she knew how to talk to them. When Grace got to the door of the tenement, she stared up the beetling cliff of dirty windows. After finding the apartment, Grace talked to the boy’s mother, who agreed to let the lady lawyer have a brief interview with her son.
In the room with Herbert, Grace smiled and asked him if he could draw. When the boy nodded yes, Grace asked if he might draw the inside of the motorcycle store for her. Kind of like a map, she said. Herbert dipped his head and got to work drawing a sketch of Mr. Cocchi’s shop for her, though in his sketch it was disappointingly bare. Herbert drew six lockers on one end, which he said policeman used for their raincoats and lamps. Herbert got more talkative as he drew. He told Grace how on one particular day the giant sidecars were all standing on end and placed to cover up the rear of the store. “Like boats,” Herbert said. That day was in February.
On that day, Herbert told Grace, everything was normal. Herbert went to the store after school as usual. He remembered that Mr. Cocchi told him he was too busy to be bothered. But that wasn’t out of the ordinary. Herbert remembered playing with Mr. Cocchi’s little son Athos out on the street, but Mr. Cocchi came out and said they were making too much noise.
Herbert said that Mr. Cocchi was smoking a lot of cigarettes and seemed upset. He told Grace that it was probably because of Mrs. Cocchi. They were always fighting. When Herbert went back to the store after school the next day, several policemen stopped him and sent him to Brooklyn for some nails, which they said were needed by Mr. Cocchi. Herbert heard hammering. “When I came back after school,” said Herbert, “the shop was locked up. He was busy in the cellar.”
The next day, Herbert again showed up to work.
“You clear out,” Mr. Cocchi told Herbert. “I don’t need you anymore.”
On the third morning, Herbert saw Mr. Cocchi’s name in the newspaper. He went down to the store and shouted to Mr. Cocchi, but he could not get in. The door was still locked.