OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS, the trial proceeded just as we’d hoped it would. Mr. Kingsley’s handwriting analysis was accepted by the judge as thoroughly scientific. Mr. Kaufman’s only hope—that he could persuade George Ewing to confess to the threatening letters and gunshots in exchange for some sort of bribe—fell apart when Mr. Ewing took the stand and gave a simple and truthful account of his role in the attacks against us. He acknowledged that he’d been in the car on the day of our buggy accident and that he’d been with Mr. Kaufman and some other men on a few other occasions, but said that he hadn’t written any letters except the last ones, which contained his signature, and had never taken a shot at our house or thrown a brick through our window. He said that Mr. Kaufman had coerced him into writing those final letters with the idea that they would shift the blame for the entire mess. He added that when he was caught, Mr. Kaufman threatened him harm if he didn’t take responsibility for everything.
Henry Kaufman took the stand in his defense but had little to say beyond his denial of the charges.
“Do you admit to having caused your motor car to collide with a buggy driven by the Misses Kopp on July 14 of last year?” Attorney Lynch asked.
“I do,” he said, “and I have paid my fine.” He spoke woodenly, as if he had memorized the answers. He was paler than when I’d last seen him and a bit thinner. He was no longer a man who looked like he was about to explode. I wondered if his attorney had persuaded him to reduce his drinking before the trial.
“Do you admit to driving to the Kopp home in Wyckoff to harass them and shoot at them after the collision?”
“I do not.”
“Are you the writer of the threatening letters sent to the Misses Kopp from August to November of last year?”
“I am not.”
“Mr. Kaufman,” Attorney Lynch said, approaching the witness stand with a sheaf of papers, “did you not provide these handwriting samples to the sheriff’s office, which were used to positively match your handwriting to that of the writer of the letters?”
Mr. Kaufman leaned forward and squinted at the paper. “I admit to writing the name ‘Constance Kopp’ at the suggestion of the sheriff, but the rest of it was coerced.”
“Coerced?” said Attorney Lynch with a smile. “By what means were you coerced?”
Mr. Kaufman looked around until he found me. “She was there!” he said, rising and pointing at me. “She trapped me and forced me to write out handwriting samples against my will.”
The men in the jury box smiled.
“Forced you?” Attorney Lynch said, taking a step back in amazement. “By what means does a lady like Miss Kopp force a grown man to do anything he doesn’t want to do?”
Mr. Kaufman looked down and mumbled something.
“Could you repeat that for the jury?” Attorney Lynch asked.
He looked up and said, in a loud, plain voice, “She’s not a regular lady.”
AFTER HIS TESTIMONY CONCLUDED, the jury took only two and a half hours to convict Henry Kaufman. He was fined one thousand dollars and, having no means of paying the fine, was taken into custody. Mrs. Garfinkel and her father hadn’t returned for the conclusion of the trial, and none of Mr. Kaufman’s associates had made an appearance, either. When he was led away, there was no one to say goodbye to him.
The verdict was read at two-thirty in the afternoon. By three o’clock we were standing in front of the courthouse saying our goodbyes to the sheriff, his deputies, and the attorneys. The reporters were trying to get Fleurette’s attention, but Sheriff Heath put Deputy Morris by her side to keep them away.
It was a perfect summer afternoon, with a jewel-blue sky above us and clouds that looked like they had been painted on. A breeze had risen to push the heat out of Newark’s fetid streets, and a willow tree planted alongside the courthouse waved its drooping branches, whispering like the rush of water. Everything looked cleaner and brighter than it had when the trial began. The granite courthouse behind us, the rows of brick offices and shops across the street, and the trolleys running along their tracks, all seemed to speak of a crisp and orderly world in which people could walk the streets in peace. The attorneys and deputies laughed and joked with one another, and they, too, seemed younger and brighter in the light of a favorable verdict and a clear June day.
We said all the thanks we could think to say and a silence fell over the group. Norma and Fleurette turned to walk to the train station. Sheriff Heath took me by the arm and led me away from them. We walked down the stairs, and then he stopped and turned to me.
“You had more of a role in this than anyone in that courtroom knew,” he said.
“Oh—” I looked at him in surprise. “Well. We all did our part.”
The sun glared on the white steps and he squinted at me with that half-smile, half-frown I still hadn’t learned to read.
“What you did will serve you well in your new occupation,” he said.
I laughed. “Occupation? I have no occupation. That’s just the trouble. If we—”
He didn’t let me finish. “Miss Kopp. I think you’d make a fine deputy.”
“Deputy?”
“Deputy sheriff.”
My throat went dry. I had to swallow before I spoke. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled and looked down at his feet, then raised his eyes to mine.
“I’m offering you a job, Miss Kopp.”