J. Jance - Trial By Fire

“What about the people at the nurses’ station?” Ali asked. “I’ve spoken to several of them in the past couple of hours. They all know who I am and that I’m associated with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. For that matter, what about the killer? No doubt he or she has been following press coverage of the incident with avid interest. If that’s the case, the perp might very well have seen me on TV during that initial press conference. Aside from all that, what about the two entries I made in the visitors’ logbook?”

Sister Anselm leaned down and pawed through the contents of her large purse before emerging with two pieces of jagged-edged notebook paper.

“You mean these?” she asked, handing them over.

When Ali examined the papers, she saw that they were indeed her handwritten entries from the visitors’ log. “You pulled them?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” Sister Anselm admitted with a smile. “I can always reinsert them later, but for right now it’s a good idea for them to disappear. As I said, Agent Robson isn’t the only person around here who’s willing to adjust the truth when it’s deemed necessary.”

For a long time, Ali said nothing.

“You’re still not convinced, are you?” Sister Anselm said.

“No,” Ali agreed. “I guess not. Not enough to try to persuade Sheriff Maxwell to go along with this.”

Sister Anselm sighed and nodded. “I suppose I’d best tell you the rest of the story then,” she said, “but that’s going to require another round of tea.” She raised her hand and caught Cynthia’s eye.

“My guest requires further convincing,” she said when Cynthia approached the table. “Hit us again, please. We’ll both have some more of your wonderful tea.”

By the time the second pots of tea came, most of the scones and sandwiches were gone.

“Have you ever heard of displaced persons?” Sister Anselm asked.

“In conjunction with World War Two, or from some other war?” Ali asked.

“World War Two,” Sister Anselm said.

“I’ve heard about them,” Ali replied. “They were people set adrift in Europe in the aftermath of the war. Often they were people whose homes and livelihoods had been destroyed. In some cases their very countries had disappeared, or if the country remained, they had no way of getting back there.”

“That’s my history in a nutshell,” Sister Anselm said with a sad smile.

“How is that possible?” Ali returned. “You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“I was born an American,” Sister Anselm said. “And I’m an American now, but that wasn’t always the case. My mother was born and raised in Milwaukee. My father was born in Germany, but he immigrated to this country in the mid-thirties. I suppose you’ve heard of the Japanese war-relocation centers that were operated in this country during World War Two.”

“Yes,” Ali said with a nod.

“Are you aware there were German war-relocation centers as well?”

“I never heard of them,” Ali said.

“You and everybody else,” Sister Anselm said, “but they did exist. My father, Hans Becker, was a printer working for a German-language newspaper in Milwaukee when he met and became engaged to my mother, Sophia Krueger. Her parents disapproved of the match, but Hans and Sophia married anyway and had two children-my older sister, Rebecca, and me. Everything was fine for a while, but then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

“December seventh is my birthday. On that day in 1941, Becka was twelve and I turned ten. We were supposed to have a party. Instead, officers from the INS showed up at our front door, arrested my father, and took him into custody. They led him away in handcuffs. For most of the next year he was held in an INS facility in Wisconsin.”

Ali had guessed Sister Anselm to be somewhere in her early seventies. Listening to the story, she realized that the nun was older than she had originally thought.

“So there was my mother. She was left with no husband, no income, and two children. When we could no longer afford to live in the apartment, we moved in with our grandparents. I believe they thought that by taking us in, they would have a chance to extricate their daughter from what they considered to be a disastrous marriage.

“My grandmother was not a nice woman. She was vindictive and mean. She tried her best to turn Becka and me against our father. One day she let slip to Becka that she and our grandfather were the ones who had set the authorities on our father. My mother never spoke to her mother again.”

“Even while you were living in their house?”

“Even then,” Sister Anselm nodded. “For a long time after that, Becka and I carried notes back and forth between our grandparents and our mother. Finally we heard that Father was going to be transferred to a newly established relocation camp in Crystal City, Texas. By then he had developed TB and was desperately ill. When Mother learned there was virtually no medical care at the camp, she asked to accompany him. The Justice Department told her that the only way that would be permitted would be if she renounced her citizenship.”

“That’s what she did?” Ali asked.

“Yes,” Sister Anselm said. “As far as my mother was concerned, living with her parents was more onerous than living in a prison camp. But when she renounced her citizenship, it turned out she renounced ours as well. We packed everything we could carry into suitcases, and off we went to Texas on the train.”

“What happened to your grandparents?”

Sister Anselm shrugged. “I never saw them again. After the war, I tried to contact them. My letters were returned unopened. But that’s getting ahead of the story. We went to Texas. Our father was very ill. Mother took care of him and worked for chits at the German mercantile store. Becka and I went to school. She hated the camp. I loved it. There were lots of families whose circumstances were similar to ours-Japanese, German, and Italian. The guards did their best to keep the groups separate, but that didn’t work for the kids at school. I made friends with all of them. My father had taught us to speak German at home, but I learned to speak Japanese and Italian, too.”

No wonder Sister Anselm is concerned about broken relationships, Ali thought. She said, “You still haven’t told me how you became a displaced person.”

“I’m coming to that,” Sister Anselm said. “By early 1943, the prisoners at the Crystal City facility were being repatriated, but because Mother had renounced her U.S. citizenship, we were sent ‘back’ to Germany with our father, even though my mother, my sister, and I had never set foot outside the United States.

“In the dead of winter, we were shipped to New York City by train and put on the Swedish ocean liner Gripsholm. After a stormy crossing the ship finally docked in Marseilles. From there we were supposed to be taken first to Switzerland and then, finally, on to a prisoner exchange in Germany, but by the time we landed in Marseilles, Father was too ill to travel. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he died a few days later.”

“So there you were, stuck in France,” Ali said.

Sister Anselm smiled. “That was bad enough. We were penniless. We had no connections there, just as we had no connections in Germany, and none of us spoke French. Not only that, by then Mother, too, had developed TB. Eventually she was moved to a sanatorium outside Paris that was operated by the Sisters of Providence.”

“What about you and your sister?” Ali asked.

“Since we had nowhere else to go and no one to look after us, we went there, too. While our mother was dying in the sanatorium, Becka and I lived in a Sisters of Providence convent adjacent to the hospital, one that housed the nuns who worked as nurses in the sanatorium.