Echoes in the Darkness (1987)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Where am / gonna be at?"

  "If they convict me?"

  "Yeah."

  "They'll probably send me to the electric chair."

  "No shit!" Martray said. "Look what it does to me"

  "It's a problem," Jay Smith said, sympathetically.

  "It's a loose end," Martray said. "Just like you said before, get rid of loose ends."

  "I think if they were to arrest me for Reinert, the best thing for you to do is to go kill Bradfield and make him disappear" Jay Smith said, casually

  "He would disappear. That's it. You made the comment. That's it."

  "But see . . ."

  "You don't have to say any more," said Martray.

  But Jay Smith had more to say. "Get him back in your car. Kill him and take his body up into some woods, up in Fayetteville or someplace, but nobody, see, nobody should know where his body is but you. When you deal with a body, only you should know. You should never let anyone else know. Do you see the advantage to that?"

  "Yeah."

  And then, just when it looked as though Martray had Dr. Jay on the verge of an all-out admission, the former principal said, "There's nothing that Bradfield could do to hurt me other than lie, and that's it."

  Then the talk turned to more mundane matters such as escaping from jail with electric hacksaws.

  In July, Jay Smith wanted Ray Martray to drive up to Dallas to pay him a visit. Martray contacted the task force in Harrisburg and agreed to wear a body wire. They videotaped Martray and Jay Smith standing in the prison visiting area. It was nearly 100 degrees outside. Inside the panel truck where the electronics technician and Jack Holtz were hiding it was a lot hotter. They shot the visiting area with a telephoto lens from outside the fence.

  It wasn't a great performance by their man. He was overacting from the moment he stepped back inside the walls of Dallas prison. One of the first moves Martray made after the handshakes were over was to playfully give Dr. Jay a little bump with his hip after he'd said something that wasn't particularly funny in the first place.

  Cute, Jack Holtz thought. Showing off because he's wearing a body wire.

  Then he made Holtz even madder by hopping around Jay Smith like some kind of oversized puppy, nervously talking over the top of everything Jay Smith was saying. He was too hyper to let Jay Smith complete a single phrase that afternoon.

  Jay Smith just stood there and put his hand up in front of his mouth in case a guard in a tower could read lips with binoculars. And he pretty well said the same things that they'd been hearing on the telephone tapes. The cops were really sick of the bullshit.

  The temperature in the van soared up over 140 degrees and the camera lens started sweating and they lost their video for a while.

  On that video, Jay Smith looked for all the world like what he'd been trained to be, a schoolteacher. He gave out lots of advice and acted as though he were humoring his boy by talking about some robberies he was going to pull with Martray to make them both rich. And he figured he wouldn't have too much longer to do, what with a good shot at a favorable appeal. He just chatted as little kids scampered around the area while their mommies visited daddies and boyfriends.

  Jay Smith was absolutely avuncular through most of it, but since no Jay Smith meeting would be complete without a little sex talk he told Martray about a mutual friend who was starting to disappoint him a whole lot. He'd started using drugs. And as Uncle Jay put it, "He likes to suck black cocks when he's high."

  The cops figured they'd sweated off a combined total of twenty-five pounds while Raymond Martray chewed more scenery than Olivier in Richard HI.

  Three months later, Martray got a chance to redeem himself with yet another videotaping. It was a lot cooler for the cops inside the panel truck. Jay Smith was wearing a long-sleeved shirt this time, carrying glasses and a couple of pencils in his shirt pocket. You'd swear he was the pious chaplain making his rounds.

  This time Martray's performance, even though he'd been coached by Jack Holtz, went more over the top. He was just too anxious.

  Martray blurted out that he was going to "take care" of Bill Bradfield, and it was clear that Jay Smith was very wary of this kind of talk.

  Jay Smith said, "But I had nothing to do with the murder, Ray."

  Then Raymond Martray danced around and promised that he'd never let Jay down. He referred to him as a criminal genius, but Jay Smith kept repeating that he had nothing to do with the Reinert murder, and all the while Martray still never let him finish a sentence.

  The cops figured they'd better sprinkle Valium on Martray's waffles before they tried this again. He was so breathless Jay Smith might have to give him CPR.

  After about a hundred "like you said's" and "like you told me's" that Jay Smith didn't seem to be buying, the older man apparently decided to quiet his disciple down with, what else? A little sex talk. Jay Smith gave Raymond Martray graphic advice on how to please a lady with cunnilingus.

  As relevant film making, these two shows ranked with a Sylvester Stallone movie. The mini-task force was not thrilled.

  Bill Bradfield, still out on bail while appealing his conviction, had lost his job with the school district and been forced to withdraw his claim against the estate of Susan Reinert.

  Bill Bradfield now knew that he would not be following the trail of Achilles and Hector and the thousand black ships. He would not be playing the lyre on the bridge of a ketcn with some young disciple peeping up his tunic. He'd have to content himself with sailing boats in his mothers bathbub.

  But he was hoping to continue to breathe the free air of Chester County.

  During a small dinner party at a lawyers' club in Philadelphia just after his conviction, Bill Bradfield said, "The key to my dilemma is to be found in Ezra Pound, two cantos in particular. It's that I've loved my friends imperfectly."

  When he was offered the wine list he refused to choose, saying, "I have no palate for wine."

  One was reminded that it was Ezra Pound who wrote: "There's no wine like the blood's crimson!"

  Chapter 23

  The Decree

  They decided in the fall of 1981 to try for a murder indictment against William Bradfield. From October of that year until March of the next, Jack Holtz and Rick Guida had to contend with the aggravation of running back and forth on the turnpike between Harrisburg and Philly to interview witnesses for grand jury testimony.

  The grand jury term ran for five months, but each months session lasted only a few days. Because their case was so complicated they never had enough time, and actually had to present their evidence piecemeal and hope they could finish by March.

  In November Bill Bradfields day arrived. He had to begin serving a four-month jail sentence for the theft of Susan Reinerts money. He was sent to Delaware County Prison but knew he had a good chance of getting out on bail pending his appeal. Cops have long suspected that the law dictionaries of America have omitted the Fs, as in "final," "finish," etc.

  Jack Holtz made an uncannily accurate prediction. He told Rick Guida that Bill Bradfield would find himself a friend in prison, and he described the friend. He said it would be a big, street-smart black guy, and that Bill Bradfield would have to talk about the case sooner or later because he always had to tell his troubles to somebody.

  Jay Smith had been in prison quite a while before he made any friends at all, but Bill Bradfield was no soloist. He needed friends worse than Mary, Queen of Scots. He started looking around.

  It wasn't long before he was playing chess with a twentyfour-year-old black inmate named Proctor Nowell. And it wasn't long before Proctor Nowell stepped between another black con and Bill Bradfield in the role of protector. Nowell later said that Bill Bradfield had promised that when they got out of jail he'd buy an apartment house in Philly and let Nowell manage it.

  After a month in jail, Bill Bradfield was successful in getting a release from prison on bail pending his appeal. Jack Holtz figured that a month had been plenty of time for a man as
garrulous as Bill Bradfield. Lou DeSantis called Franklin Center, the state police station closest to the prison, and discovered that Bill Bradfield had been friends with two black inmates, one of whom was Nowell.

  During the months that the grand jury was hearing portions of their case, Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis paid a visit to Nowell at the prison.

  Nowell was an alcoholic who'd been convicted of robbery and had a history of petty crimes.

  Jack Holtz learned that Nowell had lads, and he played on that angle, describing Karen and Michael Reinert to the convict. It was a short interview in which Nowell admitted that Bill Bradfield had told him "things," but said he didn't want to talk about it.

  The cops said to call them if he changed his mind, and that was that. Jack Holtz wasn't holding out too much hope, but within two days he got the call.

  It was Nowell who, like Raymond Martray, said, "I know stuff, but it scares me." He didn't want to talk to them in prison.

  Jack Holtz went to the district attorney's office in Delaware County to see his old friend from Orphans Court, John Reilly, and had Nowell placed on a court list. The convict was brought in with prisoners who'd be attending hearings.

  They met in a private room in the court house, and Proctor Nowell told them of conversations with Bill Bradfield. Jack Holtz called Rick Cuida and they arranged yet another session with Nowell who remained constant throughout their questioning.

  Proctor Nowell also needed a friend. He was committed to the alcohol rehabilitation program as an alternative to jail, and agreed to appear before the grand jury.

  With Nowell as the last link in their circumstantial chain, they decided it was time to arrest Bill Bradfield, this time for three counts of murder. The arrest plan was only a little less complicated than the Falklands invasion, and about as necessary.

  The date was April 6th, the time was 5:00 a.m. Bill

  Bradfield, according to their intelligence reports, was living with Rachel in a guesthouse on his mothers property. Reports from neighbors said that he had a large attack dog, and from Chris Pappas they learned that he had other hunting weapons in the farmhouse.

  The arrest team was composed of Jack Holtz, Lou DeSantis, another trooper, and a woman trooper to make the call just as before. Prosecutor Rick Guida went along, and by 5:00 a.m. he'd already smoked half a pack of cigarettes, but after all, it was his first arrest.

  Before daybreak they started watching the house with a nightscope they'd borrowed for the occasion. It outweighed two bowling balls and through the thing they could see nothing but green haze.

  Jack Holtz and the woman trooper went to a neighbor and awakened the household. Not wanting to alarm the folks in rural Chester County unduly, they said they were working a burglary investigation and needed to use the phone.

  But the neighbor said, "You shouldn't waste your time with burglars. We have murderers around here."

  And while the woman trooper called, the neighbor proceeded to tell them all about this fellow Bill Bradfield. He said they should throw him in jail instead of some burglar.

  Rachel answered the phone and said that Bill Bradfield was in Birdsboro and wouldn't be back until the next day. She seemed used to female callers.

  So the whole shooting match was off to a house in Birdsboro where they'd already heard he was spending time with a friend and was selling diet products.

  The police code was "We've located the package," presumably because they feared the master criminal was tuned in to the police frequency. Actually, Bill Bradfield would probably have approved of this caper.

  It was still dark when they arrived. Their quarry was a notoriously bad driver and they spotted a VW Beetle parked half on the sidewalk. It was a quiet neighborhood. They said their code words and synchronized their watches and got all dressed up in their flak vests and jacked rounds into their shotguns.

  The chief of police of this little place moseyed by in his car, and wondered what in hell was going on. The only thing they didn't have were helicopters and a chaplain.

  When they knocked at the door and scared the living crap out of the resident, he admitted that he was forming a company to sell diet products with his pal Bill who was in bed sleeping. They pushed by him and crept into the back of the house with enough firepower to knock down the Luftwaffe.

  Hie first thing Jack Holtz saw in the darkness when his pupils dilated was a set of flashing teeth. Canine teeth. Large.

  He yelled, "If it moves, shoot it!"

  And Bill Bradfield, who was awake in bed, thought they were talking about him. He went as rigid as Lenin's mummy. He wasn't even breathing as the cops crept toward the flashing teeth. He didn't twitch when Jack Holtz yelled, "Show me your hands!"

  Somebody turned on the lights. The "attack" dog was an English setter named Traveler who needed attention and cuddling almost as much as the guy in bed. Traveler was so happy he leaped up on Jack Holtz and started licking his face. Bill Bradfield almost turned blue before someone told him it was okay to inhale.

  Jack Holtz got a great deal of joy out of reading the arrest warrant to Bill Bradfield. He read it with verve. He wanted to read it twice. He was crazy about the part where it said conspiracy to commit murder with person or persons unknown.

  He finished it when Bill Bradfield was standing and dressed. Big Bill gave his famous stare to Rick Guida who'd been told by an FBI agent that the Bradfield stare had once made him fall back two steps.

  The stare practically demolished Guida. He was literally floored. He sat down on the floor and played with Traveler.

  When Jack Holtz got Bill Bradfield back to the lockup in Harrisburg and took off the handcuffs," his prisoner, who'd been as silent as fungus, decided to make life hard for him. Bill Bradfield just dropped down on the floor and lay there on his back.

  Jack Holtz said, "If you're gonna act like a baby, I'll treat you like one."

  But no baby ever got this treatment. Holtz reached down and grabbed two handfuls of Bill Bradfield's whiskers and curled him straight up until they were nose to nose.

  Bill Bradfield gave Jack Holtz the stare, but Jack Holtz stared back and said, "That bullshit only works on intelligent people."

  Jack Holtz had called Betty VanNort earlier to tell her they were going to arrest William Bradfield for murder, and he went to her house at 7:30 a.m. after they had him in custody.

  Betty VanNort said that she'd been awake half the night praying for them. They had a cup of tea together.

  Bill Bradfield was sent to the state correctional institution at Camp Hill. He was placed in "Mohawk," the administrative custody section for new fish who haven't been placed in the general population yet, or who need special protection. Prisoners in Mohawk are in individual cells and shout messages down the corridor to each other.

  According to the information relayed to Jack Holtz, Bill Bradfield was trying to sleep when a black convict yelled, "Braaaaadfield, you killed my schoolteacher. Braaaaadfield, you killed those little babies."

  Courtroom number four in the Dauphin County Courthouse was far too small to accommodate the spectators and reporters.

  Judge Isaac S. Garb was highly respected in Harrisburg, known for keeping a trial moving and for being fair to both sides. He was a very diminutive man and once when Rick Guida said, "Your honor, I need a few minutes. I have just one short witness," the judge replied, "Mister Guida, there aren't any short witnesses in this case. There are brief witnesses."

  The defense attorney for Bill Bradfield was a nice-looking young fellow, Cuidas age. Joshua Lock was a second-generation Harrisburg lawyer, his father having been a county district attorney.

  By his own admission he became "personally involved" almost from his first meetings with Bill Bradfield. It isn't the best idea in the world to become personally involved with clients, and he knew that, but he truly admired Bill Bradfield. Once during a strategy session, apropos of something they were discussing, Bill Bradfield gave him a thumbnail sketch of the study of grammar and linguistics, as
well as literary criticism that the lawyer wished he could've put before the jury.

  Unlike Guida, Lock believed that Bill Bradfield was highly intelligent, as was the one remaining disciple, Rachel. But Lock found Rachel to be "very very very very very very strange." And that's all he'd say for the record.

  There may have been trial lawyers who worked harder for their clients in 1983, but if so, they probably didn't live to tell of it. Lock personally, and without assistance, compiled notebooks bigger than the Philadelphia telephone directory on virtually every important witness for the prosecution. With the most elaborate and precise cross-references to each FBI report, state police report, and every bit of testimony given before state or federal grand juries or during any other proceedings thus far. His idea was to present a dozen different possibilities for the jury as to where to look for killers.

  Naturally, one possibility was Dr. Jay C. Smith. Lock viewed him as a depraved maniac, street-smart and complicated, who'd battled his way up in ways that Bill Bradfield never had. As far as Lock was concerned, Jay Smith had proved himself a liar a hundred times over. He hoped to provide other suspects for the jury to consider, and to point out that a circumstantial case could be viewed many ways. His approach was to be intellectual and scholarly.

  He'd spent twenty-eight days in the prison visiting room with William Bradfield. He would spend a total of fifteen hundred hours on the defense of his client.

  Lock respected Rick Guida, because when other prosecutors were backing away from the notorious circumstantial case, he'd seized the opportunity. He saw Guida as an egocentric, ambitious, aggressive prosecutor, and he was probably right on all counts.

  In fact, Guida was too egocentric to analyze the opposition. Josh Lock was obviously a competent lawyer and that was that. Guida didn't spend much time thinking about the other guys strengths and weaknesses. As far as he and Jack Holtz were concerned, their case could almost rest on the credibility of only one witness. Jack Holtz said that he would be Guida's best witness: that was William Bradfield.

  Rick Guida's strategy was to put on the weakest first, and that would encompass all of the forensics. Josh Lock was very strong on forensics. By the time Lock got through with the pathologist, it sounded as though Lock could have done the autopsy.