Echoes in the Darkness

by Joseph Wambaugh

  As for his mentor it would be a very busy summer. He now had a whole bunch of people to keep apart.

  Apparently, Bill Bradfield had talked to Susan Reinert about his fear that some of the folks in his summer seminar might not be up to snuff, morally speaking.

  Susan fired off a contemptuous letter early that summer showing that she was aware of his friendship with Rachel:

  I think it’s a bit hypocritical for you to rave about St. Johns lack of moral standards and “bed hopping” when you arranged to have your physical needs met from very early on. I wonder if your visits there are so emotionally difficult because you’re unsuccessful in reconciling your own past and present to your idea? Why don’t you accept yourself and not preach celibacy to others. Please think about what you can offer me come September.

  I want: 1) You to love me. 2) You to be separated from Sue. 3) Us to work through our problems.

  Love,

  Sus

  Rachel’s name began explicitly surfacing in Susan’s other letters that summer:

  You have sent out messages to many women that you were interested in them sexually and that you cared for them in a special way, including former students, Sue, Rachel, me. Sue has certainly borne the brunt of it, hence her misdirected anger at me. I’ve also felt jealousy, even of Pat, and now Rachel in particular, but always had a feeling of uniqueness to carry me through. Hope it was justified.

  Long ago I recognized that I wasn’t quite bright enough or disciplined enough for a life of the mind. I opted for a life of service (following my fathers footsteps?) yet I am also my mother’s daughter. I contemplate human relationships, not philosophy or science. Yes, I know they cast light on each other, but still, does this make us incompatible? It’s imperative for us to communicate more with each other. I still think that a serious attempt at therapy would help.

  Susan Reinert related to therapist Roslyn Weinberger that Bill Bradfield would get angry at the mere mention of the psychologists name and ask testily why Susan thought it necessary to talk to “that woman.” He never became aware that she was freely talking to that woman about him.

  That summer, Chris Pappas could not fail to notice that there were lots of nights when Bill Bradfield didn’t sleep in his dormitory room, and it was fairly obvious where he spent those nights. Sue Myers must have gotten the vibes long-distance, because one day when she was especially frazzled from trying to keep the Terra Art store open, she put in a long-distance call to Rachel and simply blurted out her suspicions.

  “This is Sue Myers,” she said, “and I’m sure you and Bill are pretty much an item by now, so I want you to know that I wouldn’t mind giving him up. Maybe you wouldn’t mind delivering that message.”

  And then the telephone practically froze to her hand.

  “She was cold,” Sue Myers later remembered. “ ‘Bitchy’ is a word that doesn’t even work. She was the original ice maiden.”

  Rachel said, “I’m afraid you’re talking to the wrong party. Mister Bradfield isn’t available for messages. I believe he’s sailing this weekend. With Shelly.”

  So Sue Myers stammered something about child molesters and hung up in humiliation, and went back to stewing over things a lot less complex than Bill Bradfield. Things like mid-life crisis and bankruptcy.

  Chris Pappas hadn’t met Rachel until that summer and often wondered about her relationship with Bill Bradfield.

  “I found her to be very straitlaced,” he said. “She had an underdeveloped sense of humor or none at all, but Bill absolutely appreciated her. He once told me that she was the only woman friend he’d ever had who was able to pull herself up by her own bootstraps so admirably. After a bad marriage she’d gotten her life together. She’d managed to save money and was planning to enter Harvard for graduate study.”

  When Bill Bradfield talked of Rachel to Chris Pappas, he smiled sadly and said, “She’s done a lot better in making something of herself than I’ve ever done.”

  Chris wasn’t in the dormitory very long before he learned that Rachel and Bill Bradfield were very close friends, indeed. He was in his bathroom downstairs one morning when Bill Bradfield came rushing in with his face flushed and his beard frazzled, and his blue eyes aglow with rapture.

  He just had to tell someone. It seemed that he and Rachel had had a terrible row and she became furious because of some complimentary things he’d been saying about little Shelly. And when he tried to tell Rachel that he simply saw Shelly as a “perfect human being” she became even angrier. Rachel admitted then that she was hopelessly in love with him and even wanted to have his children. She said that they had so much in common she couldn’t imagine why he could even think of that child.

  And then Bill Bradfield showed young Chris Pappas a look of wonder and said, “I didn’t realize just how much I’m loved by her!”

  Two hours later Chris saw them in the apartment of another former Upper Merion student named Jeff Olsen. Bill Bradfield and Rachel were arm in arm, giggling and chatting. She informed Chris that when Bill Bradfield eventually got his oceangoing sailboat, she was going to have an office on the boat. She’d work while Chris and Bill Bradfield went clamming and fishing and read their Great Books. The ice maiden was tingling. She seemed absolutely girlish.

  Susan Reinert made several calls to the dorm that summer and Chris Pappas received them. Bill Bradfield told Chris that he’d made a horrible mistake by offering advice to the troubled woman during the last school year, and now she wouldn’t leave him alone. The weekend after Chris took the first call from Susan Reinert, Bill Bradfield made a sudden overnight trip to Baltimore.

  And on a balmy summer evening Bill Bradfield felt he had to explain Rachel in light of his views on chastity and celibacy. He confessed to Chris that no matter how much he believed in obedience to Gods law, he could not himself obey at all times.

  On that occasion he said, “Because of a weakness in my character, I have an itch and I know that no matter how resolute I try to be, that itch will eventually need scratching. That’s why I’ve never formally converted to Catholicism. But I pray that one day I’ll be a better man.”

  About little Shelly, he informed Chris that he’d decided to “send” her to a Catholic college in California. He was very pleased that she was going to convert to Catholicism. He hoped she’d go on to an advanced degree at some Catholic university.

  That summer, Bill Bradfield also confessed to Chris Pappas that his life had not turned out as he’d dreamed it in this, his forty-fifth year. He hinted to the young man that perhaps one day he would marry Shelly when she was finished with her education, and that he could then develop the character and lifestyle he’d always wanted and couldn’t manage thus far.

  Bill Bradfield told Chris Pappas that he looked upon him as a younger brother, not just a friend, and that he was confessing things that he’d told no other. He swore that he would not be physically intimate with Shelly and that he did love the girl whom he saw as something good and real in his life. His relationship with her had inspired him to want to finish a poem he’d begun ten years earlier. It was called “Bloodroot.”

  It seemed that “Bloodroot” had to do with Maria, a girl he’d once loved in Baltimore. One day when he went to visit her, Maria’s parents gave him the terrible news that she’d died suddenly. He had begun the poem in memory of their love, but could never finish it. Now that he’d found this young and fresh and unsullied girl to remind him of the purity of Maria, he was determined to complete the poem.

  Bloodroot, the lovely white poppy that grows wild in Pennsylvania, is so vulnerable that it dies at the mere touch of a human being, according to folklore. Apparently, he was implying that he would never “touch” Shelly in that sense.

  During the summer Bill Bradfield and Chris had occasion to spend two days on a rented sailboat with two visitors, Jenny and Shelly. Chris Pappas overheard Bill Bradfield telling Shelly about the “Bloodroot” inspiration, and at first Chris thought he must be mistaken. This tim
e Bill Bradfield said that Maria had been in an iron lung and he told how he had held her hand as she expired. And before his relationship with Bill Bradfield had gone much further, Chris heard it yet a third time, with a different ending.

  It was the same when Bill Bradfield told him of traveling to Cuba at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Chris’s version, Bill Bradfield was ordered to count ships for the CIA. During that mission he was forced to creep up and kill a Cuban guard during an intelligence-gathering mission. He killed the Cuban with a knife.

  So Chris got a knife killing and Vince Valaitis a garroting. Sue Myers secretly did not believe that he’d even been there at all. She heard that Fran Bradfield had accused Bill of running off to New Orleans for two weeks with Tom, their homosexual lodger. And Sue wondered if it was in a New Orleans brothel that he’d “resisted” all those hussies.

  Bill Bradfield once said something about Shelly that Chris Pappas would never forget.

  “That girl is my ticket to heaven,” he said.

  Chris Pappas also spent considerable time that summer hearing that Susan Reinert was the “second-worst teacher at Upper Merion.” He was never sure who was number one.

  “I don’t know why she bothers me like this,” Bill Bradfield told Chris. “I’m just a casual friend. I wish she’d find somebody else for advice and money loans. Sure, I pity her, the poor neurotic creature, but it’s too much being her friend!”

  During the middle of August, Bill Bradfield received a letter from Susan Reinert at St. John’s. As was his custom, he couldn’t bear to part with it and so tried to hide it away when he got home, but as was her custom Sue Myers dug in every nook until she found evidence that he’d been juggling Rachel and Susan Reinert and even little Shelly.

  The letter was postmarked August 13, 1978.

  Sunday morning

  Dear Bill,

  Hi honey. I have been uncomfortable since yesterday’s phone call, so this is an attempt to straighten it out. First, you said some very nice things. Thank you. My missing you is what I’m most aware of. It’s awful. That was why I called you Friday night. Chris was very congenial on the phone, although I’m sure he was wondering why I would be calling you.

  He did say you’ve been working very hard on your papers, but he said a couple of things that made me wonder if you’d been seeing Rachel. When I admitted jealousy yesterday you said it was good. I assume you meant it was good that I care. I HATE it, a waste of time and energy. So do I have any reason to be jealous? If I do, I might as well know. I don’t mind that she’s typing your paper if she wants to. It’s nice that she could help.

  Karen and Michael had a great time while I was visiting you. Everyone was complimentary about what a pleasure they were. That really made me feel good. I’m glad I went. I also got to know Rachel better.

  Glad you went to a party. We have a tendency to give fun the lowest priority. Hope that, overall, the summer has been worth the agony.

  I know you miss me, but I fear that in your loneliness you might turn to someone else who’s there. I’ve never understood the dynamics of our relationship anyhow. When I went to Pat’s to pick up Karen and Michael I discovered that Sue Myers had shown some people a very nasty reaction at the mention of my name. I wish Sue would leave Upper Merion or that you would finally leave her. I don’t know what I can do. I do not want to go back to that same scene. This summer has been great without it, which explains my present mood. But I still have lots of feelings and worries I don’t like. I’d like to talk to you.

  Am taking Karen and Michael to a baseball game with Parents Without Partners, so must close. Write or call. Thanks for the previous calls. They help. I love you.

  Sus

  From everything Roslyn Weinberger was told, Susan Reinert’s sexual needs were about normal for a single woman of thirty-six years with a proper upbringing.

  “She was interested in sex,” the therapist said, “but only when she was emotionally involved with the person. I could never picture her going to a singles bar to pick someone up.”

  To Pat Schnure, who would probably become Susan Reinert’s best friend, she confessed that the only thing she had learned sexually from Bill Bradfield was that physical sex could be acceptable during menstruation. There was never an indication from Susan Reinert or any other woman that Bill Bradfield was some sort of stud. Rather, there were indications he was more of a snuggler and cuddler than a sexual athlete.

  It was also his custom to tell each of his close friends about his former friend Tom, the gay lodger in his first “common-law” marriage. He always assured his pals that he’d never succumbed to gay overtures, but, clearly, Tom meant something in his life.

  Saturday night is still the best time to take a girl to the movies in a place like Tredyffrin Township. And really, there isn’t a whole lot else to do on steamy August nights except to catch a movie or have a few slices of pizza. And what with the cinema in the Gateway Shopping Center being so crowded on the evening of August 19, 1978, a young couple decided on the pizzeria.

  The moon was low and the young people were sitting on the curb near the Central Penn Bank munching when their attention was diverted by a brown Ford Granada that pulled slowly into the parking lot and stopped next to a Chevrolet van, probably belonging to somebody in the cinema. A man got out of the Ford and walked toward the van and peered inside.

  The young couple suddenly forgot all about pizzas and movies. In the available light they could see that the tall man was wearing a cowl-like hood over his entire face and head. And it looked like he was carrying something in each hand-guns.

  The couple didn’t run away or even walk away. As the young man later put it, they “sort of crawled away.”

  By the time the couple got to a phone and the Tredyffrin Township police had arrived at the shopping center, the hooded gunman had gone. The young man told the police that he didn’t think the gunman had spotted them, and the police concluded that perhaps he’d been planning to break into the van but changed his mind.

  While the young people were still giving their report to the cop, a car pulled into the far end of the parking lot and began cruising slowly in their direction.

  “I think that’s the car!” the young man yelled and the driver turned abruptly and drove away.

  A few minutes later, a sergeant and lieutenant from the township police were the first to spot a brown Ford Granada that resembled the one described on the radio broadcast.

  The Ford was driving erratically, heading south in a northbound traffic lane. The cops went after it and pulled the car over at the Route 202 on-ramp at Valley Forge Road.

  The driver was a tall middle-aged man. He got out and waited as the policemen approached with flashlights, one on each side of the car.

  The cops weren’t yet certain they had the right suspect and the sergeant asked for a drivers license.

  “It’s in the car,” the driver answered calmly. He turned toward the open door and reached down toward the front seat.

  Then, every cops recurring nightmare. The sergeant heard the lieutenant yell something at him. The lieutenant from his side of the car saw it in the flashlight beam: a.22 Ruger.

  “Drop it!” the lieutenant screamed.

  A memory in fragments. A finger slid inside the trigger guard. The gun began rising up. The lieutenant could not shoot.

  “Drop it now!” he screamed.

  A microsecond. Finger pads turned white against blue steel. Then the man said something out of character for a gunman.

  He said, “Oh, my goodness!”

  He dropped the Ruger and was not shot to death.

  The lieutenant later said, “I couldn’t fire even after the first command. I was carrying a hot load in my gun and my sergeant was right behind the guy. I was scared I’d blast through him and blow away my partner. That guy was very lucky.”

  The township police found some unusual items in the car of the lucky guy. There was a black leather pouch on the front seat co
ntaining four loaded handguns. There was a sleeve of a football jersey fashioned into a hood mask. There was a bolt cutter and other tools that the police assumed were to be used to break into the car in the parking lot.

  There was, strangely enough, an oil filter with two bullet holes in the top. Then the cops noticed that the Ruger’s front sight had been filed off and on the barrel of the pistol was a cylinder of rubber, the kind used to insulate a screwdriver against electrical shock. With the front sight gone and the rubber cylinder acting as a gasket sleeve, the barrel of the weapon fit perfectly into the oil filter. The gunman had devised an effective silencer.

  There were things in the car that at a later time would be of great interest to other police during the investigation of a crime of far greater importance. There was a syringe in that car, and another syringe in the gunman’s pocket. A lab report showed the syringe was loaded with ethchlorvynol, also called Placidyl, a tranquilizing drug that, taken orally, can induce sleep. A bloodstream injection can produce unconsciousness within a minute.

  The gunman told the cops that he was merely carrying guns to “scare some kids” who’d been bothering him. He said that the drug-loaded syringe belonged to his son-in-law who was an addict. What the son-in-law was doing with such a massive dose was not clear. It was one of the most bizarre aspects of this incident that was not explained.

  There was an ordinary plastic trash bag in the backseat of the car and more bags in the trunk. There was a blue plaid jacket in the car with rolls of strapping tape in the pockets. There was a pair of gloves.

  The Tredyffrin Township police were the first to receive a piece of news that would occupy the local newspapers for months to come. Their hooded gunman was Dr. Jay C. Smith, the fifty-year-old principal of Upper Merion Senior High School in nearby King of Prussia.

  Of course, the police station was humming that night. Yet the cops weren’t even beginning to sense the imminent revelations in the secret life of the local educator.