Echoes in the Darkness

by Joseph Wambaugh

Dear Mentor,

  In reference to your letter of the fifth, this from Sonnet 25: “Then happy I that love and am belov’d …”

  I thank you for the Kenner reference list. What is my library going to look like when I’ve finished the book? My husband may have to cut my chocolate chip allowance to give me more book money. I haven’t gone any farther in The Pound Era than the first chapter, but I’ve read that twice. Maybe when I get to the last chapter I’ll understand his English even if I don’t know what he’s referring to.

  I knew some of the terms you wanted me to look up from Greek, and I’m pretty sure I understand the others. You’ll just have to see me in person to quiz me, won’t you? (Heh heh. Devilish laugh. I’m so devious.) When we’re bound for Greece, I’ll get up every morning and declaim from “The Seafarer” or “The Wanderer.”

  I was reading a book by C. S. Lewis the other day and it captures perfectly a certain type of happiness. What I’m building up to is that if your letters or visits or love makes me cry, it also makes me feel like having a great deal of buttered toast.

  Love always

  Chastity until their inevitable marriage is also on the girl’s mind, even as passion awakens.

  Dearest Love,

  I’ve been to see the monsignor about your annulments. He says there should be no problem about Fran since she married outside the Catholic Church. The problem comes up with Muriel. The Church considers a civil marriage between two Protestants valid, so we have to know if you were validly married according to civil law.

  On to more pleasant topics. I love you madly, passionately, eternally, and infinitely. There, I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest. Seriously, I miss you so terribly. Do you know what I’ve been doing? Whenever I come into my room, if there’s no one there, I kiss my pillow and pretend it’s you. I can’t believe how silly I am.

  I tell myself I will not be ruled by my passions, that it’s silly to think I’m not strong enough to get through college without you, but I’m lying through my teeth. I want you, heart’s-all-beloved-my-own, and I need you to be with me. I don’t see how I can survive days, let alone years.

  Will anyone ever recognize the quality of our love? I think not, but somehow I don’t care.

  I’m enclosing St. Josephs prayer for you to replace the copy I gave you. You are my dearest darling.

  Always and all ways yours,

  Shelly’s letters also reflect her concerns about his holy war, namely to protect his colleague Susan Reinert from the evil Dr. Smith.

  Sweetheart,

  Your letter came yesterday. I was so happy to get it that I almost kissed it right there in the dining hall.

  I’m so sorry that school is troublesome and that Dr. Smith is such a worry to you. As for that teacher, my claws start unsheathing when I think of her. Please be careful, William. We have a long time still to go and if you should get hurt before you are mine in everyone’s eyes I don’t know what I would do. It’s hard enough to be circumspect as it is. Won’t it be nice when I can be at your back as you fight your battles?

  In May, Susan Reinert had to see her friend Pat Schnure on a matter of urgency. She was agitated to the point of tears.

  “I’ve heard that Sue Myers is also going to England this summer!” Susan confided.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know! But that’s not the worst part. I can hardly believe Bill did it!”

  “What?”

  “The testimony at the Jay Smith trial. He lied. You see, I was with him at the shore when he says he saw Jay Smith. He never mentioned seeing Jay Smith at that time. He would’ve mentioned it to me. We were together almost constantly.”

  “What do you make of it? Why would he lie for Jay Smith?”

  “I don’t know, but he did.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Did you accuse him of it?”

  “Of course. He’s outraged. He says that I don’t remember. He says I’m confused. He’s furious that I don’t believe him.”

  “Are you going to overlook it or what?”

  “Overlook it? I don’t know. I could live with a certain amount of dishonesty from Bill, I suppose. I know about all the romantic entanglements and so forth. But lying under oath? Perjury? I don’t know if I can live with it.”

  The only person ever to see William Bradfield with Jay Smith outside of school was a teacher at Upper Merion, a friend of Susan Reinert, who spotted them at a diner on The Main Line.

  “I was going in and they were coming out together,” the teacher told Susan. “They stood in the parking lot and talked for a little while before getting into their cars and leaving.”

  “That explains why Bill was late for our date,” Susan told her friend.

  Susan Reinert was troubled by that incident and saw fit to discuss it again with her friend, in that Bill Bradfield had adamantly denied meeting Jay Smith at a diner or anywhere else.

  “Why?” Susan wondered. “He says he was with Jay Smith at the shore when he wasn’t. And he says he wasn’t with him at the diner when he was!”

  Susan Reinert was troubled. And she obviously had a serious talk with Bill Bradfield about his involvement with Jay Smith, because later, when a friend of hers was speculating about the Bradfield testimony and whether or not Jay Smith really had murdered and disposed of his daughter and her husband, Susan Reinert’s friend asked her point-blank if Bill Bradfield knew anything about the missing couple.

  Susan smiled cryptically and said, “Officially or unofficially? I can say this: Stephanie Hunsberger’s alive. I’m not at liberty to say more than that.”

  And she didn’t say more than that, and her friend didn’t learn what little secrets Bill Bradfield was sharing with her. Clearly, it wasn’t the other secret. The secret that she might be murdered by Jay C. Smith.

  * * *

  There were bits and pieces of Bill Bradfield’s biggest secret, that Jay Smith was going to kill Susan Reinert, that one friend would get and another wouldn’t. There was one little detail that was shared only with Chris Pappas.

  Bill Bradfield said that Jay Smith was extremely angry with Susan Reinert for having jilted him. According to Bill Bradfield, Jay Smith called her a “social climber,” and he was going to deal with the social climber in his own way. He was going to beat her severely before he murdered her.

  All the insurance coverage that Susan Reinert had purchased in the last few months, along with a small policy she’d already had, along with the accidental death rider meant that if she was to die accidently or be murdered within a year, her “future husband” stood to inherit $730,000.

  The last policy came just in time. She’d asked for two copies because her “executor” wanted one, but the company refused. The agent delivered one copy of the policy to the Ardmore home of Susan Reinert on June 20, 1979. She said that she expected to be leaving the country in a matter of days.

  13

  Bloodroot

  For a few weeks Susan Reinert had been concerned about a lump in her breast, but by May 25th she received the good news in writing: “Ultrasonic breast exam showed only some shadowing behind nipple of left breast. No evidence of any lump or mass in either breast. The single calcification is of no consequence except that it might represent the area of shadowing seen on the ultrasound exam.”

  Bill Bradfield told Vince Valaitis that Susan Reinert might die from cancer if Jay Smith didn’t get her first.

  On May 31st she called to tell her therapist, Roslyn Weinberger, about Bill Bradfields testimony in the Jay Smith trial. She called again a week later to say that she believed he’d perjured himself because he was sure that Jay Smith was an innocent man, and that he rationalized his perjury because he was seeking a “higher justice.”

  She said, “I’m not finished with this. I must know the truth. We’ve made a date to talk about it and I’ll have to be satisfied.”

  When asked if she still intended to go to England with Bill Bradfield, Susan Reinert said, “If I do, I may liv
e with him for a while to be sure I can trust him before we marry.”

  Susan Reinert told Roslyn Weinberger that despite her repeated requests he refused to talk to the psychologist and resented Susan’s need to do so.

  “There’s still an open invitation,” her therapist told Susan Reinert.

  Susan made some notes about the coming trip to Europe. Her jumble of thoughts included worries about notifications to his ex-wives and to his children, as well as her own notifications:

  What and when to tell about leaving? David and Muriel, parents, brother, Ken, Fran, Sue, friends. How long expect to stay in Europe. Leave together or separately? Jobs? What to do about medical coverage, bank accounts, safe deposit, charge account, mailing address, change of support-Ken, resigning, storage, clothes, books, records, furniture, bicycles. Marriage: When? Where? By whom? Technicalities? Divorce decree, blood tests, license, witnesses, ring(s). Announcements: Karen and Michael, Ken and Reinerts, friends.

  Pathetically, at the bottom of her notations she wrote: “When can I meet family?”

  Throughout the late spring, at least three of the neighbors of Susan Reinert began seeing a faded blue VW Beetle parked on their street. By early summer the car was being seen there late at night and was still there in the morning when they went out for their newspapers.

  None of the neighbors had ever talked to Bill Bradfield, but all had seen the man with a beard coming and going. Only one had learned his name. The neighbors had often said that Susan Reinert was an ideal mother and a fine quiet neighbor. They were a bit surprised that her gentleman friend was apparently being allowed to sleep over.

  In early June, something unusual happened at Susan Reinerts home. Her neighbor Donna Formwalt was standing on her front porch on a very warm afternoon and saw Susan Reinerts friend leaving her house in a hurry.

  “He wasn’t running,” she later said. “But you could tell he was determined to leave.”

  As he got to the yard, Susan Reinert came out the front door, crying.

  “Bill!” she called, but then she saw Donna Formwalt and went back inside.

  The event approximately coincided with Susan Reinerts call to her therapist claiming that she was going to demand satisfaction regarding his perjury on behalf of Dr. Jay C. Smith.

  On the 15th of June, a more unusual event occurred at the quiet and peaceful Reinert home in Ardmore. It was just days after Michaels tenth birthday, and he had a baseball game to play that afternoon. His grandparents John and Florence Reinert drove twenty miles from Phoenixville to watch their grandson play, but they had only remembered the game at the last moment and didn’t call before coming. When they arrived, the house looked empty. The windows were closed even though it was a warm evening.

  They spotted Michael and Karen playing in the yard next door, but instead of running to the car for hugs and kisses, both children looked apprehensive. They ran straight home across their neighbor’s yard.

  Florence Reinert called to Michael and asked if he had a baseball game and he only said yes and went inside.

  The elder Reinerts walked to the porch and waited. After a minute or two, Michael came out with his baseball uniform on and Susan Reinert followed, but quickly shut the door behind her.

  She didn’t invite them in and didn’t make small talk and the Reinerts didn’t know what to think.

  “We’ll walk to the game,” Florence Reinert said to her former daughter-in-law. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “I’ll be over later,” Susan said, and went back in the house.

  Florence and John Reinert took Karen and Karen’s friend Lee Ann, and went to watch Michael play. Halfway through the game Karen and Lee Ann got bored and decided to buy some water ice and go home for a few minutes.

  “We’ll be right back,” Karen told her grandparents, but when they didn’t return John Reinert decided to check on them.

  Donna Formwalt was at home when the girls came back from the game that evening. They were carrying cups of water ice, and Lee Ann asked her mother if she could have the water ice before dinner. She was told to put it in the freezer until later.

  Karen decided to run next door and put hers in the freezer too, but she found the front door locked. Donna Formwalt saw Karen climbing in the window by the back porch.

  A minute later she heard Karen scream and then start to cry.

  When John Reinert got to the house, he didn’t see the girls so he drove his car back to the ball park. About ten minutes before the game ended Susan and Karen Reinert finally arrived. Karen was visibly upset and so was her mother.

  When the game was over the grandparents wanted to take everyone for ice cream but Susan declined and said she and Karen wanted to walk home.

  Michael decided to ride with his grandparents so they waited and drove him home. When they got to the corner of his street they saw a seedy-looking VW Beetle with a bearded man behind the wheel driving away from the house. Then they saw Susan and Karen running toward the car. Susan began talking to the man after he stopped.

  The Reinerts dropped off their grandson and drove home to Phoenixville confused and disturbed. They’d never seen Bill Bradfield prior to that day and knew nothing about him. It got them thinking. Earlier in the spring when the Reinerts had their grandchildren over for a weekend, Michael had spotted a van in the parking lot of a shopping center and said, “We’re going to get a van like that when we go to Europe with Bill.”

  And when his grandmother said, “Who’s Bill?” her grandson would only say, “My mothers friend.”

  Susan Reinerts secrets were obviously taking a toll on her children. She’d started telling her therapist that she was fretting over having let her relationship with Bill Bradfield get to the stage where they were sleeping together under the same roof with the kids, and turning them into secret sharers.

  Some say that the land around Downingtown is so lovely it can break your heart, and that it’s impossible to drive through the rolling countryside near the frontier of Amish country without at least a minor attack of nostalgia. It’s what a city dweller longs for when urban life gets unbearable, this postcard-pretty landscape.

  Fields of corn and alfalfa envelop those twisted country roads, and past each winding turn is a travelers delight: an eighteenth-century inn turned restaurant, restored with reverence for history, or a cedar and stone farmhouse snugged within a cleavage of hills patched by wild lavender, or one of Chester County’s historic covered bridges. Haystacks are scattered about the farmland, eccentric-looking haystacks molded like enormous loaves of bread.

  Pat Schnure, the best friend and colleague of Susan Reinert, lived with her husband Biv and daughter Molly near Downingtown. They were tenants on a large piece of land just off Pennypacker Road. A grand white barn on the property had been turned into a meetinghouse, and the Pennypackers had developed part of the parcel into a tennis and swim club.

  The Schnures occupied a “springhouse,” so called because a century ago there had been water below the house that sustained the people who worked this land. A fine elm still stood beside the house, as well as an ancient hollow maple that fascinated children but had to be watched because of the tendency of old maples to shudder and die without warning.

  Susan Reinert loved the old springhouse with the rounded Chester County curve to the walls, and the inimitable patina on wood dating from the American Revolution. The doorways were so low that Biv had to duck through them. It was a warm, cozy, enduring retreat.

  In June of 1979, Karen Reinert was eleven years old and Michael was just ten. Visiting the Schnures on Pennypacker Road was always a fun event, especially for Michael.

  “A real boy” is how Biv described Michael. “I’ll never forget how thrilled he got when he hooked a small trout in the pond. A real boy.”

  The Schnures had one child, brown-eyed Molly, not yet two. When Molly was born, Biv Schnure had received a telephone call from Bill Bradfield.

  “He recited poetry by way of congratulations,” Biv rec
alled. “I think it was from Ezra Pound. I didn’t know what the devil he was talking about.”

  When Molly was a baby, Susan Reinert had given Pat a white youth blanket that used to belong to Karen. Molly wouldn’t part with it even when it went gray with age.

  Karen later gave Molly a baby doll in a blue dress. It was a very old doll made of real rubber and Molly called the doll Karen. The doll’s eyes were blue, but the real Karen had the kind of eyes that went from dove-gray to olive-green depending upon the light and the color of her clothes.

  Michael’s hair was dark blond, but Karen’s was changing color. It was chestnut now, with streaks of butterscotch. She was an especially photogenic child with an instinct for the camera. Her poses could range from tomboy to coquette depending on the photographic moment.

  Karen was a moody little girl, squeamish about insects and field mice and other critters she might encounter around the springhouse, but she enjoyed playing with Molly and loved to mother the tot. She said she couldn’t wait for Molly to get old enough to play school. Karen, of course, wanted to be the teacher like her own mother whom she obviously idolized.

  Pat Schnure recalled how Susan sometimes brought Karen and Michael to faculty meetings where they’d sit in the back of the room and quietly draw pictures. They actually enjoyed the company of adults, and Susan probably brought them to show off a bit. She was extremely proud of those children.

  In that they spent so much time with their mother they were accustomed to adult games. When they stayed with Pat and Biv as houseguests, Karen and Pat would challenge Michael and Biv to a game of bridge. The losers washed dishes and the winners went to Downingtown to buy ice cream.

  Usually they came for day visits but sometimes the children and their mother stayed at the springhouse when the Schnures were out of town. Twice during the preceding weeks they’d stayed overnight with Pat and Biv while their mother was occupied.

  It was left unsaid with whom she’d be occupied. The children were ordered by their mother never to discuss the man who would one day be their stepfather, but sometimes Pat couldn’t resist trying to draw out a kernel of gossip.