Defying Death in Hagerstown

by John Paul Carinci

  But then again, Wally would be on the outlook for the authorities, since he knew we were on our way to investigate the church.

  I don’t think the captain told Pawler to go out and look for Wally. He was probably waiting at the station house for us. But here was Pawler, screeching and speeding all over.

  “Let me know if you catch sight of that hump in the tow truck!” he snapped.

  We went around several blocks, circling large areas. Around ten minutes later, I was getting dizzy from the wild driving.

  Graham was talking fast and nervous-like, but I didn’t listen to the words. Then, suddenly, Pawler slowed and pulled over. He grabbed the two-way radio and phoned in for backup at Sullivan and West End Street. Graham and I strained to see what Pawler saw. And there in the distance was the tow truck on the side street by a bar. According to Sergeant Pawler, the suspect was inside the bar called “Get ’Em Cold Bar and Grill.”

  The sergeant waited exactly two minutes and exited the car. “I’m going to apprehend the suspect. Stay in the car, and stay low, just in case there’s any gunplay!”

  “Are you sure you—”

  “I got this, not to worry,” he said with a fierce look of determination on his face.

  “Be careful, buddy,” Graham said.

  My stomach was in knots as I played out all the possible scenarios that could unfold in the next few minutes. Had Wally been drinking? Could he be armed and waiting to ambush anyone entering the bar? Or could he have high-powered explosives at the ready, just waiting for the right time to set them off? I thought Pawler was insane to walk down the street. He was in the open, an easy shot for anyone with the luxury of having a window or door to hide behind while shooting at him.

  As Sergeant Pawler slowly walked closer to the bar, he looked around carefully, assessing any movement in the general area. He was now twenty feet from the entrance.

  “Here we go again, buddy,” Graham murmured.

  Suddenly, we heard the sounds of multiple sirens from oncoming patrol cars. Just then, Pawler put his hand on the doorknob of the bar. He turned the knob and entered just as the cruisers pulled up on either side of the front entrance and stopped short.

  “What balls that Pawler has!” I exclaimed.

  “He’s half a nut! A loose cannon, but you really gotta love the guy!” Graham said.

  He was in the bar a split second ahead of the backup officers who came rushing in. A few seconds passed before we heard a single ear-shattering gunshot that made me jump in my seat, then nothing but silence. Dead silence.

  Our eyes were glued on the front entrance of the mostly empty bar for that time of day.

  “Holy crap! Lou, it never ends around here! You think they shot Wally?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t like the way the sergeant went rushing in there. That is definitely a dangerous move. Wally could be sitting there waiting for the first officer to rush through the front door so that he can open fire on him.”

  “Yeah, but Pawler could have caught Wally off guard and surprised him by rushing in. We’ll just have to sit tight. But his backup went right in too . . . not too much lag time there.”

  “Let’s just stay in the car, buddy. Don’t look for trouble with this character.”

  “I’m cool. Not moving, man.”

  There was total silence. I could swear I could hear the ticking coming from my watch. I didn’t even want to blink, thinking I might have to make a run for it. Wally was known to have some kind of explosive device.

  Then it happened. The door of the bar swung open and an officer emerged. Then Wally appeared too, handcuffs securing his hands tightly behind his back. He was followed by Sergeant Pawler, who had his hand gripped tightly around Wally’s upper arm. And trailing everyone was the additional officer with his gun drawn as a precaution.

  They stuffed Wally into the closest police car, and then each of the officers got behind the wheel of his respective car and waited. Sergeant Pawler slowly made his way to the car. He was limping, favoring his left leg a little.

  “Pawler’s hurt,” I said. Then I suggested to Graham, “Listen, don’t say anything about it.”

  The sergeant got in the car, saying, “We got him, boys. Wally can’t hurt anyone now.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Nothing a few beers can’t fix, my friend.”

  “Sergeant, did Wally put up a fight?” Graham asked. “Did he have an explosive?”

  “He was kind of surprised, I guess. He was at a pay phone waiting to make a phone call, so there was an element of surprise. It all happened quickly. He ignored my request to put his hands in the air, and he tried to kick my legs out from under me and make a run for it. I didn’t go down, though. That’s when I fired a shot at the ceiling, and Wally stopped short and gave up. After he saw the backup I had, Wally knew it was all over. We were very concerned, though, that Wally had some kind of device or weapon. He said he had nothing, and that all he wanted to do was make a phone call. We didn’t fall for that because he had a cell phone right on his belt.”

  We pulled up third in line behind the first two police cars. The middle car was the one that held Wally, secure in the back seat. No one was taking any chances, even though it turned out Wally didn’t have any explosives or weapons on him. He was a dangerous man nonetheless. Billy Blaine had done damage right in the police precinct by wrestling an officer’s gun away, shooting him, and then escaping in a squad car. Anything is possible when it comes to capturing and bringing in a suspect. Some suspects get very desperate to escape a prison stretch that could last many years.

  We got back to the precinct prior to the other officers, who requested backup to escort the prisoner to the station house. Graham and I stood with Captain Krolm waiting for Wally to be brought in. Three additional officers had joined Pawler and the other two officers. Captain Krolm wisely added the additional officers, as Wally could possibly be violent. Wally was unpredictable because he was a seemingly respected businessman who had suddenly become deadly. If Brian was correct, Wally wanted to blow up the church, and it was rumored that he had intended to kill the officers and other personnel who would have been inside doing their investigation.

  Captain Krolm told us, “Wally has already been read his Miranda rights. His legal name is Wallace. F. Kaufman. And he is not talking. Our report from the bomb squad and fire department should be in any minute. As of right now, there have been no explosions at the church or anywhere else in town. We take these threats very seriously these days. If you ignore one threat, dozens of lives could be lost.”

  A few minutes later, we heard screaming from outside the station house. It was Wally yelling, “You killed my best friend! You’re all scum! You had no right to hurt Sy! Get your hands off me! Don’t touch me! I should have blown you all up earlier when I wanted to! I’m innocent! You’ve got nothing on . . . get your hands off . . . I want my lawyer! I have rights! Where’s my lawyer?”

  As Wally was led into the station house, no one stood in his way. The officers had to push against him to get him to move. He kept trying to stop, and they kept pushing him farther into the station house. His shoulders lunged from side to side in rebellion.

  Wally was a huge hulk of a man, maybe age forty-eight. I estimated him to stand six feet tall and weigh around three hundred pounds. He was big-boned, a big ol’ country man who looked like he could take down a couple of the officers with one swipe if his arms hadn’t been secured behind him, but the biggest threat he posed now was his screaming and yelling. He was cursing up a storm.

  Wally got more violent, using his body to knock down one officer. That’s when more officers roughly held him and pushed him hard into the fingerprinting room.

  “You’ll never make anything stick. All I have to do is make one phone call. There will be no evidence left. In fact, you can call the number for me! You’re all scum! My friend is dead! I want to call. Let me make one call!”

  The door closed, muffling the sounds of Wal
ly’s screams and curses. It sounded like they hit him on the head.

  I asked the captain what was up with Wally—did he snap? The captain explained that Sy and Wally were distant cousins, and best friends. They used to fish and hunt together. Sy might have kept Wally out of the terror until the very end. But Sy’s death apparently had indeed caused Wally to snap.

  “We’ve also established that one Wallace F. Kaufman, and our own Loretta Mistel, were an item. We believe that Loretta could have been feeding inside police information to Wally, who in turn could have fed it to Sy.”

  “No!” I said in disbelief. “Not cute Loretta with the beautiful long red hair. We scurried under the table when all hell broke loose and Billy shot the place up. She acted so innocent!”

  “That’s her,” the captain said. “Love is strange, my friend. You can never tell what people in love will do.”

  “She’s too good for that creep,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What do we know about love, Louis?” “Yeah, buddy,” Graham chimed in. “Your track record is a little shaky. . .”

  “Shaky ain’t the word. Dear Abby I am not!” I laughed. “Love is blind.”

  “You talking about Felicia again?” Graham asked.

  “Wise ass!”

  The captain took a phone call while Graham and I speculated about Billy, Sy, Wally, and now Loretta. I wondered if there were any others who would be coming out of the woodwork. The notion of Wally and Loretta had caught me completely off guard. Then again, ever since arriving in town, I had been stunned by one thing after another.

  Within five minutes, Captain Krolm finished his call and moved back over toward Graham and me. His face had suddenly turned pale, and he looked troubled, as if he had lost his best friend.

  “Well,” he began, “Wally was all set to destroy that church. But he was patiently waiting for us all to enter it first with our search warrant in hand. You see, Wally wanted you dead, Lou. But more than that, he needed to burn down that church in the worst way.” He had a distant look on his face.

  “But why? And why Wally?” I asked.

  “Wally was there. We lifted fingerprints off two cell phones he had placed at the church. His best friend was his distant cousin, Sy. But the best part of Wally’s plan of destruction was this: Wally was going to set off the explosion in the church using a remote device from some distance away from the church.”

  “He had a bomb?” Graham asked.

  “Not exactly, but it was an ingenious plan that I have never witnessed before. Sergeant Pawler arrested Wally inside the bar. He was at a phone booth, patiently waiting to make a phone call.”

  “He was calling someone to set off the bomb?” I asked.

  “Better than that. No, this plan was almost foolproof. The phone call from the bar would have set off the incendiary device, which would have engulfed the entire church with all of us trapped inside. We all would have died for sure, if not from the flames, then surely from smoke inhalation.” The captain’s eyes were more distant; he was deep in thought.

  “It sounds too good to be able to work,” I pondered aloud. “He was only one person acting alone.”

  “The only way you can understand the true plan Wally had is for me to show you the layout. Now, visualize two huge containers of gasoline strategically placed in the church with flammable items placed near them. Now watch this closely.”

  The captain took out his cell phone and pressed the volume button until the vibrate mode was set. He then took a pile of papers and made an incline under them using a large book. He then placed the cell phone face down on the slight incline of the papers. He then used his landline to call his cell phone. The silent/vibrate mode shook the phone, sending it down the incline until it fell off his desk. As he caught the falling phone, he said, “See the remote-device concept in action? Now, visualize the phone falling off my desk and landing in a vat of gasoline.”

  “But that couldn’t ignite the gas,” I pointed out.

  “Right. But Wally was smart. There was a lit votive candle resting on the back of the cell phone. The candle was ready to ignite the vat of gas once the cell phone slid off the incline. The vibration from the call on the cell phone was intended to be the magic.”

  The captain once again set the cell phone on the slightly inclined mountain of papers on his desk, called the cell phone from his desk phone again, and waited until it vibrated, which started its slide off the papers and off his desk.

  “I see it now. The candle and cell phone both wind up in the container of gasoline, thus setting off a firebomb. And if you have flammable items close by, you have an uncontrollable fire.”

  “Precisely. Now, with two containers placed apart, and the age of the church, you have an inferno that will trap all the people inside the church, but more importantly, it will destroy all traces of evidence.”

  “That’s wild! A terrorist act for sure,” Graham said. “A one-man execution machine, and all from a pay phone.”

  “Yes,” the captain agreed. “You see, any evidence would be destroyed, including the two cell phones we learned were the disposable kind that you fill by purchasing prepaid minutes. We also traced calls from those phones to Sy and our own Loretta. Again, it was all planned to destroy the evidence.”

  My mind raced as I visualized the entire scene playing out had Wally placed the call with all of us in the church. Wally knew, from where he was situated in that bar by the window payphone, when we would be passing on our way to the church. He would wait for precisely the right moment and then place the call.

  Wally wanted us to get inside the entrance before he set the cell phones on their slide into the gasoline with the lit candles piggybacking on the phones. If he waited too long, we might catch on to his plan and grab the candles off the waiting cellphones, putting out the flame. And without flames dropping into the gas containers, there would be no out-of-control inferno.

  If Loretta, the police department employee, was Wally’s girlfriend, was she also helping Sy with inside information about the investigators’ next moves? Was she telling Sy when I would be somewhere? It was all quite scary how one insignificant person in an important setting could be instrumental in possible mass murders.

  Billy had not cooperated in answering any questions in his interrogation interviews, but the others were cooperating more. Wally was telling interrogators that he had nothing to do with anything except the church deathtrap plan. He admitted that Sy had been the mastermind behind all of the planning and all of Billy’s actions. He also said that Loretta fed him all police investigation information and future plans, and he in turn fed everything to Sy.

  Wally claimed that he had nothing to do with the poison, the attempted run-down with Billy’s car, the nursing home attack, or the cutting of my car’s brake lines. He blamed Sy for everything.

  Of course, Sy was dead, and dead men can’t defend themselves. But then again, Wally might have figured what the hell, Sy is dead and can’t do any hard time anyway. So, what could they pin on Wally anyway? Maybe he would get a year or two behind bars. Or maybe, just possibly, he would get off for lack of evidence. Good lawyers are much better than fair prosecutors every time.

  Loretta, we were told, was being interrogated at the same time as her boyfriend. They both claimed that there were absolutely no additional members of the Sy Trylan terrorist group. No more threats. No more danger.

  “The worst is over,” said the police captain. Still, I couldn’t stand down mentally. I needed a good long night’s sleep—at least twelve hours. But I knew that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. First off, there was no way I could sleep restfully without some sleep aid. And even if I were drugged like a zombie, how could I possibly sleep now? There was still so much more to do. I needed to see how Sy fit into the 1923 murder cover-up, and why. I had my strong suspicions, but without actual proof, no one would ever believe me. There needed to be final closure on this case.

  The police captain told us that we had the all clear to g
o into the church and onto the large surrounding grounds as long as we were accompanied by police. The bomb squad with their bomb-sniffing dog, along with the fire department, had scoured the church and nearby areas. The gasoline containers had also been carted away. The church was being guarded, and no one was allowed on the grounds without police clearance.

  “There should be no more incidents in my town now. At least not from this group,” the captain said with a sigh of relief. I had my doubts. After all, I had let my guard down in the very beginning when Billy Blaine was first taken into custody. Then all hell had broken loose in the station house.

  Ever since I had come to town, I had had a nervous twitching in my cheek. If the stress got any worse, I was afraid they might admit me to the nursing home’s funny-farm room, where I heard they serve chocolate pudding every day at three.

  First Billy, then Sy and Wally, then Loretta—and for what purpose? So many ruined lives over murders that took place ninety years ago. Then I thought about the pimply-faced string bean of a guy from the gas station, Brian Fawlta. He had gotten a concussion from Billy that first day. The kid had been so in awe of me and the fact that I was a reporter from Washington, but if it hadn’t been for him, we all could have died. He had gone out of his way to warn me about the church. I made a mental note to drop by and thank him personally, and to ask the captain to recognize him in some way—maybe give him an award of some kind.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Once again, we were on our way to the church. At five p.m., we were a convoy of four police cars. Graham and I were once again in the rear of Sergeant Pawler’s patrol car, making small talk. He was telling me about his wife and three children, and how family life had saved him from a life of crime, drugs, and gangs. He admitted to me that early in his life, he was a street thug, and then he met Joan and married at the age of eighteen. It was his wife who saved him. And when they were blessed with three children, he realized that he was put on earth to raise his children to be good people and productive citizens. The martial arts also taught him discipline of the highest degree. Although he could kill a man twice his size with one quick and massive blow, for seven years now, he had never had to use force on a person except for that one tangle with Billy.