Echoes in the Darkness

8

In the fall of 1978 William Bradfield was about as placid as a riptide, and the riptide formed an enveloping whirlpool. It all began with a death and a dream.

The death was that of Susan Reinert’s widowed mother who passed away unexpectedly in October, leaving each of her children $34,000 in cash and half an interest in western Pennsylvania timberland. Susan was also bequeathed her mothers wedding ring valued at $1,500.

Her brother Pat Gallagher became executor of Susan’s estate and her children Karen and Michael were named as her beneficiaries. The timberland was left to appreciate, but for the moment, Susan Reinert had more cash than she’d ever had to manage before.

The dream involved Bill Bradfield, who awakened one morning sounding like Martin Luther King. He announced: “I had a dream!”

And poor overworked Sue Myers wondered if it was a wet one because they hadn’t had sex for well over a year.

“What dream?” she asked.

“It came to me in a dream,” he told her. “It’s about Doctor Smith. He’s innocent of the Sears robbery! I’ve been thinking about it and now I’m certain. He couldn’t have committed the theft because he was with me that very day last August. I saw him on that Saturday at the shore in Ocean City. So if he didn’t do that robbery, he could hardly be guilty of the other one since both crimes obviously involved the same man!”

“You never mentioned seeing him in Ocean City,” Sue Myers said.

“It didn’t seem important at the time. Now I’m sure of it. I don’t know what to do about it, though. I need to think it over.”

And then he was dressed and out the door and Sue Myers went off to work and figured she probably wouldn’t see him for another couple of days what with this new crusade to save Jay Smith.

Bill Bradfield now became even busier and more elusive. And he began having nightmares. On the nights that he was at home he frequently awakened her by crying out in his sleep. Sometimes he wept without waking. She thought he was going crazy.

Even Bill Bradfield’s beard had gone wild and tangled and shapeless. He truly began to resemble the man his faculty detractors had always compared him to. Bill Bradfield was so tormented and tense and exhausted he looked like Grigori Rasputin underwater.

Finally he let Vince in on the greatest secret yet: that he alone had the power to free Jay C. Smith.

Bill Bradfield, driving his fathers Cadillac, was taking Vince home from the art store after they’d built some Christmas displays to stimulate business.

Bill Bradfield affected his I-know-the-secret-of-the-Bermuda-Triangle voice and said, “I’ve learned something and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“What?”

“About Doctor Smith. He’s a hit man for the Mafia.”

“Bill,” Vince Valaitis said. “Bill, that is the nuttiest …”

“Listen to me,” Bill Bradfield said. “I tell you it’s true! He’s killed people. Lots of people. And that’s not all. He’s going to kill others. People we know.”

“People we know. Sure.”

“People like Susan Reinert.”

“Susan Reinert! Doctor Smith is going to kill Susan Reinert? And I suppose he told you why.”

“He says she knows too much about his trash.”

“What trash?”

“The trash at school. You know the rumors about the disappearance of his daughter and Eddie Hunsberger. Vince, he’s been … well, I think he’s chopped up some bodies and put them in the trash cans around school!”

“It’s insane,” Vince said, as calmly as possible.

“Is it? What do you think he was doing with the nitric acid he stole from the school? And how about those homemade silencers the police found? You know Doctor Smith well enough, don’t you? You named him the prince of darkness.”

“He makes things up, Bill,” Vince said reasonably. “Jay Smith always tries to shock.”

“He’s been having an affair with her, Vince. He told me all about it.”

And Vince Valaitis now had a dozen images ricocheting in his skull: of Norman the janitor sniffing at those unspeakable bundles in the school Dumpster, and of Jay Smith himself, standing in a cloud of steam from a broken pipe, calling “Tweeeeetie Bird!” in a ghostly voice. Vince made a concession. “Well, maybe part of it could be true.”

“We can’t go to the police, Vince. You have to swear to keep this a secret.”

“But we’ve got to go to the police!” Vince Valaitis cried.

“We have no proof,” Bill Bradfield informed him. “Not a shred of proof. They’d laugh at us. They wouldn’t believe us. And then we’d be in grave danger.”

“We,” Vince said. “We?”

“The man’s diabolical. He’d come for us. He’d come in the night. He’d come for our parents. Or his Mafia friends would. He’d be relentless.”

And by now it was a good thing Vince was not driving because he had one hand on his rosary and the other on his scapular. This was no monster movie. This wasn’t something from Hitchcock or Rod Serling. For the first time in his life he wasn’t shivery in a fun sort of way at talk of the macabre. This was real! For the first time in his life young Vince Valaitis was face to face with Dread and Terror.

“What are we … you going to do, Bill?”

“I think I can control him,” Bill Bradfield said. “He’s rather demented but not completely insane. I think I can convince him not to harm anyone. Then when I get sufficient evidence I can go to the authorities.”

“Oh my,” Vince Valaitis said. “Oh my, oh my, oh my.”

“There’re others in danger.”

“What others?”

“He’s so paranoid he wants revenge on everyone who’s wronged him. People who didn’t support him when he got arrested for the crimes he says he didn’t do. He’s talked about killing Bill Scutta.”

“My God, Bill’s a dear friend!” Vince cried. “We’ve got to do something!”

“And the superintendent. And a local policeman that he says is trying to frame him, and …”

Vince didn’t have to ask the next question because his eyeballs were pressing up against the lenses of his eyeglasses and he was so cotton-mouthed he looked like a cat eating bubble gum, and Bill Bradfield anticipated the Big Question and said, “No, he didn’t mention you.”

“Oh my,” Vince said.

“Yet.”

“Oh my!”

Vince Valaitis didn’t believe it all, but one thing for sure, he was convinced that if he was to breathe a word of this he might very well end up scattered around King of Prussia in enough pieces to offend lots of custodians like Norman the janitor.

When Bill Bradfield told Sue Myers about his clandestine meeting with Dr. Jay Smith, the educators motives for murder had changed some.

When she asked why Jay Smith would want to kill Susan Reinert he told her that he didn’t know why, but offered the same warning about not telling the police.

“I can handle Doctor Smith for the time being,” he said to her. “You’ve wondered who I’ve been seeing these past weeks. You probably thought I was being unfaithful all those nights that I’ve been away. Well, now you know. I’ve been with Doctor Smith.”

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Trust me,” he urged her. “Just once more. Be obedient.”

Sue Myers was tired. The jobs of teaching and retailing and hearing about Jay Smith were way too much for her. But as far as Jay Smith was concerned, there was at least a silver lining. Since Bill Bradfield was gone four or five nights a week and often slept away from home, it was better to imagine him humoring a madman like the former principal than it was to think of him in bed with Susan Reinert, or Rachel, or somebody new.

Sue Myers wanted out of all this, but knew she hadn’t the will or the strength. Sue Myers felt fossilized. Where Bill Bradfield would eventually lead her she couldn’t say, but she’d been tagging along for fifteen years and knew she’d have to follow a while longer.

Sue also had an uneasy feeling that she might be asked to contribute a little something to the alibi defense of the accused. And she was.

It happened after a meeting that Bill Bradfield said he’d attended with Jay Smiths brother and his lawyer. Bill Bradfield wanted Sue to remember that he had once encouraged their friend and teaching colleague Fred Wattenmaker to make a bet with another teacher, who claimed Bill Bradfield would never make good on a promise to visit Fred at his summer home in Ocean City, New Jersey.

Sue vaguely remembered the bet. Then Bill Bradfield asked her if she remembered that he had in fact made an August visit to the shore, but that Fred wasn’t home. And she said yes, she remembered his saying that.

And then he reminded her that the visit had been on a Saturday, hadn’t it? And she said yes, it had probably been on a weekend.

But when he asked her if she remembered that it had been the weekend just prior to a Labor Day sale that she’d scheduled at the store, she said no, she was certain it had been the Saturday before that one.

He dropped it and never asked what else she might remember.

Sue Myers had been given the job of locating the three books requested by Jay Smith at the prison farm. But with the help of relatives, he’d put up bail and became a free man long before she’d managed to get the books he’d wanted.

One evening, Bill Bradfield informed her that they were going to the home of Dr. Smith on Valley Forge Road in King of Prussia to deliver the books personally, even though Jay Smith no longer needed them. That didn’t thrill her, and she didn’t get out of the car when Bill Bradfield presented himself at the door of Jay Smith, books in hand. Sue Myers was very happy that her former principal didn’t come out to the car to say hello.

While they were driving home, Bill Bradfield said, “Damn, I think Doctor Smith’s innocent. I can’t believe the things he’s being accused of. I think he needs good legal help and lots of advice.”

But regardless of what Bill Bradfield thought about Jay Smiths innocence, Sue believed that Bill Bradfield had better not seek this advisory position. Nobody was going to control Dr. Jay C. Smith.

* * *

Whatever Jay Smith was doing in the fall of 1978 wasn’t being shared with a coterie of friends. He was no Bill Bradfield. His wife was living at home when not in the hospital, yet she hardly saw him. If he and Bill Bradfield were spending all those evenings together, there were no witnesses.

Stephanie Smith was still writing her own little diary entries about her two-timing husband, which may have helped take her mind off her cancer. She was preoccupied with the woman he’d been seeing for some time.

Stephanie Smith wrote in her diary, “All women like to hear that love bit. After he uses her he’ll tell her to go fuck herself and he’ll find another sweet woman to get what he wants from her. I’m jealous!”

Jay Smith seemed desperate to get his wife out of his house for good. He made a strange request of his former secretary.

It had been a bad year for Ida Micucci. Her husband had died, and she had broken her hip and was at home trying to cope with it all when she received a telephone call from Jay Smith that had to be as crazy as any communication she’d ever received when he was still her boss.

Jay Smith merely said, “Ida, I’m apologizing for not calling when your husband died, but would you do me a favor and let Stephanie live with you?”

Just like that.

She replied no, she didn’t think she wanted any roommates at this time.

And he thanked her politely and hung up.