Echoes in the Darkness

18

The Reinert task force installed their own phones and had their own stenographers at the state police barracks. Each day the teams of agents and state cops were assigned leads to pursue. Agent Don Redden had to report to the special agent in charge of the Philadelphia office at least every other day.

The FBI referred to the massive joint investigation as SUMUR, for Susan Murder. The code name allowed for quicker communication and better information storage. It was rare that an FBI criminal case was important enough to get a code name.

Don Redden pointed out to the state cops that the designation SUMUR gave their investigation the status of a major government case.

Joe VanNort said it sounded like typical FBI bullshit, but it was hokey enough that Bill Bradfield might like it.

It took three months for the cause of death to be finally established. The toxicology examination of Susan Reinerts blood and tissue samples revealed about 1.1 micrograms morphine per milliliter of blood-about ten times the normal medical dose and enough to kill even a junkie pretty fast. The concentration was so high she’d just stopped breathing, hence, asphyxiation. She’d also been given a mild barbiturate sedative, probably to quiet her.

The Carlisle motel matchbook found in Susan Reinerts car didn’t help. She’d stayed at that motel with another woman teacher some months before her death. But the task force learned that on that occasion she’d driven into Harrisburg to meet Bill Bradfield at Harry’s, a popular watering hole in a seedy neighborhood. Bill Bradfield liked seedy neighborhoods.

A friend and associate from Parents Without Partners told the state police that Susan Reinert and Bill Bradfield had planned to go to her mothers former home in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, to “attend to some legal matter,” and that they were taking the children. The cops wondered if the reference to “lawyer” in the June diary entry may have referred to this.

One week before her death, Susan called that friend and told the woman that she was never going to marry Bill Bradfield because he kept canceling appointments with attorneys about “certain legal questions.”

But then she called back five days before her death and said that everything had been “smoothed out.”

Then Susan Reinert said something puzzling. She said that she and her friend could have no more contact. The reason given was that it was “getting too close to the time that Sue Myers might do something.”

Susan would not explain further. She was very secretive toward the end.

The state cops had talked to every neighbor and friend of Susan Reinert who had come to their attention and the feds were duplicating the effort. Just after they came into the case the FBI interviewed sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Ann Brook, the granddaughter of Susan Reinerts next-door neighbor, Mary Gove. Beth Ann described the eerie hailstorm and the clothing that they’d all been wearing when she last saw them. It didn’t seem like a significant interview at the time.

Before going back to college in California, Shelly returned Bill Bradfields money and accompanied him to a storage locker on Route 202 near West Chester.

He told Shelly that he had to store the red IBM typewriter as well as some other dangerous things. The typewriter, he said, had been used by Dr. Smith and Mrs. Reinert to type some things that could get him in trouble. Shelly learned that the assignment to rent the storage was given to Chris Pappas.

Before returning to college, Shelly told the FBI and state cops that she’d been with Bill Bradfield on Friday, June 22nd, taking a stroll around Haverford College, his old alma mater.

During a later interview she amended the time she’d been with Bill Bradfield to cover the period when they were withdrawing money from the safety deposit box, and perhaps saying farewell to an ostrich.

Shelly’s girlfriend talked to the cops and then flew to Austria to visit relatives, but the FBI had INTERPOL chase her down to ask her a few more questions.

Sue Myers, Chris Pappas and Bill Bradfield took private polygraph exams for $125 each and were found to be absolutely truthful. Chris took another for the FBI and was found to be deceptive.

He later admitted that during the “truthful” exam he’d been lying worse than Stalin at Yalta.

Living in a Philadelphia motel and going home to Harrisburg only on weekends was probably hardest on Jack Holtz because of his son. Jason was the same age as Karen Reinert and he knew that a boy that age needed his old man. Jack Holtz called his parents almost every night to reassure his son that the case couldn’t last much longer.

When he and Joe VanNort were sitting in their rooms at night watching TV, it was obvious that VanNort worried about Holtz being away from his son. Joe VanNort frequently needed reassurance from his young partner that working for him hadn’t been the primary cause of Jack’s marriage rupture.

Jack Holtz never forgot how shaken Joe had been when he first admitted that Chaz had left home for good. They were on a flight to Alabama during a tough investigation. You’d think Jack Holtz had just announced he was going to Morocco for a sex change.

“It’s workin’ crime, ain’t it?” Joe VanNort had said. “Did that wreck your marriage, workin’ crime with me?”

Holtz tried to reassure the old cop by saying, “It’s for the best. She’s gone and it’s over.”

But Joe was stricken with Catholic guilt and he actually hushed Jack Holtz and said, “Don’t tell nobody!”

Holtz looked around and said, “Joe, who can I tell? I don’t know anybody on this airplane!”

It was during the long nights in those motel rooms in Philadelphia, drinking and watching the frequent flame of Joe’s cigarettes flowering in the gloom, that Jack Holtz wished hard for a break in the case, while Joe VanNort prayed for one.

Wishes and prayers were about to be answered by a Clark Kent-ish young English teacher who’d been carrying twice his weight in guilt and fear for two months. The heavy load was dumped on him at the memorial service for Susan Reinert.

It was a Unitarian service and was held in the evening in a chapel in Malvern. Ken Reinert was there, and Pat Gallagher, and all of Susan Reinerts friends, and her psychologist, and most of her colleagues.

Pat Schnure was crying her eyes out and saying to everyone within earshot, “Make a note of who’s not here!”

She was of course referring to the Bradfield retinue, but one of them was there. Vince Valaitis was praying harder in that Unitarian chapel than he’d ever prayed in a Catholic cathedral. With the stories in the news about the Bradfield Bunch he figured that everyone thought they were a pack of killers. He felt that therapist Roslyn Weinberger was glaring at him.

It was a sad little ceremony with various people saying a few things about Susan Reinert as a teacher and mother and friend. When it was over, Vince tried to tough it out by holding his head up and saying hello to everybody, but he felt his colleagues trying to avoid him. For the very first time in his life he saw people staring at him with fear in their eyes.

Vince had been the only one giving press releases. To one reporter he said, “We’re not part of any sort of cult. Bill Bradfield doesn’t want anyone’s money. He doesn’t care about things of this world. He cares about a better world. And as for me, I’m not some kind of killer! Why, I’m a God-fearing person. How many twenty-eight-year-olds do you know who carry rosary beads?”

Vince had informed his colleague Bill Scutta that he wished he could join a seminary and become a priest. Preferably a Trappist monastery in Tibet.

One night, Vince went for a drive to sort things out. He drove through Valley Forge Park and admired the flora, and tried to think good things about Susan Reinert, and said some prayers for her and her children. Somehow he just couldn’t go home. All he could do was drive and think and pray.

Then a funny thing happened. The sky was no longer where it was supposed to be. Something else was up there in its place: a bunch of titanic inkblots. It was only a storm taking shape, but not to Vince. And what did the inkblots contain? Nothing much. Only hairnets full of trapped leering demons.

The next time Vince looked at the swirling inkblots he saw cowled shrouded figures chanting in Latin as they made ready for a black mass. And Vince took a leap into full-scale panic.

When Vince later told the story of that night, he used the word “Gothic.” The National Weather Service verified that it had not been a Vince Valaitis Gothic hallucination. The sky did go black. The Rorschach test in heaven was split by shards of lightning. The thunder rattled the trees in Valley Forge and the rain cascaded down.

To Vince Valaitis there was absolutely no question. God Himself was speaking.

His message was something like “Okay, you little putz, you want Gothic? I’ll give you Gothic.”

Vince found himself skidding, sliding, careening, through the rain, hell-bent, as it were, for destruction. Then in the midst of it all, between the jagged flashes and the torrent of black water, he saw before him a miracle: Vince had driven on automatic pilot to God’s house.

He skidded to a stop in front of Mother of Divine Providence Church in King of Prussia. He jumped out of the car, but he was paralyzed. Vince Valaitis stood ankle-deep in puddles of dark water and verdant slime and watched his suit shrink. He pulled his necktie loose so he could breathe, and felt his shoes turn spongy. He forced those few sloshing steps to salvation.

But there were bat shapes in the night, and a fist of iron in his belly was making him retch. And if this church had even one lousy little gargoyle on the roof, Vince knew he’d bolt and run screaming in front of a truck if he could find one.

He rang the bell at the rectory and waited with the blades of rain slashing his face, hearing those terrifying Latin chants growing fainter in the distance.

When the priest opened the door that night he saw a half-drowned young fellow flashing a demented gerbil grin and doing deep breathing exercises to help ward off levitation.

Here’s what Vince heard inside his head: “I am a rational human being. I need fear no evil. I am in control. I shall begin at the beginning in a calm businesslike manner.”

Here’s what the priest heard outside Vince’s head: “FATHER, I KNOW WHO KILLED SUSAN REINERT!”

The priest feared for the stained glass. Pigeons flew from the belfry.

Soon, Vince Valaitis found himself sitting in the rectory bawling his heart out with a priest who was trying to figure out if he should hear this kid’s confession or have him blow in a bag. And finally Vince started to talk. He was interrupted by sobs from time to time, but did he talk. He told about acid and hairnets and jigsaws and bloody bags of trash and silencers and Jimmy Hoffa and 250 hits and devil suits and dildos.

Pretty soon the priest was wondering if he should call the chancery office to see if they had an exorcist hot line, because he had himself a dilly!

Vince couldn’t shut up. He segued right into Brink’s guards and chains and locks and strapping tape and golden showers and feces fiestas and humping hound dogs. He even got into Jay Smith’s mail-order penis stiffeners, but that was gilding the lily because by now this priest had heard so much that a dick splint couldn’t shock him.

When Vince came up for air, the padre became the first person to tell Vince Valaitis that he’d better tell his friend Bill Bradfield to call the cops.

Three little words. Heeded earlier they could’ve saved a lot of people an eternity of pain: call the cops.

Jack Holtz and an FBI special agent, Carlin “Call Me Chick” Sabinson, got the assignment to meet and interview Vince Valaitis. Chick Sabinson was nothing like the stereotypical law school prep. To start with, there hadn’t ever been many FBI agents called Chick. And he didn’t even look like an agent. He was a smallish, ethnic-looking guy. You figured he’d spent his life eating deli food, but you weren’t sure which deli.

Don Redden said he’d once spotted Chick Sabinson sitting at his work table writing a task force report with both hands. One hand held the pencil and the other made identical sweeping strokes of penmanship without a pencil. So there was a bit of the artist in Chick Sabinson, and it showed in his interrogation technique.

Jack Holtz, the ever-shy second banana, let Chick Sabinson do the talking when they were sitting face to face with pale and trembling Vincent Valaitis who was puffing away on a cigarette, even though he’d never smoked in his life.

Chick Sabinson had a voice something like W. C. Fields, and after advising Vince of his constitutional rights, he got around to the business at hand. “Vince,” he said, “can you see that we’re not the kind of people Bill Bradfield said we are?”

“Yes, sir,” Vince said, getting green around the gills from his own smoke.

“Call me Chick.”

“Yes sir, Chick,” Vince said obligingly. He was one sick gerbil.

“Vince,” Chick Sabinson continued, “I’d like you to use your imagination. I’d like you to imagine that the government is a bus.”

Vince stopped puffing and said, “Bus. Yes, Chick.”

“Imagine that the bus makes a certain number of stops as it rolls down the street, Vince.”

Vince imagined a red, white and blue bus chugging right along. A streetcar named Desire. A bus named Salvation.

“But Vince,” Chick said, and now there was a note of caution in his voice, “if a person doesn’t have the right fare and if the person isn’t there at the bus stop when the driver says ‘All aboarrrrrrd!’ what’s gonna happen?”

“They’ll miss the bus, Chick,” Vince said, and he almost wept. Because he was on time. He’d pay any fare they wanted!

“And the bus never returns, Vince. Never never never.”

Chick reached over and clutched Vince’s arm because tears were welling in the teachers eyes.

And apparently he had no idea how anxious Vince was to get on the bus because he kept drawing word pictures. With both hands.

“Let me put it another way,” Chick Sabinson said. “The government is a bomb shelter. And when the war starts and the bombs begin to fall, the doors will open to let a certain number of people in. But only the early birds. And only if they come when they’re invited. Do you understand what I’m saying, Vince?”

Did he ever! That time Chick Sabinson accidentally picked the right metaphor. While Chick was talking bomb shelters, Vince Valaitis was seeing trekkie space wars. The clash by night involved megatons. Nukes mushroomed. Firestorms raged. People got vaporized in their beds!

And there was Vince, three feet from the shelter door, a steaming little bespectacled radioactive lump. Wrapped in rosary beads.

Vince let out a wail. “Do I need a lawyer? Have I done anything wrong?”

Chick Sabinson said, “Tell us what you know about Jay Smith.”

That did it. Vince started crying. Between sobs he said, “He’s murdered all kinds of people! I think my life’s in danger! I don’t want to be murdered. I only want to teach English!”

And while Vince was sniffling Chick Sabinson got up and came over and put his arm around him and said, “There there, Vince. It’s all right. You’re ours, now.”

It was wonderful belonging to somebody. Again, Vince Valaitis started talking and couldn’t stop. He could hardly believe he was sitting there so happy with the FBI, and even with Jack Holtz who Bill Bradfield had said was a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist. It all felt so good he just kept talking.

Chick Sabinson and Jack Holtz almost got writer’s cramp. Before they were finished with this young man in the months ahead, the FBI reckoned that Vincent gave them nearly a hundred hours of his time.

Vince had only one real fear after that. When they saw the Mary Hume tombstone in his living room, they might accuse him of bumping off old Mary.

On September 3, the FBI was called and informed that Bill Bradfield wanted to “set the record straight.” He and Sue Myers and Vince Valaitis agreed to meet with the agents at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in King of Prussia. Bill Bradfield didn’t know that Vince had already been setting the record a whole lot straighter than he’d ever dreamed.

They met with Chick Sabinson. Bill Bradfield told the special agent that he was just a friend of Susan Reinerts and was shocked by the insurance and the will. And what he really wanted to do was to put up a reward for the return of the children, but he’d been advised by counsel not to do so.

Bill Bradfield offered the opinion that if the children were alive there was obviously someone else involved with Jay Smith. Bill Bradfield said that he was now starting to conclude that Dr. Jay was probably the actual killer of Susan Reinert.

He was relieved that Chick Sabinson was an educated man as opposed to Joe VanNort and his sidekick Jack Holtz. He said that while he was at St. John’s he’d been studying the contribution of Ptolemy to Western thought, but couldn’t explain it to the cops who thought he was taking a math class.

Chick Sabinson did not tell him about the government bus or the bomb shelter. Bill Bradfield admitted nothing. They parted amicably.

During one of his secret FBI meetings Vince told the lawmen about a typed letter that Bill Bradfield had once received at school.

It said, “Please come and meet me.” It was signed “Deirdre Paxton.”

When Bill Bradfield showed Vince the letter he’d smiled and said, “That’s from Doctor Smith.”

He’d borrowed Vince’s car and left the campus for forty-five minutes.

Vince also gave the FBI a list of telephone numbers from the Jay Smith-Bill Bradfield square-root-of-the-last-digit-of-Alexander-Graham-Bell’s-birth-date telephone system.

Bill Bradfield had left the list with Vince Valaitis for safekeeping. Bill Bradfield left trails of evidence scattered through his forest like a bearded Hansel, fearful of being lost.

Vince was a mess when it was time to go with Bill Bradfield to meet attorney John Curran for a strategy discussion. Vince had no intention of discussing strategy. Vince belonged to Chick Sabinson and the FBI. Vince was on the bus. Vince was in the bomb shelter. He was a nervous wreck trying to bring himself to confess this to Bill Bradfield and convince him to do likewise. But at the slightest hint of going to the law Bill Bradfield would start screaming about Fascists.

Vince agreed to drive Bill Bradfield to Ocean City for the meeting. He must have been exceptionally quiet during the drive because Bill Bradfield apparently sensed something.

When they were almost at the restaurant, he said quietly to Vince, “You talked to them, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Vince sighed. “I’ve been talking to the FBI and you should too. Bill, they’re nice people. We’ve got nothing to hide. We should tell them all about Jay Smith.”

“Who else have you told?” Bill Bradfield asked, even more quietly.

Vince saw that the blood had drained from his friend’s face like a sink full of dishwater.

“I’ve told Bill Scutta and my parents.”

“You’ve killed Scutta,” Bill Bradfield informed him. “You’ve killed your parents.”

Vince knew of course that Bill Bradfield was alluding to the Jay Smith legion who’d knocked off everyone from Jimmy Hoffa to hookers from Philly, and he cried, “You have to trust them, Bill! You have to talk!”

“Stop the car,” Bill Bradfield commanded, and when Vince did, he got out on the sidewalk and said, “Are you coming to talk to Curran?”

“No, I’m not,” Vince said.

“You’ve betrayed me,” Bill Bradfield said, slamming the door. “You’ve broken your solemn oath. You’ve killed me.”

Bill Bradfield arrived at the restaurant meeting in such an agitated state that he was twisting and torturing his beard. He greeted John Curran who was already talking with Chris Pappas and Sue Myers, and he asked Curran to excuse them for a moment, saying he needed an urgent private talk with his friends.

After John Curran took a walk, Bill Bradfield informed Chris and Sue that Vince had talked to the FBI. But Chris and Sue weren’t quite sure what that meant, and they seemed a bit relieved because though maintaining silence about Jay Smith might save them from a mob hit, they were looking more and more like killers themselves.

Bill Bradfield was obviously trying to talk away his panic before Curran arrived. He jabbered something about selling everything he owned and going to England or someplace else in Europe. Then he added that of course he’d give all his money to Sue Myers before leaving.

Sue Myers thought, sure, and he’d invite her to join him in England. About the same time Wallis Simpson got invited for tea and scones with the Queen Mum.

Bill Bradfield said that he, an innocent man who’d done nothing except try to protect Susan Reinert, might end up with a load of dirt in his face because of that sniveling little son of a bitch, Vince Valaitis.

Chris said, “Bill, they wouldn’t electrocute an innocent man.”

But Bill Bradfield told him testily that he wasn’t worried about being smoked by the authorities. He was afraid of being snuffed by Jay Smith because of Vince’s big mouth.

Chris Pappas was getting all mixed up again, and he said in frustration, “Jay Smith’s in prison. So maybe we should tell the cops our side of all this.”

Ah, but Jay Smith’s minions were everywhere, Bill Bradfield reminded him. And Vince Valaitis might have just signed his own death warrant. And they’d better be careful or their names would be on a murder contract right along with his. They were not yet free from Jay Smith danger.

By the time Bill Bradfield was through twiddling his beard, it looked like Medusa’s hairdo.

* * *

After Vince Valaitis had talked, and all of Bill Bradfields friends knew about it, Trooper Lou DeSantis and Special Agent Matt Mullin got the assignment to travel to California to interview Shelly again. It was the first time that her Catholic college had ever had the law arrive to chat with a student about murder.

After being taken to a private room and advised of her constitutional rights, Shelly told the lawmen that she was willing to talk, but she might need some sort of immunity.

The lawmen were licking their chops because little Shelly was showing a brow like a pile of linguini, and they thought they had something going. But then she told them what had her so worried. When Bill Bradfield and Chris were at summer school, she and her pal Jenny had been driving Chris’s car all over the place without a proper registration or drivers license.

The lawmen couldn’t believe it. They were talking about a murdered woman and two missing children and she was worrying about a traffic ticket. The Bradfield Bunch made them yearn for cattle prods and ice baths. Anything to wake them up.

Shelly told them her version of the weekend as she and Bill Bradfield had rehearsed it, replete with all the lies. The lies kept getting tangled as to where she and Bill Bradfield had been on Friday, June 22nd. She now said they may have been walking around Haverford College. As to the time he dropped her at her pal’s, she changed it from 7:00 P.M. to 8:45 P.M.

As to Bill Bradfields obvious perjury at the Jay Smith trial, Shelly finally conceded that he could have made an honest mistake because he was bad about dates.

Then the cops told her a few things to test her response. They talked about some of Bill Bradfields amorous affairs, but Shelly said she didn’t believe for a minute that there’d been anything at all between Susan Reinert and Bill Bradfield. Ditto with Rachel even after they pointed out that she’d been registered in the Philly hotel for one month prior to the murder under the name of Mrs. William Bradfield.

Shelly looked pretty smug when she heard that because Bill Bradfield had explained to her that Rachel was afraid of the seedy neighborhood and wanted any potential rapists in the hotel lobby to think she had a man in the room. Besides, Bill Bradfield had told her that he’d been celibate for five years. Rachel was just a friend and it was a pretty sad thing that in 1979 people couldn’t accept friendship between the sexes that didn’t involve something sordid. She informed the investigators that Chris and her girlfriend had that kind of relationship.

But they pointed out to Shelly that they’d seen the phone records of the hotel and learned that at 5:35 A.M. on June 1st, Bill Bradfield had made a call from that hotel to Upper Merion High School to say that he wouldn’t be able to make it to class.

Shelly was stopped by that one, but finally she said, “Okay, maybe he spent the night with Rachel. But it was probably for a good reason. Don’t you understand that people can spend the night together without thinking of sex? He was just exhausted.”

Then she tried to tell them how he taught English and Latin to her. And how he tutored students in Greek and even taught Bible studies on his own time.

The lawmen at this time didn’t know about all the money storage and the rest of it. Nor did they know that Bill Bradfield and Shelly were going to get married in a French cathedral and declaim from “The Wanderer” as they followed the trail of the Mycenaeans and their thousand black ships.

Matt Mullin had some compassion for the young woman, but Joe VanNort did not.

After they returned, Joe VanNort said, “The FBI maybe wants to pay her tuition to Notre Dame. I wanna see her graduate through a correspondence course. In state prison.”

The federal grand jury happened to be in session in Philadelphia. The Reinert task force used the powers of this grand jury to subpoena phone records, credit card information and bank records, to go deeper into the affairs of William Bradfield and his friends. And of Jay C. Smith, as well.

Vince Valaitis couldn’t wait to talk publicly about the terrible dilemma that he and his friends found themselves in. Prior to volunteering his testimony to the grand jury, Vince talked to reporters again.

“Bill Bradfield refuses to be interviewed,” Vince told them, “because he fears no one will believe him. And because he has a higher moral motivation. He doesn’t care about this world at all. He cares about his soul and another world. I’ve prayed a rosary with Bill and he wants to become a Catholic. I see Bill in an entirely different way than you do.”

He told the grand jury his strange story and then he volunteered what he thought might set the record straight for all of them:

“In the news it says ‘this clique of teachers.’ It sounds like we’re some kind of insidious group. This is something that evolved slowly. I can’t even believe I’m sitting here saying all I’ve said to you.

“There’s nothing insidious about our group. We’re good people. We’re friendly. We love each other. I feel that people in our school district think we consider ourselves superior. They’re saying that because Bill Bradfield is such an aggressive man, such a brilliant man, such an overpowering man, that we all believe in everything he does. That’s not true.”

When Vince was through talking that day, one of the grand jurors said, “Explain to me, to all of us, why in the world didn’t you at some time go to Mrs. Reinert and warn her?”

And by now Vince knew he’d spend the rest of his life being asked that question. And by now he knew that even when the words were not being uttered, the eyes were asking it.

Flattened and humiliated, after an interminable pause, Vince said, “I … just did not … deal with it.”

It was as good an answer as any of them would give. And it would never get any better.

When it was time to pay his lawyer a little installment, did Bill Bradfield just send a check or money order or even walk in and plop some cash on John Curran’s desk? Of course not, since a straightforward move like that might cause him to limit his cast which already had more players than Nicholas Nickleby.

He didn’t want his lawyer to know that he had the pile of money that Shelly had been hiding. He told Chris to ask his father if he’d take the cash and buy money orders for several thousand dollars and give the money orders to Bill Bradfield. He wanted his lawyer to think he was broke and having to borrow.

And Bill Bradfield told Chris what he’d like to do about the Judas who had caused all this misery for them.

He said, “I’d like to blow Vince’s brains out!”

He said that he was thinking about planting a story with Jay Smith that Vince Valaitis had hired a private eye to uncover things about Jay Smith. That way Dr. Jay wouldn’t think that Bill Bradfield had talked to anyone about all the Jay Smith shenanigans, and he might be encouraged to have a member of the mob “take out” Vince.

Chris wasn’t worrying about Vince at this point. Mostly he was worrying about Chris Pappas. He’d learned a lot from his master in the past several months. Chris saved potential evidence that came his way. After all, Bill Bradfield himself always said that he hated to destroy anything because he never knew when he might need it again.

The superintendent of the Upper Merion school board promised a crowd of 150 parents and citizens that while 3 teachers whose names were not mentioned could not be legally fired, they would be removed from direct contact with students.

Chris went to work at a construction job. Bill Bradfield, Sue Myers and Vince Valaitis were reassigned to nonteaching duties while the school district tried to figure out what to do with them. They were ordered to report to the deserted Union Avenue School and were given busy work.

The superintendent said privately to Vince, “Boy, if I could get you out of this district, I would!”

Unfortunately for Vince, he and Bill Bradfield were forced to share the same basement office, the same work table in fact, and there was no real work to do. They’d just report every day and Vince would read the latest newspaper article on the Reinert case and try not to talk about it to his friend, but once in a while he couldn’t help himself.

He saw a tidbit that some reporter wrote and asked, “Did you ever have breakfast at Susan Reinerts house?”

“Absolutely not!” Bill Bradfield answered.

“Pat Schnure says that Karen told her you did.”

Bill Bradfield threw a desk calendar against the wall, and shouted, “They’re all liars! The hounds are after a conviction!”

“They’re saying a lot about you and Susan Reinert,” Vince said. “It can’t all be lies.”

And then Bill Bradfield looked at him with his blue eyes brimming with sadness and disappointment, and he started mixing metaphors:

“Vince, the Book of Job says that sometimes innocent people have to be punished. God never promised you a bed of roses. During court cases there are battles, and after battles there are bodies.”

Something happened then that had never happened to Bill Bradfield. A disciple got mad enough to clench a fist.

Vince Valaitis slammed his fist down on the wooden table and said, “I’m not going to be punished for you! I’m not going to jail with you!”

Bill Bradfield got mad too. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and said, “All right, if I’m going to be blamed for murder, I might well as admit it. Here. I’ll show you how I did it.”

He drew a square with a little line. He said, “I took the children and I gave them to …”

But Vince snatched the paper and crumpled it and threw it on the floor saying, “Don’t do that! Don’t make things up!”

Vince stormed out of the basement office and was allowed to have desk space in another room.

Over the years he was asked many times to think back on that incident, especially as to Bill Bradfield saying, “I gave them to …”

At a later time he would swear that Bill Bradfield said “Smith.” He would remember that it was “I gave them to Smith.”

Years and memories are tricky. Bill Bradfield may or may not have said “Smith.” The implication seemed clear, but Vince learned that lawyers worry a great deal about such things.

Later calls from William Bradfield to Vince Valaitis came at all hours of the night.

The phone would ring and Vince would pick it up sleepily and Bill Bradfield would say, “Why are you deserting me? I need you.”

Once he cried, “Don’t betray me to the Fascists! Look what they did to Jean Seberg! Look what they did to Ezra Pound!”

Another time he called and said, “Vince, it’s all a mistake. We didn’t do anything. None of us.”

But Vince responded, “How about Jay Smith? How about all the things you told me about you and Jay Smith?”

He almost suffered a blown eardrum when Bill Bradfield screamed, “Don’t mention names! It’s phone-tapping time! The house is bugged! Everything’s dangerous! You don’t know it was Doctor Smith! None of us knows for sure!”

Bill Bradfield wasn’t the only one showing a little paranoia. Sue Myers sat weeping in her apartment one day because of her portrayal in the media. She told Vince that she’d had $1,500 worth of work done on her car but the transmission went out immediately. She was frightened.

Vince said, “That’s terrible, but it’s nothing to be frightened about.”

“Don’t you see!” Sue whispered. “The transmission could’ve been sabotaged by the FBI!”

It was inevitable. A reporter found out about the Mary Hume tombstone in Vince’s apartment and speculated that the “cult” might have lit candles on it as they uttered incantations about Susan Reinert.

During those awful days Vince’s parents stood by him. His father invited him to move back home, so Vince slipped out of his digs faster than the Shah of Iran.

Even after he’d deserted Bill Bradfield, Vince Valaitis still did not believe that his friend was guilty of anything except foolishness in not revealing what he knew about Jay Smith to the authorities. As far as he was concerned, a good man had become involved with a bad man for a good reason, and was refusing to save himself.

Vince had a theory that Jay Smith himself had placed the comb under Susan Reinert’s body, knowing it would implicate him.

“He always loved to shock and torment,” Vince told the FBI. “He’d tantalize you by drawing a circle within a circle within a circle.”

During one of his many meetings with Vince Valaitis, Chick Sabinson alluded to Jack Holtz offering Vince a drink and said, “I have to apologize. I didn’t know he’d try to ply you with liquor. By the way, I’d like to put a radio transmitter on you in case Bradfield says something incriminating. Would you do it?”

“Can’t!” Vince said fearfully. “He’d detect it. He’s a hugger.”

“Mugger,” Joe VanNort added when he heard about that one. “Hugger-mugger, just like I said.”