Echoes in the Darkness

6

As the school year of 1977–1978 and the tenure of Dr. Jay C. Smith drew to a close at Upper Merion, there were a lot of plans being made by Bill Bradfield and his friends. Vince Valaitis had become gradually aware of a lessening of contact with Bill Bradfield while he and Sue Myers tried to keep the Terra Art store from bankruptcy.

When he did see Bill Bradfield, the older man was always complaining about having been wrong to take on the responsibility of “helping” fellow teacher Susan Reinert, who he said was constantly bothering him for advice or money loans.

“She’s so pathetic and needy,” he told Vince Valaitis, “I can’t bring myself to just ignore her, but I wish she’d leave Upper Merion and go away.”

Vince was by then twenty-six years old, and not as frequently mistaken for one of the students. But most of the faculty still found the young teacher refreshing and fun. A couple of minutes into one of his excited monologues on horror flicks and the other grownups felt like taking him to a monster movie and feeding him jelly beans.

He was the kind of guileless young guy who wasn’t ashamed to say, “Sure I’ve had a sheltered life but it was a nice shelter.”

Vince Valaitis was so loyal that he’d kept his sandbox pals from kindergarten. Vince could make you worry that with a checkbook in his pocket he might someday meet a guy with an honest face and a pinkie ring selling timeshares in Atlantic City. People just wanted to protect Vince. He looked more vulnerable than Liza Minnelli.

At one of the end-of-terms soirees, Susan Rienert, who’d had a drink or two, sat at Vince’s feet and put her arms around his knees and told him how good-looking he was, which of course was true, and how much she liked him, and of course everybody liked him.

But Vince got nervous about the pass and reported it to Bill Bradfield who said it only went to prove what he’d been saying all along, that Susan Rienert was a frustrated neurotic who would jump into bed with any man in order to find a husband.

Vince knew that Susan Reinert did not always have an easy time of it financially and once when she was hard pressed he gave her money to buy Michael a cub scout uniform. But Bill Bradfield warned his young friend to stay away from that sex-starved creature, even though he knew that Vince Valaitis had a sex life like Saint Francis of Assisi. Warning him to stay away from Susan Reinert for fear of being ravished made little sense, unless viewed as a tendency of Bill Bradfields to keep certain people apart, for reasons of his own.

Another of Bill Bradfields coterie was a young fellow a year older than Vince. Bill Bradfield had seen a great deal of Christopher Pappas over the years, but he usually arranged it so that Vince Valaitis and Sue Myers were not part of his social life with Chris.

Chris was not as easy to get to know as Vince Valaitis, but in his own way, he was another young man who some thought needed protection. Chris was of medium height, sturdily built, and looked Sicilian, though he wasn’t. He was soft-spoken, unassertive, and was a very introspective young fellow. His parents were Greek-American and proud to have forebears in the country that had produced Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. His father was an assertive, self-taught house builder with clever hands and a perfectionist’s temperament. Chris spent his life trying and failing, or so he perceived his father-son relationship.

He’d been a student at Upper Merion, and along with his brother had wrestled on the team that Bill Bradfield helped to coach. When he graduated from high school in 1968 he was an unhappy lad, insecure, plagued with self-doubts. He was good with his hands but would never be as good as his father, and more than clever hands was expected from him.

His grades and test scores were too low for the local colleges and universities, but Chris heard that Kansas State University wasn’t so competitive. He applied, got accepted, and in his words “went to college just to be going.” He majored in political science because he had to major in something. His first year was disastrous, but in his second he took a course in philosophy. At first it had to do simply with being Greek, but soon it changed his life. He stayed at Kansas State for five years, and probably owed his degree to classes in philosophy.

“Philosophical ideas had an impact on me,” he said. “At last I realized that it was possible to figure things out.”

As long as he could remember, he’d seen himself as a disappointment to his father. He’d been a very slow reader all his life and believed himself to be slow in every way. His grasp of philosophical concepts started to persuade him that perhaps he wasn’t totally inadequate, but he was by no means a confident young man even after he graduated and returned to visit old friends and teachers at Upper Merion.

He began driving a school bus for the township, and was still looking for direction when Bill Bradfield urged that he enter Cabrini College and work toward a teaching certificate. His former teacher also encouraged Chris to sit in on his Great Books Program to see what advanced students could accomplish given the proper motivation.

Chris Pappas listened and pondered and followed Bill Bradfield’s advice. He did attend Cabrini as well as St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He got the certificate and returned to Upper Merion as a substitute teacher and also taught kids with learning disabilities and emotional problems. He was a good choice for a job that required compassion.

During the year that he was a substitute teacher, Chris Pappas became very close to Bill Bradfield.

“You remind me of myself when I was your age,” Bill Bradfield told him. “We’re similar, you and I. We’ve both had to deal with overpowering fathers who believed the only right way to do things was their way. We’ve always felt very little sense of accomplishment in our fathers’ eyes, haven’t we?”

Chris confessed that he’d been such a worrier all his life that he’d developed a stomach ulcer at the age of ten. Now the scholar of Upper Merion began telling him that he had a superior mind, and that one way to prove something to the ghosts of one’s childhood is to prove something to oneself. Bill Bradfield demonstrated that the way to achieve self-satisfaction and self-esteem is through duty and service. Chris trusted Bill Bradfield to guide him.

Chris Pappas was as decent and likable as Vince Valaitis, and, in his own way, even more vulnerable. He listened attentively whenever Bill Bradfield extolled the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and pointed out to him that Catholicism proved that one is not enslaved by obedience to higher authority; one is set fee by it.

At the time Chris had a friend named Jenny who was several years younger, but he and Jenny were no more than friends. And Jenny had a best friend named Shelly who was eighteen years old and one of Bill Bradfields gifted students. Shelly was a sturdy industrious girl who reminded Chris of a flouncing Pennsylvania German milkmaid, bursting with energy and opinions and a need for approval.

Soon, Shelly started wearing a Greek sailors cap like the one Bill Bradfield wore. And after listening to Bill Bradfield on Catholicism, Shelly became convinced that she should begin taking instruction to convert. It wasn’t long until Sue Myers was peeking out of her classroom window watching Bill Bradfield greeting the girl with a kiss. For a teacher, that could be a dangerous little maneuver on any high school campus, even one with the laissez faire policies of Dr. Jay Smith.

Neither Susan Reinert nor Shelly seemed as threatening to Sue Myers as a woman Bill Bradfield had been seeing on and off for a few years, a woman from Annapolis.

Rachel had originally come to Upper Merion to talk to Bill Bradfield about his advanced students as potential candidates for St. Johns College in Annapolis, a liberal arts institution that promoted the Great Books concept.

Sue Myers had met Rachel on the very day that she’d scored the one-kick decision over Susan Reinert. When Sue saw the way Bill Bradfield was looking at Rachel she realized she might have more kicking to do.

Bill Bradfield started urging students toward a further education at St. John’s, Annapolis, or at the colleges sister campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

One summer, he and Sue Myers took a trip to Santa Fe so he could enroll in a seminar. Sue had to live in a godawful apartment in the outskirts rather than being close to the school where he spent most of his time. It made her wonder. Then she discovered that Rachel was also at the New Mexico campus.

Rachel was a very articulate, seemingly intelligent young woman, as petite as Susan Reinert. She wore no makeup; her clothing was modest; her shoes were flat. Her black hair was slashed down the middle and looked like it was combed with a steam iron. She had good bones and possibly could be attractive but probably never would be.

To Sue, she looked like she belonged on a widow’s walk in 19th-century fiction, floating between the gables. Rachel was different and mysterious and Sue Myers feared her more than the others.

This one, she thought, could be a Bill Bradfield “keeper.”

Sue was delighted to learn that Rachel had been married at one time. Sue believed that Bill Bradfield could never sustain a relationship with a woman who was not a virgin. Yet the more Sue studied Rachel the more she realized that this young woman looked as virginal as any that prowled the moors in a Gothic novel. And that’s how she looked: Gothic.

Chris Pappas enthusiastically agreed to join Bill Bradfield in a summer program at St. Johns in Annapolis where Rachel would be “helpful” to them. There would be vigorous tutorials, seminars, papers to be written on the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Chris hoped to emerge more qualified, more confident.

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 time 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 containing 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.

It was near midnight when the arresting officer was walking past Dr. Jay Smith in the booking office. He overheard a remark that the prisoner whispered into the telephone.

Jay Smith said to his listener, “… even before the bailbondsman. Get over to the house and take everything out. Including the files!”

The blue metal sign at the township limit reads: NAMED FOR FREDERICK THE GREAT, KING OF PRUSSIA. Jay Smith lived in King of Prussia, only a few minutes from Upper Merion Senior High School. It was well past midnight when township police started acting upon information received from the arresting officers.

At 1:00 A.M. a detective was staked out at the residence of Jay Smith on Valley Forge Road. The cops couldn’t imagine who would arrive at the house of the principal to “get everything out.” And what would “everything” consist of?

At 2:00 A.M. a car entered the Smith driveway. The driver of the car held four university degrees. He was short and slight and looked as threatening as Woody Allen. In fact, he looked very much like the school librarian, which is what he’d been until the recent Philadelphia layoffs. The librarian had been a close friend of Jay Smiths for many years.

The cops hid by a line of trees and watched the librarian carrying boxes from the basement of the Smith house. Among the items he carried to his Plymouth were some file boxes containing two packets of marijuana weighing a total of 818 grams. The cops pounced on the unsuspecting librarian who said that he was only doing what his friend Jay Smith had asked, and the authorities later decided not to charge him with any crime. But the marijuana in the box allowed them to get the local magistrate out of bed and swear out a search warrant.

At seven o’clock that morning the secret basement apartment of Jay Smith was full of cops. They found an additional 580 grams of marijuana and some vials of contraband pills and capsules, but the drugs were eventually of minimal interest to the police. Far more intriguing were other things that caused many excited calls to other police stations around The Main Line.

Another search warrant was served the next day, a warrant that covered a search more far-reaching than anticipated. The superintendent of schools was asked to come to the Jay Smith home where he identified office machines and other equipment stolen from the Upper Merion school district, as well as reproductions of famous paintings snatched off the walls in the district office. And also something that made absolutely no sense to the cops: Dr. Jay Smith had apparently stolen four gallons of nitric acid from the school. For what?

Then there were the things that had nothing to do with the school. They found two silver badges and uniforms, the kind worn by Brink’s security guards. In Jay Smith’s desk they found a bogus identification card fashioned from a U.S. Army identification card. In fact, there was a whole packet of stolen army I.D. cards. The bogus Brink’s card bore a photo of Jay Smith with the name “Carl S. Williams” beneath it.

The charges against the school principal were piling up when the police found yet another uniform, that of an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. This uniform wasn’t a phony. A call verified that the educator was retired from the 79th Army Reserve Command, and that Colonel Smith had in fact carpooled to army reserve meetings with his commanding general. The general was shocked. He’d always spoken highly of his intelligent colonel. The general was John Eisenhower, son of the thirty-fourth president of the United States.

The cops in the basement that day hauled off a lot of evidence and photographed the rest. The bottles of drugs contained Valium, Librium and Placidyl, but the cops were puzzling over everything else. They found five more oil-filter silencers along with a pair of latex gloves. The basement walls were pocked with bullet holes, no doubt from target practice with the silenced guns. Along with the stolen military I.D. cards, they found a pile of blue combs bearing the name of his army reserve unit.

They learned that one of Jay Smiths guns appeared to have been bought by and registered to the assistant principal at Upper Merion, except that when they contacted the man he informed them he had never bought a gun. He told the cops that his wallet and identification had been stolen from his desk in the past year.

It appeared that Jay Smith had swiped everything from Upper Merion but the swimming pool, when he wasn’t busy terrorizing Sears stores as a bogus courier.

There were lots of other unusual things in the basement, his library for instance. Dr. Jay Smith had books with titles like The Canine Tongue, Her Bestial Dreams, Her Four-legged Lover, The Bestial Erotics and Animal Fever.

There were plenty of swinger publications, both straight and gay. There were classified ads from “modern” couples willing to exchange information with pen pals. And finally, there was a significant quantity of chains and several locks. The cops photographed the chains and figured that Dr. Jay was a world class party animal.

This was reinforced when Stephanie Smith gave her divorce lawyer a dildo described on a later police report as “pink, regular size” and another described as “extra large, black, with manual crank, squirts water.”

And what, the boys in the station house wanted to know, would General Eisenhower think of those little weapons?