Echoes in the Darkness (29 page)

"Maybe some poor hooker that could pass for Susan Reinert in morgue photos!"

"And then Bradfield ..."

"Gives Gallagher and Ken Reinert their quiet money and goes off to England and meets his new family and they buy a boat and go sailing off to . . ."

"The Greek islands or the Aegean Sea or some canal in Venice where Ezra Pound mighta flushed his freaking toilet one time!"

Well, there it was. The homicide investigators nightmare. All the cops were sitting around stunned. And Joe VanNorts cynical blackjack mouth was hanging open, about to lose his eighty-first Marlboro of the day.

Jack Holtz was beating his snuff to death and spitting juice into a Coke bottle at a rate or forty globs per minute. He was also pressing the nose piece on his glasses, which is a laugh because he was so cautious and controlled you could heave him off a cliff in Acapulco and he'd come up with his Timex and those glasses digging into his cheeks like surgical implants.

Every cop in the room had a nightmare vision of eighteen FBI agents strutting in long enough to have lunch. Then in forty-eight hours they'd load the real Susan Reinert and her kids on a London Concorde heading for JFK and a press conference where Joe VanNort and Jack Holtz and all the others wouldn't be heard over the thunder of cackles, snorts and guffaws. The horror of it all was professional humiliation.

A telephone call was made. The latent-prints specialist verified that the fingerprints on the corpse matched the lifts found all over the bedroom and bathroom of Susan G. Reinert of Ardmore.

The cops all looked at each other with shit-I-knew-it-all-thetime grins.

And that's how a cop's mind works.

Chapter
17

Dr. Jekyll

As FBI agents go, the state cops could have done far worse. In the first place, the special agent in charge, Don Redden, was almost as young as Jack Holtz, and younger than several of the agents he was supervising. And he wasn't one of those FBI agents whose secondary mission in life is to look preppier than George Bush.

Don Redden was more of a Harrisburg kind of guy. In fact, he'd worked in the Harrisburg office and knew Jack Holtz. He was a Kentuckian and sounded like chicken-fried-steak, and looked as though he'd be right at home dipping snuff with Holtz or tramping around on VanNort's mountain with a twelve gauge.

But it was tough for Special Agent Don Redden or any of them to get chummy with Joe VanNort. Every other day he was having a faceoff with somebody.

Once he grabbed three feds and said, "I hear somebody in this group was reinterviewin' witnesses and said the statie's done a piss-poor job!"

And of course the agents denied it, and maybe they hadn't said it, but Joe VanNort went to Don Redden and said, "We're gettin' it together here. I want everybody to know who's in charge of this investigation. Me. That's who's in charge."

Don Redden knew Joe VanNort was a daddy cop from the old school and he understood the resentment and jealousy that goes with these cases, and he didn't say too much when VanNort braced his agents with embarrassing questions.

"Any a you people ever investigated a murder?" Joe VanNort challenged. "I mean, even one little murder?"

Of course VanNort knew that the FBI rarely had the opportunity, but he even accused the "goddamn schoolteachers" of never having seen a dead body in all their lives.

You had to be careful with Joe VanNort because you couldn't be certain which group of goddamn schoolteachers he was talking about. Bill Bradfield, et al., or the feds.

When any of the special agents wanted to go to the Reinert house, VanNort demanded that a trooper be present. When the agents wanted to bring Ken Reinert or Pat Gallagher into the house for any reason, Joe VanNort would get so hot he could set off sprinklers because those two still hadn't been officially cleared as far as he was concerned.

The feds weren't around a week before he turned to Jack Holtz t J said, "When this case is over I ain't never workin' with the FBI again. No matter who orders me."

The F agents immediately liked the blue comb lead and the other Jay Smith connections. Despite Joe VanNort, they began working in that direction.

As far as VanNort was concerned, Bill Bradfield was a hugger-mugger, acting alone. The kind that picks on plain or homely women, turns on the charm and gives them some cuddles while he picks their purses.

There was something else that Joe VanNort maintained from his first encounter with Bill Bradfield and from everything he'd learned.

"I can get that guy," he promised, "because he's got a mouth he can't control. And he'll never be able to control it. He'll talk his way right into the joint."

While Stephanie Smith lay dying of cancer, a former coworker at the dry cleaner's released Stephanie's diary to a local newspaper. And it was full of lurid fact and fantasy.

The newspaper accounts in August were enough in themselves to keep a task force busy.

One headline said: sex rinc linked to murder. swinger's group probed.

State police have uncovered explosive new evidence in the Susan Reinert murder case linking the Upper Merion teacher to a bizarre sex ring. Officials have categorically refused to disclose any details publicly about the group. But sources said yesterday that Mrs. Reinerts knowledge of the love cult may have been a motive in the slaying.

The individuals contacted by reporters have said that as many as 20 to 30 men and women regularly participated in "swinging sessions" that included homosexual and sado-masochistic acts. However, it could not be determined whether Mrs. Reinert actually participated in any of the orgies.

One police source said that Mrs. Reinert may have been killed because she was about to expose the existence of the group and its members, most of whom are "professionals."

A Sunday edition of a Philadelphia paper printed an interesting story that caught Jay Smiths attention in his cell at Dallas prison. The headline read: satan cult death?

Teacher may have been sexually assaulted, tortured, before she was slain, probers say. The murderers of Upper Merion High School teacher Susan Reinert may have been members or associates of a Satan worship cult, investigators have told reporters. Mrs. Reinert may have been stripped, tortured and sexually assaulted as she lay on a makeshift sacrifice altar during a black Mass devil worship ceremony on the weekend of her murder last June. Federal and state investigators have found evidence of the existence of the cult in the Upper Merion area.

Cult members were described by one investigator as "intellectual professionals." They did not balk at using animals in sex exhibition and encounters, the investigators said. Investigators said they were not sure if Susan Reinert was actually a member of the cult or whether she attended the black Mass rituals and other ceremonies out of curiosity, but they said they were certain Mrs. Reinert knew about the cult and the identity of many of its members.

Satanism or devil worship is as old as Christianity itself. Its members traditionally dress in dark hooded robes and gather at a narrow altar to witness Satan, usually a cult ringleader in Satan garb, perform a sexual sacrifice on an unclothed maiden. Literature about the cult attests that in modem times the ceremony has included the use of sexual stimulation devices. Satan performs sadomasochistic acts on his victim who is tied up and heavily drugged while other cult members hold lighted candles and chant ancient prayers of Satanic worship.

Some of Smiths papers, letters, and diaries that were

made public last week in a copyrighted story in a Montgomery County newspaper, indicated that Smith engaged in sexual activities while wearing such costumes as military fatigues and a Satan outfit.

With school soon to resume, Upper Merion Township was taking a lot of shots.

A front-page headline read: the abc's of a school cone bad.

At least four teachers are currently under investigation for criminal offenses according to a police source. And as many as a dozen more are suspected of involvement with, or knowledge of, a love cult.

There were pictures on the front page of the harried schoolboard president and the school superintendent facing an irate mob of parents who wanted William Bradfield and his intimates fired.

A Philadelphia paper ran a picture of a furious mother brandishing a microphone at a school-board meeting. The headline said: sex, drugs, trouble, upper merion high.

Angry parents were asking politicians to probe the entire school district, according to an article with a headline that said, life in the suburbs is suddenly scandalous.

And while tabloids were calling Upper Merion the school for scandal, the new administration was trying to assure everyone that a breakdown in discipline under Dr. Jay C. Smith was being greatly exaggerated.

"Its a real bitch!" one administrator was quoted as saying. They don't teach you how to handle these things in graduate school."

The yearbook of Upper Merion Senior High School had been dedicated to the new principal and was printed just before the term ended. The dedication said:

In becoming principal, you took on a school that was certainly in need of direction. You turned it around and sent it on the right course.

The billboard at the city limit said: upper merion township is a cood place to live, work and worship.

But one night a vandal painted a huge scarlet notice on the side of the school.

It said: the devil's workshop.

"All because a one little rubber dick!" Joe VanNort griped.

He figured that the dildo found in the car, and Stephanies diary detailing Jay Smith's exotic sex practices, were having a squirrel cage effect on his task force. The FBI agents were diving into the Satanism gossip on the theory that the children were being held by a devil cult. Joe VanNort figured they weren't going to stop till they found Rosemarys baby.

And every time he turned around there was an indication that one of his own men was blabbing to a certain woman reporter. He was being diverted from the Reinert case by one of his guys with a big mouth and an erection. He despised all reporters and they felt the same about him.

Joe VanNort said, "I don't give a shit if Jay Smith wore the skin of a bare-ass oh-rang-itang, we ain't chasin' no devils except that bearded son of a bitch with my birthday."

To his great chagrin, Joe VanNort had discovered that he and Bill Bradfield were bom on the same month and day. He was hoping to send Bill Bradfield a card next year, care of state prison.

Despite what he said, Joe VanNort got dragged into one cult raid out in the country. Acting on a tip that Satanists were holding two young kids in a vacant house, the cops broke in, but there were no demons. There was a semidevilish pentagram painted on the floor.

Stephanie Smith finally succumbed to her cancer and was buried on August 12th at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Cemetery in Linwood. Jay Smith was permitted to attend the funeral while escorted by a state prison guard.

Though William Bradfield was mentioned more frequently, Jay Smith was more intriguing to the journalists. There were many feature articles.

an educator named jay c. smith was a mystery to his wife too.

jay c. smith, educator and man of secrets.

even wife could not be sure.

The FBI was fascinated by the sexual flavor of the case. They used the Stephanie Smith diary like a Michelin guidebook to perdition. Special agents were all over the sex shops in Times

Square following tips that Susan Reinert had been murdered by a snuff-film killer.

They went after a lead that Jay Smith had killed a pair of Dobermans that were found months earlier with their sex organs mutilated. They checked out the story that a black hooker found dead in Valley Forge was a Jay Smith victim. They persued a story that Jay Smith wanted to open his own massage parlor, and at least that one was true.

The FBI followed up rumors that he frequented Plato's Retreat in New York. They worked on a letter Stephanie had filched, a letter from a man who had sent Dr. Jay a nude pinup of himself. They even looked into the alleged Jay Smith mail order scheme for penis enlargers.

Then the FBI got a call from a federal inmate in Kentucky who said that when he was in prison in Trenton, New Jersey, William Bradfield had come to him looking for a hit man. The FBI pursued the lead extensively all across the country until they found the reported hit man. It came to nothing more than the butchered dogs, the snuff films, the dead hooker and all the rest.

Joe VanNort just showed the frustrated agents his lopsided grin and said, "Welcome to homicide, boys!"

The FBI also worked hard on the car of Susan Reinert. Debris jammed under the bumper was analyzed and found to be slag. They explored the possibility that the Reinert children had been taken to a place where the car was backed into a slag heap. But the car still contained half a tank of gas, and since Susan Reinert had filled it Friday afternoon, it wasn't likely that it had gone anywhere but straight to Harrisburg. Unless the killer was willing to stop at a filling station with one body or three in the luggage compartment.

It was a time-consuming exercise. There's a lot of slag in Pennsylvania and the FBI saw more that year than U.S. Steel.