Echoes in the Darkness (31 page)

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 worlcin' 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 I"

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 halfdrowned 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 Hofla 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 Smiths 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 teacher's 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 dangerj 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. Its 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-thewool 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-ofAlexander-Craham-Bell's-birth-date telephone system.