Echoes in the Darkness (41 page)

Rucker had to spend the rest of his life helmeted because he fell down a lot. The reason he fell down was that when the police had captured him he didn't want to go back to jail and had stuck his gun in his mouth and tried to see how many times he could pull the trigger. He managed it once, but botched the job. He had a horseshoe scar on his face and a brain like a milk cow. He just did as he was told and tottered through life. As Martray put it, "He was a very mellow individual.''

So David Rucker just sat there like a kindergartner on a school bus and grinned obligingly during a long conversation with Raymond Martray. Another inmate on the bus and a prison guard witnessed the conversation, but did not hear it.

So Martray got to run to Jay Smith with the great news that not only had he met Rucker but a guard had seen him talking to Rucker. Jay Smith had suddenly gotten himself another alibi witness. Martray was asked to say that Rucker had confessed to him that he'd been the actual armored-car courier at the Sears store.

Jay Smith really started working hard on Ray Martray's perjury conviction, so that Martray could testify in a court of law. And then, as luck would have it, David Rucker got hit with one too many hockey pucks, as it were, and expired. So he wasn't around to refute the phony confession that he'd never made in the first place.

Well, it wasn't the most promising basis for overturning Dr. Jay's conviction, but jailhouse lawy ers have nothing but time. Ray Martray had taken Bill Bradfields place as Jay Smiths favorite alibi witness.

Jay Smith and Martray became constant buddies that summer. Jay Smith hired a private investigator named Russell Kolins to take a sworn statement from Martray in the presence of a stenographer. But before that could be done, Jay Smith had to prepare Martray for the interview so that Kolins would believe in him completely, along with the authorities later.

He insisted on giving Martray a "stress test" in case the Kolins affidavit resulted in his being hooked up to a polygraph. He took Martray up into the bleachers in the yard where the cons play ball, and wrapped an electrical cord around Martray's chest and put paper clips on his fingers. He gave him a playpoly right there with Martray answering various test questions about David Rucker and his own friendship with Jay Smith.

Martray said that a young inmate strolling by the bleachers that afternoon spotted them and did a double take, but you see all sorts of weird things in prison yards, and two grown men playing polygraph with paper clips and extension cords probably wasn't all that loony.

The upshot was that Ray Martray had in his possession the make-believe polygraph charts and an envelope containing "stress questions" for Russell Kolins. Martray had something else. He had a very incriminating statement to whet the cops' appetite, but it had taken place in private, and there was no one to corroborate it.

According to Martray, Jay Smith said that Bill Bradfield had asked Dr. Jay to help kill Susan Reinert because she was going to blow the whistle on Bill Bradfield for the perjury at Jay Smiths trial. Moreover, Martray said that he'd asked Jay Smith about the Reinert children and Dr. Jay had volunteered the statement "I took care of it."

And if that wasn't enough, on another occasion, also in private, Jay Smith had gotten upset about something when they were discussing the Reinert case, and blurted, "I killed the fucking bitch."

On Raymond Martrays make-believe polygraph chart with the typed questions was "Did Jay Smith ever tell you he killed Reinert?"

And "Did Jay Smith ever tell you he was a friend of Bradfield?"

Typed charts and questions that anyone could've typed didn't do anything to corroborate Martray, but the ex-cop handed the investigators an envelope on which he'd jotted notes during his meeting with David Rucker.

There was some other writing on that envelope that read, "Sears St. Davids, August 1977" and, on the other side, "Sears Neshaminy Mall, December 1977."

These were written in the hand of Jay Smith. So far, it was the only thing that tended to corroborate their informant.

On October 1, 1981, Jack Holtz was celebrating his sixth anniversary as an investigator for Joe VanNort. That was also the day that Joe VanNort had to do his shooting qualification on the pistol range.

The old cop failed to qualify that morning. He was irritated, since that meant he had to come back in the afternoon and shoot the pistol range all over again. Joe VanNort, former hunter, former police rodeo rider, was not a guy who wanted to fail on a routine shoot at the state police range. But Joe wasn't his old self and there was no hiding it, not from Jack Holtz nor from Joes wife Betty, who'd been begging him long-distance to take his vitamin pills since she couldn't be there in that Philly motel watching over him.

Jack Holtz, after the incident at the courthouse when Joe VanNort didn't seem to know where he was, had asked Joe when he'd be taking his next physical exam. Joe had said he'd do it as soon as the goddamn investigation slowed up. He complained of having gout attacks that were causing some pain in his joints.

Now he told Jack to take the car. He'd call after he qualified on the range.

That afternoon, Sergeant Joseph A. VanNort, age fiftyseven, with nearly thirty-two years as a cop, tried again on the police pistol range. He took a tool of his trade and did his best to hit the targets but they wouldn't hold still. He showed the world his cynical lopsided grin for the last time. Hie heart attack hit like a .357 magnum. And just as in the folksong, this old workingman laid down his iron and he died.

Jack Holtz heard on the police radio that a car was being sent to the residence of Betty VanNort in Harrisburg. He raced back to the barracks and got the news. Jack Holtz couldn't keep his glasses welded on his face on that afternoon.

He did his weeping in private and then he drove straight to the home of Betty VanNort and tried not to cry again because Joe VanNort wasn't the kind of guy who would want you playing the baby in his house.

The funeral mass was held at a church in Jermyn, Pennsylvania, near the mountains Joe had loved. He was buried in his family cemetery. Jack Holtz was a pallbearer. It was the first time in six years that he'd worn a uniform.

Betty VanNort was provided for by Joe's insurance and pension, but she couldn't bear to go to the cabin anymore. She turned it over to his nephew with the stipulation that they not sell it until her death.

Joe VanNort never got his Madonna with the pool of water at her feet.

When Jack Holtz got back to work he found that it was very different without the top banana. The FBI had already cut its task force participation to just a few full-time agents, and didn't seem to think that a murder indictment against Bill Bradfield was all that probable. Jay Smith seemed totally out of the question. However, they wanted to take over now that Joe VanNort was dead.

But Jack Holtz showed that in a quieter way he could be just as intractable as the man who had trained him. The state police were not surrendering their authority in this case, not even a little of it. He told the feds that he was now in charge.

One of the first things he did was to go through all of Joes personal files. He could have wept again. He found a note that Joe had obviously mislaid back in 1979, a note from a couple of guys in South Carolina who'd been working at Three Mile Island and saw a hatchback open and called the police after they'd read about the case in the papers.

Jack Holtz telephoned the men who established that Susan Reinerts body had been left at the Host Inn as early as seven o'clock on Sunday evening. For the first time it was clear why Jay Smith had made calls to his attorney's office and residence anxious to establish the time of 8:37 p. m., when he was far from Harrisburg.

Their driving tests showed that it was a ninety-minute drive from the Host Inn in Harrisburg to the house on Valley Forge Road, so Holtz figured that Jay Smith must have narrowly missed being seen by the men from Three Mile Island.

He hated to tell the others, but he had to. He explained how Joe had been losing it for some time and was obviously a very sick man. He wanted to ask Betty if Joe's death had been related to a cerebral hemorrhage, but couldn't bring himself to do it.

He told the remaining FBI agents that they'd never met the old Joe VanNort, the man who made him an investigator, still the best interrogator he'd ever seen. They just hadn't known the real Joe VanNort, he assured them.

Jack Holtz was a very lonely top banana.

It was time to reassess. Since there were so many counties involved in the investigation, the attorney general of Pennsylvania opted to assign one of his own prosecutors as the legal coordinator.

Richard L. Guida was a very aggressive, organized, nervously energetic young guy who could've outsmoked Joe VanNort, particularly at trial time. At thirty-four, he was one month older than Jack Holtz but looked five years younger. He was a natural middleweight but would drop down to a welterweight during a trial becausc he'd forget to eat.

Guida had originally been a prosecutor but had left to try his hand at private practice. He wasn't cut out to be a defense lawyer. There are many trial lawyers who claim they can do each job with equal enthusiasm, but that's something like a macho celebrity who gets caught in a homosexual tryst and says, "Well, I'm bisexual." And the gay tabloids say, "Oh sure. Oscar Wilde used that old line."

Lawyers can do both jobs, but not with the same gusto.

A good prosecutor needs to be about half-Doberman. Rick Guida qualified. He was one of those prosecutors who always look like they may die of heartburn if the defendant tells just one more lie. And in a year when half the guys his age in America had a Tom Selleck mustache, it was a good thing he had one, because it helped hide his deadly sneer when a defense witness told a whopper.

Since the FBI presence had been dribbling away for several months, it was decided that another task force should be formed, a little one. Special Agent Matt Mullin stayed on, as did Special Agent Bob Loughney who'd done extensive work on the slag samples taken from Susan Reinerts car, but who had never been able to discover from whence they came. The little task force included another police detective from Montgomery County, and a deputy district attorney to act as special prosecutor. And of course Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis from the state police.

They worked from a command post in Norristown, with Rick Guida remaining in Harrisburg and coming east when required. But the little task force didn't accomplish much. The momentum was gone. Lots of days they just sat around and shuffled their reports and looked for things that weren't there, things to move Bill Bradfield from the category of convicted thief to a murder indictment.

By December, the FBI decided to hang out the "closed" sign. Matt Mullin and Bob Loughney were the last FBI special agents to leave. The FBI had done more lab work on this criminal investigation than on any other with the exception of the Patricia Hearst case. Jack Holtz was very depressed by the FBI report that said the Reinert murder was unsolvable.

It was a downbeat Christmas for Jack Holtz. Of course he got to go home to his son on weekends. Still, he logged more nights in motel rooms than Willy Loman, and with Joe VanNort gone the nights were lonelier.

Lou DeSantis was from Philly, so he slept at home most of the time. DeSantis had gotten involved with the task force in the first place because he'd been available when the call came to pick up Ken Reinert in Philadelphia and drive him to Harrisburg to identify the body of his ex-wife.

So far, the investigation hadn't brought any hardship for DeSantis, but he wasn't fond of hearing Jack Holtz talk about relocating the task force to Harrisburg, where he'd be the one living in motels.

But that's what happened in April. And now it was a minitask force. It included Jack Holtz, Lou DeSantis and Deputy Attorney General Rick Guida. And that was all there would be until the end. The bunch of bananas was down to three and they were getting overripe. Jack Holtz couldn't even count his gray hairs anymore, hut at least he was again living with his son. He celebrated by redecorating. That meant buying another duck.

When asked why he had so many ducks, he looked surprised, as though the answer was obvious: they didn't want flowers.

The move to Harrisburg coincided with another event that would, add hundreds of man-hours to the already mammoth investigation. Jay Smiths work had been successful. Raymond Martray got released from prison on $10,000 bail, pending appeal.

While he was free, Martray again contacted Jack Holtz and Lou DeSantis who went to meet him at his father's house. Martray said that Jay Smith wanted him to fake a story that Joe VanNort had offered Martray a deal to frame Jay Smith. He also said that Jay Smith wanted to kill a deputy sheriff and wanted to poison the water supply at Dallas, and all of this had to do with escape plots if he got indicted for murder. Dr. Jay still had the Reinert murder very much on his mind, according to Martray.

Before they'd left the case, the FBI had administered a lie detector test to Raymond Martray. The polygraph operator said he was possibly deceptive. After his release from prison, the cops administered another. He passed on the "key questions." Though Joe VanNort had been a polygraph operator, Jack Holtz seldom used the machine on anyone.

"It's a good tool, but," was his opinion of lie detectors.

Jack Holtz decided that if half of what Martray said was accurate it was time to take a stab at the prince of darkness. He and Rick Guida asked Martray if he'd agree to telephone monitoring, and he signed a consent form in the presence of his lawyer.