Echoes in the Darkness (58 page)

question is asked: "What would you have done if, according to Bill Bradfield, Jay Smith had been making those same terrible threats against Susan Reinert and the children?"

To say they would then have acted would of course be an admission that the life of Susan Reinert had been assigned a paltry value, by virtue of Bill Bradfield's assessment of her. No one could answer the question.

All of them-William Bradfield's friends and colleagues, his former students, his lovers, the families of his confidants, or their lawyers-all of them who had been told that there was a man named Jay Smith planning to murder Susan Reinert-all of them can ask themselves one question: "Did I believe Bill Bradfield that she was in danger?"

If the answer is yes, there are three ghosts that each of them might have to face from time to time. In the darkness.

What of the strange partnership between William Bradfield and Jay Smith? Well, perhaps there was nothing strange about it, once it's stripped of picturesque settings and yes, Gothic trappings. Their partnership perhaps was not so different from those formed every day in center city Philadelphia by thousands of crime partners who have not earned certificates and titles from famous universities.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with sin and everything to do with sociopathy, that most incurable of human disorders because all so afflicted consider themselves blessed rather than cursed.

It may have been nothing more than an everyday moment when one sociopath detects a flare of black light in the eyes of another. Seeing a potential mate. Seeing his own kind.

If Jay C. Smith ever does sit in the electric chair, it would not be out of character for him to say testily, "I hope you're all satisfied, because I never was a pervert, you know."

The electric chair can be a sociopath's greatest triumph if he thinks he can manipulate his audience to the end. To die in control is to die in ecstasy.

As to William S. Bradfield, Jr., he's housed in the state correctional institution at Graterford, Pennsylvania. Sue Myers said that he was taking correspondence courses from Villanova in Arabic and astronomy.

"He loves prison," she said. "He gets to tell his mother horror stories and scare her to death. At last, he's a poet in exile. Locked away like Ezra Pound."

His lawyer, Joshua Lock, said that people don't understand Bill Bradfield, and that its true that he might prefer Graterford to a less austere prison.

Lock described Graterford prison as "almost Gothic."

William Bradfield can live a life of contemplation. What he can't do is define his life as Greek tragedy, not in Aristotelian terms where the tragic hero must change. The sociopath can't change. For the sociopath there is no third act.

One might think that after it was over, after he'd successfully concluded an immense investigation that the FBI said was unsolvable, when Jack Holtz returned to Troop H he'd be welcomed as some sort of hero. But if one thinks that, one doesn't know as much about the policeman's lot as Gilbert and Sullivan did.

When he returned, it was to find that most of the investigators who'd been there back in 1979 were dead, or retired, or transferred to other assignments.

The first thing that was said to him was "Why the hell did it take you seven years to clear a homicide?"

There was even talk of not being able to find a slot for him, and perhaps returning him to uniform and traffic duties.

Rick Guida was at last able to remove the pictures of Karen and Michael Reinert from his desk. His letdown at the conclusion of the case was more noticeable than Jack Holtz's. He spoke to the attorney general of Pennsylvania about getting Holtz assigned to his office to investigate major crimes.

Jack Holtz said that he'd do it, but he didn't want to work on white-collar crimes. He wanted to work homicides. Not too much to ask as a reward, one might think. Just to pursue murderers, on behalf of the commonwealth.

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EPILOGUE:

It seemed that after the most massive police investigation in Pennsylvania history had been concluded, the thing to do would be to return to the lovely countryside near Downingtown where the trees are bronze and fire in Indian summer, and wild flowers riot on the hillsides, and haystacks are molded into huge bread loaves. Where one can watch young geese spiraling toward the sun, their sapphire heads glistening in the rays.

Susan Reinert and her children had had some happy times in the old springhouse near Pennypacker Road, hearing the wings of the young honkers cracking like spinnakers in the wind, watching the young birds bursting through pale plumes in the summer sky. It was not out of the question that the bones of Karen and Michael Reinert could be resting in a place like this. There was no harm in wishing it.

In the summer of 1986, Pat and Biv Schnures younger daughter Caitlyn was four years old, and Molly was nine by then, very tall like her parents.

Molly still had an old-fashioned rubber doll with blue eyes that used to belong to another little girl. All her life Molly had called that doll Karen, but she'd forgotten why she'd named her that.

When her mother asked Molly if she remembered the little girl who gave her that doll, she tried to recall her doll's namesake. But Molly was growing up and dolls weren't so important anymore.

It was just too hard for her to remember the other Karen. It seemed like such a long time ago.

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JOSEPH WAMBAUGH, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department, is the author of fifteen books-The New Centurions, The Blue Knight, The Onion Field, The Choirboys, The Black Marble, The Glitter Dome, The Delta Star, Lines and Shadows, The Secrets of Harry Bright, Echoes in the Darkness, The Blooding, The Golden Orange, Fugitive Nights, Finnegan's Week, and Floaters-all of them outstanding bestsellers. He lives in southern California.