Echoes in the Darkness Read online

  And by now, the principal’s secretary was getting to know more about his family than she ever wanted to know. Ida Micucci knew that his eldest daughter Stephanie was a strung-out junkie, living at various times with other addicts in the area. The young woman was in and out of rehabilitation programs. She would often call her father, but end up telling Ida how much she needed money.

  Sometimes she’d come into the office to get money from her father, money she said was to be spent at fashionable beauty salons in Valley Forge, but which probably went up her nose or into her arm. And if her father wasn’t there, the young woman would sit and complain to Ida that while her husband Edward Hunsberger was locked up for his own narcotics addiction, Jay Smith was trying to push her into a relationship with someone else. She asked if Ida had any influence with her father.

  And of course Ida would have to say that God Himself had no influence with Jay C. Smith, and the secretary’s heart would ache for the poor girl. She felt even more pity for his other daughter Sheri, a sweet but deeply troubled youngster. She wished that Sheri would get out of that house and go to live with one of her uncles.

  And so it went. Ida would take all the strange phone calls from strange women, and watch Jay Smith in his black suit go to wash his hands twenty times a day, and smell the strange chemical smells in his office after he left. Moreover, people were reporting thefts from their desks lately. There was a thief about, but Ida figured a desk burglar was small potatoes around here.

  Then, despite all her attempts not to be drawn into the troubled life of her boss, Ida learned that the entire Smith household was disintegrating. As if the addiction of young Stephanie and her husband Eddie wasn’t trouble enough, Jay Smith’s wife discovered she had terminal cancer.

  So Ida Micucci went on trying to pity her boss. And in his own strange way he sometimes surprised her pleasantly.

  Once, Ida happened to tell Jay Smith that she liked stuffed cabbage. Two days later when she got home from work, Ida discovered a vat of stuffed cabbage on her front porch, enough to feed the Philadelphia Eagles.

  When holidays came, she’d discover presents in her car. No notes, no acknowledgments necessary.

  At times like these when he was weathering such tragedy, she truly wanted to pity him. But whenever she tried to commiserate for the elder Stephanie’s illness or young Stephanie’s drug problems, she’d search his eyes for signs of sadness or pain. She never saw anything but Pan leading a nymph to perdition. He was a very hard man to pity.

  Susan Reinert occasionally brought her children Karen and Michael to the principal’s office when she had a late class. Jay Smith didn’t like the idea. One day after they left Ida said to him, “Boy, if all kids were only as nice and polite as those two!”

  He slid his eyes in her direction and said, “I don’t like teachers bringing their damn kids around school. We’re not here to babysit.”

  “You’d have to like those kids,” Ida Micucci retorted.

  “I don’t like any kids,” Jay Smith replied.

  And because Ida was the only one who ever tried to get in the last word with Dr. Jay Smith, she said, “How can you be a school principal and not like kids?”

  He turned and went silently back to his office and closed the door.

  During the tenure of Jay Smith, Ida discovered that she was losing respect for teachers in general.

  “They could all see what was happening to our school,” she said later. “They were so scared for their jobs they said nothing. I’ll never feel the same about the profession after my experience working for Jay Smith.”

  And though it wasn’t her place to administer discipline, one day Ida got sick and tired of all the cowards she perceived them to be. She stormed into Jay Smiths office and said, “Do you know that there’re students smoking dope in the parking lot? Are you going to do something about this or not?”

  And Jay Smith sat back in his chair and folded his arms and slid his eyes onto her, and with a look of amusement said, “What do you want me to do with them, Ida? Kill them?”

  The elder daughter of Jay Smith wrote a very troubled letter to a former boyfriend that winter, a letter that ended up in the hands of local police. In the letter, young Stephanie expressed an irrational fear of her father. She had come to believe that her father had somehow induced the rapid growing cancer in the stomach, intestines and lymph nodes of her mother. The terrified young woman concluded that perhaps her mother’s illness had been induced through toxic substances in her food.

  The letter said in part, “So much cancer in such a short period? No way. I’m afraid I’ll kill myself if anything else happens!”

  And then there occurred the strangest event of all in the legend of Dr. Jay Smith. Young Stephanie and her husband Eddie happened to stop at the home of his parents, Pete and Dorothy Hunsberger in North Wales. The Hunsbergers, like the Smiths, had suffered a lot because of the addiction of Eddie, their only child. Eddie was a handsome young fellow and an avid reader. His parents knew he had potential. The Hunsbergers had never stopped hoping that perhaps he could conquer the addiction, and Eddie seemed to be making some strides in rehabilitation this time. The reason he came to them that Saturday in February, 1978, was to complete his income tax return.

  Their son customarily visited once a week. The last words that Dorothy Hunsberger ever heard him utter were “We’ll be back a little later.”

  He and young Stephanie walked out the door and were never seen again. Except by Jay Smith.

  After weeks of frantic inquiries, Dorothy Hunsberger told police that Eddies father-in-law, Dr. Jay C. Smith, was the last person to see the couple.

  Jay Smith had told Dorothy Hunsberger that the young people had suddenly decided to head out for California because Eddie discovered there was a warrant out for his arrest, a warrant for writing forged drug prescriptions.

  “But I’ve checked with federal, state and local authorities!” Dorothy Hunsberger told police. “There aren’t any warrants for Eddie.”

  The last message she ever got from Jay Smith regarding their children was given during a phone call near the end of that school term. He said, “Well, the kids are finally in California.”

  The last she ever heard on the subject from the wife of Jay Smith came in a terrifying phone call that she at first chalked up to delirium from cancer drugs.

  The elder Stephanie said to Mrs. Hunsberger, “Oh, my God, I hope Jay didn’t do them in!”

  * * *

  Ida Micucci thought her prayers had been answered. The school received word at the last faculty meeting of 1978 that Dr. Jay Smith was leaving the principals office for a position in the Upper Merion administration building. That’s what they heard publicly. Privately, there were rumors that the district administrators had gotten wind of some of the shoplifting complaints that local merchants and police hadn’t kept totally quiet.

  At that last faculty meeting, Bill Bradfield arose and gave Dr. Smith a glowing testimonial. He spoke extemporaneously for five minutes. And he organized a retirement dinner.

  While Sue Myers and Vince Valaitis and Susan Reinert and Ida Micucci and almost everybody else around the school were feeling relief, Bill Bradfield was comparing Jay Smith to Albert Schweitzer. When Bill Bradfield got through, you’d think that Upper Merion’s foremost expert on poodles in your waterbed was beloved. It was a reprise of Goodbye Mr. Chips.

  One of the people ever so grateful to see him go was Pat Schnure, Susan Reinert’s closest friend in the English department. Pat was tall and willowy with dark hair and turquoise-blue eyes. Bill Bradfield had once made a minor pass at her, but she was far too pretty for his efforts. When Pat had occasion to drive her principal home one day she felt his eyes slide over her like a steamy wet cloak.

  He said things like “Pat, it’s not easy being a fellow like me in the company of a beauty like you. You see, I’m aware that I’m not attractive, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have needs.”

  Trying not to jam the gas pedal
through the floor, Pat said, “Gee, wasn’t that a swell lunch?” and anything else that popped into her head to change the subject.

  “Tell me, Pat,” he said, “do you like to have your body relaxed? Through massage for instance?”

  She started shaking a little, but then he said, “You know, there are other ways to make money. You could have a second career if you wished.”

  And as she was getting ready to say, “Gosh, thanks, Doctor Smith, but I’d make a lousy masseuse,” he totally surprised her by saying, “You should consider a security job. I see you as a very fine security officer. What do you think of that?”

  6

  The Gunman

  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 wom
an 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.