Joseph Wambaugh - Echoes in the Darkness

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?”