Kill for Thrill (18 page)

Linda McLaughlin and Thomas Bodnar had been standing in the plaza parking lot when Michael Travaglia and his passengers sailed through the traffic signal at First Street and Astronaut Way. They had seen Leonard speed across the bridge after them and then they had heard the gunfire. Tom Bodnar had raced to the middle of First Street and stared off into the frozen darkness on the other side of the bridge, trying to see what had happened. But two hundred yards and the veil of night had conspired against him, and he couldn’t even see Leonard Miller’s headlights. Sensing that there was something desperately wrong, Bodnar ran back to the Stop-N-Go and grabbed the phone to call for help. Other than that, neither Bodnar nor McLaughlin had much information. What they did have was a description of the car. They described a late model, silver blue sports car occupied by several men. This information would provide Tom Tridico with what he needed to send out an all-points bulletin to police departments in the area asking for assistance in the search for the killers.

When Tom arrived back at the barracks, he sorted through the information that had begun pouring in since news of the slaying had spread moments after the shots were fired. Investigative triage was a skill that Tom had perfected early in his career. It had helped him earn his stripes. The physical evidence was scant. A few fragments of glass, plenty of blood—which appeared to belong solely to Officer Miller—and little else. He wished for more but had made cases on less, so he didn’t lose hope. He knew that ballistic evidence would prove helpful, but recovery of the bullets from Leonard Miller’s body wouldn’t happen until several hours later, so he focused on the information that he did have.

If Miller’s defensive shots had struck his killer, then there were no obvious signs of it at the scene. Of course, that didn’t rule out the possibility that he had, in fact, wounded his assailant, but there were no traces of blood left behind. Tom was getting ready to notify the local hospitals just in case when he was interrupted.

When Tom stepped into the barracks’ lobby at 7:15 a.m., Ronald Ashton met him with eager anticipation. Ashton wanted desperately to help. He had been on his way to work, heading out Route 380, when he noticed a silver blue sports car parked off the side of the road. Tom held his breath. Ashton had heard the description of the car on his police scanner that morning while he was getting ready for work. Tom thanked his stars for police buffs. The car looked like it had a couple bullet holes in it, Ashton offered. That was all that Tom needed to hear. He immediately signaled for one of the dozen or so troopers milling around expectantly looking for things to do to come take the statement from Ashton and then snatched up his coat and headed to his car.

After Tom had settled in behind the wheel of his police-issue unmarked car, he radioed for Troopers David Ivey and Steven Szabo, who were patrolling the area, to head to Coopers Trailer Sales out on Route 380 to investigate. Optimistically, Tom dropped the car into gear and headed out to meet them.

Within five minutes of their arrival, Szabo and Ivey radioed to Tom that they had hit the jackpot. Tom goosed the police car and held his breath. This would be the break they needed, he could feel it.

By 7:30 that morning, Tom Tridico was standing beside a half dozen state troopers surveying a 1977 silver blue Fiat Lancia. Tridico closed down the entrances to the lot with several uniformed officers stationed at each end. While waiting for Rick Marshall, Tom began a quick once over of the car. He noted two bullet holes in the passenger’s side quarter panel. No doubt the slugs would match Leonard’s gun.

The driver’s window was shattered, and tiny little fragments of safety glass littered the seats. Tom wasn’t a gambler, but if he were a betting man, he’d have bet his house, impending pension and his daughters’ college funds on the glass fragments matching those he had found at the crime scene.

Taking a step back from the car, Tom collected his thoughts and began to plan his next step. Unless the killers had stolen another car or hitched a ride, they couldn’t have gotten too far. Hopeful, Tom radioed to his patrol units in the area instructing them to begin canvassing along Route 380. He knew that if he was going to track Leonard’s killer down, he needed all the help he could get. He had the barracks pass along everything he knew up to this point to the police in the surrounding towns of Plum Borough, Murrysville and Monroeville. Tom knew that more eyes were always a good thing.

Tom didn’t have to ask twice. Troopers, local police and county detectives fanned out across the three counties searching for the cop killers. In reality, Tom hadn’t really had to ask at all. From the moment the news of Leonard’s murder hit the airwaves, cops from every tiny town and borough in a three-county area had been going inch by inch over the countryside, sifting through everything in hopes that something would surface that would reveal Leonard Miller’s killer.

At 10:00 a.m., the police saturation paid off. As part of the dragnet, Trooper Frank Sheetz had been assigned to canvass along 380. Route 380 is a main artery running through the small town of Holiday Park on the outskirts of Monroeville. As a back route to Pittsburgh, it is pretty well travelled and dotted with convenience stores, gas stations and shopping plazas. Trooper Sheetz hadn’t gotten more than a five-minute walk from the Cooper Trailer Sale’s parking lot when he reached the 7-Eleven convenience store.

The night manager at the store remembered three strange men at the store around 7:00 a.m. that morning. One of the men had a small cut above his eye, and they were all acting a bit suspicious. Asking the clerk and customers for a ride into Pittsburgh, the men had apparently run into an acquaintance and then disappeared. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded to the clerk as if the men were headed into McKeesport, or maybe Elizabeth. The man with the cut was described as tall and lean with straggly brown hair and scruffy facial hair. Immediately, Sheetz radioed to Tom Tridico, who sent George Boyerinas and Rich Dickey to the store with the photograph of Michael Travaglia. Dickey showed the photo. The clerk never hesitated. Michael Travaglia was the man with the cut above his eye.

Within minutes, Tom Tridico was on the phone with the McKeesport Police. Chief Thomas Hanna was on the other end. The camaraderie that emerges among agencies in a time of such crisis is what makes the subculture of the police community such a tightknit group. Eager to do anything within his power, Tom Hanna pledged all his men and resources to aid in the search. Armed with a description of the three men and a photograph of Michael Travaglia, Troopers Sheetz and Griffin set out to join Tom Hanna and his men as they scoured the rusty streets and alleys of McKeesport for three scruffy and deadly men.

Having dispatched men to all parts of Westmoreland, Allegheny and Armstrong Counties, setting a record-breaking dragnet in motion, Tridico returned to the Kiski Valley Barracks. He sat at a tiny, overcrowded desk running through facts, checking off bits of evidence in his head and staring at the face of Michael Travaglia in his mind. He had done all that he could do. The case was in the hands of his men in the street. He had faith in them. Feeling helpless, Tom reached across the desk, lifted the receiver from its cradle and mashed the stout buttons on the keypad with his tired fingers.

John Flannigan’s voice reminded Tom of rolling green hills, leprechauns and shamrocks. As he collected his scattered thoughts and began to fill in Flannigan on their progress, it became clearer to Tom that what had begun as a promising investigation had degraded into a waiting game. Tom recounted what he knew to John. Travaglia and two other unknown men had sped through Apollo in a 1977 silver blue Lancia and goaded Leonard Miller into chasing them. After Leonard stopped them, one of the men in the car shot Leonard twice with a .38-caliber revolver.

Both men agreed that it was comforting to know that Leonard had gotten off six shots. Tom attributed it to good training, and John agreed. Both men knew that tiny victories amid such a catastrophic event were all that they could hope for, and each secretly vowed to hold onto those tiny victories for all they were worth.

Leonard’s killers had escaped along Route 66 and then abandoned the Lancia near Holiday Park, where they hitched a ride into McKeesport. Although he hadn’t been able to confirm it, Tom was pretty sure that the Lancia was stolen. All of these things Tom knew, and now so did John Flannigan. What neither man knew, but which both desperately wanted to know, was the answer to the question, where was Michael Travaglia?

Tom reminded Flannigan about Chuck Lutz’s Sonny’s Lounge warrant, Daniel Keith and Ray Scalese (both of whom he hoped were with Michael) and thanked him in advance for anything that he and his men might be able to do.

Tom Tridico heard the vacant hum of the dial tone in his ear before he even realized that his conversation was over. Numb and bone weary, he lowered the phone into its cradle and stared at the blank desk blotter on the desk in front of him. Tom was not a man who easily admitted defeat. Inside, that voice that always haunted him when he hit a brick wall in a case began to nag at him. Warning him that if they didn’t pick up the trail of the killers soon, it would grow stale, the voice reminded him of how impotent he was—how human. Tom knew that when the trail goes cold, the odds of solving a case drop drastically. In Tom’s world, failure was never an option, and the few times when it did happen, he took the defeat to heart. Victims left unspoken for, deaths unaccounted for and killer’s unpunished all swirled in Tom’s mind—a seething, jumbled mess.

Slowly, the face of Leonard Miller crept into the swirling stew of his past and stared at Tom. Expressionless and blank, Leonard’s face looked just as it had twelve hours earlier at the roadside as Tom kneeled over his body—when Tom had made his promise.

Kneeling beside Leonard Miller, Tom had promised him secretly, silently and earnestly that he would find the killers. He promised Leonard that he would speak for him and would stand up for him to make sure that his blood was not spilled in vain. As Tom Tridico sat in that station house, at that desk, alone with Leonard Miller, he slowly began to realize that he might not be able to keep his promise. For the first time in his thirty-year career, Tom Tridico was scared.

John Flannigan spread his notebook out on the podium and looked out over his detectives. He shuffled several papers. His men stared at him in silent anticipation. News such as the murder of a fellow officer spreads like wildfire through the police community, so Flannigan’s men were already fully aware that Tom Tridico and his men were tracking a cop killer. They all knew why they were there. What they didn’t know, and what Flannigan was about to tell them, was that they were going to be crucial in solving the case.

Flannigan began in even, unemotional, measured tones, in his characteristic low-key, almost ambivalent delivery. He offered his men the tiny scraps of information that most already knew anyway. The men stirred, restlessly. They were men of action. Sitting in briefings and talking about solutions were not options these men tolerated well. Frank Amity spoke up first.

“Look, Sarge, I know this Scalese guy. How about me and Tony go scarf this prick up and see what he knows?”

Flannigan shared his men’s enthusiasm and action-oriented outlook on police work, but the stripes that often sat heavy on his shoulders forced him to tighten the reigns a little from time to time.

“Look, we’re gonna head out momentarily. Let’s just not go off half-cocked.” Respect for Flannigan was universal among his men, and they stirred but held their seats for a moment longer. “PSP thinks this guy Travaglia might also be running with a kid name Daniel K. Montgomery.”

Condemi piped up, “We got pictures on any of these mopes?”

“Tridico sent me a photo of Michael Travaglia, but the other two skells, we’ve got nothing on.” Flannigan continued, “Montgomery may hang out downtown, and according to what PSP knows, he’s got a real distinct West Virginia accent. They said you can’t miss it.” Flannigan hesitated. “Might be these guys hang out downtown, near Liberty and Ninth.”