Kill for Thrill by Michael W. Sheetz Read Free Book Online Page B

like the Travaglia and Lesko one arose, he would coordinate the investigation. Supervising men such as Charles Lutz, Richard Dickey, Curtis Hahn, Robert Luniewski and countless others, Tom Tridico would eventually call upon them to bring Michael Travaglia and John Lesko to justice.
    By Tridico’s own count, he has handled thousands of criminal investigations and well over two hundred homicide investigations. Nevertheless, the Travaglia and Lesko case has most affected him. Probably in part because of Leonard Miller and in part because, as the years have dragged on, the criminal justice system has called on him to repeatedly recount for jurors and jurists alike the soul-robbing events that began for him on the cusp of the New Year in 1980. In 1979, Tom Tridico did not know Edward Wolak. Tom Tridico did not know Peter Levato. Soon, however, Edward Wolak would know both Peter Levato and Tom Tridico.

    Snow crunched beneath Edward Wolak’s boots as he picked his way down the bank into the ravine below. It was getting late in the morning. He ducked beneath the snow-draped branch of a spruce tree. “Just one more trap to check,” he mumbled, “and then home in time for lunch.”
    The feeble morning sun peeked through the trees behind him as he made his way along the steep bank, squashing the dappled sunlight with his hunting boots. One hundred feet beyond, a fallen oak tree stretched across the mouth of the ditch. The long-retired patriarch of the glen marked the spot where Eddie’s next trap lay in wait, with its famished mouth open wide, eagerly awaiting its next meal. He squeezed under the recumbent oak and knelt beside the trap. It was empty. It was always empty. He didn’t expect today to be much different than any other day. The only things two years of trapping in these woods had earned him were a few mangy squirrels, an opossum and one rather scruffy beaver pelt.
    He stood up, brushed the forest litter from the knees of his brown corduroy pants and shuffled his thick rubber boots through the ankle-deep layer of leafy debris. As he followed the gently curving ditch toward a large stand of evergreens, the rush of the creek behind him drowned out his thoughts.
    The chains of the two galvanized steel-jawed traps that hung over his left shoulder rhythmically jangled and clanked in his ear to the beat of his rising and falling feet. He adjusted them with a gloved hand and pushed through a wall of pine boughs like a passenger forcing his way onto the subway.
    By now, the sun had climbed into the late morning cerulean sky, and as he stepped onto the road, the muted world of the ravine receded into his memory. He looked up. Tears filled his squinting eyes as they struggled to adjust to the solar onslaught. Eddie lifted his hand to shield his eyes and stared down the road leading back toward his house, where he knew a warm lunch would surely greet him. As he crossed Loyalhanna Dam Road and headed for the banks of Loyalhanna Creek, he hoped that his Saturday morning had not been a total waste.
    Eddie scattered some loose twigs with the toes of his boots as he walked. Silent thoughts of lunch wrapped around him like a warm blanket as step after step rose and fell, bringing him closer and closer to his home. As he picked his way through the underbrush, his eyes were drawn to the base of a large tree sitting about twenty feet from the edge of the creek. He moved in for a closer look.
    Growing out of the side of the tree was what looked like an odd, twisted branch. It was misshapen and knurled. As Edward circled the tree, a sharp bit of sunlight caught his eye and everything flashed white. He rubbed his eye with wool-gloved fists and took two more steps. Standing in the long shadow of the large tree, Edward Wolak slowly reopened his eyes.
    He was staring into Peter Levato’s lifeless face. An invisible fist landed squarely in Eddie’s gut with a dull thud. It forced every thread of air out of his lungs, while microscopic tremors