Death Among the Waves

     Natasha Yugoselski ran to hang up her Walker Company work apron and rushed to the exit for the long trek home. She couldn’t wait to throw herself into the arms of Janusz, her husband, lifemate and love. He had spent the glorious summer day swimming on the Jersey Shore with Stash and Walter, his two teenage sons, and Natasha couldn’t wait to hear about their adventures. 

      Sure she regretted having to work on the production line while her family played, but one of the Walker Company’s frequent layoffs had hit Janusz three weeks before. She, therefore, at least temporarily, had to carry the burden to help the couple fulfill its dream of owning their own home in America after escaping Communist Poland.

       Natasha, therefore, had mixed feelings as she walked up the driveway of her sister Jeanette’s home, but little did she realize the tragedy waiting at the back door of her adopted homestead.

       As she and her sister Jeanette rounded the corner into the driveway Natasha’s brother-in-law Urico almost knocked them over and confronted them with a somber expression on his face. Neighbors suddenly heard Natasha let out a sorrowful scream and saw her collapse into her sister’s arms as tears flooded from her eyes.

      Urico tried to hold back the news, but he could not repress his own sorrow any longer, “Your husband drowned this afternoon while swimming with his sons in Seaside Heights.”

    Natasha momentarily composed herself to ask about her sons, who came running out of the back door to embrace their mother. They had escaped the huge wave that had overtaken their father.

     After the family collected itself sufficiently to walk into the house, Natasha continued to shake her head in disbelief, “Janusz was an expert swimmer. He grew up on the Baltic Coast near Gdansk and took to the water since his childhood like one of the harbour seals he loved to frolic with. We had just begun to take aim at the Great American Dream and it looks like this tragedy has robbed us of that dream.”

       The boys said they couldn’t understand it either. Their father had been swimming right next to them and showed no signs of distress in the water.

      Turns out, even though Urico had burst forth with the black story of his brother-in-law’s death, he had held back some very disturbing details so he could give his sister-in-law time to digest the sudden turn of events.

     “I hate to say, but I haven’t told you everything,” he reluctantly said to his sister after he saw some acceptance in her eyes. “The police, after talking to the boys and speaking to us on the phone, believe foul play may have played a part in Janusz’s death. Although the seas around Seaside Heights can erupt with sudden force, the waves this morning washed ashore fairly calmly and they believe a good swimmer should not have run into trouble.”

       “But anybody could drown in the surf, no matter how calm it comes in,” Natasha cried. “Did they find something else that could have meant his drowning wasn’t an accident?”

       “I probably should not say anything more until Det. Smith of the Seaside Police Department comes here in about an hour,” Urico said, “but they did find bullet holes in his back.”

     The young widow and her two sons let out screams of sorrow in unison.

     “Janusz did not have an enemy in the world,” she said. “We came to this country only a few months ago. His friends and family both here and in Poland considered him one of the finest men they ever knew. There’s no way anyone would want to kill him.”

      A loud knock on the door interrupted their conversation.

     Det. Derrick Smith and Sgt. Harry Anderson of the Seaside Heights Police Department came in and introduced themselves to the family.

     “The coroner is in the midst of the autopsy,” Smith said. “We’ll have a much better idea of what happened once the coroner finishes his work.”

      “Meanwhile,” the detective continued, “Mrs. Yugoselski, had your husband made any enemies in Poland or gotten into any disputes before he left the Walker Company?”

      “Never,” she said. “Janusz had been a community volunteer in our home country before we came here. At Walker, his bosses and fellow employees considered him like one of their family.  In fact, his supervisors had tears in their eyes when they informed him that they had to cut back his position.”

      A week later, the autopsy showed Janusz had been killed  by two 45 caliber bullets fired from the Seaside Heights shoreline.  Police had not found a gun or other evidence of the shooting,

      What they found after searching Janusz’s car in a parking lot at the Shore resort, however, proved very surprising and disturbing.

       Turned out that Janusz had led a secret second life as an active member in a US-based resistance movement engaged in plotting the overthrow of the Polish government.  In an old suitcase locked in his trunk they found a diary with the names of Polish Communist officials circled with red targets.  A number of entries in the diary spoke of “cell meetings” scheduled for the next two weeks. Next to the suitcase they discovered a number of chemicals that, when combined, could create an explosion capable of leveling an entire city block.

          Another disturbing notation in the diary said that Janusz feared some Communist operatives in the United States had followed him and might “erase him” soon.   He didn’t believe, however, that the Communists would attempt anything in such a public area as Seaside Heights that had a fairly large police presence.  Therefore, that’s probably why he had decided to get away from his “second life” for a pleasant weekend excursion with his sons.

       The Communists, however, had posed as nondescript tourists and rented a bungalow overlooking the ocean. Their entire operation would have gone undiscovered had the owner of the bungalow not reported what “sounded like gunshots” coming from the area of his backyard the day Janusz and his sons had gone swimming.

      “I’m usually not here on weekends,” the landlord told the police, “but this area is very family-oriented or a hangout for teenagers.  Although I had no problem renting to three middle-aged men with foreign accents, they had fallen behind in their rent and they didn’t bring any luggage with them when they checked in–only a few long, hard cases. That is why I kept a close eye on them. One of my tenants in another bungalow I own called me away on an emergency around the time I heard the shots, so I didn’t have time to look into it further. When I returned the next morning I found this bungalow empty and the men gone.”

      When the detectives reviewed the lease agreements the men had signed they found, as they figured, common, probably fabricated, American names and home addresses which did not exist in the towns the men said they had come from.

      However, not many gun enthusiasts made purchases of high-powered 45 automatic pistols in firearms stores in the Seaside Heights area, and the second store owner they questioned said he recognized the men as one of his customers with a very heavy Eastern European accent. He gave the police a description of the car the customer drove as he left.

      The detectives found the car abandoned at the nearby Point Pleasant Train Station, but, when they felt the hood of the car it still was warm.

      The last train bound for the direction of New York City had not yet departed. The detectives boarded the train and arrested three men on suspicion of the murder of Janusz Yugoselski.

      The three men. Wladslaw Koboseski,  Stashu Frotereski and Franklin Borovich, pled diplomatic immunity.  Turned out, however, that they had taken such pains to establish phony “American identities” that Polish officials no longer recognized them as nationals of that country.  Also, the fragile Polish Communist government did not wish to offend the United States, which might, in the near future, become an important trade partner.

       Following headline-grabbing trials lasting six months federal courts convicted the trio of kidnapping and murder.  They would spend the remainder of their lives in jail without the possibility of parole.