the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "This beast should be in the ground," a Tulare County detective had said, outraged that Brooks's inquiry had resulted in a motion to dismiss the murder charge.

  "I don't disagree," said Brooks.

  "He's what Death Row's all about, for chrissake!" the detective sputtered.

  "I think you're right," said Brooks. "I've been to the row. I've put lots of people there who would just eat up average folks. There wouldn't even be any bones left."

  "Then why did you do this? Why screw up our case? Why?"

  And later Brooks took some kidding when another gang member, a moronic, incredibly violent black man was asked by the psychiatrist if there wasn't somebody, some one person in his entire life whom he wanted to emulate, besides gang leader Ronald Polk. And the killer thought, and chewed his lip for a moment, and then smiled brightly saying: "Sure. There's one person. I'd like to be just like Sergeant Brooks!"

  Pierce Brooks would never criticize Karl Hettinger for saying he simply wasn't sure. He understood what it was to have to be sure far past a reasonable doubt. So he sighed and accepted the minor setback and decided it just meant he'd have to work harder on Smith. He knew Jimmy Smith did not have Powell's tremendous ego which was producing a gush of information about the robberies, most of it remarkably accurate, indicating a good mind and an extraordinary memory for detail. Smith was rather without ego, a quiet-spoken, wily sneak thief, an ex-hype, a street hustler who survived by his wits. Brooks was painting a mental picture of Smith, of a leech who clings to aggressive movers like Powell, who is satisfied with crumbs. He knew Smith would trust no one, especially not a cop, white or black. Smith would respond neither to kind words nor harsh ones, was merely clinging to a glimmer of hope that if Brooks could not prove he fired the four shots, he would escape the gas chamber.

  Pierce Brooks studied the records of both men for any clues to their personalities, especially Jimmy Smith's, and then he sat at his desk and examined the mug shot taken on the eleventh of March and compared it with one taken in July of 1950 when Smith was not yet twenty years old. In the first he saw a light skinned, curly haired mulatto youngster staring into the camera arrogantly, his eyes tough, the set of his mouth defiant. In the recent mug shot life had taken its toll and Pierce Brooks looked at a pleasant face, anything but tough, eyes soft and rather moist, the naturally strong jaw not set strongly, rather as though he was used to holding it loose, ready to break into a subservient smile. Smith's forehead was wrinkled. Brooks guessed his forehead was always wrinkled in expressions of distress, humility, servility. He was convinced that Smith was a whining coward and that was the key to him.

  Brooks swore to himself he would confess. Jimmy Smith would follow Gregory Powell as he always had-right into that apple green room in San Quentin.

  On Monday night, with just one day's rest, Karl Hettinger was back on duty. He arrived at Hollywood Station an hour early to get it over with, the questions, the well-meaning questions, the insatiably curious questioning policemen he knew he must face. He hadn't had time to do much thinking about Saturday night and what it meant. He'd eaten, slept, awakened to talk to relatives and friends, and slept some more. He'd slept brokenly, an hour of deep exhausted sleep followed by an hour of hot, fitful, dream-laden sleep. Then another hour of merciful exhaustion.

  Now, approaching the parking lot at Hollywood Station, he felt like a stranger, like he'd never been here before. He'd always liked this station. It was an old comfortable building. It looked like a station house. Now though, it looked different. He knew most of the uniformed policemen he saw leaving and entering, but they looked different. For a second as he pushed through the old swinging door he felt at home, and he wondered if it was his or Ian's turn to drive tonight. And then as he thought it, the blood jetted to his head and he felt dizzy and had to talk silently to himself until he was calm again.

  One hour later he was not calm as he entered the patrol watch commander's office.

  "Hettinger!" said the lieutenant, "How's . . ."

  "Lieutenant, I'd like to talk to the men at rollcall."

  "You would? Why?"

  "I've just had thirteen guys ask me about Saturday night. I wanna talk to the rollcall. I wanna tell everyone about it at one time and get it over with. I just don't wanna keep telling it."

  Karl did talk to the rollcall. In fact, his superiors thought it would be a good idea for as many policemen as possible to hear about the kidnapping so he talked to rollcalls again and again. On the very first rollcall discussion that night at Hollywood Station, to the uniformed officers of the nightwatch, an older sergeant was the first to ask a question when Karl finished his recitation of the events from the moment of kidnap to the rescue at the farmhouse.

  "Question," said the sergeant, his foot up on a chair, the three chevrons looking bold on the blue sleeve.

  "Yes?" said Karl.

  "The purpose of this talk is to help other policemen, so the things that happened to you and Campbell don't happen again. Now let's hear your opinion about how you guys fouled up. The things each of you did wrong. Or what you didn't do and should've done."

  Karl stared at the sergeant and his mouth went dry and then he looked back at the faces in the room and some of them were looking at the sergeant and some at Karl and some were looking away. He answered something but did not remember what he answered, and then after a few more questions the watch commander broke up the meeting.

  That first night he was back on duty, that Monday night, Karl and his new partner stopped a truck as their first contact of the evening. It looked very like one which had just been reported stolen in the vicinity. But the occupants were not auto thieves. A woman was driving and the passenger was her daughter. Karl's partner had a laugh with the woman when he explained why they had been stopped. When Karl walked back to the police car he wanted to grab the fender for support. He actually stopped walking and pretended to be checking his flashlight because he was afraid his legs would cave if he took another step. He clenched his teeth to keep his jaw from trembling, but there was nothing he could do about his legs.

  Only walk and hope they held him up. They did, and his new partner never seemed to notice. It was the second longest night of Karl Hettinger's life.

  On the day before Ian Campbell's funeral, Pierce Brooks decided that it was time for a confrontation between Gregory Powell, Jimmy Smith, and Karl Hettinger. By now, with the preliminary ballistics work done, he had a pretty good idea of what had happened when the shooting started.

  Powell had fired one into Campbell's mouth. Hettinger ran and Powell emptied the gun at him. He fired three, had one misfire, and clicked on the empty cylinder. That accounted for the five he carried in the gun. At almost the same moment Powell was firing, Smith cranked off a round from the automatic at Hettinger. That took care of the shell casing they found at the scene. Then the ambidextrous Smith, with Campbell's Smith and Wesson in his other hand, stepped forward and blasted four more into Campbell's prone body. In the panic and confusion, Powell sat in the car with the heap of guns and reloaded Hettinger's Colt which one of them took from the glove compartment. In the dark he actually reloaded the only one of the four guns which hadn't been fired at all. Powell took out the rounds, fumbled around, and put two of them back in along with four of his own 158 grain ammunition. The other guns weren't reloaded and told the story.

  Pierce Brooks took Greg out of his cell that day and into an interrogation room. Before bringing the others in, Brooks said, "Sit down, Greg. I've got a little news for you."

  "What's that?"

  "Jimmy Smith has been arrested and is in the building right now. He's told us a different story than the one you've told us."

  "Well"-Greg shrugged-"as long as you've got Jimmy I may as well tell you, I popped off the first cap and Jimmy popped the caps into the officer after he was down."

  And that was that. He'd said it so casually it was anticlimactic. Almost disappointing. The fight was over as far as Gregory Powell was concerned. B
rooks glanced at his partner and said, "All right, let's tape it."

  Before Jimmy Smith's arrival, Greg softened his spontaneous declaration of a moment ago: "Well, everything was just exactly like I stated it before except for one thing. When I walked around back of the car and walked up to Jimmy, I don't know exactly how it happened, but my gun went off and I hit the officer and he went down. And he was still moving and the minute it happened, I knew, well, there's nothing else to do but go ahead and try to get the other one too, you know, and so I started shooting at the other one. And he was running, and I ran off just about even with the other officer, and while I was shooting at him Jimmy said, 'Hey this son of a bitch is still alive,' and started popping caps into him."

  "All right now, Greg, when you got out of the car, which gun did you have?"

  "I had my .38."

  Brooks took the four-inch Colt from a briefcase and held it up. Greg smiled and said, "That's my baby."

  "All right, do you know positively which gun Jimmy had?"

  "Yes. He had the .38, the police .38 that I had previously had in my waistband."

  "Would this be . . ."

  "The driver's. He put the other officer's gun in the glove compartment so I handed him this one. He didn't know anything about automatics."

  "After the first shot at Officer Campbell do you remember how many times you fired at the officer running down the road?"

  "Yes, I fired until my gun was empty. I carried five in the gun, always keeping the hammer on an empty cylinder."

  "After Jimmy handed you the .32 automatic, did you take one shot with that .32 at the officer?"

  "I don't think so."

  "The .32 was fired, Greg."

  "I didn't fire it, no. I don't think Jimmy did. Maybe he did, but I don't think so. I didn't fire it because I didn't have it until afterwards when he handed it to me."

  "And now, if we bring Jimmy Smith up here, will you tell him the same story to his face as you told us?"

  "Definitely, but there's an awful lot of hostility towards Jimmy."

  "We'll keep you separated here."

  "I have an awful temper."

  "All right, let me warn you, we're not going to permit any altercation. We'd like you to conduct yourself as a gentleman."

  Before Jimmy arrived, Brooks left and spoke to Karl Hettinger, who waited in the squad room.

  "Okay, Karl, there's one thing I'd like you to do. When we all meet in here, you go ahead and tell your story the way you did originally, that you saw Smith fire the four shots. It'll just be a form of accusatory statement here in the interrogation. I think he might go ahead and cop out then. Only leave out the Lindbergh statement. I want Powell to talk. I'm willing to let him save face and rationalize. That statement might frustrate him so much he'll clam up."

  "I hope he cops out." Karl sighed. "I'd just like to get it all over with."

  At 11:00 a. M. Jimmy Smith was brought inside the room and he and Gregory Powell sat on opposite ends of the table. They looked at each other with hate and accusation, each feeling victimized by the other.

  Gregory Powell was the first to tell his story, omitting the Lindbergh statement which Pierce Brooks let pass because it was so devastating, so brutal, it could upset him if it were dwelled upon, and Jimmy Smith had verified it separately. We'll save that one for the jury, Brooks thought.

  "... I walked around back of the car," said Greg, "and shot the officer, and he fell to the ground and the other officer hollered and started running. I started shooting at him and Jimmy said, That son of a bitch isn't dead,' and started firing into the officer that was lying on the ground."

  "All right, Jimmy, you've heard Gregory's statement?"

  "Yes sir."

  "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

  And Jimmy said, "Yes sir. We stepped around the car like I told you and he fired and shot the officer. I had the automatic in my hand, just like I told you I did, and I hadn't fired at nobody. I didn't . . ."

  "Greg said he handed you the driver's gun when you got out of the car in the onion field."

  "No. I left the .38 layin there. This is the one the officer out in Hollywood, that he . . . the one that he handed to me, the little officer handed it to me. I still had that one."

  "Jimmy, you put that gun in the glove compartment," said Greg.

  Pierce Brooks then said for the benefit of the tape, "The time is now 11:05 and Officer Hettinger has just entered the room."

  Then to Karl, "This man sitting to my right-Gregory Powell -what did you see him do when the first shot was fired?"

  "Powell was holding a weapon in his hand," said Karl very deliberately. "He raised it. He fired at Officer Campbell, struck him, knocked him down. I then spun and ran northbound along the same dirt road we had come up in the car. I looked back and saw Smith standing over Officer Campbell. He was firing a gun into his body. Then I saw Powell fire at me twice and didn't look back and heard two more shots. I assume they were fired at me."

  "I don't know how to say it," said Jimmy. "I swear I don't . . . I . . ."

  "Before you say it," said Brooks, "let's ask Gregory here, what the officer told us, is that what happened?"

  "That's substantially the truth except as I walked around the back of the car, without saying anything, as I was walking up, the gun went off the first time."

  "Now, do you want to tell us your story, Jimmy?"

  "Anything you want me to say," said Jimmy.

  "I want you to tell us what happened. You've heard Powell and you've heard the officer."

  "Yes sir. I did not fire into that officer's body."

  "All right," said Brooks. "How could Greg possibly have gone over to the place you mentioned and shot at this officer and at the same time fired into Officer Campbell? The trajectory and the physical evidence bear out the story of Gregory Powell and this officer."

  "Yes sir."

  "It does not bear out your story."

  "Yes sir. But I didn't shoot him. I'm positive."

  "You say that Powell fired one shot at the officer. The officer fell down. Then he fired more shots at the fleeing officer until you heard a click."

  "Yes sir."

  "Then after the shooting was over, he came over to you and you got in the car for the reloading. How did the four bullets get into Campbell's chest? And how did one shot get fired from the .32 automatic? The empty casing was found by the blood spot."

  Then }immy began a rambling statement that took them back to the Hollywood streets, and Pierce Brooks tapped his fingers impatiently, but did not interrupt because one never knew when an innocuous statement could end in confession. Then Jimmy finished by saying, "I don't know if he is firin at this officer or how. I said he's firin at this officer because to me it's the way it looks. It's all hazy to me. If you want me to admit it, sir, I will."

  Pierce Brooks stiffened, because a remark such as that usually signals a seeking for rationale, a push, a man who wants to tell, doesn't know how, needs help. But of course he could not encourage him or the confession would be inadmissible in court.

  "We want you to tell the truth," said Brooks, and then he slumped disgustedly when Jimmy said, "I swear by my mother I didn't shoot him. This don't mean nothin to you, but I'm gonna get the same he gets, so why deny it?"

  "Do you recall, Officer," said Brooks, "when Powell ordered you out of the car did he have just one gun in his hand?"

  "I only saw one gun in his hand," said Karl.

  "All right, Jimmy, I want you to explain to me how there were four shots fired into the officer's body after Powell had fired all of the ammunition in his .38 and you drove off with the other guns."

  "Yes sir, when we got back to the car . . ."

  "You are not answering my question, Jimmy."

  And so it went, and after it was over Jimmy turned as they were leaving the room and said to Brooks, "Sergeant, I'm sorry my memory was hazy and that I lied to you before. But now I do remember Powell firin into the officer's body on the gr
ound. And I know I fired one shot outta the .32. It bucked in my hand so I musta fired a wild shot somewhere, maybe at the officer runnin away."

  "He's a goddamn liar," said Greg. "You're just a lousy punk and too chicken to tell the truth!"

  "Well you told your share of lies too," said Jimmy.

  "You're a goddamn liar."

  "Okay, bastard, I'm puttin a curse on the baby, on that unborn child that Max is carryin around. It's gonna be born dead, hear me?"

  "That's enough of that kind of talk," said Pierce Brooks and the two friends were led back to their separate cells.

  Pierce Brooks, during the days to follow, talked individually many times to both of them, on virtually every crucial point, until one of them verified each event told by Karl Hettinger, including a remarkable recorded admission by Gregory Powell which he was later to deeply regret making.

  "I did think of killing the officer, Mr. Brooks, as we came down the Grapevine. The thought came to my mind if we hid their bodies in one of those canyons, they never would be found. I shied away from the thought to find some other alternative to turning them loose, and yet keep them tied down long enough for me to get back to L. A., get my wife and come back to Bakersfield to get my station wagon and get a running start.

  "As I got out of the car I was still trying to think up some alternative, and didn't let the thought of killing them enter my mind. I thought of handcuffs, but realized that daylight was only four to five hours away, and there was no possibility of holding them long enough to do everything I needed to do.

  "So without even considering anything for fear that I'd change my mind, without really facing the fact that this is what I intended to do, I deliberately kept my mind occupied with other thoughts as I walked around the back of the car, raised my gun, and shot the officer.

  "I didn't consciously think that I had to kill. I didn't dwell upon it. I just raised the gun, fired at him, and immediately tried to hit the other officer, still without thinking consciously: this man I must kill also. Because if I let the thought enter my mind of what I was doing, I might've been confused and too scared to do what I knew or felt had to be done."