the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Karl Hettinger was not a man of great imagination. His dreams were more literal than symbolic. They had a beginning, a middle and an end. They started at the intersection of Carlos and Gower in Hollywood and continued with him caught screaming on barbed wire, ripping free only to run in slow motion through an onion field, finally hunched over in the front of an ambulance looking back at Ian on the stretcher. When the dreams first started, he would always look back with great hope unable to see the bloody holes torn in Ian's chest. He would see only the blood streaming from his mouth down his cheeks into his ears, filling the ears, and spilling out onto the crisp white stretcher sheets. As he got accustomed to the dream he never looked back with hope at his partner. Though he couldn't see the bubbling holes, he knew Ian was dead. There was never any hope in the later dreams.

  The intensity of the dreams did not abate. Helen, after the first few months, was becoming accustomed to the thrashing and sweating and whimpering in the night.

  "Why don't you go to a doctor about these dreams, Karl," she would plead. "It's nothing, Helen. What can a doctor do? I just had a shocking experience and I'll get over it. It's not so bad now."

  "That's not true, Karl. They're coming more often now."

  "No, they're not. I should know, shouldn't I?"

  And Karl would set his jaw and press his lips and Helen knew it was over. He wouldn't argue, he just stubbornly resisted, saying it would work out.

  It was a blessing to work for the chief of police, though he hated being indoors so much. But at least it wasn't strenuous. His body was unaccustomed to functioning with half a night's sleep. Before Ian Campbell was killed he had slept long and deeply. Fatigue often set in early in the afternoons these days.

  And he liked, or perhaps loved, the chief himself. William H. Parker was unlike any man Karl had known. He was eloquent, outspoken, perhaps the best educated and best read of any chief in Los Angeles history. The chief was married but childless, totally committed to his duties. He obviously liked his driver, would take him into his confidence telling him things that even his closest colleagues were never told. The chief was said to be a good judge of men and seemed to sense that his serious and silent young driver would never betray a confidence. He was right.

  The chief also seemed to sense that perhaps Karl Hettinger felt patronized for being there. So often the chief's conversations subtly veered in that direction, and he would say things to reassure his driver and tell him what a splendid bodyguard and companion he was. The chief would become angry when he overheard insensitive policemen questioning Karl about the Campbell murder, or the recent trial. He saw that it still caused the young officer some anxiety to talk about it.

  The chief's kindness was rewarded by zealous loyalty. His new driver felt a compulsion about protecting the chief and even though Parker would tell his staff to remain at their desks when he took one of his frequent walks to City Hall, there would be a figure behind him, following unnoticed at a discreet distance-a slender figure in a suit which was too big, a young man with close-cut strawberry- blond hair, and blue eyes which were darkening and sinking.

  Helen Hettinger deeply regretted she had not married Karl sooner than she had. She had not known him well enough before the killing to gauge how much the event had changed him. There were some changes however which were very obvious.

  "Karl, you just ran through another red light!" she would say. "I did?"

  "Karl, what's happening to you? That's the second time today you did that."

  "Are you sure the light was red?"

  "It was red, Karl. You used to be the most cautious driver in town. What's happened to you, lately?"

  "Are you sure it was red?"

  Karl Hettinger was given an annual physical examination. It was the same examination as always. The doctor asked him if he had any medical problems, the patient answered that he had not. The patient gave his blood and urine specimens to the lab technician, had a chest X ray, an eye examination, was measured and weighed and released. Nothing unusual was noted or reported except that one nurse took his folder from the examining room and saw something which caught her eye. The patient had lost twenty pounds.

  "Think I'll ask this officer for his diet," she said.

  "How's that?" the other nurse asked.

  "This officer's lost twenty pounds." Then she began comparing the new physical with the last one. "That's funny. He's an inch shorter. He's barely five feet nine now. What the hell kind of diet is that?"

  "Let's see," said the other nurse going through his folder.

  "His vision. It went from 20/20 and 20/30 to 20/40 and 20/40. What's going on here?"

  "Look, honey," said the older nurse, nodding toward the far examination room. "When you know who examines them you can't tell what he'll write down."

  "Karl H.," read the first nurse on the label and opened the file to find the patient's last name. "I wonder if the H is for Houdini?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "He's lost twenty pounds. He's going blind. He's shrunk an inch! This guy's pulling a disappearing act."

  On his next physical the patient's sight returned to 20/20 and 20/30 just as it had been before. However the weight did not return. Nor did the inch of stature. No one took official notice of the metamorphosis, and the patient would be the last one to ever mention it.

  On the thirtieth of August, 1964, just one day after the thirtieth birthday of Gregory Powell, just nine days after what would have been the thirty-third birthday of Ian Campbell, a son was born to Karl and Helen Hettinger. They called him Kurt, and Karl began to dream of taking his son on camping trips and teaching him to fish and play baseball, and spending hours talking to him. He wished for his son, without knowing it, all the things which had been absent in his own boyhood.

  "How about some Mexican food, Karl?" his wife said when she recovered from the childbirth and was anxious to get out of the house.

  "Oh, I'd rather not."

  "Well how about Italian food?"

  "Oh, I can get some and bring it home, I guess.".

  "You used to love Mexican and Italian food when I first married you."

  "I still do, Moms."

  "But you used to really eat. Now you just eat enough to live."

  "Let's not start that again, please, Helen."

  "I hate to be a nagging wife, but I think there's something very wrong with you."

  "There's nothing wrong. I'm just getting a little tired of working in the chief's office and listening to all these questions about the murder. All these policemen that work in these office jobs love to hear about all the exciting police work they're not in on. But they won't go out in the street and do it. It might spoil their chances to butter up to the brass and get promoted."

  "Well whadda you know? You actually got a little mad for a minute. That does my heart good. Why don't you get mad at me sometime? Why don't you swear at me?"

  "Why should I get mad at you, Moms?" said Karl smiling into the hazel eyes of his young wife, who at twenty-two seemed to him more mature and infinitely stronger than he. These days he doubted his strength.

  "We never talk. Really talk about things."

  "What things?"

  "You know. About things that bother you. The things you think about. About the dreams, maybe."

  "The dreams aren't coming so often anymore." Karl sighed. "I told you that."

  "I sleep with you. Don't tell me."

  "I'm thinking about going to the Detective Bureau. Chief Brown himself asked me to transfer into his bureau. I'll bet when I get out of this chauffeur job and start doing police work again I'll be a new man."

  "Why don't you stay in the chief's office? You're almost thirty years old. You've had enough cops and robbers. Stay inside."

  "There's nothing to worry about, Moms," said Karl. "Tell you what. Let's plan a camping trip now that you're on your feet again. We haven't been for a while."

  Karl transferred to the Detective Bureau, but the dreams didn't vanish as he h
ad predicted. The little nagging pains got worse, especially the one at the base of his skull. No one ever knew how bad it sometimes got.

  "How about telling me the truth, Karl?" Helen said one night after dinner. "You're not too crazy about the detective work, are you?"

  "I like it okay. Only . . ."

  "Yes? Tell me, Karl."

  "Well, sometimes the older ones say things. Like . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "Like they resent me because I drove for the chief and got brought into the bureau because of it. And maybe like they think . . ."

  "Go on."

  "Like they think I shoulda done more... you know... like about the . . . about when Ian was killed."

  "That's ridiculous!" said Helen angrily.

  "Well, they send people ... they send everybody to the academy for in-service training, you know, and they teach it there. They teach what policemen should do. They teach that I never shoulda given up my gun and they tell things you should do that I didn't do."

  "Go on."

  "Well, that's it. I don't know. I think I'm gonna like the pickpocket detail. My partner's one of the slickest old guys in the business. He knows every pickpocket in L. A. I think I'm gonna like that job. You know what we need? A camping trip. Some fishing."

  There were hushed conversations around the fires during those fishing trips. They usually went with the Cannells and the Jameses, and sometimes the Howards would join them. It was a closely knit police group. The husbands had worked patrol together and were all outdoorsmen. Jim Cannell was the implicit leader. He was not only a fisherman, but a hunter, a hiker, and a camper, who worked harder at it all than the others. He talked incessantly with few pauses in the stream of words. One of them said if you would transcribe Jim Cannell's talk you'd never find a period. He usually dominated the conversations and the others winked and let him. Karl enjoyed listening to his friend.

  This night, however, Jim Cannell was not entertaining in his usual booming voice. The talk was low and quiet, and Karl and Helen were walking out in the darkness by Lake Isabella and did not hear it.

  "My idea of a fun day used to be to go fishing with Karl Hettinger," Cannell was whispering to Stew James and his wife, Donna. "I mean it's unreal."

  "What's unreal?" asked Cannell's wife, Jo.

  "The change in him. Look at him. How stooped he walks."

  "He used to walk superstraight." Stew James nodded. James had blond thinning hair and was known as the worrier of the group. Cannell always said he would get bald from worrying.

  "I haven't seen him laugh in a long long time," said Dick Howard, the third man at the campfire, the youngest.

  "He used to keep me going all day with one-liners," said Cannell to the women. "He had that wit that sparkled at least one time during every rollcall and kept the rest of us awake. . . . Maybe I'll invite him duck hunting. Maybe he needs to get out more."

  "He isn't much for shooting," said James.

  "That's another thing that's different about him," said Jo Can- nell. Helen said he can't shoot anymore. He used to be a dead shot and now he can't hit . . ."

  "A moose in the ass," said Cannell, draining his beer, and the others grinned because Jo Cannell was a Jehovah's Witness and disapproved of her husband's profanity and beer drinking.

  "Helen said she and Karl were shooting at tin cans out by the lake and he couldn't shoot a lick," Stew James agreed.

  "He's having trouble qualifying at the pistol range every month," said Cannell.

  "And have you noticed the way he's always rotating his head like his neck hurts?" said Donna James, a perky brunette who sat with a blanket wrapped around her this crisp night when a damp wind blew in from the lake.

  "So maybe his neck hurts," said Dick Howard, who worried and noticed less than the others.

  "You didn't know him well enough to see the difference," said Cannell. "You didn't know him B. C." "B. C.?"

  "Before Campbell. You just wouldn't believe it. It's unreal, "said Cannell.

  "He's growing into a little old man before my eyes," said James, the worried eyes turning down.

  "He looks like doomsday itself," said Cannell. "There isn't enough left of him to know it's Karl Hettinger."

  "Well what's the sense mulling over all this?" said one of the women. "Nobody ever asks what's troubling him."

  "He's not that kind of guy," said Cannell. "He keeps things in and doesn't like prying."

  "That's what I've always thought," said Stew James. "My role is to be his friend and not bug him. If he wants to talk he will."

  "Some people can't talk," said Jo Cannell.

  "Well anyway, I think I'll see if he wants to go duck hunting," said her husband. "It doesn't matter a goddamn bit if he can shoot or not. We don't hunt anyway, we just drink."

  "Well I think it still bothers him!' said Donna James.

  They all knew what it was and several heads turned involuntarily toward the lake, but his silhouette had vanished in the darkness. It was the unstated law that none of them ever talked about it in front of Karl Hettinger. He had never described his night of terror to any of them, had never told any of them how it had affected him, not so much as a word. They mistakenly assumed that he must at least discuss it with Helen. With somebody.

  Now the voices had dropped to a whisper and the words were muffled by coffeecups or beer cans.

  "If it's bothering him, he'll just have to talk about it."

  "It must just be the shock of seeing Ian killed," said James. "It must be that. Ian was such a . . . gentle guy. Do you know he loved classical music?"

  "So do I," said Jim Cannell, "but I ain't so gentle."

  "I'd drink to that, if I drank," said Jo Cannell dryly.

  "Maybe Ian and Karl should never have been working together," Dick Howard agreed. Then he grinned at Cannell. "They were too nice. Should've been somebody like you with them, Jim."

  "I wonder if maybe Karl could feel . . . oh, responsible in some way," James mused.

  "Why should he?" asked Cannell. "It was Campbell's fault, not Karl's."

  And there it was. The blame being laid. All policemen, even the closest friends of Karl Hettinger, had to lay blame for the catastrophe. They were policemen. The most dynamic of men. No man- caused calamity happens by chance. Only acts of God are unprevent- able. It was as certain as sunset.

  The next day, fishing, Cannell had his friend very much in mind and he began consciously to test him.

  "Why don't you tune up that wreck of yours, Karl? It sounds awful."

  "Are you kidding?" said Karl. "If I tried fixing it, it'd never run again."

  "Come on. You used to say you were a pretty good shade-tree mechanic."

  "I can't fix anything," said Karl.

  "Where're we gonna fish today, Karl?" asked Cannell carefully.

  "I don't care. Wherever you wanna fish."

  "Well, you pick the spot, Karl," said Cannell staring at the smaller man. "You pick it, Karl. We'll go wherever you decide."

  "Well. . . I . . . how . . . how about you deciding, Jim. You make the decisions."

  They fished mostly in silence. Jim Cannell looked often at his friend, watched him rotate his head, and massage his aching neck. Watched the fingernails periodically digging into his palms.

  That night, Karl sat alone on a picnic table away from the fire. He sat as he always did, hunched forward, hands pressed between his knees, eyes down, nails digging.

  After awhile Helen Hettinger said, "Where's Karl?" and turned, seeing him sitting in the darkness. "He must be cold," she said, and went to the truck to get a blanket.

  "That's a bitchin broad, brother," said Cannell. "And how's that for alliteration, my dear?" he added, gulping his beer and winking at the tiny Jehovah's Witness, who was looking in resignation at the pile of empty beer cans.

  Helen Hettinger by now also knew her role with her taciturn husband. She knew he would never confide in her or in anyone on earth. She also believed she was not bright enough nor sophistic
ated enough to know what to tell him even if he would confide. She only sensed what she must do.

  Helen left the light and warmth of the fire to sit next to Karl on the picnic table. She said nothing. She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. Then she got inside the blanket with him and pulled his head down to her shoulder.

  "She was just a kid herself," Jim Cannell said later. "But she held Karl like you would a baby. Without saying a word. The rest of us after awhile got up and hit the sack for the night. They just sat there like that in the dark. She rocked him a little. I'll never forget that gesture."

  Karl did enjoy the pickpocket detail for the short time he worked it. His partner was all that was advertised, a graying, portly police veteran who melted into crowds. Oscar O'Lear was invisible on crowded sidewalks or in bus stations or department stores, even on buses, anywhere pickpockets lurked. He was the scourge of the feather-fingered brigades which descend on the downtown streets of Los Angeles both in and out of season.

  The pickpockets tended to be a clannish lot, much like hotel burglars. They avoided the company of less artistic thieves who need guns and saps and knives to make their living. Karl loved watching the way his partner could spot a pursepick clear across a department store, usually by first identifying the thief and then sensing who the victim would be even before the thief himself had made his choice.

  Most of all, Karl was glad to be out of the police building onto the streets once more. He was almost sure the inside work was causing many of his problems. He had assured his wife the insomnia and dreams would stop and the appetite would return when he once got back to an outside job.

  But in fact it was all getting worse. So much did he fear the dreams that he sat every night before his television until the early morning hours drinking one beer after another, taking nonprescription sleeping pills because he still refused to see a doctor, hoping each night that sleep would come easily and that he would not dream.

  There were other things now to contend with, some of which Helen could observe, some she guessed. He was hit by a maelstrom of symptoms which almost drove him to seek medical assistance except that each particular malady would vanish as mysteriously as it appeared, and another would take its place. He had bouts of diarrhea, chest pains, and vicious headaches at the base of his skull which truly frightened him.