the Onion Field (1973) (24 page)

Jimmy smiled at Greg, who returned the grin and seemed satisfied.

Karl saw Greg's head move toward Jimmy again, and he strained forward, but heard only the muffler's roar. Jimmy Smith was to say later, "Powell told me, he said, 'Jimmy, remember, if you have to shoot a policeman, save one bullet for you.' He said that, and my asshole slammed shut again."

When they reached the valley floor, Jimmy Smith for the first time believed they were going to make it. Had made it. They were less than an hour from the motel and the station wagon-a cold car. They had kidnapped two cops and were walking away from it. It was hard to control his exultation. "I know where there's a dirt road," he said to Greg. "I used to work around the Bakersfield area." And they were at the Maricopa turnoff, where they had been earlier in the day with the shorted-out tail lights.

"Turn off here," Greg said, and Ian did, and the road curved west over the highway.

"Do you want me to go straight?" asked Ian, now headed west.

"Yeah, if you turn it'll take us back to 99."

And Jimmy was straining his eyes for a place, anyplace. A dirt road. Just a place. And then there were some dusty tire tracks out of the fields to the south. The tire tracks meant a road, and suddenly Greg said, "Pull over and turn around."

Ian eased the little Ford to the side and made a U-turn on the lonely quiet highway and Karl's heart began pounding with new vigor, as did Ian's, as did Jimmy Smith's and Gregory Powell's, as each approached his destiny. Then Ian made a right turn on the dirt road heading south toward Wheeler Ridge, south on the long dusty dirt road.

Karl strained upward, tried to see, but as far as he could see was black loneliness and quiet. The smell of sweat and whiskey was suddenly unendurable. Then Greg said: "That's the farmhouse you're going to hike back to. To make your call."

But it wasn't that far. It wasn't that far! Were they going to handcuff them? It wasn't that far to be logical!

They had driven ninety miles. They had four tenths of a mile to go down the dirt road, down toward the ridge.

"I see it," Karl said. "I see the farmhouse." That sight, that farmhouse in the middle of these lonely fields with its little lights, gave him hope. Somehow here, next to the earth, with his kind of people, on his kind of land, somehow he would be safe.

"We gotta tie these guys up," said Jimmy.

"No, if we tie them up they'll be here all night long and freeze to death," said Greg.

"Well, we oughtta tie them up just a little bit, you know, so they'll work themselves loose."

"No," Greg said vacantly. "We'll just let them go."

And Jimmy was to confess at a later time, "Jesus. It dawned on me then. It really hit me!"

And then they came to a dirt road which crossed the one they'd been driving on.

"Do we turn here?" asked Jimmy Smith, and his voice was shaking and he rubbed his mouth with nicotine-smudged fingers, face numb, head feeling oppressively heavy.

"No, just keep going," said Greg.

"It looks too soft. We'll get stuck," Karl said, feeling that he could not bear it. Not another moment. Wondering if his legs would hold him when he stood. They were cramped, and weak from the fear.

Then they came to another dirt road which crossed this one and Ian again slowed to a crawl. There was a large ditch in front of them in which a huge, recently installed gas line was lying, waiting to be buried.

"This is the spot," Greg said. "Turn left and then turn around."

While Ian made a careful U-turn in the soft dirt, Greg said, "You get this car stuck and you're both dead."

"Don't chatter the wheels," Karl said to his partner. "You might get the rear wheels stuck." But Ian managed the turn and was now driving back toward the ditch, the little car pointing the way they had come.

"Stop the car," Greg said. "Turn off the lights. This is where we're going to let you go."

Jimmy Smith turned and looked at Karl Hettinger, who was sitting knees up, hands hanging limply over his knees.

"I just started lookin at him then. I don't know why. He seemed to have big hands, the way they was hangin over his knees, and I noticed that, and I noticed the other officer was a pretty big man because I couldn't see around him out the side window on the driver's side. And I don't know, I just noticed little things about them ever since I got the bad feelin. Ever since Greg said he didn't wanna tie them up. And now I was breathin funny again. Couldn't get enough air, seemed like. And I could hear wind screechin through. Screamin like. I hated that goddamn wind. And I just saw the big ditch there where they was fixin to bury that big silver pipe. All the dirt was piled up beside it and I thought, I hope he don't drive off into that ditch. And then for the first time I started feelin cold. Cold!"

Then the car was stopped. The lights were turned off. Greg wanted the lights off.

"Get out, Jim," Greg said.

Then a hand picked up Ian Campbells Smith and Wesson which was on the seat between them.

Jimmy alighted and walked around the back of the car. Then Greg backed across the seat, still covering them with his Colt.

"Get out," Greg said to Ian, and now Greg was standing beside the door on the passenger side. Ian got out and faced toward the rear, toward Jimmy Smith, and Ian put his hands in the air.

"Get out," Greg said to Karl.

"Do you want me to climb over the seat?"

"What've you got in yoyr hands?" Greg said unexpectedly.

"Nothing. See, I'm going to keep my hands in sight," said Karl, crawling over the little seat in the darkness, using only his elbows.

"You're doing it just right," said Greg.

Then Karl was standing beside the driver's door of the little coupe on Ian's left. He put his hands in the air and the two policemen faced Jimmy Smith, who stood several feet from the rear fender of the car, pointing his automatic at them, more in front of Ian than in front of Karl. It was just past midnight.

The silence rang in their ears during those seconds. There was no sound. No crickets. Only the wind howling.

But there was something. And then Ian recognized it. It was onion. They were between two sections of onions just beginning to sprout now in the month of March, already pungent. And it may have been the onion or the wind or something else, but Ian Campbell wiped his eyes quickly and then raised his hands high again. It may have been the landscape, so endlessly flat, so desolate at night, the earth so dusty beneath the crust, that the wind was blowing powdery choking dust balls all around them. The eye craved mountains, the heart shrank from the vast solitude, but the soaring ranges were far to the east and north, as far as the horizon. It looked to Karl like pictures of the moon, gray and desolate. Under a black sky like this, and except for the wind, the moon would be exactly like this, terrible in the darkness.

Now it seemed bitterly cold to Ian Campbell as he stood to the right of Karl Hettinger, and once, with their hands upraised their fingers touched for an instant. Though Karl's fingers were icy, the touch of a hand of a friend helped calm Ian, and until they were safe at last, it would be better to think of other things, of anything, perhaps of the pipes, as he'd done all his life in troubled moments, as he'd done in Korea or in frightening moments as a policeman.

Though it was not the clearest of nights-now sporadically cloudy as puffy specters scudded past the moon-still one could feel the stars all around. It was on such nights many years ago that Ian loved to march by the tarpits. Perhaps Ian deliberately thought of the pibroch, of playing "MacCrimmon Will Never Return" and vowed that when this was over, when he was home again, he would master the great pibroch.

The silence was broken by the sound of Gregory Powell's footsteps, scraping on the crust of earth as he rounded the back of the car in the darkness. Karl could not see his face in the moonlight, just the hair, short and dark blond, and the triangle of the face. Now he and Ian were looking at Gregory Powell, at the long neck and the shadowy face and the gun in his hand, the hand in deep shadows, and Gregory Powell walked over to Jimmy Smith and leaned close and appeared to whisper, but no man except these two would ever learn the words he whispered, and then Gregory Powell moved to his right so that he was in front of Karl Hettinger. Jimmy Smith moved slightly to his right, just as he did on the desert that day in Henderson, Nevada, and he stood almost behind Gregory Powell. Jimmy held a gun in his right hand, the hand with L-O-V-E tattooed across the fingers. And though Gregory Powell was more directly in front of Karl Hettinger, he continued to look at Ian Campbell, at the big man, his gun pointed toward the policeman's feet.

Despite the cold wind, sweat poured down Ian's ribs and chest and burned his eyes, so he closed them, and perhaps it-made it easier to imagine the pipes, to hear them wailing far back in the funnel of the wind. Perhaps it calmed him.

Jimmy Smith said later, "The big cop seemed relaxed, you know?"

Gregory Powell said to Ian Campbell, "We told you we were going to let you guys go, but have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh Law?"

Ian said, "Yes."

And Gregory Powell raised his arm and shot him in the mouth.

For a few white-hot seconds the three watched him being lifted up by the blinding fireball and slammed down on his back, eyes open, watching the stars, moaning quietly, a long plaintive moan, and he was not dead nor even beginning to die during these seconds -only shocked, and half conscious. Perhaps his heart thundered in his ears almost drowning out the skirl of bagpipes. Perhaps he was confused because instead of tar he smelled onions at the last. He probably never saw the shadow in the leather jacket looming over him, and never really felt the four bullets flaming down into his chest.

Jimmy Smith was to say later: "I can only remember his arm and hand. His hand! Each time a bullet hit him, his hand would jerk and jump up. Like he was grabbin for you. Like he was grabbin for your leg in the dark there! I'll never forget that arm."

Jimmy Smith shouted in horror, "He's still movn!"

But if Ian Campbell did not hear the voice, nor the staccato explosions, nor feel the four bullets bursting his heart, perhaps he believed that the bagpipes screamed and screamed..

Karl screamed and screamed. He didn't know that he screamed. The scream tore from his throat a second after the first bullet crashed into Ian's mouth, when Karl's mind actually comprehended that they were killing Ian Campbell. When the two men heard him they turned and saw Karl screaming and running, stumbling and running a zigzag course down the road, terror leaping from his face white in the moonlight, yet with presence of mind to zigzag, change directions. Compulsively he turned and heard the explosions and saw the flashes-four oblong red and yellow fireballs blasting down into the chest of Ian Campbell. Then Gregory Powell ran after Karl and Karl heard more explosions and saw more fireballs, round this time, burning through the night, coming for him. Coming for him. He sobbed and cut to his left and his right, his coat flapping in the wind, and heard shouts and dived head-first to his left through a row of tumbleweed packed hard against the barbed wire farm fence, ripping his hands and face on the wire. For a long second he was clawing through the wall of tumbleweed and was caught on the wire while he heard the padded footsteps running on the dirt road. Coming for him. As in a dream he was caught. Trapped. Weeping. Thrashing. And the footsteps were coming closer. He could hear the panting.

Then Karl was free. On his feet, stumbling over the torn trouser leg. He fell in the darkness still sobbing, then got up and balled up the ripped fabric and pulled it up to his thigh and ran, one bare leg flashing in the moonlight.

Jimmy Smith did not hear Gregory Powell running back toward him. He did not hear the distant echoes of the shots reverberating off the peaks of Wheeler Ridge. He no longer heard Karl's screams, nor the moan from Ian Campbell. He was only aware of pain, a burning sensation behind his eyes, and the first sound he heard was Greg's voice, breathless, frantic.

"What the hell is the matter with you? The son of a bitch is getting away!"

Jimmy nodded dumbly and Greg said, "We gotta catch him! Where's the flashlight? Goddamnit, where's the big flashlight?"

"It's on the floor," Jimmy said. "It's on the floor of the car where I left it."

Then Greg took Karl's flashlight and ran back to the barbed wire with the almost inpenetrable tangle of tumbleweed blown against it.

Greg got up on a fence post and flashed his light out into the field. Back and forth went the light while Karl lay burrowed into the ground not far from Jimmy Smith and the corpse of Ian Campbell.

Karl checked his watch and saw that it was 12:15 a. M., and he put his glasses in his coat pocket and waited. He was thinking now. He was weakened, dreadfully weakened by the shock. Unable to run without falling to the ground like a clumsy child. Still, his mind had not forsaken him and he was thinking rightly that the killers would believe he would run north toward the farmhouse. Toward the highway. So Karl had cut back south, doubled back toward the great ditch with the silver pipe, toward the coupe and the killers, toward the body of his partner. He was huddled there on the ground in the darkness and the cold, gasping erratically, fighting the shock and the agonizing stomach spasms. Fighting the terror. Waiting for his strength so that he could get up with a man's legs under him and run. But for now he just lay there watching the light sweep over the fields. Back and forth. Then it disappeared for a moment.