the Onion Field (1973) (28 page)

Brooks glanced over at Glen Bates, his bearlike, gray haired partner, as they drove silently down the Grapevine from Fort Tejon, the valley spreading below them. He and Bates had discussed tersely what they knew about the case and both had ridden without speaking for the past half hour. It was understood, though it had never been mentioned, that Bates, the older man, deferred to his younger partner, and in fact was glad to assume less exacting investigative duties connected with their cases because any investigation by Pierce Brooks made rigorous demands. Brooks's imagination was admired, but his thoroughness was legend.

Brooks appeared to be lethargic, smoking listlessly as they rode, occasionally glancing at his watch, but his mind was at work. He was forming a mental picture from what he already knew of the two killers, Powell and Youngblood, who would soon be identified as Jimmy Smith, alias Jimmy Youngblood.

Powell had already talked freely to Kern County authorities so the first step had already been taken for Brooks, but Brooks was sure the initial confession was laced with lies and rationalizations which Powell might feel obliged to defend stubbornly. And of course with one suspect still at large, Powell no doubt had placed all the blame on his partner. Brooks was sure without knowing any of the details of the confession. It was as sure as nightfall.

He began thinking about the young officer Hettinger who had been kidnapped, terrorized, who had barely escaped the fate of Campbell. He wondered what condition Hettinger would be in. Brooks could not think of a case in which a policeman had been put through such prolonged terror. Policemen usually died cleaner deaths: a sudden gunshot during a robbery attempt, a traffic violator who suddenly turns out to be a gunman, a distraught husband or wife who insanely shoots the arbitrator called to their domestic quarrel. But not this. Not an execution in an onion field. So he thought of what Hettinger would be like after being kidnapped, witnessing the execution, being hunted. He couldn't recall any murder victim in any of his cases being put through such an ordeal. Then he thought of Harvey Glatman. His victims had been sadistically terrorized for hours.

At one time Pierce Brooks had been involved in the cases of ten separate residents of San Quentin's Death Row, such were the kinds of Los Angeles murder cases assigned to him. Harvey Glatman was the only man he'd ever seen executed. He'd rationalized a hundred times to himself as to why he attended this execution, deciding it was so that he would be a better homicide detective because of it, that if he once saw a case all the way through to the last gasp of life, he would be that much surer and more thorough in his future investigations. He wondered if it weren't merely the thing which drew most of the witnesses, a ghoulish curiosity. One thing was certain, it did in fact make him a fanatically thorough detective.

Then he thought of Harvey Glatman's victims, the women kidnapped and bound, then photographed by the murderer, and strangled slowly. He thought of Glatman, the diffident little man who was so afraid of heights he wouldn't climb a ladder, who had a thousand dollars' worth of pornographic pictures in his home, who adored pictures of women in black lingerie, bound in ropes and chains. Who would dash to his television set with his camera and shoot a picture of the screen whenever a movie would show a woman bound, and who, while still a small boy, was discovered in his room with a heavy cord tied from his penis to a dresser, leaning back, groaning in pain and ecstasy.

Pierce Brooks tried to think of Glatman's victims, especially the pathetic lonelyhearts girl, and tried to remember the pictures Glatman had taken of them, tied and gagged, sure of their imminent strangulation, expressions on their faces ranging from hysteria to resignation, to absolute grief. But when they brought the killer into the gas chamber he didn't seem to recognize Brooks or anyone else at the observation windows. He seemed dazed. And oblivious to it all, submitted pliably when they strapped him in the chair. And as the observers, jelly-kneed, reached fop the supportive handrails, the cyanide was released. Pierce Brooks was to tell his colleagues that condemned men don't go peacefully to sleep in the gas chamber, as advertised. That on the contrary, Glatman died jerking, thrashing, gasping, strangled as piteously by the state as were his victims by him, though the motives were different. The punishment in his case had indeed fit the crime, and Pierce Brooks was indeed an even more diligent detective. But he never witnessed another execution.

"I'm still not against capital punishment," he said later. "But I've gotta be real sure of my cases from now on. Way past any reasonable doubt."

By 5:00 a. M. Pierce Brooks was in Bakersfield sitting across a table from a young man with a red-blond crew cut in a short-sleeved shirt. The young man's husky voice was surprisingly steady. Other than for an occasional nervous touching of his eyelid, he seemed much like the other off-duty policemen still milling around the station.

"To recap what you've told me," Brooks said, "it was the one you now know as Gregory Powell who hit your partner in the face with one shot after making the Lindbergh statement?"

"Yes."

"And you think he fired an automatic?"

"Yes."

"And when you ran you looked over your left shoulder and saw oblong flashes?"

"Yes."

"And round flashes?"

"Yes."

"The oblong flashes were going down into your partner who was on the ground?"

"Yes. Yes."

"The round flashes were coming toward you?"

"Yes."

"And they were simultaneously fired by two different men?"

"Yes."

"And you think Powell was firing at you, not down into the ground. In other words the round flashes were his?"

"Yes."

"Take a break and then we'll go out to the onion field," Pierce Brooks said, and he was more than excited now. It was as he hoped. Both suspects had shot the officer and this was important to Brooks, crucial in fact. For despite what the law said about principal defendants being equally responsible, he had been a policeman long enough to know that law as stated and law as applied are two different things. That despite the nature of the crime, the trigger man was almost always held more accountable than a passive partner. So he hoped very much that the evidence would put one of the murder weapons in the hands of Gregory Powell's partner. By now, a Kern County autopsy surgeon had made a perfunctory check and told Brooks there was one shot in the dead man's mouth and four in his chest, three of which had exited.

As soon as the sun rose, Pierce Brooks was in the onion field directing a ballistics expert to dust his brush lightly over the bloodstained earth where the blood began, before it tracked across the road to a ditch where a gas pipe lay.

On the second or third swipe with the brush the ballistics man recovered three .38 slugs which were later found to be from Ian Campbell's own gun.

Karl Hettinger was back again in the onion field, but now he was showing the strain and exhaustion-shivering, smelling the tender dew-wet onions, remembering how it smelled last night when he stood here in the dark, arms upraised, and accidentally touched his partner's hand. Pierce Brooks looked at him and said, "Somebody better drive Hettinger back to Hollywood."

But it would be afternoon before the police department was through with him and he was at last in his bed thinking the night had ended. He was later to wonder if that night would ever end.

On Sunday morning the Ian Campbell home was filled with people. It was a modest tract home with a floor plan indistinguishable from the others in the neighborhood. It was not large enough to accommodate the numerous uniformed policemen, family friends, and curious acquaintances who had by now heard of the killing and rushed to Chatsworth. Since it was so close to payday there was not enough money for coffee and food for all the people until Hollywood Station sent a policeman with some.

Wayne Ferber was there, his close-set eyes sunken and black against his paleness.

"I heard about it from Chrissie," Wayne said. "She called and said, 'I want to tell you before you hear it on the news. Ian's been killed.' Like that she said it. I couldn't believe it. I knew it must've been a car wreck. When I heard about the murder I thought that's impossible. It had to've been an act of God. Then I came to the house. All I could see were gray faces, blank stares. Adah, Art Petoyan. They didn't believe it. Neither did I. Chrissie believed it. She said she knew it the moment the phone rang in the middle of the night. She was able to tell me what happened. No sobs. Tears never fell. She talked with me and then took care of the little girls. I thought about how Ian had always been my best friend and how he never needed a best friend. He was completely self-contained. And then all I could do was sit there and wonder if his set and straight mouth would look different in death."

Art Petoyan was in the bedroom sedating Adah and muttering cliches: "I said things like, 'God moves in mysterious ways,' and all that crap which doesn't explain anything. All that crap which I'd said before and which disgusted me, and yet as a doctor all you can do is hope they have some kind of faith, some kind of inner strength. But this poor girl just wasn't like that unbelievable person in the other room. Chrissie Campbell was in there serving people. Serving them coffee and making sure the kids were okay, and God, I don't know what else. And of all of us, the close ones, she was the only one in the house who was dry-eyed. I offered to sedate her, but she said she didn't need it. And she didn't!

"After that for many months I treated Adah for her emotional problems, if you want to call it treatment. Like a charlatan, I gave her vitamin-B-complex injections, but she didn't know what they were and they served their purpose because she believed me when I said it would help her. I prescribed thorazine and talked to her when she needed me and finally she settled down into a kind of overwhelming loneliness. She didn't want to go back with her mother, but finally she did go back to northern California.

"Adah was no Chrissie Campbell. She couldn't raise those girls alone. I delivered them both. They were big beautiful babies. They looked just like him."

Among the people at the house were the inevitable newsmen to interview the widow, but when they discovered it would be impossible they turned to Chrissie for the words that could be made both poignant and quotable. The reporters covering the hard news had pretty well gotten the facts of the killing and the capture of Powell.

So until the other killer was caught, the Campbell family was all they had.

One of the reporters had been told that Campbell's mother was herself a widow who lived alone and that the officer had been an only child. So pencils were readied for a tearful litany of memories, prayers, maybe even a noble sentiment about a son not having died in vain, maybe even a comment on the ruthless senseless act of the killers. And of course a picture, if it could be arranged: a hanky pressed to a mother's face, pitiable, grief-etched.

Instead, Chrissie appeared before them completely composed. They saw an attractive woman with an erect posture, to them middle aged, but actually past sixty. She said: "I'm Chrissie Campbell."

"Do you have a comment you'd care to make at this time, Mrs. Campbell?" one reporter asked gently. "Something that our readers ..."

Chrissie's reply was buried in the middle of an article relating the events of the killing. The editor told the reporter that it had no value whatever as exploitation of grief or emotion or rage. When pressed as to why then he would boldface the remark and use it, he grinned and said: "It's the most terse and sensible thing I've ever seen uttered by a victim of a tragedy. Not worth a nickel as news, but so goddamn true."

Chrissie had merely said: "There's no comment worth making. My boy is dead and anything anybody can say won't change it." Then she had smiled politely, turned, and gone back to help with the children.

Karl Hettinger's house was full of waiting friends and family that Sunday, while Karl was still in Bakersfield. The story had been on television and radio by now, and they'd come from various parts of Los Angeles to be there. Among them was Bob Burke, Karl's ex- roommate, who was still in uniform.

Helen was nervously pouring coffee for everyone and running to the door whenever she heard a car. Little of the tumble of conversation was to remain with her, with one exception.

It was Karl's former roommate who said it. He was talking to several of Karl's other friends.

He shook his head and said, "You can always do something. I just don't see giving up your gun to some crook under any circumstances. And even after that, you can do something. Karl should've ..."

And then he saw Helen stop on her way to the kitchen and stare at him. "No reflection on Karl," he quickly added. "I'm not trying to judge anybody."

Helen went on to the kitchen, but suddenly her hands went clammy. But she dismissed it from her mind, not knowing that Burke, Karl's close friend, was only the first.

At noon that Sunday, Pierce Brooks was finished in the onion field and was facing another young man, just one year older than Karl Hettinger. Brooks, as always, watched carefully during the introduction. He saw flat blue eyes and a long neck and pale hollow cheeks. He saw hands which did not tremble when they met, and a jaw which remained firm. Pierce Brooks did not talk to Gregory Powell about the murder. Not a word. They drove him to Los Angeles speaking only when necessary. It wasn't until that afternoon in the interrogation room of Homicide Division that Brooks broached the subject.