the Onion Field (1973) (30 page)

"Do you know what the Little Lindbergh Law is?"

"No, not specifically. I have a general idea."

"What's your general idea?"

"That kidnapping carries capital punishment."

"The gun you had during the ride north was your Las Vegas Colt?"

"Yes."

"This is also the gun you had when you walked around the car and fired at the officer?"

"No sir."

"And then Jimmy fired into the officer as he was lying on the ground?"

"I didn't have the .38. I didn't have any weapon when I walked around that car."

"He was shot with two different guns."

"He was shot with two different guns?"

"That's right"

"Well I didn't even know this."

"All right then, why did you have to get out and face the officers? Why didn't you just drop them off and leave them there if your plan was to get a head start into Bakersfield?"

"I don't know. Because Jimmy was standing out here on the side, and I just walked around back and asked him if he wanted me to drive or if he was going to drive, and there was ... as far as I was concerned . . . well, we had even joked about the fact that it was freezing cold and everything."

"Why did you have to ask Jimmy that when you do all the driving anyway?"

"I don't always drive. I bought the car for Jimmy. It was Jimmy's car. Just as soon as we got it registered it was gonna be in his name, and it was something that he was proud of, and I just ... I got in the habit. . . making it a habit of always speaking to him, you know, like if he wanted me to drive or if he was going to drive."

"You say you saw Jimmy shooting into the prone body of the officer?"

"I saw him shooting downward ... I don't know ... I think he was shooting ... I know he was shooting into him."

"I'm going to tell you now that he did shoot into the officer's body, but I'm going to tell you that before this happened, the officer was shot down with another gun, the gun you held all the way up."

"It didn't happen like that, Mr. Brooks. Look it, I know I've had the course anyway. You know, no matter how it goes. I've had the course and I realize this, you know? The officer just got shook up and doesn't remember right."

"You say the automatic was not fired at the scene?"

"No, it was not."

"What if I told you that it was and that we could prove it?"

"Well if you can prove it, then I'm wrong. But I say it wasn't."

"Well, I'm telling you that it was, and now there are three guns fired. Are you going to tell me now that he fired all three guns?"

"I'll tell you this much, I'll tell you that .32 automatic was not fired at the scene."

"You're losing your temper again."

"No, I'm not losing my temper. It wasn't fired when I was present, and I don't believe it was fired, period. Despite anything you might say."

"You do lose your temper pretty quickly, don't you?"

"Yes, I have a rather nasty temper."

"Do you always shake like that when you get mad? Do you always look like that, like you're looking right now at me?"

"No, Mr. Brooks. I can't help it. This is the way I've been all my life. Well, not all my life. I didn't used to have this bad a temper, but since I got out of Vacaville it's gotten worse and worse and that's the way it is."

"All right. That's enough for tonight. It's 9:30."

Before going back to the homicide squad room Pierce Brooks smoked a cigarette and paced the hallway and wondered what ballistics would uncover now that the little Ford coupe had been discovered. The .32 shell casing found at the blood spoor proved the automatic had been fired at least once, but preliminary indications were that .38 slugs had done all the killing-the overkilling. Brooks thought of the bullet in the face, enough in itself, and the four in the chest while he was writhing helplessly. They shot him to pieces. They killed him two or three times.

Then he thought of it again: We told you guys we were going to let you goy but have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh Law? Pierce Brooks snuffed out the cigarette and smiled grimly. Losers, he thought. Small time losers who couldn't do anything right. Who didn't even know that the Lindbergh Law applied only to kidnapping for ransom or kidnapping with great bodily harm. So at the moment Gregory Powell made the statement, he hadn't committed a capital offense. It was Powell's ignorance of the law which killed the young officer. Punks. Stupid, stupid punks, thought Pierce Brooks. Then he walked through the doorway into the squad room.

At ten o'clock Sunday night, after having been on duty twenty hours, and after having had only two hours of sleep before that tour of duty began, Pierce Brooks was home, stomach knotted and acid- full, nauseated from the cigarettes and coffee. But he would barely have time to eat and bathe. He would have no sleep. He received another telephone call. Jimmy Smith had been captured. This time Brooks and his partner were driven to Bakersfield in a detective car by a third detective, since neither of them was in any condition to drive, and they dozed fitfully as once again they crossed the Grapevine Highway.

At 3:30 a. M. on Monday, a bedraggled Pierce Brooks sized up Jimmy Lee Smith and decided to interrogate him there at Bakersfield police station. He seemed anxious to talk.

"... Now, wait a minute, before I get started, I wanna tell you that I'm not sayin this lookin for no help or nothin because I know there ain't none now. It's too late now. This is actually what happened. . . ."

And then Jimmy began a long tale full of lies, truths, half truths, and like Greg, he drew numerous diagrams for Brooks and was encouraged by the noncommittal nods of the detective, and thought that at least the detective didn't disbelieve him. On went the story of Greg whispering strange things to him on the trip about a Little Lindbergh Law, and saving a bullet for himself. Pierce Brooks merely nodded occasionally in encouragement up to the moment Jimmy Smith was standing in the dirt road in the onion field and Greg came around the back of the car.

"I forget exactly what he said, somethin ... he said somethin . . . Then he fired and he shot this officer. I don't know if he shot this officer once, twice. I think he shot him just one time. But anyway, I don't even move. I'm just petrified more or less. He starts to shoot at this officer who breaks and runs right down the road. Greg runs over there. He's runnin, but he's steady firin. Then Greg comes back and tells me, he says, 'Let's get the car and catch him,' you know? So I started comin toward the car. 'Did you kill the officer?' I said. 'Is he dead?' 'Yeah, he's deader than a mackerel,' he says. So he starts reloadin the guns and droppin shells. 'Do you want me to drive around this way and turn around?' I say. He says, 'Yeah.' I took off and got down that road and went off and left him. Now that's just a fast of what happened."

"You didn't fire any gun?"

"No sir."

"You had the .32 automatic in your hand?"

"Yes sir."

"When Greg stepped around the car just before he shot, which gun did he have?"

"I don't even know. When he comes around the car I stepped back three or four steps in order to give him room, see?"

"What did you give him room for?"

"I don't know. I just stepped back, you know?"

"Well why did you give him room? You saw him carrying a gun?"

"No, I . . ."

"You knew there was going to be a shooting." "No."

"He whispered something to you."

"He didn't."

"You knew there was going to be a shooting then."

"No sir."

"You didn't want to get in the line of fire."

"No sir."

"Then why did you move back?"

"I don't know. I'd tell you if I did because it wouldn't make no difference."

"Did you fire any shots at all?"

"I did not fire a shot. It don't make no difference. I want you to know I'm not lyin to you, you know?"

"That's what Greg said, that it doesn't make any difference and he has no reason to lie."

"He did? Well, it don't make any difference because we're both gonna get gassed anyway. It don't matter, you know? This is the point I've been tryin to get over all night to these other officers. I wanna get the point over to them, to any man. I was scared to death. I mean, hey, I don't have the nerve to kill no man just cold blooded, just outright. He shot that man down like a dog."

"How many holdups have you pulled with Greg?"

"I haven't pulled none with him."

"Are you telling me you have not been involved in any way either inside or out as driver on any robbery at all?"

"That's right, sir."

"And are you also telling me you didn't fire a shot in that onion field?"

"I didn't fire a shot."

"I'll finish by asking you one more question about what happened after Greg fired that first shot and the officer fell."

"Yes?"

"Did he then fire some more shots at the fleeing officer?"

"I guess. I don't know how many."

"Is that all the shots that were fired?"

"Yes."

"How many times?"

"Three or four. Until the gun went click."

"Did you fire even a single shot?" "No."

"Do you think you could ever kill, Jimmy?" "No."

"Jimmy, we believe you were involved in robberies with Greg. At least as a driver."

"I can tell you don't believe me, Sergeant."

"That's right, I don't believe you."

"Please, Sergeant, believe me. I swear it on my mother's name. I want you to believe me."

Pierce Brooks made a careful note that Jimmy Smith had given an account of the crime leaving out one conspicuous fact-the four shots fired into Ian Campbell's chest.

The Los Angeles papers were full of execution news on Monday, March 11. "Moonlight Execution" was the headline, with pictures of the officers and the killers and Pierce Brooks.

Brooks drank coffee and munched toast that morning and read, and his newspaper told on the same front page of legal executions which were taking place in other parts of the world. In Paris, Jean Marie Bastien-Thiry was executed as a member of the political underground which merely plotted the murder of Charles de Gaulle. Brooks smiled crookedly at this and at another article telling of the execution in Leningrad of five men who were found guilty of black marketing those goods their factory had produced above its quota. Death was the sentence in Russia for a crime which would hardly qualify as a high-grade California misdemeanor. Brooks wondered what his counterparts in the police forces of Paris or Leningrad would say to his fears that one of his two killers would evade the gas chamber for kidnapping and brutally executing a police officer. We told you we were going to let you go . . .

He was thinking such things because he had received a bit of distressing news from a reinterview with Karl Hettinger. Karl had changed his mind about a positive identification of Jimmy Smith as the one who stood over Ian Campbell and fired the four shots into the dying man.

"I'm just not sure, Sergeant Brooks," Karl said, looking even more overwrought than he did that morning after the killing.

"But you're at least sure the shots were simultaneous with those being fired at you as you were running?"

"Well, I hate to say for sure. After all, I was wrong about Powell shooting Ian with the automatic. Now you tell me it was the Colt revolver."

"Karl, that's a tiny detail. It was dark out there that night. Listen, your story's been right down the line and remarkable for what you've been through. I've been bragging about what a great witness you are. Don't lose your confidence because of a tiny discrepancy as to which gun you thought you saw in the dark in Powell's hand."

"I'm not."

"But on the other hand if you're just not sure about who fired the shots down into the body, well ..."

"I'm just not, Sergeant. I was running. It was dark. Guns were flashing. I'd bet my life Smith fired down into him from where they were standing when I looked back and from the shots all being nearly together, but I guess I just feel it's remotely possible that Powell shot at me and then ran over and shot Ian four times in the chest and it only looked like Smith in the darkness."

"Was it Smith, Karl?"

"I know it was Smith, but I can't say for sure in court because I couldn't see that well."

Pierce Brooks, despite his disappointment, understood Karl Het- tinger's unwillingness to say he was certain when he was not. It would be so easy to say it. Powell was with Hettinger precisely on this point. But Brooks understood and respected the young officer's honesty. He knew Karl would be criticized implicitly by others for reversing his earlier positive identification of Smith as the final executioner. But Karl would not be criticized by Pierce Brooks.

It had just been the year before that Brooks had investigated the Ronald Polk gang, a group of highway bandits who would pick up hitchhikers, rub pepper in their eyes, and rob or murder. Brooks suspected the gang of five murders. Only one could ultimately be proved. It involved the robbing of a young sailor who was picked up hitchhiking and after failing to respond to the caresses of the tall transvestite member of the group, was robbed and finally shot to death because he fought and screamed when his penis was being cut off. After the shooting the transvestite did a ritual dance around the bloody corpse as he waved the severed trophy in the air and finally put it in his mouth, laughing with a woman's voice.