the Onion Field (1973) (31 page)

Ronald Polk was, during the course of the trial, given a psychiatric exam. The psychiatrist concluded her evaluation: "I would consider this individual incorrigible. He has much hostility in him for being poor and seems to have an unending reservoir of energy. This type of habitual criminal neither profits from experience nor punishment. He can only work against society and thereby derive power, and he will always be able to find followers whom he can impress with his intelligence and destructive drives. He will never be able to work within society. Diagnosis: sociopathic personality, antisocial type." And then the French psychiatrist could not resist a Gallic quip which Brooks felt the defense had a right to pounce upon at the penalty trial of Polk: "May I suggest in all sincerity that this individual be given a rightful place in lifesize format in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum."

It was Pierce Brooks himself who helped the gang member he considered most dangerous to escape a murder charge, much to the disgust and consternation of other detectives. Brooks, troubled by a time sequence in the story of the accused killer concerning the murder in Tulare County, reopened the investigation in mid-trial and uncovered jail records to show that it would indeed have been nearly impossible for the suspect to have driven in time to the Tulare murder. Though he wanted the gang in the gas chamber more than any he had ever investigated, he did not regret his decision.

"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. Brooks 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?"