“Get this straight, Donald. I have no hesitancy whatever in accepting money from you for anything.”
I handed her a hundred dollars.
She looked at the money with wide-eyed surprise.
“This,” I said, “is going to have to last you for a while. Don’t try to account for it. Just put it in as a hundred dollars expense money, and if you have any left you get home, just forget about it.”
“But this is your money.”
“There’s more where that came from.”
She hesitated, then folded the money and put it in purse. I had an idea it was more money than she had one time in quite a spell.
We finished our dinner. I got her a couple of bottles of Tehuacán mineral water and a bottle opener to keep in the room, told her it was better to drink Tehuacán, the mineral water of Mexico, then it was to take a chance on drinking tap water.
When I started to say good night, she reached up kissed me.
“Donald,” she said, “I don’t know whether anyone ever told you, but you’re a very wonderful person.”
“Are you telling me now?” I asked.
She said, “I’m telling you now,” and kissed me again.
15
I was up before daylight and on the long, lonely road north, leaving the tide-flats behind me, climbing up the higher desert, then driving for mile after mile.
The east lightened into a glorious orange, then into blue, and the sun burst over the mountains to throw long shadows from the grease wood and the desert plants.
Finally I came to the turnoff.
By this time it was broad daylight.
It was a job getting to El Centro in time for the preliminary hearing, but I made it.
The deputy district attorney was a man named Rob, Clinton Roberts, and he took himself rather seriously.
He started out by making a speech to Judge Polk who was holding the preliminary hearing.
“The purpose of this hearing, if the Court please, is not to prove the defendant guilty of a crime, but simply to show that a crime has been committed and that there is reasonable ground to believe the defendant is connected with the commission of that crime.”
Judge Polk frowned slightly as though he objected to being educated by a much younger man.
“This Court understands fully the scope of a preliminary hearing, Mr. Prosecutor,” he said. “You don’t need to explain it.”
“I am not explaining it, if the Court please,” Roberts said. “I am trying to set forth the position of this office. Because of the prominence and social standing of the defendant we are going to go further than would ordinarily be the case. We are going to introduce enough evidence to show fully what the prosecution will rely on at the time of trial. And if the defendant can explain that evidence we will be only too glad to have such explanation made so that the case can be dismissed at this time.”
Anton Newberry, twisting his thin lips into a grin, said, “In other words, you are inviting the defense to show its hand at this preliminary hearing?”
“Not at all,” Roberts said angrily. “We are simply trying to show that the prosecution will conduct its case according to the highest standard of professional ethics and that if the defense can explain the evidence we will be only too glad to join with the defense in asking the Court for a dismissal.”
“And if the defense makes no explanation?” Newberry asked.
“Under those circumstances,” Roberts snapped, “We will ask that the defendant be bound for trial in the Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder.”
“Go ahead with your evidence,” Judge Polk said to Roberts.
Roberts called the county surveyor to the stand to introduce the diagram he had made showing a section of the road between Calexico and Imperial.
There were no questions on cross-examination.
Roberts introduced the testimony of a Calexico officer who was on patrol duty on the night of the tenth and the morning of the twentieth. He had no the pickup with the houseboat trailer parked at a space in the road very near the northern boundary of city limits of Calexico. He had seen it earlier in the evening of the nineteenth and he saw it shortly after midnight on the morning of the twentieth. He decided to leave occupant of the houseboat alone until morning and waken him to tell him that there were laws against camping there by the roadside and that, while he didn’t want to be arbitrary, he would have to insist that the occupant move on.
The officer had knocked on the door repeatedly. There was no answer, so he tried the handle of the door. The door was unlocked. He opened the door and looked inside and saw a body sprawled upon the floor.
He came to the conclusion that the man had been shot. He immediately backed away and closed the door, careful as he closed the door not to leave any fingerprints.
He had then radioed headquarters and they had out a team of investigators and had notified the sheriff in El Centro, who had sent deputies.
The officers had moved the pickup and houseboat to police headquarters at Calexico where there were facilities for a scientific investigation.
An expert fingerprint man from the Sheriff’s Office had taken over and, within a short time, Sergeant Frank Sellers, an expert in homicide from the Los Angeles Police, who was frequently engaged in liaison work in outlying communities, had joined forces with the other officers.
Newberry said shortly, “No questions on cross-examination.”
An officer identified on the diagram, which had already been introduced, the place where the pickup and trailer had been located just within the city limits.
Again there was no cross-examination.
A Sheriff’s Office fingerprint expert was called to the stand. He testified to painstakingly powdering the inside as well as the outside of the pickup and houseboat, searching for fingerprints.
Had he found any?
Indeed he had. He had found many latents that were smudged. He had found some seventy-five latents that couldn’t be identified and he had found some latents that could be identified.
“The latents that could be identified,” Roberts asked, “where did you find them?”
“I found five prints of a left hand that had been placed against the aluminum side of the houseboat, just to the left of the door handle. One of the fingerprints, presumably the thumb print, was smudged. The other four latents were identifiable.”
“Do you have photographs of the fingerprints?”
“I do.”
“Will you produce those photographs, please?”
The witness produced the photographs.
“Now then, you say that those were identifiable. Have you identified those four fingerprints that were clear and unsmudged?”
“I have.”
“Whose fingerprints are they?”
“The fingerprints of Milton Carling Calhoun, the defendant in this case.”
There was a startled gasp from the spectators, Newberry’s eyes were blinking several times to the second, but his face was a wooden poker face.
Calhoun was the one who showed emotion. He should incredulous and then chagrined.
This time Newberry made a perfunctory cross-examination.
“You don’t know when those fingerprints were made,” he said.
“No, sir, I do not. All I know is that they were made at some time before I was called on to go over houseboat for fingerprints, and that was on the morning of the twentieth.”
Was the expert absolutely certain these were fingerprints of the defendant?
“Absolutely.”
“Each print? Or was it the cumulative effect of several prints?”
“No, sir,” the expert said. He had identified each every fingerprint. There had been enough points of similarity in each fingerprint to make an identification positive.
Newberry let the guy go.
A medical examiner summoned by the Sheriff’s Office testified that he had journeyed with the county coroner to Calexico; that the body had been observed m place the floor of the houseboat; that then the body had been removed to the mortuary and there had been a post mortem. Death had been caused by a .38-caliber bull which had penetrated the chest, severed a part of heart, and lodged near the spine on the right-hand side the body, traversing the chest at an angle. The bullet had been recovered. Death had been at some time between 9 o’clock at night on the nineteenth and 3 o’clock in the morning on the twentieth.