“I did.”
“How was she registered?”
“Under the name of Nanncie Beaver, but she first tried to register under the name of Nanncie Armstrong.”
“And what caused her to change her registration?”
“I said, ‘Look, dearie, when a single woman comes in here I have to know something about her. Now, I want to take a look at your driving license.’ So then she produced her driving license and said she was sort of hiding and didn’t want anyone to know she was registered there, and I told her it was all right by me as long as she behaved herself; that I was running a decent, respectable place and that I’d expect her to behave herself, otherwise out she went.”
“And she stayed on there?”
“Yes.”
“Until what time?”
“I don’t know when she actually left the motel, but the rent was paid up until the twentieth. When I went in to check her room on the morning of the twentieth, there was the key in the door on the outside and she had gone. All of her baggage — everything.”
“Was the rent paid?”
“You bet the rent was paid,” Mrs. Honcutt said. “With a woman like that I collect in advance, day by day.”
“Thank you, that’s all,” Roberts said.
“Any questions?” Judge Polk asked Newberry.
The lawyer seemed puzzled. “No questions.”
“Now then,” Roberts said, “I’m going to call Mr. Herbert C. Newton.”
Herbert Newton was a middle-aged individual with a quick, nervous manner and a wiry frame. He quite evidently enjoyed being a witness.
He gave his name, address and occupation to clerk, then turned expectantly to Roberts.
Roberts said, “Where were you staying on the evening of the nineteenth and the morning of the twentieth?”
“At the Maple Leaf Motel in Calexico.”
“At any time during the night did you have occasion get up and look out of your window?”
“I did.”
“What was your unit?”
“I was in Unit One which is right next to the street right across from Unit Twelve.”
“And what happened, if anything?”
“It was around two or three o’clock in the morning when I heard voices across in Unit Twelve, and the light came on in Unit Twelve which threw a light in my bedroom. The voices and the light wakened me and kept me from sleeping. I became very irritated.”
“And what did you do?”
“After a while I got up.”
“And what did you see or hear?”
“I could hear a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. They seemed to be arguing. After I got up out of bed heard the man say, ‘You’ve got to get out of here. You’re in danger. You come with me and I’ll take you to another place where you won’t get mixed up with this writer friend and be in danger.’ ”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. He said, ‘Get packed and meet me out in the car and I’ll take the gun. You can’t keep it with you in Mexico.’ ”
“What was that last?”
“He said, ‘I’ll take the gun.’ ”
“And then what happened?”
“Then he said, ‘Pack just as fast as you can.’ ”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. He said. ‘You’re foolish to have got mixed in this thing. Now, I’ll take charge of things and get you off the hook, but you’ve got to quit being tied up with that crazy writer.’ ”
“Then what happened?”
“Then the door opened and this man came out.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“I certainly did. The light from inside the apartment was full on his face.”
“And do you see this man in the courtroom?”
“Certainly. He is the defendant.”
“That’s the man you saw emerging from the apartment?”
“That’s the man I saw.”
“That’s the man who said, ‘I’ll take the gun’?”
“That’s the man who said, ‘I’ll take the gun. You can’t keep it with you in Mexico.’ ”
“Then what happened?”
“Then the door was closed, and after a very few minutes the light went out and some woman whom I couldn’t see opened the door and put a bag and a suitcase on the threshold, and this man who had been waiting in a big car, parked at the curb, came and picked up the bag and the suitcase and put them in the car. Then they drove away.”
“Any questions on cross-examination?” Judge Polk asked.
Newberry said, “I have just one or two questions of this witness. Can you give us the exact time of this conversation Mr. Newton?”
“No, I cannot. I was aroused from sleep and I was annoyed and irritated. In fact, I was so angry I couldn’t get back to sleep for I guess an hour. I know it was before three o’clock because I didn’t get to sleep until after three o’clock. I finally got up and took a couple Bufferin.”
“There’s no question in your mind that the man you saw was Milton Carling Calhoun, the defendant in case?”
“Absolutely no question.”
“Do you wear glasses?”
“I wear glasses when I read, but I can see with glasses at a distance and I saw this man just as plain as day, standing there in the doorway.”
“I think that’s all,” Newberry said.
Roberts said, “If the Court please, that concludes our case. We ask that the defendant be bound over to Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder.”
I said to Newberry, “Ask for a continuance.”
Newberry shook his head. “It won’t do any good. We aren’t going to put on any defense. I never put on defense at a preliminary hearing. It just tips your hand and—”
I interrupted him to say in a whisper, “They haven’t proven anything except a bare case of circumstantial evidence and—”
“Don’t be funny,” Newberry broke in. “They’ve shown his fingerprints on the houseboat. They’ve shown his ownership of the fatal gun. They have evidence showing that he went to the Maple Leaf Motel at two o’clock in the morning to get the gun. He was going to take care of things to protect his light-of-love. He went out and took matters into his own hands. He killed the dope runner.”
“That’s not the kind of a man Calhoun is,” I said. “For God’s sake, move for a continuance!”
Judge Polk said, “Gentlemen, is there any defense?”
“A half hour’s continuance,” I said.
Calhoun looked at me and then looked at his attorney.
“A half-hour continuance won’t hurt anything,” he said to Newberry.
Newberry got to his feet reluctantly.
“There seems to be some question as to procedure,” he said. “May I ask for a thirty-minute recess?”
Judge Polk looked at his watch. “The Court will take a fifteen-minutes recess,” he said. “That should be ample for counsel to confer with his client.”
Judge Polk left the bench and retired to chambers.
I grabbed Newberry’s arm and pulled him and Calhoun over to a secluded corner of the courtroom under the watchful eye of the deputy sheriff who had Calhoun in custody.
“You lied to me,” Newberry said to his client.
Calhoun said, “I only lied to you on an unessential matter. It was absolutely vital to me to keep Nanncie out of it. Yes, I did go to the motel. I wanted to get the gun back because I had an idea that I was going to stay and protect Nanncie. But she told me she didn’t have the gun, that she had given it to this writer, this Colburn Hale.”
“And that made you mad?” I asked.
“It made me very angry. I had given her that gun for her own protection.”
“So what did you do?”
“I took her over to the Lucerna Hotel in Mexicali, got her a room and paid for it. Then I came back across the border and registered at the De Anza Hotel.”
I shook my head and said, “No, you didn’t. You drove along the road to that place where the pickup was parked. Now, what caused you to go in that houseboat?”