In Cold Blood (15 page)

Dewey was in the kitchen; Marie, searching for him, found him there, waiting for a pot of coffee to percolate and with the murder-scene photographs spread before him on the kitchen table—bleak stains, spoiling the table’s pretty fruit-patterned oilcloth. (Once he had offered to let her look at the pictures. She had declined. She had said, “I want to remember Bonnie the way Bonnie was—and all of them.”) He said, “Maybe the boys ought to stay with Mother.” His mother, a widow, lived not far off, in a house she thought too spacious and silent; the grandchildren were always welcome. “For just a few days. Until—well, until.”

“Alvin, do you think we’ll ever get back to normal living?” Mrs. Dewey asked.

Their normal life was like this: both worked, Mrs. Dewey as an office secretary, and they divided between them the household chores, taking turns at the stove and the sink. (“When Alvin was sheriff, I know some of the boys teased him. Used to say, ‘Lookayonder! Here comes Sheriff Dewey! Tough guy! Totes a six-shooter! But once he gets home, off comes the gun and on goes the apron!”) At that time they were saving to build a house on a farm that Dewey had bought in 1951—two hundred and forty acres several miles north of Garden City. If the weather was fine, and especially when the days were hot and the wheat was high and ripe, he liked to drive out there and practice his draw—shoot crows, tin cans—or in his imagination roam through the house he hoped to have, and through the garden he meant to plant, and under trees yet to be seeded. He was very certain that some day his own oasis of oaks and elms would stand upon those shadeless plains: “
Some
day. God willing.”

A belief in God and the rituals surrounding that belief—church every Sunday, grace before meals, prayers before bed—were an important part of the Deweys’ existence. “I don’t see how anyone can sit down to table without wanting to bless it,” Mrs. Dewey once said. “Sometimes, when I come home from work—well, I’m tired. But there’s always coffee on the stove, and sometimes a steak in the icebox. The boys make a fire to cook the steak, and we talk, and tell each other our day, and by the time supper’s ready I know we have good cause to be happy and grateful. So I say, Thank you, Lord. Not just because I should—because I want to.”

Now Mrs. Dewey said, “Alvin, answer me. Do you think we’ll ever have a normal life again?”

He started to reply, but the telephone stopped him.

T
he old Chevrolet left Kansas City November 21, Saturday night. Luggage was lashed to the fenders and roped to the roof; the trunk was so stuffed it could not be shut; inside, on the back seat, two television sets stood, one atop the other. It was a tight fit for the passengers: Dick, who was driving, and Perry, who sat clutching the old Gibson guitar, his most beloved possession. As for Perry’s other belongings—a cardboard suitcase, a gray Zenith portable radio, a gallon jug of root-beer syrup (he feared that his favorite beverage might not be available in Mexico), and two big boxes containing books, manuscripts, cherished memorabilia (and hadn’t Dick raised hell! Cursed, kicked the boxes, called them “five hundred pounds of pig slop!”)—these, too, were part of the car’s untidy interior.

Around midnight they crossed the border into Oklahoma. Perry, glad to be out of Kansas, at last relaxed. Now it was true—they were on their way—On their way, and never coming back—without regret, as far as he was concerned, for he was leaving nothing behind, and no one who might deeply wonder into what thin air he’d spiraled. The same could not be said of Dick. There were those Dick claimed to love: three sons, a mother, a father, a brother—persons he hadn’t dared confide his plans to, or bid goodbye, though he never expected to see them again—not in this life.

C
LUTTER
—E
NGLISH
V
OWS
G
IVEN IN
S
ATURDAY
C
EREMONY
: that headline, appearing on the social page of the Garden City
Telegram
for November 23, surprised many of its readers. It seemed that Beverly, the second of Mr. Clutter’s surviving daughters, had married Mr. Vere Edward English, the young biology student to whom she had long been engaged. Miss Clutter had worn white, and the wedding, a full-scale affair (“Mrs. Leonard Cowan was soloist, and Mrs. Howard Blanchard organist”), had been “solemnized at the First Methodist Church”—the church in which, three days earlier, the bride had formally mourned her parents, her brother, and her younger sister. However, according to the
Telegram’s
account, “Vere and Beverly had planned to be married at Christmastime. The invitations were printed and her father had reserved the church for that date. Due to the unexpected tragedy and because of the many relatives being here from distant places, the young couple decided to have their wedding Saturday.”

The wedding over, the Clutter kinfolk dispersed. On Monday, the day the last of them left Garden City, the
Telegram
featured on its front page a letter written by Mr. Howard Fox, of Oregon, Illinois, a brother of Bonnie Clutter. The letter, after expressing gratitude to the townspeople for having opened their “homes and hearts” to the bereaved family, turned into a plea. “There is much resentment in this community [that is, Garden City],” wrote Mr. Fox. “I have even heard on more than one occasion that the man, when found, should be hanged from the nearest tree. Let us not feel this way. The deed is done and taking another life cannot change it. Instead, let us forgive as God would have us do. It is not right that we should hold a grudge in our hearts. The doer of this act is going to find it very difficult indeed to live with himself. His only peace of mind will be when he goes to God for forgiveness. Let us not stand in the way but instead give prayers that he may find his peace.”

T
he car was parked on a promontory where Perry and Dick had stopped to picnic. It was noon. Dick scanned the view through a pair of binoculars. Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky. A dusty road winding into and out of a white and dusty village. Today was his second day in Mexico, and so far he liked it fine—even the food. (At this very moment he was eating a cold, oily tortilla.) They had crossed the border at Laredo, Texas, the morning of November 23, and spent the first night in a San Luis Potosí brothel. They were now two hundred miles north of their next destination, Mexico City.

“Know what I think?” said Perry. “I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.”

“Did what?”

“Out there.”

Dick dropped the binoculars into a leather case, a luxurious receptacle initialed H.W.C. He was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn’t Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddam thing up? It really was
annoying
. Especially since they’d agreed, sort of, not to talk about the goddam thing. Just forget it.

“There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that,” Perry said.

“Deal me out, baby,” Dick said. “I’m a normal.” And Dick meant what he said. He thought himself as balanced, as sane as anyone—maybe a bit smarter than the average fellow, that’s all. But Perry—there
was
, in Dick’s opinion, “something wrong” with Little Perry. To say the least. Last spring, when they had celled together at Kansas State Penitentiary, he’d learned most of Perry’s lesser peculiarities: Perry could be “such a kid,” always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep (“Dad, I been looking everywhere, where you been, Dad?”), and often Dick had seen him “sit for hours just sucking his thumb and poring over them phony damn treasure guides.” Which was one side; there were others. In some ways old Perry was “spooky as hell.” Take, for instance, that temper of his. He could slide into a fury “quicker than ten drunk Indians.” And yet you wouldn’t know it. “He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at or listen to,” Dick once said. For however extreme the inward rage, outwardly Perry remained a cool young tough, with eyes serene and slightly sleepy. The time had been when Dick had thought he could control, could regulate the temperature of these sudden cold fevers that burned and chilled his friend. He had been mistaken, and in the aftermath of that discovery, had grown very unsure of Perry, not at all certain what to think—except that he felt he ought to be afraid of him, and wondered really why he wasn’t.

“Deep down,” Perry continued, “way, way rock-bottom, I never thought I could do it. A thing like that.”

“How about the nigger?” Dick said. Silence. Dick realized that Perry was staring at him. A week ago, in Kansas City, Perry had bought a pair of dark glasses—fancy ones with silver-lacquered rims and mirrored lenses. Dick disliked them; he’d told Perry he was ashamed to be seen with “anyone who’d wear that kind of flit stuff.” Actually, what irked him was the mirrored lenses; it was unpleasant having Perry’s eyes hidden behind the privacy of those tinted, reflecting surfaces.

“But a nigger,” said Perry. “That’s different.”

The comment, the reluctance with which it was pronounced, made Dick ask, “Or did you? Kill him like you said?” It was a significant question, for his original interest in Perry, his assessment of Perry’s character and potentialities, was founded on the story Perry had once told him of how he had beaten a colored man to death.

“Sure I did. Only—a nigger. It’s not the same.” Then Perry said, “Know what it is that really bugs me? About the other thing? It’s just I don’t believe it—that anyone can get away with a thing like that. Because I don’t see how it’s possible. To do what we did. And just one hundred percent get away with it. I mean, that’s what bugs me—I can’t get it out of my head that something’s got to happen.”

Though as a child he had attended church, Dick had never “come near” a belief in God; nor was he troubled by superstitions. Unlike Perry, he was not convinced that a broken mirror meant seven years’ misfortune, or that a young moon if glimpsed through glass portended evil. But Perry, with his sharp and scratchy intuitions, had hit upon Dick’s one abiding doubt. Dick, too, suffered moments when that question circled inside his head: Was it possible—were the two of them “honest to God going to get away with doing a thing like that”? Suddenly, he said to Perry, “Now, just shut up!” Then he gunned the motor and backed the car off the promontory. Ahead of him, on the dusty road, he saw a dog trotting along in the warm sunshine.

M
ountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky.

When Perry asked Dick, “Know what I think?” he knew he was beginning a conversation that would displease Dick, and one that, for that matter, he himself would just as soon avoid. He agreed with Dick: Why go on talking about it? But he could not always stop himself. Spells of helplessness occurred, moments when he “remembered things”—blue light exploding in a black room, the glass eyes of a big toy bear—and when voices, a particular few words, started nagging his mind: “Oh, no! Oh, please! No! No! No! No! Don’t! Oh, please don’t, please!” And certain sounds returned—a silver dollar rolling across a floor, boot steps on hardwood stairs, and the sounds of breathing, the gasps, the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed windpipe.

When Perry said, “I think there must be something wrong with us,” he was making an admission he “hated to make.” After all, it was “painful” to imagine that one might be “not just right”—particularly if whatever was wrong was not your own fault but “maybe a thing you were born with.” Look at his family! Look at what had happened there! His mother, an alcoholic, had strangled to death on her own vomit. Of her children, two sons and two daughters, only the younger girl, Barbara, had entered ordinary life, married, begun raising a family. Fern, the other daughter, jumped out of a window of a San Francisco hotel. (Perry had ever since “tried to believe she slipped,” for he’d loved Fern. She was “such a sweet person,” so “artistic,” a “terrific” dancer, and she could sing, too. “If she’d ever had any luck at all, with her looks and all, she could have got somewhere, been somebody.” It was sad to think of her climbing over a window sill and falling fifteen floors.) And there was Jimmy, the older boy—Jimmy, who had one day driven his wife to suicide and killed himself the next.

Then he heard Dick say, “Deal me out, baby. I’m a normal.” Wasn’t that a horse’s laugh? But never mind, let it pass. “Deep down,” Perry continued, “way, way rock-bottom, I never thought I could do it. A thing like that.” And at once he recognized his error: Dick would, of course, answer by asking, “How about the nigger?” When he’d told Dick that story, it was because he’d wanted Dick’s friendship, wanted Dick to “respect” him, think him “hard,” as much “the masculine type” as he had considered Dick to be. And so one day after they had both read and were discussing a
Reader’s Digest
article entitled “How Good a Character Detective Are You?” (“As you wait in a dentist’s office or a railway station, try studying the give-away signs in people around you. Watch the way they walk, for example. A stiff-legged gait can reveal a rigid, unbending personality; a shambling walk a lack of determination”), Perry had said “I’ve always been an outstanding character detective, otherwise I’d be dead today. Like if I couldn’t judge when to trust somebody. You never can much. But I’ve come to trust you, Dick. You’ll see I do, because I’m going to put myself in your power. I’m going to tell you something I never told anybody. Not even Willie-Jay. About the time I fixed a guy.” And Perry saw, as he went on, that Dick was interested; he was really listening. “It was a couple of summers ago. Out in Vegas. I was living in this old boarding house—it used to be a fancy cathouse. But all the fancy was gone. It was a place they should have torn down ten years back; anyway, it was sort of coming down by itself. The cheapest rooms were in the attic, and I lived up there. So did this nigger. His name was King; he was a transient. We were the only two up there—us and a million
cucarachas
. King, he wasn’t too young, but he’d done roadwork and other outdoor stuff—he had a good build. He wore glasses, and he read a lot. He never shut his door. Every time I passed by, he was always lying there buck-naked. He was out of work, and said he’d saved a few dollars from his last job, said he wanted to stay in bed awhile, read and fan himself and drink beer. The stuff he read, it was just junk—comic books and cowboy junk. He was O.K. Sometimes we’d have a beer together, and once he lent me ten dollars. I had no cause to hurt him. But one night we were sitting in the attic, it was so hot you couldn’t sleep, so I said, ‘Come on, King, let’s go for a drive.’ I had an old car I’d stripped and souped and painted silver—the Silver Ghost, I called it. We went for a long drive. Drove way out in the desert. Out there it was cool. We parked and drank a few more beers. King got out of the car, and I followed after him. He didn’t see I’d picked up this chain. A bicycle chain I kept under the seat. Actually, I had no real idea to do it till I did it. I hit him across the face. Broke his glasses. I kept right on. Afterward, I didn’t feel a thing. I left him there, and never heard a word about it. Maybe nobody ever found him. Just buzzards.”