everybody.»
As though for his brother and sisters life had been a bed of roses! Maybe so, if that meant
cleaning up Mama’s drunken vomit, if it meant never anything nice to wear or enough to eat. Still,
it was true, all three had finished high school. Jimmy, in fact, had graduated at the top of his
class — an honor he owed entirely to his own will power. That, Barbara Johnson felt, was what
made his suicide so ominous. Strong character, high courage, hard work — -it seemed that none of
these were determining facto in the fates of Tex John’s children. They shared a doom against
which virtue was no defense. Not that Perry was virtuous, or Fern. When Fern was fourteen, she
changed her name, and for the rest of her short life she tried to justify the replacement: Joy. She
was an easy going girl, «everybody’s sweetheart» — rather too much everybody’s, for she was
partial to men, though somehow she hadn’t much luck with them. Somehow, the kind of man she
liked always let her down. Her mother had died in an alcoholic coma, and she was afraid of drink

• yet she drank. Before she was twenty, Fern-Joy was beginning the day with a bottle of beer.
  Then, one summer night, she fell from the window of a hotel room. Falling she struck a theater
  marquee, bounced off it, and rolled under the wheels of a taxi. Above, in the vacated room, police
  found her shoes, a moneyless purse, an empty whiskey bottle.
  One could understand Fern and forgive her, but Jimmy was a different matter. Mrs. Johnson was
  looking at a picture of him in which he was dressed as a sailor; during the war he had served in
  the Navy. Slender, a pale young seafarer with an elongated face of slightly dour saintliness, he
  stood with an arm around the waist of the girl he had married and, in Mrs. Johnson’s estimation,
  ought not to have, for they had nothing in common — the serious Jimmy and this teen-age San
  Diego fleet-follower whose glass beads reflected a now long-faded sun. And yet what Jimmy had
  felt for her was beyond normal love; it was passion — a passion that was in part pathological. As
  for the girl, she must have loved him, and loved him completely, or she would not have done as
  she did. If only Jimmy had believed that! Or been capable of believing it. But jealousy imprisoned
  him. He was mortified by thoughts of the men she had slept with before their marriage; he was convinced, moreover, that she remained promiscuous — that every time he went to sea, or even
  left her alone for the day, she betrayed him with a multitude of lovers, whose existence he
  unendingly demanded that she admit. Then she aimed a shotgun at a point between her eyes
  and pressed the trigger with her toe. When Jimmy found her, he didn’t call the police. He picked
  her up and put her on the bed and lay down beside her. Sometime around dawn of the next day,
  he reloaded the gun and killed himself.
  Opposite the picture of Jimmy and his wife was a photograph of Perry in uniform. It had been
  clipped from a newspaper, and was accompanied by a paragraph of text: «Headquarters, United
  States Army, Alaska. Pvt. Perry E. Smith, 23, first Army Korean combat veteran to return to the
  Anchorage, Alaska, area, greeted by Captain Mason, Public Information Officer, upon arrival at
  Elmendorf Air Force Base. Smith served 15 months with the 24th Division as a combat engineer.
  His trip from Seattle to Anchorage was a gift from Pacific Northern Airlines. Miss Lynn Marquis,
  airline hostess, smiles approval at welcome. (Official U.S. Army Photo).» Captain Mason, with
  hand extended, is looking at Private Smith, but Private Smith is looking at the camera, in his
  expression Mrs. Johnson saw, or imagined she saw, not gratitude but arrogance, and, in place of
  pride, immense conceit, it wasn’t incredible that he had met a man on a bridge and thrown him off
  it. Of course he had. She had never doubted it.
  She shut the album and switched on the television, bur it did not console her. Suppose he did
  come? The detectives had found her; why shouldn’t Perry? He need not expect her to help him,
  she wouldn’t even let him in. The front door was locked, but not the door to the garden. The
  garden was white with sea-fog; It might have been an assembly of spirits: Mama and Jimmy and
  Fern. When Mrs. Johnson bolted the door, she had in mind the dead as well as the living.
  A cloudburst. Rain. Buckets of it. Dick ran. Perry ran too, but he could not run as fast; his legs
  were shorter, and he was lugging the suitcase. Dick reached shelter — a barn near the highway long before him. On leaving Omaha, after a night spent in a Salvation Army dormitory, a truck
  driver had given them a ride across the Nebraska border into Iowa. The past several hours,
  however, had found them afoot. The rain came when they were sixteen miles north of an Iowa
  settlement called Tenville Junction.
  The barn was dark.
  «Dick?» Perry said.
  «Over here,» Dick said. He was sprawled on a bed of hay.
  Perry, drenched and shaking, dropped beside him. «I’m so cold,» he said, burrowing in the hay,
  «I’m so cold I wouldn’t give a damn if this caught fire and burned me alive.» He was hungry, too.
  Starved. Last night they had dined on bowls of Salvation Army soup, and today the only
  nourishment they’d had was some chocolate bars and chewing gum that Dick had stolen from a
  drugstore candy counter. «Any more Hershey?» Perry asked.
  No, but there was still a pack of chewing gum. They divided it, then settled down to chewing it,
  each chomping on two and a half sticks of Doublemint, Dick’s favorite flavor (Perry preferred
  Juicy Fruit). Money was the problem. Their utter lack of it had led Dick to decide that their next
  move should be what Perry considered «a crazy-man stunt» — a return to Kansas City. When Dick
  had first urged the return, Perry said, «You ought to see a doctor.» Now, huddled together in the
  cold darkness, listening to the dark, cold rain, they resumed the argument, Perry once more
  listing the dangers of such a move, for surely by this time Dick was wanted for parole violation — «if
  nothing more.» But Dick was not to be dissuaded. Kansas City, he again insisted, was the one
  place he was certain he could successfully «hang a lot of hot paper. Hell, I know we’ve got to be
  careful. I know they’ve got a warrant out. Because of the paper we hung before. But we’ll move
  fast. One day — that’ll do it. If we grab enough, maybe we ought to try Florida. Spend Christmas in
  Miami — stay the winter if it looks good.» But Perry chewed his gum and shivered and sulked. Dick
  said, «What is it, honey? That other deal? Why the hell can’t you forget it? They never made any
  connection. They never will.»
  Perry said, «You could be wrong. And if you are, it means The Corner.» Neither one had ever
  before referred to the ultimate penalty in the State of Kansas — the gallows, or death in The
  Corner, as the inmates of Kansas State Penitentiary have named the fad that houses the
  equipment required to hang a man.
  Dick said, «The comedian. You kill me.» He struck a match, intending to smoke a cigarette, but something seen by the light of the flaring match brought him to
  his feet and carried him across the barn to a cow stall. A car was parked inside the stall, a blackand-white two-door 1956 Chevrolet. The key was in the ignition.
  Dewey was determined to conceal from «the civilian population» any knowledge of a major break
  in the Clutter case — so determined that he decided to take into his confidence Garden City’s two
  professional town criers: Bill Brown, editor of the Garden City Telegram, and Rob Wells, manager
  of the local radio station. KlUL. In outlining the situation, Dewey emphasized his reasons for
  considering secrecy of the first importance: «Remember, there’s a possibility these men are
  innocent.»
  It was a possibility too valid to dismiss. The informer, Floyd Wells, might easily have invented his
  story; such tale-telling was not infrequently undertaken by prisoners who hoped to win favor or
  attract official notice. But even if the man’s every word was gospel, Dewey and his colleagues
  had not yet unearthed one bit of solid supporting evidence — «courtroom evidence.» What had they
  discovered that could not be interpreted as plausible, though exceptional, coincidence? Just
  because Smith had traveled to Kansas to visit his friend Hickock, and just because Hickock
  possessed a gun of the caliber used to commit the crime, and just because the suspects had
  arranged a false alibi to account for their whereabouts the night of November 14, they were not
  necessarily mass murderers. «But we’re pretty sure this is it. We all think so. If we didn’t, we
  wouldn’t have set up a seventeen-state alarm, from Arkansas to Oregon. But keep in mind: It
  could be years before we catch them. They may have separated. Or left the country. There’s a
  chance they’ve gone to Alaska — not hard to get lost in Alaska. The longer they’re free, the less of
  a case we’ll have. Frankly, as matters stand, we don’t have much of a case anyhow. We could
  nab those sonsabitches tomorrow, and never be able to prove spit.»
  Dewey did not exaggerate. Except for two sets of boot prints, one bearing a diamond pattern and
  the other a Cat’s Paw design, the slayers had left not a single clue. Since they seemed to take
  such care, they had undoubtedly got rid of the boots long ago. And the radio, too — assuming that
  it was they who had stolen it, which was something Dewey still hesitated to do, for it