won his entire attention. It concerned murder,
the slaying of a Florida family, a Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Walker, their four-year-old son, and their
two-year-old daughter. Each of the victims, though not bound or gagged, had been shot through
the head with a .22 weapon. The crime, clueless and apparently motiveless, had taken place
Saturday night, December19, at the Walker home, on a cattle-raising ranch not far from
Tallahassee.
Perry interrupted Dick’s athletics to read the story aloud, and said, «Where were we last Saturday
night?»
«Tallahassee?»
«I’m asking you.»
Dick concentrated. On Thursday night, taking turns at the wheel, they had driven out of Kansas
and through Missouri into Arkansas and over the Ozarks, «up» to Louisiana, where a burned-out
generator stopped them early Friday morning. (A second-hand replacement, bought in Shreveport, cost twenty-two fifty.) That night they’d slept parked by the side of the road
somewhere near the Alabama-Florida border. The next day’s journey was an un-hurried affair,
had included several touristic diversions — visits to an alligator farm and a rattlesnake ranch, a ride
in a glass-bottomed boat over a silvery-clear swamp lake, a late and long and costly broiledlobster lunch at a roadside seafood restaurant. Delightful day! But both were exhausted when
they arrived at Tallahassee, and decided to spend the night there. «Yes, Tallahassee,» Dick said.
«Amazing!» Perry glanced through the article again. «Know what I wouldn’t be surprised? If this
wasn’t done by a lunatic. Some nut that read about what happened out in Kansas.»
Dick, because he didn’t care to hear Perry «get going on that subject,» shrugged and grinned and
trotted down to the ocean’s edge, where he ambled awhile over the surf-drenched sand, here and
there stooping to collect a seashell. As a boy he’d so envied the son of a neighbor who had gone
to the Gulf Coast on holiday and returned with a box full of shells — so hated him — that he’d stolen
the shells and one by one crushed them with a hammer. Envy was constantly with him; the
Enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.
For instance, the man he had seen by the pool at the Fontaine-bleau. Miles away, shrouded in a
summery veil of heat-haze and sea-sparkle, he could see the towers of the pale, expensive hotels

the Fontaine bleau, the Eden Roc, the Roney Plaza. On their second day in Miami he had
suggested to Perry that they invade these pleasure-domes. «Maybe pick up a coupla rich
women,» he had said. Perry had been most reluctant; he felt people would stare at them because
of their khaki trousers and T-shirts. Actually, their tour, of the Fontaine bleau’s gaudy premises
went unnoticed, amid the men striding about in Bermuda shorts of candy-striped raw silk, and the
women wearing bathing suits and mink simultaneously. The trespassers had loitered in the lobby,
in the garden, lounged by the swimming pool. It was there that Dick saw the man, who was his
own age — twenty-eight or thirty. He could have been a «gambler or lawyer or maybe a gangster
from Chicago.» Whatever he was, he looked as though he knew the glories of money and power.
A blonde who resembled Marilyn Monroe was kneading him with suntan oil, and his lazy,
beringed hand reached for a tumbler of iced orange juice. All that belonged to him, Dick, but he
would never have it. Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why
should that «big-shot bastard» have all the luck? With a knife in his hand, he, Dick, had power.
Big-shot bastards like that had better be careful or he might «open them up and let a little of their
hick spill on the floor » But Dick’s day was ruined. The beautiful blonde rubbing on the suntan oil
had ruined it. He’d said to Perry, «Let’s pull the hell out of here.»
Now a young girl, probably twelve, was drawing figures in the sand, carving out big, crude faces
with a piece of driftwood. Dick, pausing to admire her art, offered the shells he had gathered.
«They make good eyes,» he said. The child accepted the gift, where upon Dick smiled and winked
at her, He was sorry he felt as he did about her, for his sexual interest in female children was a
failing of which he was «sincerely ashamed» — a secret he’d not confessed to anyone and hoped
no one suspected (though he was aware that Perry had reason to), because other people might
not think it «normal.» That, to be sure, was something he was certain he was — «a normal.»
Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done «eight or nine» times in the last several years, did not
disprove it, for if the truth were known, most real men had the same desires he had. He took the
child’s hand and said, «You’re my baby girl. My little sweetheart.» But she objected. Her hand,
held by his, twitched like a fish on a hook, and he recognized the astounded expression in her
eyes from earlier incidents in his career. He let go, laughed lightly, and said, «Just a game. Don’t
you like games?»
Perry, still reclining under the blue umbrella, had observed the scene and realized Dick’s purpose
at once, and despised him for it; he had «no respect for people who can’t control themselves
sexually,» especially when the lack of control involved what he called «pervertiness» — «bothering
kids,» «queer stuff,» rape. And he thought he had made his views obvious to Dick; indeed, hadn’t
they almost had a fist fight when quite recently he had prevented Dick from raping a terrified
young girl? However, he wouldn’t care to repeat that particular test of strength. He was relieved
when he saw the child walk away from Dick.
Christmas carols were in the air; they issued from the radio of the four women and mixed
strangely with Miami’s sunshine and the cries of the querulous, never thoroughly silent seagulls.
«Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him» : a cathedral choir, an exalted music
that moved Perry to tears — which refused to stop, even after the music did. And as was not uncommon when he was thus afflicted, he dwelt upon a possibility that had for him «tremendous
fascination» : suicide. As a child he had often thought of killing himself, but those were
sentimental reveries born of a wish to punish his father and mother and other enemies. From
young manhood onward, however, the prospect of ending his life had more and more lost its
fantastic quality. That, he must remember, was Jimmy’s «solution,» and Fern’s, too. And lately it
had come to seem not just an alternative but the specific death awaiting him.
Anyway, he couldn’t see that he had «a lot to live for.» Hot islands and buried gold, diving deep in
fire-blue seas toward sunken treasure — such dreams were gone. Gone, too, was «Perry
O’Parsons,» the name invented for the singing sensation of stage and screen that he’d halfseriously hoped some day to be. Perry O’Parsons had died without having ever lived. What was
there to look forward to? He and Dick were «running a race without a finish line» — that was how it
struck him. And now, after not quite a week in Miami, the long ride was to resume. Dick, who had
worked one day at the ABC auto-service company for sixty-five cents an hour, had told him,
«Miami’s worse than Mexico. Sixty-five cents! Not me. I’m white.» So tomorrow, with only twentyseven dollars left of the money raised in Kansas City, they were heading west again, to Texas, to
Nevada — «nowhere definite.»
Dick, who had waded into the surf, returned. He fell, wet and breathless, face down on the sticky
sand. «How was the water?»
«Wonderful.»
The closeness of Christmas to Nancy Clutter’s birthday, which was right after New Year’s, had
always created problems for her boy friend, Bobby Rupp. It had strained his imagination to think
of two suitable gifts in such quick succession. But each year, with money made working summers
on his father’s sugar-beet farm, he had done the best he could, and on Christmas morning he had
always hurried to the Clutter house carrying a package that his sisters had helped him wrap and
that he hoped would surprise Nancy and delight her. Last year he had given her a small heartshaped gold locket. This year, as forehanded as ever, he’d been wavering between the imported
perfumes on sale at Norris Drugs and a pair of riding boots. But then Nancy had died.
On Christmas morning, instead of racing off to River Valley Farm, he remained at home, and later
in the day he shared with his family the splendid dinner his mother had been a week preparing.
Everybody — his parents and every one of his seven brothers and sisters — had treated him gently
since the tragedy. All the same, at meal times he was told again and again that he must please
eat. No one comprehended that really he was ill, that grief had made him so, that grief had drawn
a circle around him he could not escape from and others could not enter — except possibly Sue.
Until Nancy’s death he had not appreciated Sue, never felt altogether comfortable with her. She
was too different — took seriously things that even girls ought not to take very seriously: paintings,
poems, the music she played on the piano. And, of course, he was jealous of her; her position in
Nancy’s esteem, though of another order, had been at least equal to his. But that was why she
was able to understand his loss. Without Sue, without her almost constant presence, how could
he have withstood such an avalanche of shocks — the crime itself, his interviews with Mr. Dewey,
the pathetic irony of being for a while the principal suspect?
Then, after about a month, the friendship waned. Bobby went less frequently to sit in the Kidwells’
tiny, cozy parlor, and when he did go, Sue seemed