that safe is or you’re gonna be a good bit sorrier.’ But Mr.
Clutter — oh, you could see he was scared, but his voice stayed mild and steady — he went on
denying he had a safe.
«Sometime along in there, I fixed the telephone. The one in the office. I ripped out the wires. And I
asked Mr. Clutter if there were any other telephones in the house. He said yes, there was one in
the kitchen. So I took the flashlight and went to the kitchen — it was quite a distance from the
office. When I found the telephone, I removed the receiver and cut the line with a pair of pliers.
Then, heading back, I heard a noise. A creaking over-head. I stopped at the foot of the stairs
leading to the second floor. It was dark, and I didn’t dare use the flashlight. But I could tell there
was someone there. At the top of the stairs, silhouetted; against a window. A figure. Then it
moved away.»
Dewey imagines it must have been Nancy. He’d often theorized, on the basis of the gold
wristwatch found tucked in the toe of a shoe in her closet, that Nancy had awakened, heard
persons in the house, thought they might be thieves, and prudently hidden the watch, her most
valuable property.
«For all I knew, maybe it was somebody with a gun. But Dick
wouldn’t even listen to me. He was so busy playing tough boy. Bossing Mr. Clutter around. Now
he’d brought him back to the bedroom. He was counting the money in Mr. Clutter’s billfold. There
was about thirty dollars. He threw the billfold on the bed and told him, ‘You’ve got more money in
this house than that. A rich man like you. Living on a spread like this.’ Mr. Clutter said that was all
the cash he had, and explained he always did business by check. He offered to write us a check.
Dick just blew up — ‘What kind of Mongolians do you think we are?’ — and I thought Dick was ready
to smash him, so I said, ‘Dick. Listen to me. There’s somebody awake upstairs.’ Mr. Clutter told
us the only people upstairs were his wife and a son and daughter. Dick wanted to know if the wife
had any money, and Mr. Clutter said if she did, it would be very little, a few dollars, and he asked
us — really kind of broke down — please not to bother her, because she was an invalid, she’d been
very ill for a long time. But Dick insisted on going upstairs. He made Mr. Clutter lead the way.
«At the foot of the stairs, Mr. Clutter switched on lights that lighted the hall above, and as we were
going up, he said, ‘I don’t know why you boys want to do this. I’ve never done you any harm. I never saw you before.’ That’s when Dick told him, ‘Shut up! When we want you to talk, we’ll tell
you.’ Wasn’t anybody in the upstairs hall, and all the doors were shut. Mr. Clutter pointed out the
rooms where the boy and girl were supposed to be sleeping, then opened his wife’s door. He
lighted a lamp beside the bed and told her, ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid. These men,
they just want some money.’ She was a thin, frail sort of woman in a long white nightgown. The
minute she opened her eyes, she started to cry. She says, talking to her husband, ‘Sweetheart, I
don’t have any money.’ He was holding her hand, patting it. He said, ‘Now, don’t cry, honey. It’s
nothing to be afraid of. It’s just I gave these men all the money I had, but they want some more.
They believe we have a safe somewhere in the house. I told them we don’t.’ Dick raised his hand,
like he was going to crack him across the mouth. Says, ‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up?’ Mrs. Clutter
said, ‘But my husband’s telling you the God’s truth. There isn’t any safe.’ And Dick answers back,
‘I know goddam well you got a safe. And I’ll find it before I leave here. Needn’t worry that I won’t.’
Then he asked her where she kept her purse. The purse was in a bureau drawer. Dick turned it
inside out. Found just some change and a dollar or two. I motioned to him to come into the hall. I
wanted to discuss the situation. So we stepped outside, and I said — «
Duntz interrupts him to ask if Mr. and Mrs. Clutter could over-hear the conversation.
«No. We were just outside the door, where we could keep an eye on them. But we were
whispering. I told Dick, ‘These people are telling the truth. The one who lied is your friend Floyd
Wells. There isn’t any safe, so let’s get the hell out of here.’ But Dick was too ashamed to face it.
He said he wouldn’t believe it till we searched the whole house. He said the thing to do was tie
them all up, then take our time looking around. You couldn’t argue with him, he was so excited.
The glory of having everybody at his mercy, that’s what excited him. Well, there was a bathroom
next door to Mrs. Clutter’s room. The idea was to lock the parents in the bathroom, and wake the
kids and put them there, then bring them out one by one and tie them up in different parts of the
house. And then, says Dick, after we’ve found the safe, we’ll cut their throats. Can’t shoot them,
he says — that would make too much noise.»
Perry frowns, rubs his knees with his manacled hands. «Let me think a minute. Because along in
here things begin to get a little complicated. I remember. Yes. Yes, I took a chair out of the hall
and stuck it in the bathroom. So Mrs. Clutter could sit down. Seeing she was said to be an invalid.
When we locked them up, Mrs. Clutter was crying and telling us, ‘Please don’t hurt anybody.
Please don’t hurt my children.’ And her husband had his arms around her, saying, like,
‘Sweetheart, these fellows don’t mean to hurt anybody. All they want is some money.’
«We went to the boy’s room. He was awake. Lying there like he was too scared to move. Dick told
him to get up, but be didn’t move, or move fast enough, so Dick punched him, pulled him out of
bed, and I said, ‘You don’t have to hit him, Dick.’ And I told the boy — he was only wearing a T-shirt

to put on his pants. He put on a pair of blue jeans, and we’d just locked him in the bathroom
when the girl appeared — came out of her room. She was all dressed, like she’d been awake some
while. I mean, she had on socks and slippers, and a kimono, and her hair was wrapped in a
bandanna. She was trying to smile. She said, ‘Good grief, what is this? Some kind of joke?’ I don’t
guess she thought it was much of a joke, though. Not after Dick opened the bathroom door and
shoved her in …»
Dewey envisions them: the captive family, meek and frightened but without any premonition of
their destiny. Herb couldn’t have suspected, or he would have fought. He was a gentle man but
strong and no coward. Herb, his friend Alvin Dewey felt certain, would have fought to the death
defending Bonnie’s life and the lives of his children.
«Dick stood guard outside the bathroom door while I reconnoitered. I frisked the girl’s room, and I
found a little purse — like a doll’s purse. Inside it was a silver dollar. I dropped it somehow, and it
rolled across the floor. Rolled under a chair. I had to get down on my knees. And just then it was
like I was outside myself. Watching myself in some nutty movie. It made me sick. I was just
disgusted. Dick, and all his talk about a rich man’s safe, and here I am crawling on my belly to
steal a child’s silver dollar. One dollar. And I’m crawling on my belly to get it.»
Perry squeezes his knees, asks the detectives for aspirin, thanks Duntz for giving him one, chews
it, and resumes talking. «But that’s what you do. You get what you can. I frisked the boy’s room,
too. Not a dime. But there was a little portable radio, and I decided to take it. Then I remembered
the binoculars I’d seen in Mr. Clutter’s office. I went downstairs to get them. I carried the
binoculars and the radio out to the car. It was cold, and the wind and the cold felt good. The moon was so bright you could see for miles. And I thought, Why don’t I walk off? Walk to the highway,
hitch a ride. I sure Jesus didn’t want to go back in that house. And yet — How can I explain this? It
was like I wasn’t part of it. More as though I was reading a story. And I had to know what was
going to happen. The end. So I went back upstairs. And now, let’s see — uh-huh, that’s when we
tied them up. Mr. Clutter first. We called him out of the bathroom, and I tied his hands together.
Then I marched him all the way down to the basement — «
Dewey says, «Alone and unarmed?»
«I had the knife.»
Dewey says, «But Hickock stayed guard upstairs?»
«To keep them quiet. Anyway, I didn’t need help. I’ve worked with rope all my life.»
Dewey says, «Were you using the flashlight or did you turn on the basement lights?»
«The lights. The basement was divided into two sections. One part seemed to be a playroom.
Took him to the other section, the furnace room. I saw a big cardboard box leaning against the
wall. A mattress box. Well, I didn’t feel I ought to ask