“. . . news of a break in the case has met with little reaction in the town of Holcomb, a half mile from the Clutter home. Generally, townspeople in the community of two hundred and seventy expressed relief . . .”
The young farmer hooted. “Relief! Last night, after we heard it on the TV, know what my wife did? Bawled like a baby.”
“Shush,” said Mrs. Clare. “That’s me.”
“… and Holcomb’s postmistress, Mrs. Myrtle Clare, said the residents are glad the case has been solved, but some of them still feel others may be involved. She said plenty of folks are still keeping their doors locked and their guns ready . . .”
Mrs. Hartman laughed. “Oh, Myrt!” she said. “Who’d you tell that to?” “A reporter from the Telegram.”
The men of her acquaintance, many of them, treat Mrs. Clare as though she were another man. The farmer slapped her on the back and said, “Gosh, Myrt. Gee, fella. You don’t still think one of us – anybody round here – had something to do with it?”
But that, of course, was what Mrs. Clare did think, and though she was usually alone in her opinions, this time she was not without company, for the majority of Holcomb’s population, having lived for seven weeks amid unwholesome rumors, general mistrust, and suspicion, appeared to feel disappointed at being told that the murderer was not someone among themselves. Indeed, a sizable faction refused to accept the fact that two unknown men, two thieving strangers, were solely responsible. As Mrs. Clare now remarked, “Maybe they did it, these fellows. But there’s more to it than that. Wait. Some day they’ll get to the bottom, and when they do they’ll find the one behind it. The one wanted Clutter out of the way. The brains.”
Mrs. Hartman sighed. She hoped Myrt was wrong. And Mrs. Helm, said, “What I hope is, I hope they keep ’em locked up good. I won’t feel easy knowing they’re in our vicinity.”
“Oh, I don’t think you got to worry, ma’am,” said the young farmer. “Right now those boys are a lot more scared of us than we are of them.”
On an Arizona highway, a two-car caravan is flashing across sagebrush country – the mesa
country of hawks and rattlesnakes and towering red rocks. Dewey is driving the lead car, Perry Smith sits beside him, and Duntz is sitting in the back seat. Smith is handcuffed, and the handcuffs are attached to a security belt by a short length of chain – an arrangement so restricting his movements that he cannot smoke unaided. When he wants a cigarette, Dewey must light it for him and place it between his lips, a task that the detective finds “repellent,” for it seems such an intimate action – the kind of thing he’d done while he was courting his wife.
On the whole, the prisoner ignores his guardians and their sporadic attempts to goad him by repeating parts of Hickock’s hour-long tape-recorded confession: “He says he tried to stop you, Perry. But says he couldn’t. Says he was scared you’d shoot him too,” and “Yes, sir, Perry. It’s all your fault. Hickock himself, he says he wouldn’t harm the fleas on a dog.” None of this -outwardly, at any rate – agitates Smith. He continues to contemplate the scenery, to read Burma-Shave doggerel, and to count the carcasses of shotgunned coyotes festooning ranch fences. Dewey, not anticipating any exceptional response, says, “Hickock tells us you’re a natural-born killer. Says it doesn’t bother you a bit. Says one time out there in Las Vegas you went after a colored man with a bicycle chain. Whipped him to death. For fun.”
To Dewey’s surprise, the prisoner gasps. He twists around in his seat until he can see, through the rear window, the motorcade’s second car, see inside it: “The tough boy!” Turning back, he stares at the dark streak of desert highway. “I thought it was a stunt. I didn’t believe you. That Dick let fly. The tough boy! Oh, a real brass boy. Wouldn’t harm the fleas on a dog. Just run over the dog.” He spits. “I never killed any nigger.” Duntz agrees with him; having studied the files on unsolved Las Vegas homicides, he knows Smith to be innocent of this particular deed. “I never killed any niggers. But he thought so. I always knew if we ever got caught, if Dick ever really let fly, dropped his guts all over the goddam floor – I knew he’d tell about the nigger.” He spits again. “So Dick was afraid of me? That’s amusing. I’m very amused. What he don’t know is, I almost did shoot him.”
Dewey lights two cigarettes, one for himself, one for the prisoner. “Tell us about it, Perry.”
Smith smokes with closed eyes, and explains, “I’m thinking. I want to remember this just the way it was.” He pauses for quite a while. “Well, it all started with a letter I got while I was out in Buhl, Idaho. That was September or October. The letter was from Dick, and he said he was on to a cinch. The perfect score. I didn’t answer him, but he wrote again, urging me to come back to Kansas and go partners with him. He never said what kind of score it was. Just that it was a ‘sure-fire cinch.’ Now, as it happened, I had another reason for wanting to be in Kansas around about that time. A personal matter I’d just as soon keep to myself it’s got nothing to do with this deal. Only that otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back there. But I did. And Dick met me at the bus station in Kansas City. We drove out to the farm, his parents’ place. But they didn’t want me there. I’m very sensitive; I usually know what people are feeling.
“Like you.” He means Dewey, but does not look at him. “You hate handing me a butt. That’s your business. I don’t blame you.. Any more than I blamed Dick’s mother. The fact is, she’s a very sweet person. But she knew what I was – a friend from The Walls and she didn’t want me in her house. Christ, I was glad to get out, go to a hotel. Dick took me to a hotel in Olathe. We bought some beer and carried it up to the room, and that’s when Dick outlined what he had in mind. He said after I’d left Lansing he celled with someone who’d once worked for a wealthy wheat grower out in western Kansas. Mr. Clutter. Dick drew me a diagram of the Clutter house. He knew where everything was – doors, halls, bedrooms. He said one of the ground-floor rooms was used as an office, and in the office there was a safe – a wall safe. He said Mr. Clutter needed it because he always kept on hand large sums of cash. Never less than ten thousand dollars. The plan was to rob the safe, and if we were seen – well, whoever saw us would have to go. Dick must have said it a million times: ‘No witnesses.'”
Dewey says, “How many of these witnesses did he think there might be? I mean, how many people did he expect to find in the Clutter house?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. But he wasn’t sure. At least four. Probably six. And it was possible the family might have guests. He thought we ought to be ready to handle up to a dozen.”
Dewey groans, Duntz whistles, and Smith, smiling wanly, adds, “Me, too. Seemed to me that was a little off. Twelve people. But Dick said it was a cinch. He said, ‘We’re gonna go in there and splatter those walls with hair.’
The mood I was in, I let myself be carried along. But also – I’ll be honest – I had faith in Dick; he struck me as being very practical, the masculine type, and I wanted the money as much as he did. I wanted to get it and go to Mexico. But I hoped we could do it without violence. Seemed to me we could if we wore masks. We argued about it. On the way out there, out to Holcomb, I wanted to stop and buy some black silk stockings to wear over our heads. But Dick felt that even with a stocking he could still be identified. Because of his bad eye. All the same, when we got to Emporia – “
Duntz says, “Hold on, Perry. You’re jumping ahead. Go back to Olathe. What time did you leave there?” –
“One. One-thirty. We left just after lunch and drove to Emporia. Where we bought some rubber gloves and a roll of cord. The knife and shotgun, the shells – Dick had brought all that from home. But he didn’t want to look for black stockings. It got to be quite an argument. Somewhere on the outskirts of Emporia, we passed a Catholic hospital, and I persuaded him to stop and go inside and try and buy some black stockings from the nuns. I knew nuns wear them. But he only made believe. Came out and said they wouldn’t sell him any. I was sure he hadn’t even asked, and he confessed it; he said it was a puky idea – the nuns would’ve thought he was crazy. So we didn’t stop again till Great Bend. That’s where we bought the tape. Had dinner there, a big dinner. It put me to sleep. When I woke up, we were just
