ought to ask him to stretch out on the cold floor, so I
dragged the mattress box over, flattened it, and told him to lie down.»
The driver, via the rear-view mirror, glances at his colleague, attracts his eye, and Duntz slightly
nods, as if in tribute. All along Dewey had argued that the mattress box had been placed on the
floor for the comfort of Mr. Clutter, and taking heed of similar hints, other fragmentary indications
of ironic, erratic compassion, the detective had conjectured that at least one of the killers was not
altogether uncharitable.
«I tied his feet, then tied his hands to his feet. I asked him was it too tight, and he said no, but said
would we please leave his wife alone. There was no need to tie her up — she wasn’t going to
holler or try to run out of the house. He said she’d been sick for years and years, and she was just
beginning to get a little better, but an incident like this might cause her to have a setback. I know
it’s nothing to laugh over, only I couldn’t help it — him talking about a ‘setback.’
«Next thing, I brought the boy down. First I put him in the room with his dad. Tied his hands to an
overhead steam pipe.
Then I figured that wasn’t very safe. He might somehow get loose and undo the old man, or vice
versa. So I cut him down and I took him to the playroom, where there was a comfortable looking
couch. I roped his feet to the foot of the couch, roped his hands, then carried the rope up and
made a loop around his neck, so if he struggled he’d choke himself. Once, while I was working, I
put the knife down on this — well, it was a freshly varnished cedar chest; the whole cellar smelled
of varnish — and he asked me not to put my knife there. The chest was a wedding present he’d
built for somebody. A sister, I believe he said. Just as I was leaving, he had a coughing fit, so I
stuffed a pillow under his head. Then I turned off the lights — «
Dewey says, «But you hadn’t taped their mouths?»
«No. The taping came later, after I’d tied both the women in their bedrooms. Mrs. Clutter was still
crying, at the same time she was asking me about Dick. She didn’t trust him, but said she felt I
was a decent young man. I’m sure you are, she says, and made me promise I wouldn’t let Dick
hurt anybody. I think what she really had in mind was her daughter. I was worried about that
myself. I suspected Dick was plotting something, something I wouldn’t stand for. When I finished
tying Mrs. Clutter, sure enough, I found he’d taken the girl to her bedroom. She was in the bed,
and he was sitting on the edge of it talking to her. I stopped that; I told him to go look for the safe
while I tied her up. After he’d gone, I roped her feet together and tied her hands behind her back.
Then I pulled up the covers, tucked her in till just her head showed. There was a little easy chair
near the bed, and I thought I’d rest a minute; my legs were on fire — all that climbing and kneeling.
I asked Nancy if she had a boy friend. She said yes, she did. She was trying hard to act casual
and friendly. I really liked her. She was really nice. A very pretty girl, and not spoiled or anything.
She told me quite a lot about herself. About school, and how she was going to go to a university
to study music and art. Horses. Said next to dancing what she liked best was to gallop a horse,
so I mentioned my mother had been a champion rodeo rider.
«And we talked about Dick; I was curious, see, what he’d been saying to her. Seems she’d asked
him why he did things like this. Rob people. And, wow, did he toss her a tear jerker — said he’d
been raised an orphan in an orphanage, and how nobody had ever loved him, and his only
relative was a sister who lived with men without marrying them. All the time we were talking, we
could hear the lunatic roaming around below, looking for the safe. Looking behind pictures. Tapping the
walls. Tap tap tap. Like some nutty woodpecker. When he came back, just to be a real bastard I
asked had he found it. Course he hadn’t, but he said he’d come across another purse in the
kitchen. With seven dollars.»
Duntz says, «How long now had you been in the house?»
«Maybe an hour.»
Duntz says, «And when did you do the taping?»
«Right then. Started with Mrs. Clutter. I made Dick help me — because I didn’t want to leave him
alone with the girl. I cut the tape in long strips, and Dick wrapped them around Mrs. Clutter’s head
like you’d wrap a mummy. He asked her, ‘How come you keep on crying? Nobody’s hurting you,’
and he turned off the bedside lamp and said, ‘Good night, Mrs. Clutter. Go to sleep.’ Then he
says to me, as we’re heading along the hall toward Nancy’s room, I’m gonna bust that little girl.’
And I said, ‘Uh-huh. But you’ll have to kill me first.’ He looked like he didn’t believe he’d heard
right. He says, ‘What do you care? Hell, you can bust her, too.’ Now, that’s something I despise.
Anybody that can’t control themselves sexually. Christ, I hate that kind of stuff. I told him straight,
‘Leave her alone. Else you’ve got a buzz saw to fight.’ That really burned him, but he realized it
wasn’t the time to have a flat-out free-for-all. So he says, ‘O.K., honey. If that’s the way you feel.’
The end of it was we never even taped her. We switched off the hall light and went down to the
basement.»
Perry hesitates. He has a question but phrases it as a statement: «I’ll bet he never said anything
about wanting to rape the girl.»
Dewey admits it, but he adds that except for an apparently somewhat expurgated version of his
own conduct, Hickock’s story supports Smith’s. The details vary, the dialogue is not identical, but
in substance the two accounts — thus far, at least — corroborate one another.
«Maybe. But I knew he hadn’t told about the girl. I’d have bet my shirt.»
Duntz says, «Perry, I’ve been keeping track of the lights. The way I calculate it, when you turned
off the upstairs light, that left the house completely dark.»
«Did. And we never used the lights again. Except the flashlight. Dick carried the flashlight when
we went to tape Mr. Clutter and the boy. Just before I taped him, Mr. Clutter asked me — and
these were his last words — wanted to know how his wife was, if she was all right, and I said she
was fine, she was ready to go to sleep, and I told him it wasn’t long till morning, and how in the
morning somebody would find them, and then all of it, me and Dick and all, would seem like
something they dreamed. I wasn’t kidding him. I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a
very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.
«Wait. I’m not telling it the way it was.» Perry scowls. He rubs his legs; the handcuffs rattle. «After,
see, after we’d taped them, Dick and I went off in a corner. To talk it over. Remember, now, there
were hard feelings between us. Just then it made my stomach turn to think I’d ever admired him,
lapped up all that brag. I said, ‘Well, Dick. Any qualms?’ He didn’t answer me. I said, ‘Leave them
alive, and this won’t be any small rap. Ten years the very least.’ He still didn’t say anything. He
was holding the knife. I asked him for it, and he gave it to me, and I said, ‘All right, Dick. Here
goes.’ But I didn’t mean it. I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit
he was a phony and a coward. See, it was something between me and Dick. I knelt down beside
Mr. Clutter, and the pain of kneeling — I thought of that goddam dollar. Silver dollar. The shame.
Disgust. And they’d told me never to come back to Kansas. But I didn’t realize what I’d done till I
heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. I handed the knife to Dick. I
said, ‘Finish him. You’ll feel better.’ Dick tried — or pretended to. But the man had the strength of
ten men — he was half out of his ropes, his hands were free. Dick panicked. Dick wanted to get the
hell out of there. But I wouldn’t let him go. The man would have died anyway, I know that, but I
couldn’t leave him like he was. I told Dick to hold the flashlight, focus it. Then I aimed the gun.
The room just exploded. Went blue. Just blazed up. Jesus, I’ll never understand why they didn’t
hear the noise twenty miles around.»
Dewey’s ears ring with it — a ringing that almost deafens him to the whispery rush of Smith’s soft
voice. But the voice plunges on, ejecting a fusillade of sounds and images: Hickock hunting the
discharged shell; hurrying, hurrying, and Kenyon’s head in a circle of light, the murmur of muffled
pleadings, then Hickock again scrambling after a used cartridge; Nancy’s room, Nancy listening to
boots on hardwood stairs, the creak of the steps as they climb toward her, Nancy’s eyes, Nancy watching the flashlight’s shine seek the target («She said, ‘Oh, no! Oh, please. No! No! No! No!
Don’t! Oh, please don’t! Please!’ I gave the gun to Dick. I told him