aim, and she turned her face to the wall»); the dark hall, the assassins hastening toward the final
door. Perhaps, having heard all she had, Bonnie welcomed their swift approach.
«That last shell was a bitch to locate. Dick wiggled under the bed to get it. Then we closed Mrs.
Clutter’s door and went downstairs to the office. We waited there, like we had when we first came.
Looked through the blinds to see if the hired man was poking around, or anybody else who might
have heard the gunfire. But it was just the same — not a sound. Just the wind — and Dick panting
like wolves were after him. Right there, in those few seconds before we ran out to the car and
drove away, that’s when I decided I’d better shoot Dick. He’d said over and over, he’d drummed it
into me: No witnesses. And I thought, He’s a witness. I don’t know what stopped me. God knows I
should’ve done it. Shot him dead. Got in the car and kept on going till I lost myself in Mexico.»
A hush. For ten miles and more, the three men ride without speaking.
Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey’s silence. It had been his ambition to learn
«exactly what happened in that house that night.» Twice now he’d been told, and the two versions
were very much alike, the only serious discrepancy being that Hickock attributed all four deaths to
Smith, while Smith contended that Hickock had killed the two women. But the confessions,
though they answered questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design.
The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well
have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they
had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to
look at the man beside him without anger — with, rather, a measure of sympathy — for Perry
Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage
and then another. Dewey’s sympathy, however, was not deep enough to accommodate either
forgiveness or mercy. He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged — hanged back to back.
Dunn asks Smith, «Added up, how much money did you get from the Clutters?»
«Between forty and fifty dollars.»
Among Garden City’s animals are two gray tomcats who are always together — thin, dirty strays
with strange and clever habits. The chief ceremony of their day is performed at twilight. First they
trot the length of Main Street, stopping to scrutinize the engine grilles of parked automobiles,
particularly those stationed in front of the two hotels, the Windsor and Warren, for these cars,
usually the property of travelers from afar, often yield what the bony, methodical creatures are
hunting: slaughtered birds — crows, chickadees, and sparrows foolhardy enough to have flown into
the path of oncoming motorists. Using their paws as though they are surgical instruments, the
cats extract from the grilles every feathery particle. Having cruised Main Street, they invariably
turn the corner at Main and Grant, then lope along toward Courthouse Square, another of their
hunting grounds — and a highly promising one on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 6, for the
area swarmed with Finney County vehicles that had brought to town part of the crowd populating
the square. The crowd started forming at four o’clock, the hour that the county attorney had given
as the probable arrival rime of Hickock and Smith. Since the announcement of Hickock’s
confession on Sunday evening, newsmen of every style had assembled in Garden City:
representatives of the major wire services, photographers, newsreel and television cameramen,
reporters from Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and, of course, all the principal Kansas
papers — twenty or twenty-five men altogether. Many of them had been waiting three days without
much to do except interview the service-station attendant James Spor, who, after seeing
published photographs of the accused killers, had identified them as customers to whom he’d
sold three dollars and six cents worth of gas the night of the Holcomb tragedy.
It was the return of Hickock and Smith that these professional spectators were on hand to record,
and Captain Gerald Murray, of the Highway Patrol, had reserved for them ample space on the
sidewalk fronting the courthouse steps — the steps the prisoners must mount on their way to the
county jail, an institution that occupies the top floor of the four-story limestone structure. One
reporter, Richard Parr, of the Kansas City Star, had obtained a copy of Monday’s Las Vegas Sun.
The paper’s headline raised grounds of laughter: fear lynch mob awaiting return or; killer
suspects. Captain Murray remarked, «Don’t look much like a necktie party to me.»
Indeed, the congregation in the square might have been expecting a parade, or attending a political rally. High-school students, among them former classmates of Nancy and Kenyon
Clutter, chanted cheerleader rhymes, bubbled bubble gum, gobbled hotdogs and soda pop.
Mothers soothed wailing babies. Men strolled about with young children perched on their
shoulders. The Boy Scouts were present — an entire troop. And the middle-aged membership of a
women’s bridge club arrived en masse. Mr. J. P. (Jap) Adams, head of the local Veterans
Commission office, appeared, attired in a tweed garment so oddly tailored that a friend yelled,
«Hey, Jap! What ya doin’ wearin’ ladies’ clothes?» — for Mr. Adams, in his haste to reach the
scene, had unwittingly donned his secretary’s coat. A roving radio reporter interviewed sundry
other townsfolk, asking them what, in their opinion, the proper retribution would be for «the doers
of such a dastardly deed,» and while most of his subjects said gosh or gee whiz, one student
replied, «I think they ought to be locked in the same cell for the rest of their lives. Never allowed
any visitors. Just sit there staring at each other till the day they die.» And a tough, strutty little man
said, «I believe in capital punishment. It’s like the Bible says — an eye for an eye. And even so
we’re two pair short!»
As long as the sun lasted, the day had been dry and warm — October weather in January. But
when the sun descended, when the shadows of the square’s giant shade trees met and
combined, the coldness as well as darkness numbed the crowd. Numbed and pruned it; by six
o’clock, fewer than three hundred persons remained. Newsmen, cursing the undue delay,
stamped their feet and slapped frozen ears with ungloved, freezing hands. Suddenly, a
murmuring arose on the south side of the square. The cars were coming.
Although none of the journalists anticipated violence, several had predicted shouted abuse. But
when the crowd caught sight of the murderers, with their escort of blue-coated highway patrolmen, it fell silent, as though amazed to find them humanly shaped. The handcuffed men, whitefaced and blinking blindly, glistened in the glare of flashbulbs and floodlights. The cameramen,
pursuing the prisoners and the police into the courthouse and up three flights of stairs,
photographed the door of the county jail slamming shut.
No one lingered, neither the press corps nor any of the townspeople. Warm rooms and warm
suppers beckoned them, and as they hurried away, leaving the cold square to the two gray cats,
the miraculous autumn departed too; the year’s first snow began to fall.
IV
THE CORNER
Institutional dourness and cheerful domesticity coexist on the fourth floor of the Finney County
Courthouse. The presence of the county jail supplies the first quality, while the so-called Sheriff’s
Residence, a pleasant apartment separated from the jail proper by steel doors and a short
corridor, accounts for the second.
In January, 1960, the Sheriff’s Residence was not in fact occupied by the sheriff, Earl Robinson,
but by the undersheriff and his wife, Wendle and Josephine («Josie») Meier. The Meiers, who had
been married more than twenty years, were very much alike: tall people with weight and strength
to spare, with wide hands, square and calm and kindly faces — the last being most true of Mrs.
Meier, a direct and practical woman who nevertheless seems illuminated by a mystical serenity.
As the undersheriff’s helpmate her hours are long; between five in the morning, when she begins
the day by reading a chapter in the Bible, and 10:00p.m., her bedtime, she cooks and sews for
the prisoners!, darns, does their laundry, takes splendid care of her husband, and looks after their
five-room apartment, with its gemutlich melange of plump hassocks and squashy chairs and
cream-colored lace window curtains. The Meiers have a daughter, an only child, who is
married and lives in Kansas City, so the couple live alone — or, as Mrs. Meier more correctly puts
it: «Alone except for whoever happens to be in the ladies’ cell.»
The jail contains six cells; the sixth, the one reserved for female prisoners, is actually an isolated
unit situated inside the Sheriff’s Residence — indeed, it adjoins the Meiers’ kitchen. «But,» says
Josie Meier, «that don’t worry me. I enjoy the company. Having somebody to talk to while I’m
doing my kitchen work. Most of these women, you got to feel sorry for them. Just met up with Old
Man Trouble is all. Course Hickock and Smith was a different matter. Far as I know, Perry Smith
was the first man ever stayed in the ladies’ cell. The reason was, the sheriff wanted to keep him
and Hickock separated from each other until after their trial. The afternoon they brought them in, I
made six apple pies and baked some bread and all the while kept track of the goings-on down
there on the Square. My kitchen window overlooks the Square; you couldn’t want a better view.
I’m no judge of crowds, but I’d guess there were several hundred people waiting to see the boys
that killed the Clutter family. I never met any of the Clutters myself, but from everything I’ve ever
heard about them they must have been very fine people. What happened to them is hard
