Then he said something about a movie – he had such a quiet way of speaking, almost a whisper. Wanted to know if I had seen a movie. I forget the name, anyway I hadn’t seen it: never have been much for picture shows. He said this show took place in Biblical times, and there was a scene where a man was flung off a balcony, thrown to a mob of men and women, who tore him to pieces. And he said that was what came to mind when he saw the crowd on the Square. The man being torn apart. And the idea that maybe that was what they might do to him. Said it scared him so bad his stomach still hurt. Which was why he couldn’t eat. Course he was wrong, and I told him so – nobody was going to harm him, regardless of what he’d done; folks around here aren’t like that.
“We talked some, he was very shy, but after a while he said, ‘One thing I really like is Spanish rice.’ So I promised to make him some, and he smiled kind of, and I decided – well, he wasn’t the worst young man I ever saw. That night, after I’d gone to bed, said as much to my husband. But Wendle snorted. Wendle wasn’t of the first on the scene after the crime was discovered. He said he wished I’d been out at the Clutter place when they found the bodies. Then I could’ve judged for myself just how gentle Mr. Smith was. Him and his friend Hickock. He said they’d cut out your heart and never bat an eye. There was no denying it – not with four people dead. And I lay awake wondering if either one was bothered by it – the thought of those four graves.”
A month passed, and another, and it snowed some part of almost every day. Snow whitened the wheat-tawny countryside, heaped the streets of the town, hushed them.
The topmost branches of a snow-laden elm brushed against the window of the ladies’ cell. Squirrels lived in the tree, and after weeks of tempting them with leftover breakfast scraps, Perry lured one off a branch onto the window sill and through the bars. It was a male squirrel with auburn fur. He named it Red, and Red soon settled down, apparently content to share his friend’s captivity. Perry taught him several tricks: to play with a paper ball, to beg, to perch on Perry’s shoulder. All this helped to pass time, but still there were many long hours the prisoner had to lose. He was not allowed to read newspapers, and he was bored by the magazines Mrs. Meier lent him: old issues of Good Housekeeping and McCalls. But he found things to do: file his
fingernails with an emery board, buff them to a silky pink sheen; comb and comb his lotion-soaked and scented hair; brush his teeth three and four times a day; shave and shower almost as often. And he kept the cell, which contained a toilet, a shower stall, a cot, a chair, a table, as neat as his person. He was proud of a compliment Mrs. Meier had paid him. “Look!” she had said, pointing at his bunk. “Look at that blanket! You could bounce dimes.” But it was at the table that he spent most of his waking life; he ate his meals there, it was where he sat when he sketched portraits of Red, drew flowers,
and the face of Jesus, and the faces and torsos of imaginary women; and it was where, on cheap sheets of ruled paper, he made diary-like notes of day-to-day occurrences.
Thursday 7 January. Dewey here. Brought carton of cigarettes. Also typed copies of Statement for my signature. I declined.
The “Statement,” a seventy-eight-page document which he had dictated to the Finney County court stenographer, recounted admissions already made to Alvin Dewey and Clarence Duntz. Dewey, speaking of his encounter with Perry Smith on this particular day, remembered that he had been very surprised when Perry refused to sign the statement. “It wasn’t important: I could always testify in court as to the oral confession he’d made to Duntz and myself. And of course Hickock had given us a signed confession while we were still in Las Vegas – the one in which he accused Smith of having committed all four murders. But I was curious. I asked Perry why he’d changed his mind. And he said, ‘Everything in my statement is accurate except for two details. If you’ll let me correct those items then I’ll sign it.’ Well, I could guess the items he meant. Because the only serious difference between his story and Hickock’s was that he denied having executed the Clutters single-handed. Until now he’d sworn Hickock killed Nancy and her mother.
“And I was right! – that’s just what he wanted to do: admit that Hickock had been telling the truth, and that it was he, Perry Smith, who had shot and killed the whole family. He said he’d lied about it because, in his words, ‘I wanted to fix Dick for being such a coward. Dropping his guts all over the goddam floor.’ And the reason he’d decided to set the record straight wasn’t that he suddenly felt any kinder toward Hickock. According to him he was doing it out of consideration for Hickock’s parents – said he was sorry for Dick’s mother. Said, ‘She’s a real sweet person. It might be some comfort to her to know Dick never pulled the trigger. None of it would have happened without him, in a way it was mostly his fault, but the fact remains I’m the one who killed them.’ But I wasn’t certain I believed it. Not to the extent of letting him alter his statement. As I say, we weren’t dependent on a formal confession from Smith to prove any part of our case. With or without it, we had enough to hang them ten times over.”
Among the elements contributing to Dewey’s confidence was the recovery of the radio and pair of binoculars the murderers had stolen from the Clutter house and subsequently disposed of in Mexico City (where, having flown there for the purpose, K.B.I. Agent Harold Nye traced them to a pawnshop). Moreover, Smith, while dictating his statement, had revealed the where-abouts of other potent evidence. “We hit the highway and drove east,” he’d said, in the process of describing what he and Hickock had done after fleeing the murder scene. “Drove like hell, Dick driving. I think we both felt very high. I did. Very high, and very relieved at the same time. Couldn’t stop laughing, neither one of us; suddenly it all seemed very funny – I don’t know why, it just did. But the gun was dripping blood, and my clothes were stained; there was even blood in my hair.
So we turned off onto a country road, and drove maybe eight miles till we were way out on the prairie. You could hear coyotes. We smoked a cigarette, and Dick went on making jokes about what had happened back there. I got out of the car, and siphoned some water out of the water tank and washed the blood off the gun barrel. Then I scraped a hole in the ground with Dick’s hunting knife, the one I used on Mr. Clutter, and buried in it the empty shells and all the left over nylon cord and adhesive tape. After that we drove till we came to U.S. 83, and headed east toward Kansas City and Olathe. Around dawn Dick stopped at one of those picnic places: what they call rest areas – where they have open fireplaces. We built a fire and burned stuff. The gloves we’d worn, and my shirt. Dick said he wished we had an ox to roast; he said he’d never been so hungry. It was almost noon when we got to Olathe. Dick dropped me at my hotel, and went on home to have Sunday dinner with his family. Yes, he took the knife with him. The gun, too.”
K.B.I. agents, dispatched to Hickock’s home, found the knife inside a fishing-tackle box and the shotgun still casually propped against a kitchen wall. (Hickock’s father, who refused to believe his
“boy” could have taken part in such a “horrible crime,” insisted the gun hadn’t been out of the house since the first week in November, and therefore could not be the death weapon). As for the empty cartridge shells, the cord and tape, these were retrieved with the aid of Virgil Pietz, a county-highway employee, who, working with a road grader in the area pinpointed by Perry Smith, shaved away the earth inch by inch until the buried articles were uncovered. Thus the last loose strings were tied, the K.B.I. had now assembled an unshakable case, for tests established that the shells had been discharged by Hickock’s shotgun, and remnants of cord and
