In Cold Blood (8 page)

Mr. Clutter straightened, reached again for his pen. “Tell the
truth
, I feel pretty good. And pretty optimistic. I’ve got an idea a man could make some real money around here the next few years.” While outlining his schemes for future financial betterment, he signed the check and pushed it across his desk.

The time was ten past six, and the agent was anxious to go; his wife would be waiting supper. “It’s been a pleasure, Herb.”

“Same here, fellow.”

They shook hands. Then, with a merited sense of victory, Johnson picked up Mr. Clutter’s check and deposited it in his billfold. It was the first payment on a forty-thousand-dollar policy that in the event of death by accidental means, paid double indemnity.

“And He walks with me, and He talks with me,

       And He tells me I am His own,

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

       None other has ever known …”

WITH THE AID OF HIS guitar, Perry had sung himself into a happier humor. He knew the lyrics of some two hundred hymns and ballads—a repertoire ranging from “The Old Rugged Cross” to Cole Porter—and, in addition to the guitar, he could play the harmonica, the accordion, the banjo, and the xylophone. In one of his favorite theatrical fantasies, his stage name was Perry O’Parsons, a star who billed himself as “The One-Man Symphony.”

Dick said, “How about a cocktail?”

Personally, Perry didn’t care what he drank, for he was not much of a drinker. Dick, however, was choosy, and in bars his usual choice was an Orange Blossom. From the car’s glove compartment Perry fetched a pint bottle containing a ready-mixed compound of orange flavoring and vodka. They passed the bottle to and fro. Though dusk had established itself, Dick, doing a steady sixty miles an hour, was still driving without headlights, but then the road was straight, the country was as level as a lake, and other cars were seldom sighted. This was “out there”—or getting near it.

“Christ!” said Perry, glaring at the landscape, flat and limitless
under the sky’s cold, lingering green—empty and lonesome except for the far-between flickerings of farmhouse lights. He hated it, as he hated the Texas plains, the Nevada desert; spaces horizontal and sparsely inhabited had always induced in him a depression accompanied by agoraphobic sensations. Seaports were his heart’s delight—crowded, clanging, ship-clogged, sewage-scented cities, like Yokohama, where as an American Army private he’d spent a summer during the Korean War. “Christ—and they told me to keep away from Kansas! Never set my pretty foot here again. As though they were barring me from heaven. And just look at it. Just feast your eyes.”

Dick handed him the bottle, the contents reduced by half. “Save the rest,” Dick said. “We may need it.”

“Remember, Dick? All that talk about getting a boat? I was thinking—we could buy a boat in Mexico. Something cheap but sturdy. And we could go to Japan. Sail right across the Pacific. It’s been done—thousands of people have done it. I’m not conning you, Dick—you’d go for Japan. Wonderful, gentle people, with manners like flowers. Really considerate—not just out for your dough. And the women. You’ve never met a real woman …”

“Yes, I have,” said Dick, who claimed still to be in love with his honey-blond first wife though she had remarried.

“There are these baths. One place called the Dream Pool. You stretch out, and beautiful, knockout-type girls come and scrub you head to toe.”

“You told me.” Dick’s tone was curt.

“So? Can’t I repeat myself?”

“Later. Let’s talk about it later. Hell, man, I’ve got plenty on my mind.”

Dick switched on the radio; Perry switched it off. Ignoring Dick’s protest, he strummed his guitar:

“I came to the garden alone, while the dew was still on the roses,

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

The Son of God discloses …”

A full moon was forming at the edge of the sky.

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, WHILE giving evidence prior to taking a lie-detector test, young Bobby Rupp described his last visit to the Clutter home: “There was a full moon, and I thought maybe, if Nancy wanted to, we might go for a drive—drive out to McKinney Lake. Or go to the movies in Garden City. But when I called her—it must have been about ten of seven—she said she’d have to ask her father. Then she came back, and said the answer was no—because we’d stayed out so late the night before. But said why didn’t I come over and watch television. I’ve spent a lot of time at the Clutters’ watching television. See, Nancy’s the only girl I ever dated. I’d known her all my life; we’d gone to school together from the first grade. Always, as long as I can remember, she was pretty and popular—a
person
, even when she was a little kid. I mean, she just made everybody feel good about themselves. The first time I dated her was when we were in the eighth grade. Most of the boys in our class wanted to take her to the eighth-grade graduation dance, and I was surprised—I was pretty proud—when she said she would go with me. We were both twelve. My dad lent me the car, and I drove her to the dance. The more I saw her, the more I liked her; the whole family, too—there wasn’t any other family like them, not around here, not that I know of. Mr. Clutter may have been more strict about some things—religion, and so on—but he never tried to make you feel he was right and you were wrong.

“We live three miles west of the Clutter place. I used to walk it back and forth, but I always worked summers, and last year I’d saved enough to buy my own car, a ’55 Ford. So I drove over there, got there a little after seven. I didn’t see anybody on the road or on the lane that leads up to the house, or anybody outside. Just old Teddy. He barked at me. The lights were on downstairs—in the living room and in Mr. Clutter’s office. The second floor was dark, and I figured Mrs. Clutter must be asleep—if she was home. You never knew whether she was or not, and I never asked. But I found out I was right, because later in the evening Kenyon wanted to practice his horn, he played baritone horn in the school band—and Nancy told him not to, because he would wake
up Mrs. Clutter. Anyway, when I got there they had finished supper and Nancy had cleaned up, put all the dishes in the dishwasher, and the three of them—the two kids and Mr. Clutter—were in the living room. So we sat around like any other night—Nancy and I on the couch, and Mr. Clutter in his chair, that stuffed rocker. He wasn’t watching the television so much as he was reading a book—a ‘Rover Boy,’ one of Kenyon’s books. Once he went out to the kitchen and came back with two apples; he offered one to me, but I didn’t want it, so he ate them both. He had very white teeth; he said apples were why. Nancy—Nancy was wearing socks and soft slippers, blue jeans, I think a green sweater; she was wearing a gold wristwatch and an I.D. bracelet I gave her last January for her sixteenth birthday—with her name on one side and mine on the other—and she had on a ring, some little silver thing she bought a summer ago, when she went to Colorado with the Kidwells. It wasn’t my ring
—our
ring. See, a couple of weeks back she got sore at me and said she was going to take off our ring for a while. When your girl does that, it means you’re on probation. I mean, sure, we had fusses—everybody does, all the kids that go steady. What happened was I went to this friend’s wedding, the reception, and drank a beer, one bottle of beer, and Nancy got to hear about it. Some tattle told her I was roaring drunk. Well, she was stone, wouldn’t say hello for a week. But lately we’d been getting on good as ever, and I believe she was about ready to wear our ring again.

“O.K. The first show was called ‘The Man and the Challenge.’ Channel 11. About some fellows in the Arctic. Then we saw a Western, and after that a spy adventure—‘Five Fingers.’ ‘Mike Hammer’ came on at nine-thirty. Then the news. But Kenyon didn’t like anything, mostly because we wouldn’t let him pick the programs. He criticized everything and Nancy kept telling him to hush up. They always quibbled, but actually they were very close—closer than most brothers and sisters. I guess partly it was because they’d been alone together so much, what with Mrs. Clutter away and Mr. Clutter gone to Washington, or wherever. I know Nancy loved Kenyon very specially, but I don’t think even she, or anybody, exactly understood him. He seemed to be off somewhere.
You never knew what he was thinking, never even knew if he was looking at you—on account of he was slightly cockeyed. Some people said he was a genius, and maybe it was true. He sure did read a lot. But, like I say, he was restless; he didn’t want to watch the TV, he wanted to practice his horn, and when Nancy wouldn’t let him, I remember Mr. Clutter told him why didn’t he go down to the basement, the recreation room, where nobody could hear him. But he didn’t want to do that, either.

“The phone rang once. Twice? Gosh, I can’t remember. Except that once the phone rang and Mr. Clutter answered it in his office. The door was open—that sliding door between the living room and the office—and I heard him say ‘Van,’ so I knew he was talking to his partner, Mr. Van Vleet, and I heard him say that he had a headache but that it was getting better. And said he’d see Mr. Van Vleet on Monday. When he came back—yes, the Mike Hammer was just over. Five minutes of news. Then the weather report. Mr. Clutter always perked up when the weather report came on. It’s all he ever really waited for. Like the only thing that interested me was the sports—which came on next. After the sports ended, that was ten-thirty, and I got up to go. Nancy walked me out. We talked a while, and made a date to go to the movies Sunday night—a picture all the girls were looking forward to,
Blue Denim
. Then she ran back in the house, and I drove away. It was as clear as day—the moon was so bright—and cold and kind of windy; a lot of tumbleweed blowing about. But that’s all I saw. Only now when I think back, I think somebody must have been hiding there. Maybe down among the trees. Somebody just waiting for me to leave.”

THE TRAVELERS STOPPED FOR dinner at a restaurant in Great Bend. Perry, down to his last fifteen dollars, was ready to settle for root beer and a sandwich, but Dick
said no, they needed a solid “tuck-in,” and never mind the cost, the tab was his. They ordered two steaks medium rare, baked potatoes, French fries, fried onions, succotash, side dishes of macaroni and hominy, salad with Thousand Island dressing, cinnamon rolls, apple pie and ice cream, and coffee. To top it off, they visited a drugstore and selected cigars; in the same drugstore, they also bought two thick rolls of adhesive tape.

As the black Chevrolet regained the highway and hurried on across a countryside imperceptibly ascending toward the colder, cracker-dry climate of the high wheat plains, Perry closed his eyes and dozed off into a food-dazed semi-slumber, from which he woke to hear a voice reading the eleven-o’clock news. He rolled down a window and bathed his face in the flood of frosty air. Dick told him they were in Finney County. “We crossed the line ten miles back,” he said. The car was going very fast. Signs, their messages ignited by the car’s headlights, flared up, flew by: “See the Polar Bears,” “Burtis Motors,” “World’s Largest FREE Swimpool,” “Wheat Lands Motel,” and, finally, a bit before street lamps began, “Howdy, Stranger! Welcome to Garden City. A Friendly Place.”

They skirted the northern rim of the town. No one was abroad at this nearly midnight hour, and nothing was open except a string of desolately brilliant service stations. Dick turned into one—Hurd’s Phillips 66. A youngster appeared, and asked, “Fill her up?” Dick nodded, and Perry, getting out of the car, went inside the station, where he locked himself in the men’s room. His legs pained him, as they often did; they hurt as though his old accident had happened five minutes before. He shook three aspirins out of a bottle, chewed them slowly (for he liked the taste), and then drank water from the basin tap. He sat down on the toilet, stretched out his legs and rubbed them, massaging the almost unbendable knees. Dick had said they were almost there—“only seven miles more.” He unzippered a pocket of his windbreaker and brought out a paper sack; inside it were the recently purchased rubber gloves. They were glue-covered, sticky and thin, and as he inched them on, one tore—not a dangerous tear, just a split between the fingers, but it seemed to him an omen.

The doorknob turned, rattled. Dick said, “Want some candy? They got a candy machine out here.”

“No.”

“You O.K.?”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t be all night.”

Dick dropped a dime in a vending machine, pulled the lever, and picked up a bag of jelly beans; munching, he wandered back to the car and lounged there watching the young attendant’s efforts to rid the windshield of Kansas dust and the slime of battered insects. The attendant, whose name was James Spor, felt uneasy. Dick’s eyes and sullen expression and Perry’s strange, prolonged sojourn in the lavatory disturbed him. (The next day he reported to his employer, “We had some tough customers in here last night,” but he did not think, then or for the longest while, to connect the visitors with the tragedy in Holcomb.)

Dick said, “Kind of slow around here.”

“Sure is,” James Spor said. “You’re the only body stopped here since two hours. Where you coming from?”

“Kansas City.”

“Here to hunt?”

“Just passing through. On our way to Arizona. We got jobs waiting there. Construction work. Any idea the mileage between here and Tucumcari, New Mexico?”

“Can’t say I do. Three dollars six cents.” He accepted Dick’s money, made change, and said, “You’ll excuse me, sir? I’m doing a job. Putting a bumper on a truck.”

Dick waited, ate some jelly beans, impatiently gunned the motor, sounded the horn. Was it possible that he had misjudged Perry’s character? That Perry, of all people, was suffering a sudden case of “blood bubbles”? A year ago, when they first encountered each other, he’d thought Perry “a good guy,” if a bit “stuck on himself,” “sentimental,” too much “the dreamer.” He had liked him but not considered him especially worth cultivating until, one day, Perry described a murder, telling how, simply for “the hell of it,” he had killed a colored man in Las Vegas—beaten him to death with a bicycle chain. The anecdote elevated Dick’s
opinion of Little Perry; he began to see more of him, and, like Willie-Jay, though for dissimilar reasons, gradually decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities. Several murderers, or men who boasted of murder or their willingness to commit it, circulated inside Lansing; but Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, “a natural killer”—absolutely sane, but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows. It was Dick’s theory that such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably exploited. Having reached this conclusion, he had proceeded to woo Perry, flatter him—pretend, for example, that he believed all the buried-treasure stuff and shared his beachcomber yearnings and seaport longings, none of which appealed to Dick, who wanted “a regular life,” with a business of his own, a house, a horse to ride, a new car, and “plenty of blond chicken.” It was important, however, that Perry not suspect this—not until Perry, with his gift, had helped further Dick’s ambitions. But perhaps it was Dick who had miscalculated, been duped; if so—if it developed that Perry was, after all, only an “ordinary punk”—then “the party” was over, the months of planning were wasted, there was nothing to do but turn and go. It mustn’t happen; Dick returned to the station.