Mockingbird (22 page)

“Last night? Good grief, I wasn't flirting. You mean because we were holding hands? He just came backstage during the show. And I was so nervous. So he held my hand. To give me courage.”

“Very sweet. Then what?”

“Bobby took me to the spook movie. And
we
held hands.”

“Was it scary? Not Bobby. The movie.”

“He didn't think so; he just laughed. But you know me. Boo!—and I fall off the seat.”

“What are you eating?”

“Nothing.”

“I know—your fingernails,” said Susan, guessing correctly.
84

It was the synergy of two writers at work in Garden City that gave
In Cold Blood
such verisimilitude. George Steiner, a reviewer for the
Manchester Guardian,
called the book “uncanny” when it was published in 1965. “Looked at minutely enough, filtered through the lens of a highly professional recorder, caught by the tape recording ear in its every inflection and background noise, the most sordid, shapeless of incidents, take on a compelling truth.”
85

Nelle scoured the town for information that might be useful to Truman, applied the eye of a novelist to identify elements of drama, and opened doors of homes for him that otherwise might have remained closed. And now, in early January 1960, with the killers caught and soon to be returned to Garden City, Truman was about to come into a windfall of privileged information, as a result of the friendship that Nelle had nurtured with the Deweys. If KBI director Logan Sanford had known the extent of the clandestine breach in bureau protocol that was opening wider and wider, the entire investigation would have been compromised.

*   *   *

On Sunday morning, January 3, Marie Dewey phoned Nelle at the Warren Hotel to tell her, “Al made it.”
86
Dewey had arrived in Las Vegas after midnight; Smith and Hickock had already signed waivers of extradition to Kansas, unaware that they were about to be questioned about the Clutter murders. Dewey expected to arrive back in Garden City late Tuesday or early Wednesday with both men in custody and, he hoped, a pair of confessions in hand.

The phantoms who had terrorized the community would be coming back. Until then, Nelle and Truman would just have to stay busy, biding their time. This being a Sunday just three days after New Year's Day, it was hard to overcome a feeling of lethargy. They spent most of the afternoon interviewing one person—the Clutters' housekeeper, Mrs. Helm—trying to get a better sense of how the family had lived. Despite his claims later that he never took notes, Truman either jotted down a few things in Mrs. Helm's presence or made notes afterward in a palm-size spiral pad he carried: “Mrs. Helm—did all laundry[.] Nancy did own housework. Saturday [the day of the murders]—had a large dinner. Steak—in sink soup bowls—3.”
87

That evening, while Nelle and Truman were having dinner at the Warren Hotel with a long-winded foreign correspondent, a waiter interrupted to say that there was a call at the front desk. It was Marie. Hickock had confessed, she said—why didn't they come over right away for a celebration? Abruptly they extended apologies to their surprised dinner partner and made a quick getaway to the Deweys'.

Marie, Nelle, and Truman stayed up late discussing the case. Marie was feeling light as a feather and in the mood to talk about Al and his career in law enforcement. Around 10:45, Dewey called from Vegas to speak to Truman. Hickock's confession was Nancy Clutter's birthday present, Al said, she would have turned seventeen that day. Now Smith, hearing that Hickock had confessed, would likely crack, too. All four KBI detectives—Dewey, Nye, Church, and Duntz—were about to go out on the town and have some fun. Truman recommended the Sands Hotel Casino in the center of the Las Vegas Strip. Marie, proud to bursting about Al's work, brought out Christmas cards from convicts he had helped put away as proof that he cared about them.

The next day, Nelle filled three single-spaced, typewritten pages with everything she and Truman had heard. “Truman and Nelle were pretty damn good interrogators themselves,” commented Nye later. “And they played Al and Marie both—it was obvious.”
88

On Monday morning, KBI director Logan Sanford, standing in for Al Dewey, held a press conference at the courthouse and announced to reporters that the suspects were on their way from Las Vegas and would get in sometime late Tuesday afternoon. Nelle met Marie at the Trail Room coffee shop for lunch after the press conference. A highway patrolman stopped by their table and asked Marie to call him when Al was about fifty miles away from Garden City, so his men could prepare for the big crowd expected outside the courthouse. After he left, Marie promised to call Nelle, too, the moment she heard anything.
89

There was an anxious sense in the air of the curtain about to rise on the second act. Nelle and Truman, feeling too fidgety to start anything fresh, spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around. With no particular purpose in mind, they walked the few blocks to the courthouse. In a hallway, they bumped into six-foot-four Duane West. West, twenty-eight, was just beginning a second two-year term as Finney County prosecutor, and was excited about the prospect of grilling Hickock and Smith in the courtroom. He was talkative in the glare of television lights, but when Nelle and Truman wanted a word with him, he wouldn't give them the time of day. From his suit pocket he produced an envelope, which, he showed them with a flourish, was addressed to “Mr. Duane (Sherlock Holmes) West.” Nelle held her tongue, but jotted in her notes, “D.W. a slob.”
90

They climbed the stairs to Undersheriff Wendle Meier's office. Just deposited in the undersheriff's office as prime evidence was the shotgun used in the murders, which the KBI had found in plain sight at the home of Hickock's parents. The Savage 300 model twelve-gauge looked practically brand-new. Examining it, Nelle noticed someone had scratched
M
or maybe
H
near the trigger. It was an unexceptional weapon, the kind that any hunter, proud of his new purchase from a sporting goods store, might take into the fields on an autumn day.

With two hours of winter daylight remaining, the pair decided to drive the mile or so out on North Third Street to Valley View Cemetery, where the Clutters had been laid to rest. They hadn't visited the graves yet, but now, with the killers in custody, it seemed fitting that they should.

The sun was going down when they arrived, and it was cold. The cemetery was eighty-three acres, half of it unused. In the 1890s, a group of settler women had tried to beautify the prairie burial ground with trees and bushes, hauling barrels filled with water twice a day to nourish the plantings. But the long, brutal droughts of the dust bowl years in the 1930s had wiped out their efforts. Truman and Nelle walked the rows until finally—in Zone A, Lot 470, spaces 1–4—they came upon the mounded graves of Nancy, Kenyon, Herb, and Bonnie Clutter. The upturned earth was marked with the names of the interred, but there were no headstones yet or any signs of remembrance. Nelle found the scene “desolate and lonely in the extreme.”
91

Late that night, Al Dewey called Marie with a message for Truman: “I killed him with kindness.” In the car during the ride across the desert, Smith had confessed.
92

Hundreds of Garden City and Holcomb residents prepared to brave the blustery weather, with a temperature cold enough to bring on snow, on Tuesday, January 5, the day scheduled for Smith and Hickock's arrival. At the Deweys' house, Nelle and Truman had deposited a fresh bottle of J&B scotch with a note attached: Dear Foxy, After your long and heroic journey, we are certain you will appreciate a long swig of this. So: welcome home! From your ever faithful historians, Truman and Nelle.
93

KBI chief Logan Sanford had said only that the suspects were due “late Tuesday afternoon,” so Nelle and Truman showed up at the courthouse at around 3:00
P.M.
to wait for word from Sheriff Earl Robinson's office. The hallway was filled with bored newsmen smoking and waiting. Nelle found a Coors beer ashtray to crush out her cigarette butts, and settled in. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of
Garden City Telegram
editor Bill Brown, who had figured out that she and Truman had some kind of pull with Dewey. He wasn't the only one, he said later. “I was busy talking to other KBI agents and local sheriff's officers who moaned about Dewey paying more attention to Truman than the case at hand.”
94
A little after 4:00
P.M.
, the radio dispatcher announced to everyone that Finney County prosecutor Duane West would have to delay a press conference until five o'clock. A highway patrol captain appeared, champing on a cigar, and gave instructions to the press to keep the sidewalk clear. Lee assumed that a crowd must be gathering, and she went outside to see it. The overcast sky was cold enough to snow, but bystanders in twos and threes were beginning to fill the square. In her notes she wrote:

The thermometer was dropping and T's ears (good barometer) were red; my feet numb. We had stood for perhaps twenty minutes when we were aware that a few teenagers grouped under a tree nearby was now a definite crowd. Two Holcomb High basketball jackets in the midst. As they waited, the teenagers squirmed, wriggled, fought mock battles; the girls giggled and flirted with the photographers—two ran over to the press line and asked to be photographed.
95

A reporter asked a middle-aged man standing near the sidewalk if death would be sufficient punishment for the killers. “Like in the Bible,” he replied. “An eye for an eye. And even then, we're two short.” Capote overhead the comment and included it in
In Cold Blood.
96
A photographer asked a gum-chewing little boy named Johnny Shobe to blow a big bubble, but the air was so cold that the trick worked only after several tries.

By 6:00
P.M.
, the crowd was four or five deep and had never stopped murmuring. Newsmen stamped their feet and blew on their hands. Then suddenly someone shouted, “They're coming!”

At the curb, two dark mud-splashed sedans rolled to a halt. Al Dewey got out of the backseat of the first car; then, quickly, a handful of other men exited both cars, as if on cue. The figures strode quickly up the sidewalk and toward the courthouse. It had grown so dark that the photographers' flashbulbs acted like strobe lights and caught them in midstep. There were no jeers, no catcalls from the crowd. Everyone seemed strangely struck dumb. Dewey had the arm of Perry Smith, who was a head shorter than Al and wearing dungarees and a black leather jacket. Hickock came next, also accompanied by a detective, but Nelle couldn't get a good look because a broad-backed policeman had stepped in front of her. When the platoon of suspects and detectives sprinted up the courthouse steps, Nelle, Truman, and the reporters surged after them.

They went up to the second floor where a large room had been set aside for a press conference. A few seats were still open in the front row before a table with four microphones. TV lights were switched on and lit up the place like day. Dewey sat down behind a mike and said, “Hello, Bill,” to Bill Brown, and then smiled down at Nelle and Truman.

Questions came pell-mell from the reporters, but Dewey seemed to enjoy playing poker with everyone. Yes, the suspects had confessed, but no reporters would be allowed to listen to their taped interrogations or statements. Right now, Smith and Hickock were being held upstairs in the fourth-floor jail. They would be arraigned tomorrow morning.

“What time did you get in?” someone shouted.

“About five o'clock,” Dewey said cryptically. It was 6:30
P.M.
(The entourage had stopped to look unsuccessfully for evidence that Smith and Hickock claimed they had buried by a roadside.)

Duane West tried to direct some attention his way, but no one was interested. The press conference sputtered to an end.

Outside the courthouse, the crowd had dispersed, leaving a few pop bottles and candy wrappers in the grass. Truman was disgusted. He expected the return of the killers to be dramatic. Why had everyone just stood there gawking? And that press conference! The whole thing, he complained to Nelle as they walked back toward the hotel, was “a debacle.”
97

*   *   *

The next morning, the sound of a heavy iron door clanking shut overhead signaled that Smith and Hickock were coming down for their arraignment. Nelle, Truman, and about thirty-five members of the press had been waiting for an hour in the wood-paneled Finney County Courtroom since 10:00
A.M.
Probate judge M. C. Schrader, a formal-looking, white-haired man in a dark suit, entered the courtroom and took his place behind the bench. (“Central casting judge,” Nelle noted.)
98
She also noticed that the U.S. flag above him had forty-eight stars, although Alaska and Hawaii had become the forty-ninth and fiftieth states the previous year.

Hickock entered the courtroom first, without handcuffs, but flanked by sheriff's deputies, who directed him to sit in a chair at the very front. The glare of floodlights set up for television cameras enabled Nelle to see him as if he were an actor under stage lights. He was about five foot ten, she estimated, blue eyed and clean shaven with his dark blond hair in a crew cut. His clothes were drab: gray khaki trousers, blue denim prisoner's workshirt, brown shoes, and white socks. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully to reveal a large tattoo of a cat on his left hand. His face, misshapen as a result of a car accident, intrigued Nelle: “as if someone cut it down the middle, then put it back together not quite in place,” a description Truman later changed to “It was as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together a fraction off center.”
99
As the judge read the charges against Hickock—four counts of first-degree murder—the defendant listened, eyes downcast and hands clasped. Nelle noticed that a muscle in his jaw twitched at the mention of Nancy Clutter's name.