In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [110]
"We did. No kidding."
"What were their names?"
"I never asked."
"You and Hickock spent the night with these women and never asked their names?"
"They were just prostitutes."
"Tell us the name of the motel."
"Ask Dick. He'll know. I never remember junk like that." Dewey addressed his colleague. "Clarence, I think it's time we straightened Perry out." Duntz hunched forward. He is a heavyweight with a welter-weight's spontaneous agility, but his eyes are hooded and lazy. He drawls; each word, formed reluctantly and framed in a cattle-country accent, lasts awhile. "Yes, sir," he said. " 'Bout time."
"Listen good, Perry. Because Mr. Duntz is going to tell you where you really were that Saturday night. Where you were and what you were doing." Duntz said, "You were killing the Clutter family." Smith swallowed. He began to rub his knees.
"You were out in Holcomb, Kansas. In the home of Mr. Herbert W. Clutter. And before you left that house you killed all the people in it."
"Never. I never."
"Never what?"
"Knew anybody by that name. Clutter." Dewey called him a liar, and then, conjuring a card that in prior consultation the four detectives had agreed to play face down, told him, "We have a living witness, Perry. Somebody you boys overlooked." A full minute elapsed, and Dewey exulted in Smith's silence, for an innocent man would ask who was this witness, and who were these Clutters, and why did they think he'd murdered them - would, at any rate, say something. But Smith sat quiet, squeezing his knees.
"Well, Perry?"
"You got an aspirin? They took away my aspirin." .
"Feeling bad?"
"My legs do." It was five-thirty. Dewey, intentionally abrupt, terminated the interview. "We'll take this up again tomorrow," he said. "By the way, do you know what tomorrow is? Nancy Clutter's birthday. She would have been seventeen."
“She would have been seventeen." Perry, sleepless in the dawn hours, wondered (he later recalled) if it was true that today was the girl's birthday, and decided no, that it was just another way of getting under his skin, like that phony business about a witness - "a living witness." There couldn't be. Or did they mean - If only he could talk to Dick! But he and Dick were being kept apart; Dick was locked in a cell on another floor. "Listen good, Perry. Because Mr. Duntz is going to tell you where you really were . . ." Midway in the questioning, after he'd begun to notice the number of allusions to a particular November weekend, he'd nerved himself for what he knew was coming, yet when it did, when the big cowboy with the sleepy voice said, "You were killing the Clutter family" - well, he'd damn near died, that's all. He must have lost ten pounds in two seconds. Thank God he hadn't let them see it. Or hoped he hadn't. And Dick? Presumably they'd pulled the same stunt on him. Dick was smart, a convincing performer, but his "guts" were unreliable, he panicked too easily. Even so, and however much they pressured him, Perry was sure Dick would hold out. Unless he wanted to hang. "And before you left that house you killed all the people in it." It wouldn't amaze him if every Old Grad in Kansas had heard that line. They must have questioned hundreds of men, and no doubt accused dozens; he and Dick were merely two more. On the other hand - well, would Kansas send four Special Agents a thousand miles to pick up a small-time pair of parole violators? Maybe somehow they had stumbled on something, somebody - "a living witness." But that was impossible. Except - He'd give an arm, a leg to talk to Dick for just five minutes. And Dick, awake in a cell on the floor below, was (he later recalled) equally eager to converse with Perry - find out what the punk had told them. Christ, you couldn't trust him to remember even the outline of the Fun Haven alibi - though they had discussed it often enough. And when those bastards threatened him with a witness! Ten to one the little spook had thought they meant an eyewitness. Whereas he, Dick, had known at once who the so-called witness must be: Floyd Wells, his old