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By Root 465 0

friend and former cellmate. While serving the last weeks of his sentence, Dick had plotted to knife Floyd - stab him through the heart with a handmade "shiv" - and what a fool he was not to have done it. Except for Perry, Floyd Wells was the one human being who could link the names Hickock and Clutter. Floyd, with his sloping shoulders and inclining chin - Dick had thought he'd be too afraid. The sonofabitch was probably expecting some fancy reward - a parole or money, or both. But hell would freeze before he got it. Because a convict's tattle wasn't proof. Proof is foot-prints, fingerprints, witnesses, a confession. Hell, if all those cowboys had to go on was some story Floyd Wells had told, then there wasn't a lot to worry about. Come right down to it, Floyd wasn't half as dangerous as Perry. Perry, if he lost his nerve and let fly, could put them both in The Corner. And suddenly he saw the truth: It was Perry he ought to have silenced. On a mountain road in Mexico. Or while walking across the Mojave. Why had it never occurred to him until now? For now, now was much too late.

Ultimately, at five minutes past three that afternoon, Smith admitted the falsity of the Fort Scott tale. " That was only something Dick told his family. So he could stay out overnight. Do some drinking. See, Dick's dad watched him pretty close - afraid he'd break parole. So we made up an excuse about my sister. It was just to pacify Mr. Hickock." Otherwise, he repeated the same story again and again, and Duntz and Dewey, regardless of how often they corrected him and accused him of lying, could not make him change it - except to add fresh details. The names of the prostitutes, he recalled today, were Mildred and Jane (or Joan). "They rolled us," he now remembered. "Walked off with all our dough while we were asleep." And though even Duntz had forfeited his composure - had shed, along with tie and coat, his enigmatic drowsy dignity - the suspect seemed content and serene; he refused to budge. He'd never heard of the Clutters or Holcomb, or even Garden City. Across the hall, in the smoke-choked room where Hickock was undergoing his second interrogation, Church and Nye were methodically applying a more roundabout strategy. Not once during this interview, now almost three hours old, had either of them mentioned murder - an omission that kept the prisoner edgy, expectant. They talked of everything else: Hickock's religious philosophy ("I know about hell. I been there. Maybe there's a heaven, too. Lots of rich people think so"); his sexual history ("I've always behaved like a one-hundred-percent normal"); and, once more, the history of his recent cross-country hegira ("Why we kept going like that, the only reason was we were looking for jobs. Couldn't find anything decent, though. I worked one day digging a ditch . . ."). But things unspoken were the center of interest - the cause, the detectives were convinced, of Hickock's escalating distress. Presently, he shut his eyes and touched the lids with trembling fingertips. And Church said, "Something wrong?"

"A headache. I get real bastards." Then Nye said, "Look at me, Dick." Hickock obeyed, with an expression that the detective interpreted as a pleading with him to speak, to accuse, and let the prisoner escape into the sanctuary of steadfast denial. "When we discussed the matter yesterday, you may recall my saying that the Clutter murders were almost a perfect crime. The killers made only two mistakes. The first one was they left a witness. The second - well, I'll show you." Rising, he retrieved from a corner a box and a briefcase, both of which he'd brought into the room at the start of the interview. Out of the briefcase came a large photograph. "This," he said, leaving it on the table, "is a one-to-one reproduction of certain footprints found near Mr. Clutter's body. And here" - he opened the box - "are the boots that made them. Your boots, Dick." Hickock looked, and looked away. He rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. "Smith," said Nye, "was even more careless. We have