In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [139]
"And you meant for Mr. Hickock to believe that Mr. Clutter had a lot of money, didn't you?"
"I told him Mr. Clutter had a lot of money, yes." Fleming once more elicited an account of how Hickock had fully informed Wells of his violent plans for the Clutter family. Then, as though veiled in a private grief, the lawyer wistfully said, "And even after all of that you did nothing to discourage him?"
"I didn't believe he'd do it."
"You didn't believe him. Then why, when you heard about the thing that happened out here, why did you think he was the one that was guilty?" Wells cockily replied, "Because it was done just like he said he was going to do!" Harrison Smith, the younger half of the defense team, took charge. Assuming an aggressive, sneering manner that seemed forced, for really he is a mild and lenient man, Smith asked the witness if he had a nickname.
"No. I just go by 'Floyd.'" The lawyer snorted. "Don't they call you 'Squealer' now? Or do they call you 'Snitch'?"
"I just go by 'Floyd,' " Wells repeated, rather hangdog.
"How many times have you been in jail?"
"About three times."
"Some of those times for lying, were they?" Denying it, the witness said that once he'd gone to jail for driving without an operator's license, that burglary was the reason for his second incarceration, and the third, a ninety-day hitch in an Army stockade, had been the outcome of something that happened while he was a soldier: "We was on a train trip guard. We got a little intoxicated on the train, done a little extra shooting at some windows and lights." Everyone laughed; everyone except the defendants (Hickock spat on the floor) and Harrison Smith, who now asked Wells why, after learning of the Holcomb tragedy, he had tarried several weeks before telling the authorities what he knew. "Weren't you," he said, "waiting for something to come out? Maybe like a reward?"
"No."
"You didn't hear anything about a reward?" The lawyer was referring to the reward of one thousand dollars that had been offered by the Hutchinson News, for information resulting in the arrest and conviction of the Clutter murderers.
"I seen it in the paper."
"That was before you went to the authorities, wasn't it?" And when the witness admitted that this was true, Smith triumphantly continued by asking, "What kind of immunity did the county attorney offer you for coming up here today and testifying?" But Logan Green protested: "We object to the form of the question, Your Honor. There's been no testimony about immunity to anybody." The objection was sustained, and the witness dismissed; as he left the stand, Hickock announced to everyone within earshot, "Sonofabitch. Anybody ought to hang, he to hang. Look at him. Gonna walk out of here and get that money and go scot-free." This prediction proved correct, for not long afterward Wells collected both the reward and a parole. But his good fortune was short-lived. He was soon in trouble again, and, over the years, experienced many vicissitudes. At present he is a resident of Mississippi State Prison in Parchman, Mississippi, where he is serving a thirty-year sentence for armed robbery.
By Friday, when the court recessed for the weekend, the state had completed its case, which included the appearance of four Special Agents of the Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. These men, laboratory technicians skilled in various categories of scientific crime detection, had studied the physical evidence connecting the accused to the murders (blood samples, footprints, cartridge shells, rope and tape), and each of them certified the validity of the exhibits. Finally, the four K.B.I. agents provided accounts of interviews with the prisoners, and of the confessions eventually made by them. In cross-examining the K.B.I. personnel, the defense attorneys, a beleaguered pair, argued that the admissions of guilt had been obtained by improper means - brutal interrogation in sweltering, brightly lighted, closet-like rooms. The allegation,