got to ask the questions. And some of them cut deep, "But none of the persons he questioned, and none of the questions he asked ("I was exploring the emotional background. I thought the answer might be another woman - a triangle. Well, consider: Mr. Clutter was a fairly young, very healthy man, but his wife, she was a semi-invalid, she slept in a separate bedroom . . ."), produced useful information; not even the two surviving daughters could suggest a cause for the crime. In brief, Nye learned only this: "Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered." At the end of the day, when the three agents convened in Dewey's office, it developed that Duntz and Church had had better luck than Nye - Brother Nye, as the others called him. (Members of the K.B.I, are partial to nicknames; Duntz is known as Old Man - unfairly, since he is not quite fifty, a burly but light-footed man with a broad, tomcat face, and Church, who is sixty or so, pink-skinned and professorial looking, but "tough" according to his colleagues, and "the fastest draw in Kansas," is called Curly, because his head is partly hairless.) Both men, in the course of their inquiries, had picked up "promising leads." Duntz ‘s story concerned a father and son who shall here be known as John Senior and John Junior. Some years earlier John had conducted with Mr. Clutter a minor business transaction, the outcome of which angered John Senior, who felt that Clutter had thrown him "a queer ball." Now, both John Senior and his son "boozed"; indeed, John Junior was an often incarcerated alcoholic. One unfortunate day father and son, full of whiskey courage, appeared at the Clutter home intending to "have it out with Herb." They were denied the chance, for Mr. Clutter, an abstainer aggressively opposed to drink and drunkards, seized a gun and marched them off his property. This discourtesy the Johns had not forgiven; as recently as a month ago, John Senior had told an acquaintance, "Every time I think of that bastard, my hands start to twitch. I just want to choke him." Church's lead was of a similar nature. He, too, had heard of someone admittedly hostile to Mr. Clutter: a certain Mr. Smith (though that is not his true name), who believed that the squire of River Valley Farm had shot and killed Smith's hunting dog. Church had inspected Smith's farm home and seen there, hanging from a barn rafter, a length of rope tied with the same kind of knot that was used to bind the four Clutters. Dewey said, "One of those, maybe that's our deal. A personal thing - a grudge that got out of hand."
"Unless it was robbery," said Nye, though robbery as the motive had been much discussed and then more or less dismissed. The arguments against it were good, the strongest being that Mr. Clutter's aversion to cash was a county legend; he had no safe and never carried large sums of money. Also, if robbery were the explanation, why hadn't the robber removed the jewelry that Mrs. Clutter was wearing - a gold wedding band and a diamond ring? Yet Nye was not convinced: "The whole setup has that robbery smell. What about Clutter's wallet? Someone left it open and empty on Clutter's bed - I don't think it was the owner. And Nancy's purse. The purse was lying on the kitchen floor. How did it get there? Yes, and not a dime in the house. Well - two dollars. We found two dollars in an envelope on Nancy's desk. And we know Clutter cashed a check for sixty bucks just the day before. We figure there ought to have been at least fifty of that left. So some say, 'Nobody would kill four people for fifty bucks.' And say, 'Sure, maybe the killer did take the money - but just to try and mislead us, make us think robbery was the reason. 'I wonder." As darkness fell, Dewey interrupted the consultation to telephone his wife, Marie, at their home, and warn her that he wouldn't be home for dinner. She said, "Yes. All right, Alvin," but he noticed in her tone an uncharacteristic anxiety. The Deweys, parents of two young boys, had been married seventeen years, and Marie, a Louisiana-born