Like sheep in a blizzard. When suddenly Bobby woke up and said, 'We ought to go see Nancy. We ought to be with her.' So we drove to Garden City - went to the Phillip V Funeral Home, there on Main Street. I think Bobby's kid brother was with us. Yes, I'm sure he was. Because I remember we picked him up after school. And I remember he said how there wasn't going to be any school the next day, so all the Holcomb kids could go to the funeral. And he kept telling us what the kids thought. He said the kids were convinced it was the work of a hired killer.' I didn't want to hear about it. Just gossip and talk - everything Nancy despised. Anyway, I don't much care who did it. Somehow it seems beside the point. My friend is gone. Knowing who killed her isn't going to bring her back. What else matters? They wouldn't let us. At the funeral parlor, I mean. They said no one could view the family. Except the relatives. But Bobby insisted, and finally the undertaker - he knew Bobby, and, I guess, felt sorry for him - he said all right, be quiet about it, but come on in. Now I wish we hadn't." The four coffins, which quite filled the small, flower-crowded parlor, were to be sealed at the funeral services - very understandably, for despite the care taken with the appearance of the victims, the effect achieved was disquieting. Nancy wore her dress of cherry-red velvet, her brother a bright plaid shirt; the parents were more sedately attired, Mr. Clutter in navy-blue flannel, his wife in navy-blue crepe; and - and it was this, especially, that lent the scene an awful aura - the head of each was completely encased in cotton, a swollen cocoon twice the size of an ordinary blown-up balloon, and the cotton, because it had been sprayed with a glossy substance, twinkled like Christmas-tree snow. Susan at once retreated. "I went outside and waited in the car," she recalled. "Across the street a man was raking leaves. I kept looking at him. Because I didn't want to close my eyes. I thought, if I do I'll faint. So I watched him rake leaves and burn them. Watched, without really seeing him. Because all I could see was the dress. I knew it so well. I helped her pick the material. It was her own design, and she sewed it herself. I remember how excited she was the first time she wore it. At a party. All I could see was Nancy's red velvet. And Nancy in it. Dancing."
The Kansas City Star printed a lengthy account of the Clutter funeral, but the edition containing the article was two days old before Perry, lying abed in a hotel room, got around to reading it. Even so, he merely skimmed through, skipped about among the paragraphs: "A thousand persons, the largest crowd in the five-year history of the First Methodist Church, attended services for the four victims today. . . .Several classmates of Nancy's from Holcomb High School wept as the Reverend Leonard Cowan said: 'God offers us courage, love and hope even though we walk through the shadows of the valley of death. I'm sure he was with them in their last hours. Jesus has never promised us we would not suffer pain or sorrow but He has always said He would be there to help us bear the sorrow and the pain.' . . . On the unseasonably warm day, about six hundred persons went to the Valley View Cemetery on the north edge of this city. There, at graveside services, they recited the Lord's Prayer. Their voices, massed together in a low whisper, could be heard throughout the cemetery." A thousand people! Perry was impressed. He wondered how much the funeral had cost. Money was greatly on his mind, though not as relentlessly as it had been earlier in the day - a day he'd begun "without the price of a cat's miaow." The situation had improved since then; thanks to Dick, he and Dick now possessed "a pretty fair stake" - enough to get them to Mexico. Dick! Smooth. Smart. Yes, you had to hand it to him. Christ, it was incredible how he could "con a guy." Like the clerk in the Kansas City, Missouri, clothing store, the first of the places Dick had decided to "hit." As for Perry, he'd never tried to "pass a check." He