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By Root 373 0

full-scale affair ("Mrs. Leonard Cowan was soloist, and Mrs. Howard Blanchard organist"), had been "solemnized at the First Methodist Church" - the church in which, three days earlier, the bride had formally mourned her parents, her brother, and her younger sister. However, according to the Telegram's account, "Vere and Beverly had planned to be married at Christmas time. The invitations were printed and her father had reserved the church for that date. Due to the unexpected tragedy and because of the many relatives being here from distant places, the young couple decided to have their wedding Saturday." The wedding over, the Clutter kinfolk dispersed. On Monday, the day the last of them left Garden City, the Telegram featured on its front page a letter written by Mr. Howard Fox, of Oregon, Illinois, a brother of Bonnie Clutter. The letter, after expressing gratitude to the townspeople for having opened their "homes and hearts" to the bereaved family, turned into a plea. "There is much resentment in this community [that is, Garden City]," wrote Mr. Fox. "I have even heard on more than one occasion that the man, when found, should be hanged from the nearest tree. Let us not feel this way. The deed is done and taking another life cannot change it. Instead, let us forgive as God would have us do. It is not right that we should hold a grudge in our hearts. The doer of this act is going to find it very difficult indeed to live with himself. His only peace of mind will be when he goes to God for forgiveness. Let us not stand in the way but instead give prayers that he may find his peace."

The car was parked on a promontory where Perry and Dick had stopped to picnic. It was noon. Dick scanned the view through a pair of binoculars. Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky. A dusty road winding into and out of a white and dusty village. Today was his second day in Mexico, and so far he liked it fine - even the food. (At this very moment he was eating a cold, oily tortilla.) They had crossed the border at Laredo, Texas, the morning of November 23, and spent the first night in a San Luis Potosi brothel. They were now two hundred miles north of their next destination, Mexico City.

"Know what I think? " said Perry. "I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did."'

"Did what?"

"Out there." Dick dropped the binoculars into a leather case, a luxurious receptacle initialed H.W.C. He was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn 't Perry shut up? Christ Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddam thing up? It really was annoying. Especially since they'd agreed, sort of, not to talk about the goddam thing. Just forget it.

"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that," Perry said.

"Deal me out, baby," Dick said. "I'm a normal." And Dick meant what he said. He thought himself as balanced, as sane as anyone - maybe a bit smarter than the average fellow, that's all. But Perry - there was, in Dick's opinion, "something wrong" with Little Perry. To say the least. Last spring, when they had celled together at Kansas State Penitentiary, he'd learned most of Perry's lesser peculiarities: Perry could be "such a kid," always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep ("Dad, I been looking everywhere, where you been, Dad?"), and often Dick had seen him "sit for hours just sucking his thumb and poring over them phony damn treasure guides." Which was one side; there were others. In some ways old Perry was "spooky as hell." Take, for instance, that temper of his. He could slide into a fury "quicker than ten drunk Indians." And yet you wouldn't know it. "He might be ready to kill you, but you'd never know it, not to look at or listen to," Dick once said. For however extreme the inward rage, outwardly Perry remained a cool young tough, with eyes serene and slightly sleepy. The time had been when Dick had thought he could control, could regulate the temperature of the sudden cold fevers that burned and chilled his friend, he had been mistaken, and in the aftermath of that discovery, had