In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [73]
It was Saturday, Christmas was near, and the traffic crept along Main Street. Dewey, caught in the traffic, looked up at the holly garlands that hung above the street - swags of gala greenery trimmed with scarlet paper bells - and was reminded that he had not yet bought a single gift for his wife or his sons. His mind automatically rejected problems not concerned with the Clutter case. Marie and many of their friends had begun to wonder at the completeness of his fixation. One close friend, the young lawyer Clifford R. Hope, Jr., had spoken plainly: "Do you know what's happening to you, Al? Do you realize you never talk about anything else?" "Well," Dewey had replied, "that's all I think about. And there's the chance that just while talking the thing over, I'll hit on something I haven't thought of before. Some new angle. Or maybe you will. Damn it, Cliff, what do you suppose my life will be if this thing stays in the Open File? Years from now I'll still be running down tips, and every time there's a murder, a case anywhere in the country even remotely similar, I'll have to horn right in, check, see if there could be any possible connection. But it isn't only that. The real thing is I've come to feel I know Herb and the family better than they ever knew themselves. I'm haunted by them. I guess I always will be. Until I know what happened." Dewey's dedication to the puzzle had resulted in an uncharacteristic absent-mindedness. Only that morning Marie had asked him please, would he please, please, not forget to ... But he couldn't remember, or didn't, until, free of the shopping day traffic and racing along Route 50 toward Holcomb, he passed Dr.I. E. Dale's veterinarian establishment. Of course. His wife had asked him to be sure and collect the family cat, Courthouse Pete. Pete, a tiger striped torn weighing fifteen pounds, is a well-known character around Garden City, famous for his pugnacity, which was the cause of his current hospitalization; a battle lost to a boxer dog had left him with wounds necessitating both stitches and antibiotics. Released by Dr. Dale, Pete settled down on the front seat of his owner's automobile and purred all the way to Holcomb. The detective's destination was River Valley Farm, but wanting something warm - a cup of hot coffee - he stopped off at Hartman's Cafe.
"Hello, handsome," said Mrs. Hartman. "What can I do for you?"
"Just coffee, ma'am." She poured a cup. "Am I wrong? Or have you lost a lot of weight?"
"Some." In fact, during the past three weeks Dewey had dropped twenty pounds. His suits fitted as though he had borrowed them from a stout friend, and his face, seldom suggestive of his profession, was now not at all so; it could have been that of an ascetic absorbed in occult pursuits. "How do you feel?"
"Mighty fine."
"You look awful." Unarguably. But no worse than the other members of the K..B.I. entourage - Agents Duntz, Church, and Nye. Certainly he was in better shape than Harold Nye, who, though full of flu and fever, kept reporting for duty. Among them, the four tired men had "checked out" some seven hundred tips and rumors. Dewey, for example, had spent two wearying and wasted days trying to trace that phantom pair, the Mexicans sworn by Paul Helm to have visited Mr. Clutter on the eve of the murders. "Another cup, Alvin?"
"Don't guess I will. Thank you, ma'am." But she had