In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [74]
"Depends."
"About that fellow you caught? Prowling in the Clutter house? He's the one responsible. That's what we heard."
"I think you heard wrong, old man. Yes, sir, I do." Although the past life of Jonathan Daniel Adrian, who was then being held in the county jail on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon, included a period of confinement as a mental patient in Topeka State Hospital, the data assembled by the investigators indicated that in relation to the Clutter case he was guilty only of an unhappy curiosity.
"Well, if he's the wrong un, why the hell don't you find the right un? I got a houseful of women won't go to the bathroom alone." Dewey had become accustomed to this brand of abuse; it was a routine part of his existence. He swallowed the second cup of coffee, sighed, smiled.
"Hell, I'm not cracking jokes. I mean it. Why don't you arrest somebody? That's what you're paid for."
"Hush your meanness," said Mrs. Hartman. "We're all in the same boat. Alvin's doing good as he can." Dewey winked at her. "You tell him, ma'am. And much obliged for the coffee." The ranch hand waited until his quarry had reached the door, then fired a farewell volley: "If you ever run for sheriff again, just forget my vote. 'Cause you ain't gonna get it."
"Hush your meanness," said Mrs. Hartman. A mile separates River Valley Farm from Hartman's Cafe. Dewey decided to walk it. He enjoyed hiking across wheat fields. Normally, once or twice a week he went for long walks on his own land, the well-loved piece of prairie where he had always hoped to build a house, plant trees, eventually entertain great-grandchildren. That was the dream, but it was one his wife had lately warned him she no longer shared; she had told him that never now would she consider living all alone "way out there in the country." Dewey knew that even if he were to snare the murderers the next day, Marie would not change her mind - for once an awful fate had befallen friends who lived in a lonely country house. Of course, the Clutter family were not the first persons ever murdered in Finney County, or even in Holcomb. Senior members of that small community can recall "a wild goings-on" of more than forty years ago - the Hefner Slaying. Mrs. Sadie Truitt, the hamlet's septuagenarian mail messenger, who is the mother of Postmistress Clare, is expert on this fabled affair: "August, it was. 1920. Hot as Hades. A fellow called Tunif was working on the Finnup ranch. Walter Tunif. He had a car, turned out to be stolen. Turned out he was a soldier AWOL from Fort Bliss, over there in Texas. He was a rascal, sure enough, and a lot of people suspected him. So one evening the sheriff - them days that was Orlie Hefner, such a fine singer, don't you know he's part of the Heavenly Choir? - one evening he rode out to the Finnup ranch to ask Tunif a few straight forward questions. Third of August. Hot as Hades. Outcome of it was, Walter Tunif shot the sheriff right through the heart. Poor Orlie was gone 'fore he hit the ground. The devil who done it, he lit out of there on one of the Finnup horses, rode east along the river. Word spread, and men for miles around made up a posse. Along about the next morning, they caught up with him; old Walter Tunif. He didn't get the chance to say how d'you do? On account of the boys were pretty irate. They just let the buckshot fly." Dewey's own initial contact with foul play in Finney County occurred in 1947. The incident is noted in his files as follows: "John Carlyle Polk, a Creek Indian, 32 years of age, resident Muskogee, Okla., killed Mary Kay Finley, white female, 40 years of age, a waitress residing in Garden City. Polk stabbed her with the jagged neck of a beer bottle in a room in the Copeland Hotel, Garden City, Kansas, 5-9-47." A cut-and-dried description of an open-and-shut case. Of