• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 390 0

are you gonna do, Floyd?' I said, Well, I didn't rightly know - what did he think I ought to do? Well, he was all for me going to the proper people. Said he didn't think I ought to live with something like on my mind. And he said I could do it without anybody inside guessing I was the one told. Said he'd fix it. So the next day he got word to the deputy warden - told him I wanted to be 'called out.” Told the deputy if he called me to his office on some pretext or other, maybe I could tell him who killed the Clutters. Sure enough, the deputy sent for me. I was scared, but I remembered Mr. Clutter, and how he'd never done me no harm, how at Christmas he'd give me a little purse with fifty dollars in it. I talked to the deputy. Then I told the warden hisself. And while I was still sitting there, right there in Warden Hand's office, he picked up the telephone - "

The person to whom Warden Hand telephoned was Logan Sanford. Sanford listened, hung up, issued several orders, then placed a call of his own to Alvin Dewey. That evening, when Dewey left his office in the courthouse at Garden City, he took home with him a manila envelope. When Dewey got home, Marie was in the kitchen preparing supper. The moment he appeared, she launched into an account of household upsets. The family cat had attacked the cocker spaniel that lived across the street, and now it seemed as if one of the spaniel's eyes might be seriously damaged. And Paul, their nine-year-old, had fallen out of a tree. It was a wonder he was alive. And then their twelve-year-old, Dewey's namesake, had gone into the yard to burn rubbish and started a blaze that had threatened the neighborhood. Someone - she didn't know who - had actually called the Fire Department. While his wife described these unhappy episodes, Dewey poured two cups of coffee. Suddenly, Marie stopped in the middle of a sentence and stared at him. His face was flushed, and she could tell that he was elated. She said, "Alvin. Oh, honey. Is it good news?" Without comment, he gave her the manila envelope. Her hands were wet; she dried them, sat down at the kitchen table, sipped her coffee, opened the envelope, and took out photographs of a blond young man and a dark-haired, dark-skinned young man - police-made "mug shots." A pair of semi-coded dossiers accompanied the photographs. The one for the fair-headed man read: Hickock, Richard Eugene (WM) 28. KBI 97 093; FBI 859 273A. Address: Edgerton, Kansas. Birthdate 6-6-31. Birthplace: K.C., Kans. Height: 5-10. Weight: 175. Hair: Blond. Eyes: Blue. Build: Stout. Comp: Ruddy. Occup: Car Painter. Crime: Cheat & Defr.& Bad Checks. Paroled: 8-13-59. By: So. K.C.K. The second description read: Smith, Perry Edward (WM) 27-59. Birthplace: Nevada. Height: 5-4. Weight: 156. Hair: D. Brn. Crime: B&E. Arrested:(blank). By: (blank). Disposition: Sent KSP 3-13-56 from Phil-lips Co. 5-10 yrs. Rec. 3-14-56. Paroled: 7-6-59. Marie examined the front-view and profile photographs of Smith: an arrogant face, tough, yet not entirely, for there was about it a peculiar refinement; the lips and nose seemed nicely made, and she thought the eyes, with their moist, dreamy expression, rather pretty - rather, in an actorish way, sensitive. Sensitive, and something more: "mean." Though not as mean, as forbiddingly "criminal," as the eyes of Hickock, Richard Eugene. Marie, transfixed by Hickock's eyes, was reminded of a childhood incident - of a bobcat she'd once seen caught in a trap, and of how, though she'd wanted to release it, the cat's eyes, radiant with pain and hatred, had drained her of pity and filled her with terror. "Who are they?" Marie asked. Dewey told her Floyd Wells' story, and at the end he said, "Funny. The past three weeks, that's the angle we've concentrated on. Tracking down every man who ever worked on the Clutter place. Now, the way it's turned out, it just seems like a piece of luck. But a few days more and we would've hit this Wells. Found he was in prison. We would've got the truth then. Hell, yes."

"Maybe it isn't the truth," Marie said. Dewey and the eighteen