In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [81]
over in Olathe. Living here at home with us, getting to bed early, not violating his parole any shape or fashion. I'll tell you, Mr. Nye, I've not got long, I'm with cancer, and Dick knowed that - least ways, he knowed I'm sickly - and not a month ago, right before he took off, he told me, 'Dad, you've been a pretty good old dad to me. I'm not ever gonna do nothing more to hurt you.' He meant it, too. That boy has plenty of good inside him. If ever you seen him on a football field, if ever you seen him play with his children, you wouldn't doubt me. Lord, I wish the Lord could tell me, because I don't know what happened." His wife said, "I do," resumed her darning, and was forced by tears to stop. "That friend of his. That's what happened." The visitor, K.B.I. Agent Harold Nye, busied himself scribbling in a shorthand notebook - a notebook already well filled with the results of a long day spent probing the accusations of Floyd Wells. Thus far the facts ascertained corroborated Wells' story most persuasively. On November 20 the suspect Richard Eugene Hickock had gone on a Kansas City shopping spree during which he had passed not fewer than "seven pieces of hot paper." Nye had called on all the reported victims - salesmen of cameras and of radio and television equipment, the proprietor of a jewelry shop, a clerk in a clothing store - and when in each instance the witness was shown photographs of Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, he had identified the former as the author of the spurious checks, the latter as his "silent" accomplice. (One deceived salesman said, "He [Hickock] did the work. A very smooth talker, very convincing. The other one - I thought he might be a foreigner, a Mexican maybe - he never opened his mouth.") Nye had next driven to the suburban village of Olathe, where he interviewed Hickock's last employer, the owner of the Bob Sands Body Shop. "Yes, he worked here," said Mr. Sands. "From August until - Well, I never saw him after the nineteenth of November, or maybe it was the twentieth. He left without giving me any notice whatever. Just took off - I don't know where to, and neither does his dad. Surprised? Well, yes. Yes, I was. We were on a fairly friendly basis. Dick kind of has a way with him, you know. He can be very likable. Once in a while he used to come to our house. Fact is, a week before he left, we had some people over, a little party, and Dick brought this friend he had visiting him, a boy from Nevada - Perry Smith was his name. He could play the guitar real nice. He played the guitar and sang some songs, and him and Dick entertained everybody with a weight-lifting act. Perry Smith, he's a little fellow, not much over five feet high, but he could just about pick up a horse. No, they didn't seem nervous, neither one. I'd say they were enjoying themselves. The exact date? Sure I remember. It was the thirteenth. Friday, the thirteenth of November." From there, Nye steered his car northward along raw country roads. As he neared the Hickock farm, he stopped at several neighboring homesteads, ostensibly to ask directions, actually to make inquiries concerning the suspect. One farmer's wife said, "Dick Hickock! Don't talk to me about Dick Hickock! If ever I met the devil! Steal? Steal the weights off a dead man's eyes! His mother, though, Eunice, she's a fine woman. Heart big as a barn. His daddy, too. Both of them plain, honest people. Dick would've gone to jail more times than you can count, except nobody around here ever wanted to prosecute. Out of respect for his folks." Dusk had fallen when Nye knocked at the door of Walter Hickock's weather-grayed four-room farmhouse. It was as though some such visit had been expected. Mr. Hickock invited the detective into the kitchen, and Mrs. Hickock offered him coffee. Perhaps if they had known the true meaning of the caller's presence, the reception tendered him would have been less gracious, more guarded. But they did not know, and during the hours the three sat conversing, the name Clutter was never mentioned, or the word murder. The parents accepted what