In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [82]
"Dick brought him [Perry] home one evening, and told us he was a friend just off a bus from Las Vegas, and he wanted to know couldn't he sleep here, stay here awhile," Mrs. Hickock said. "No, sir, I wouldn't have him in the house. One look and I saw what he was. With his perfume. And his oily hair. It was clear as day where Dick had met him. According to the conditions of his parole, he wasn't supposed to associate with anybody he'd met up there [Lansing]. I warned Dick, but he wouldn't listen. He found a room for his friend at the Hotel Olathe, in Olathe, and after that Dick was with him every spare minute. Once they went off on a weekend trip. Mr. Nye, certain as I'm sitting here, Perry Smith was the one put him up to writing them checks." Nye shut his notebook and put his pen in his pocket, and both his hands as well, for his hands were shaking from excitement. "Now, on this weekend trip. Where did they go?"
"Fort Scott," Mr. Hickock said, naming a Kansas town with a military history. "The way I understood it, Perry Smith has a sister lives in Fort Scott. She was supposed to be holding a piece of money belonged to him. Fifteen hundred dollars was the sum mentioned. That was the main reason he'd come to Kansas, to collect this money his sister was holding. So Dick drove him down there to get it. It was only a overnight trip. He was back home a little before noon Sunday. Time for Sunday dinner."
"I see," said Nye. "An overnight trip. Which means they left here sometime Saturday. That would be Saturday, November fourteenth?" The old man agreed.
"And returned Sunday, November fifteenth?"
"Sunday noon." Nye pondered the mathematics involved, and was encouraged by the conclusion he came to: that within a time span of twenty or twenty-four hours, the suspects could have made a round-trip journey of rather more than eight hundred miles, and, in the process, murder four people.
"Now, Mr. Hickock," Nye said. "On Sunday, when your son came home, was he alone? Or was Perry Smith with him?"
"No, he was alone. He said he'd left Perry off at the Hotel Olathe." Nye, whose normal voice is cuttingly nasal and naturally intimidating, was attempting a subdued timbre, a disarming, throw-away style. "And do you remember - did anything in his manner strike you as unusual? Different?"
"Who?"
"Your son."
"When?"
"When he returned from Fort Scott." Mr. Hickock ruminated. Then he said, "He seemed the same as ever. Soon as he came in, we sat down to dinner. He was mighty hungry. Started piling his plate before I'd finished the blessing. I remarked on it, said, 'Dick, you're shoveling it in as fast as you can work your elbow. Don't you mean to leave nothing for the rest of us?' Course, he's always been a big eater. Pickles. He can eat a whole tub of pickles."
"And after dinner what did he do?"
"Fell asleep," said Mr. Hickock, and appeared to be moderately taken aback by his own reply. "Fell fast asleep. And I guess you could say that was unusual. We'd gathered round to watch a basketball game. On the TV. Me and Dick and our other boy, David. Pretty soon Dick was snoring like a buzz saw, and I said to his brother, 'Lord, I never thought I'd live to see the day Dick would go to sleep at a basketball game.' Did, though. Slept straight through it. Only woke up long enough to eat some cold supper, and right after went off to bed." Mrs. Hickock rethreaded her darning needle; her husband rocked his rocker and sucked on an unlit pipe. The detective's trained eyes roamed the scrubbed and humble room. In a corner, a gun stood propped against the wall; he had noticed it before. Rising, reaching for it, he said, "You do much hunting, Mr. Hickock?"
"That's his gun. Dick's. Him and David go out once in a while. After rabbits, mostly." It was a .12-gauge Savage shotgun, Model 300; a delicately etched scene of pheasants in flight ornamented the handle. "How long has Dick had it?" The question aroused Mrs. Hickock. "That gun cost me over a hundred