In Cold Blood (21 page)

With Love & Prayers,            
Your sister & Bro. in Law       
Barbara & Frederic & Family  

In preserving this letter, and including it in his collection of particular treasures, Perry was not moved by affection. Far from
it. He “loathed” Barbara, and just the other day he had told Dick, “The only
real
regret I have—I wish the hell my sister had been in that house.” (Dick had laughed, and confessed to a similar yearning: “I keep thinking what fun if my second wife had been there. Her, and all her goddam family.”) No, he valued the letter merely because his prison friend, the “super-intelligent” Willie-Jay, had written for him a “very sensitive” analysis of it, occupying two single-spaced typewritten pages, with the title “Impressions I Garnered from the Letter” at the top:

IMPRESSIONS I GARNERED FROM THE LETTER

1.) When she began this letter, she intended that it should be a compassionate demonstration of Christian principles. That is to say that in return for your letter to her, which apparently annoyed her, she meant to turn the other cheek hoping in this way to incite regret for your previous letter and to place you on the defensive in your next.

However few people can successfully demonstrate a principle in common ethics when their deliberation is festered with emotionalism. Your sister substantiates this failing for as her letter progresses her judgment gives way to temper—her thoughts are good, lucid the products of intelligence, but it is not now an unbiased, impersonal intelligence. It is a mind propelled by emotional response to memory and frustration; consequently, however wise her admonishments might be, they fail to inspire resolve, unless it would be the resolve to retaliate by hurting her in your next letter. Thus commencing a cycle that can only culminate in further anger and distress.

2.) It is a foolish letter, but born of human failing.

Your letter to her, and this, her answer to you, failed in their objectives. Your letter was an attempt to explain your outlook on life, as you are necessarily affected by it. It was destined to be misunderstood, or taken too literally because your ideas are opposed to conventionalism. What could be
more
conventional than a housewife with three children, who is “dedicated” to her family???? What could be more natural than that she would resent an unconventional person.
There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn’t a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you
can
remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures. Her letter failed because she couldn’t conceive of the profundity of your problem—she couldn’t fathom the pressures brought to bear upon you because of environment, intellectual frustration and a growing tendency toward isolationism.

3.) She feels that:

a) You are leaning too heavily towards self-pity.

b) That you are too calculating.

c) That you are really undeserving of an 8 page letter written in between motherly duties.

4.) On page 3 she writes: “I truthfully feel none of us has anyone to blame etc.” Thus vindicating those who bore influence in her formative years. But is this the whole truth? She is a wife and mother. Respectable and more or less secure. It is easy to ignore the rain if you have a raincoat. But how would she feel if she were compelled to hustle her living on the streets? Would she still be all-forgiving about the people in her past? Absolutely not. Nothing is more usual than to feel that others have shared in our failures, just as it is an ordinary reaction to forget those who have shared in our achievements.

5.) Your sister respects your Dad. She also resents the fact that you have been preferred. Her jealousy takes a subtle form in this letter. Between the lines she is registering a question: “I love Dad and have tried to live so he could be proud to own me as his daughter. But I have had to content myself with the crumbs of his affection. Because it is you he loves, and why should it be so?”

Obviously over the years your Dad has taken advantage of your sister’s emotional nature via the mails. Painting a picture that justifies her opinion of him—an underdog cursed with
an ungrateful son upon whom he has showered love and concern, only to be infamously treated by that son in return.

On page 7 she says she is sorry that her letter must be censored. But she is really not sorry at all. She is glad it passes through a censor. Subconsciously she has written it with the censor in mind, hoping to convey the idea that the Smith family is really a well-ordered unit:
“Please do not judge us all by Perry.”

About the mother kissing away her child’s boo-boo. This is a woman’s form of sarcasm.

6.) You write to her because:

a) You love her after a fashion.

b) You feel a need for this contact with the outside world.

c) You can use her.

Prognosis: Correspondence between you and your sister cannot serve anything but a purely social function. Keep the theme of your letters within the scope of her understanding. Do not unburden your private conclusions. Do not put her on the defensive and do not permit her to put you on the defensive. Respect her limitations to comprehend your objectives, and remember that she is touchy towards criticism of your Dad. Be consistent in your attitude towards her and do not add anything to the impression she has that you are weak, not because you need her good-will but because you can expect more letters like this, and
they can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts
.

FINISH

As Perry continued to sort and choose, the pile of material he thought too dear to part with, even temporarily, assumed a tottering height. But what was he to do? He couldn’t risk losing the Bronze Medal earned in Korea, or his high-school diploma (issued by the Leavenworth County Board of Education as a result of his having, while in prison, resumed his long-recessed studies). Nor did he care to chance the loss of a manila envelope fat with photographs—primarily of himself, and ranging in time from a pretty-little-boy
portrait made when he was in the Merchant Marine (and on the back of which he had scribbled, “16 yrs. old. Young, happy-go-lucky & Innocent”) to the recent Acapulco pictures. And there were half a hundred other items he had decided he must take with him, among them his treasure maps, Otto’s sketchbook, and two thick notebooks, the thicker of which constituted his personal dictionary, a non-alphabetically listed miscellany of words he believed “beautiful” or “useful,” or at least “worth memorizing.” (Sample page: “Thanatoid = deathlike; Omnilingual = versed in languages; Amerce = punishment, amount fixed by court; Nescient = ignorance; Facinorous = atrociously wicked; Hagiophobia = a morbid fear of holy places & things; Lapidicolous = living under stones, as certain blind beetles; Dyspathy = lack of sympathy, fellow feeling; Psilopher = a fellow who fain would pass as a philosopher; Omophagia = eating raw flesh, the rite of some savage tribes; Depredate = to pillage, rob, and prey upon; Aphrodisiac = a drug or the like which excites sexual desire; Megalodactylous = having abnormally large fingers; Myrtophobia = fear of night and darkness.”)

On the cover of the second notebook, the handwriting of which he was so proud, a script abounding in curly, feminine flourishes, proclaimed the contents to be “The Private Diary of Perry Edward Smith”—an inaccurate description, for it was not in the least a diary but, rather, a form of anthology consisting of obscure facts (“Every fifteen years Mars gets closer. 1958 is a close year”), poems and literary quotations (“No man is an island, Entire of itself”), and passages from newspapers and books paraphrased or quoted. For example:

My acquaintances are many, my friends are few; those who really know me fewer still.

Heard about a new rat poison on the market. Extremely potent, odorless, tasteless, is so completely absorbed once swallowed that no trace could ever be found in a dead body.

If called upon to make a speech: “I can’t remember what I was going to say for the life of me—I don’t think that ever before in my life have so many people been so directly responsible
for my being so very, very glad. It’s a wonderful moment and a rare one and I’m certainly indebted. Thank you!”

Read interesting article Feb. issue of
Man to Man:
“I Knifed My Way to a Diamond Pit.”

“It is almost impossible for a man who enjoys freedom with all its prerogatives, to realize what it means to be deprived of that freedom.”—Said by Erle Stanley Gardner.

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”—Said by Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot Indian Chief.

This last entry was written in red ink and decorated with a border of green-ink stars; the anthologist wished to emphasize its “personal significance.” “A breath of a buffalo in the wintertime”—that exactly evoked his view of life. Why worry? What was there to “sweat about”? Man was nothing, a mist, a shadow absorbed by shadows.

But, damn it, you do worry, scheme, fret over your fingernails and the warnings of hotel managements: “SU DÍA TERMINA A LAS 2 P.M. ”

“Dick? You hear me?” Perry said. “It’s almost one o’clock.”

Dick was awake. He was rather more than that; he and Inez were making love. As though reciting a rosary, Dick incessantly whispered: “Is it good, baby? Is it good?” But Inez, smoking a cigarette, remained silent. The previous midnight, when Dick had brought her to the room and told Perry that she was going to sleep there, Perry, though disapproving, had acquiesced, but if they imagined that their conduct stimulated him, or seemed to him anything other than a “nuisance,” they were wrong. Nevertheless, Perry felt sorry for Inez. She was such a “stupid kid”—she really believed that Dick meant to marry her, and had no idea he was planning to leave Mexico that very afternoon.

“Is it good, baby? Is it good?”

Perry said: “For Christsake, Dick. Hurry it up, will you? Our day ends at two P.M.”

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 tom 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 Café.

“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.