Thus:
Al: Perry, you have been lying to us, you havenât been telling the truth. We know where you were on that weekendâyou were out at Holcomb, Kansas, seven miles west of Garden City, murdering the Clutter family.
(Perry white; swallowed a couple of times. Long pause.)
Perry: I donât know anybody named Clutter, I donât know where Garden City or Holcomb isâ
Al: Youâd better get straightened out on this deal and tell us the truthâ
Perry: I donât know what youâre talking about ⦠I donât know what youâre talking about.
(Al & Duntz rise to go.)
Al: Weâre talking to you sometime tomorrow. Youâd better think this over tonight. Do you know what today is? Nancy Clutterâs birthday. She would have been seventeen. 32
When Nelle had finished copying as much as she could, Dewey let her and Truman see another piece of evidence: Nancy Clutterâs diary containing three yearsâ worth of entries. Since the age of 14 , Nancy had recorded, in three or four sentences every night, the dayâs events and her thoughts about family, friends, pets, and, later, her teenage love affair with Bobby Rupp. Different colored ink identified the years. Nelle and Truman riffled through the pages. The final entry was made approximately an hour before her death. Nelle copied it down. 33
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Loaded with notes from interviews, transcribed interrogations, newspaper clippings, some photos Truman had snapped, sketches of the Clutter farmhouse, and anything Dewey had given them copies of, Nelle and Truman boarded the luxury Santa Fe Super Chief on January 16 in Garden City. It was snowing hard, and they settled in for the 40 -hour ride to Dearborn Station, in Chicago. Over the course of approximately one month, they had gathered enough for a solid magazine article for The New Yorker. They would have to return for the trial in March. If the suspects were sentenced to death, should their execution be part of the story? It was a grisly thought. Before his ideas escaped him, Truman wrote some notes on a Santa Fe cocktail napkin.
Nelle, of course, had plenty of other things to think about. As soon as she returned to New York, she would have to go over the galleys of To Kill a Mockingbird âa painstaking but nevertheless thrilling task for a first-time novelist.
As she watched Truman in the seat opposite hers, musing out the window of the train about The New Yorker article, it probably seemed incredible that her novel would be in bookstores in a few months. Then she would have the right to call herself a writer, too, though not in his league by any means. All she hoped for was a âquick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers.â 34
The Super Chief was delayed for six hours along the route, and when they arrived in Chicago, they had already missed their New York Central connection. They stayed in the city overnight and departed again the next day, arriving in New York on Wednesday, January 20 .
âReturned yesterdayâafter nearly 2 months in Kansas: an extraordinary experience, in many ways the most interesting thing thatâs ever happened to me,â Truman wrote to his friend, the photographer Cecil Beaton. âBut I will let you read about itâit may amount to a small book.â 35
That small book, In Cold Blood, would become one of the most highly regarded works of nonfiction ever published.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Two months later, Nelle and Truman were back in Kansas for the trial, scheduled to begin the third week of March. By coincidence, the Cluttersâ farm was going up for auction the same week.
They left behind a late snowy season in New York. A wet, warm spring had come to western Kansas. Nelle and Truman drove out to the Clutter farm on Sunday, March 21 , to witness the sale. Bumper-to-bumper traffic met them at the entrance to the lane up to the farmhouse. The sunny weather in the low 70 s