We Were Killers Once

by Becky Masterman

  “We had no business knowing about you until you chose to reveal it. It was a coincidence that Brigid was in law enforcement and naturally suspicious. How did you know that she had thought something was … amiss?”

  “You mean that I was in prison? Well, you might get out of prison and go straight, but that doesn’t mean you lose your contacts. A guy in Tallahassee called to tell me he had word some elderly white-haired woman was nosing around, asking questions about me.”

  Carlo had smiled at hearing the description of Brigid as elderly and white-haired. “Well, your cohort had it partly right,” he said.

  The next part was easy, because Beaufort was telling the truth. He explained how he had been a disadvantaged youth, a trial for his mother after his father died in the Korean War. (Well, that part was a lie, but Beaufort was warming to his story.) A young hoodlum, he was arrested for possession of marijuana when that could send you to prison for a couple of years. Then getting out, more hardened than before by his time, he hooked up with his former supplier and started selling. Got picked up on the street again by a sting agent. Did more time—

  While he was telling his story, the phone rang. Beaufort stopped in midsentence and looked around the house for where the phone might be. Carlo looked, too, in the direction of the kitchen area across the great room. At the phone on the counter over the liquor cabinet.

  “Do you need to get that?” Beaufort asked, not wanting to show he was on edge. “If it’s important. I can always pick up the story when you’re finished.”

  “Let it go to voice mail,” Carlo said. “We get so many telemarketers calling we don’t even get up unless they leave a message.”

  They both stopped while the phone went through six rings and then changed to voice mail. “Hello, Carlo? It’s Elias. I know you screen calls, I’ll wait for you to pick up.”

  Carlo smiled at Beaufort. “Could I freshen your drink?” he asked.

  Beaufort shook his head, and after a couple of beats the voice went on.

  “Okay then, you’re not within earshot. Call me. I’ll be at the church for another hour. Good—oh, it’s around nine right now. Bye.”

  Carlo nodded at Beaufort to go on with his story.

  On the third go-round Beaufort had decided to take a step up in the marketing chain and supply the drugs himself. He bought a small boat and was transporting the goods up through the Gulf of Mexico to safe harbors along the west coast of Florida. This went on for a while, but coincided with the Three Strikes and Life law. “Do you remember that?” Beaufort asked.

  “I do. It was part of the war on drugs. You got caught then?”

  “Yep. Third time was the charm. I was in for life, no parole. Whether it was fate or God, those years in prison changed me, and getting released not too long ago was like salvation. I truly had my second, hell, sorry, Father, my fourth chance at life. And I wasn’t going to screw it up this time.”

  “So you were never a jockey.”

  Beaufort shook his head ruefully, imagining his segue into finally finding out where Carlo had that document. If he could somehow trick him into revealing it without having to strong-arm him. What if, somehow, some way, it wasn’t necessary to kill Carlo? That would be nice. He didn’t want to hurt Carlo even more than he didn’t want to hurt Gloria. “No, I made that up. I could see you were good people and I didn’t want you to think bad things about me.” He took another sip, and watched Carlo, who looked at him with such kind eyes as he had never known before. No one in his whole life had looked at him in just such a way. Was that love? And then he heard himself talking.

  * * *

  Beaufort talked for a long time. He told about when he was twelve years old, taking out his pop’s shotgun that was kept in the closet, and playing cops and robbers with his eight-year-old brother. He never liked his brother, that was for sure, because he knew Howard was his mom’s favorite. She never looked at him the way she looked at Howard, or made the things he liked to eat as much as she made them for Howard.

  He shot his brother dead, but he told the judge he didn’t know the gun was loaded. He was pretty sure he didn’t know, anyway. But he got sent to reform school just the same. His mother didn’t believe it was an accident at all. The reform school was hard. He got pushed around by the other boys because he was smaller, but worse than that was the matron, a woman whose armpits smelled of frying onions and garlic when she leaned over him. For some reason those times made him angry, and he took it out on the other boys, once beating a kid’s head so hard with a brick he came back from the hospital with his face all wired together.

  They must have told his parents, because when Jeremiah was released from the school two years later, his parents wouldn’t let him back in the house. What was he going to do, where was he going to go, and only twelve years old? The house burned down. He didn’t know his parents couldn’t get out. He went to the next town, lived with his mean old granddad for a while, and then they lit out west …

  All the things Beaufort had kept to himself, as if the deeds were large things that he needed to keep hidden for so many years. Meeting up with Hickock and Smith, and what happened at the Clutter place, that was just the beginning.

  He saw the Walkers in a diner in Sarasota, and heard them talking about buying a car they’d seen: a ’57 Chevy.

  He watched them split up. The father took the two small children. The mother went home.

  He followed her.

  He sat outside the house getting his courage up.

  When he finally got out of the car and walked up to the house, he could see her through the screen door. She was putting some groceries away. The screen door was unlocked, but he knocked anyway so as not to alarm her.

  He said he had heard them talking and wondered if they’d like to buy his car.

  She said her husband was just out getting cigarettes and would he like to wait.

  She offered him some sweet tea but he said no.

  He sat at the kitchen table. There was mail on the table that she opened. One was a Christmas card which she placed so you could see it on top of the refrigerator.

  He surprised her when her back was turned to him, took her into the bedroom, raped and shot her. He dragged her body off the bed and into the front room. He didn’t know why he did that, nor why he covered the blood on the bed with the spread.

  He saw a cedar chest where people usually kept things that were important to them. He thought it would be good to take something from it, so the cops would think it was someone who knew the family. He found a majorette’s uniform folded neatly in the chest. He took one of the pieces from it and left the lid of the chest open.

  He heard the front door open and ran back into the living room.

  He shot the father. It took two bullets.

  He shot the older boy because he might be old enough to tell.

  The mother was not dead, but had crawled to where her husband lay with his dead son. She was on her knees when he shot her again in the back of the head.

  He shot the toddler but it didn’t die immediately. The gun was out of bullets now. He took the baby into the bathroom where he laid it facedown and turned on the tap. It didn’t lift its head.

  He turned off the water and didn’t think about whether anyone could pick up his print when he put his hand on the bathtub faucet to get up.

  Looking for a wallet, he went through the father’s pockets but only found a pocketknife, which he took.

  Finally, he picked up two wrapped presents that were underneath the Christmas tree.

  And left. Had he felt pleasure in the killing? It was hard to remember how he felt then. There was no pleasure in the recollection now. He felt more like an observer, distinterested. If he felt anything, it was that it hadn’t happened. The important thing is that he was a killer then, but he wasn’t now. Now he only killed when there was no other option. Now he—

  He heard, “Jerry? Jerry, are you all right?”

  Beaufort looked at Carlo and wondered
how much he had said and when he had stopped talking. From Carlo’s face it didn’t appear that he had said very much. He heard himself say, “If a person does something bad, but they never do anything that bad again, then is the person still bad all through?”

  Carlo tilted his head and looked puzzled at the question, was about to ask one of his own when Beaufort shook himself out of the strange mood he’d been in and changed the subject. He had realized he was about to get into worse things that maybe it wasn’t wise to reveal, especially as he was looking for that confession. Maybe someday he’d have more opportunity to talk with Carlo.

  Forty–seven

  Here is a good question. If Perry Smith was so much smarter than me, why was I the one who knew how to grift, and I had to coach him how to do it? And if he was so tough, why was he such a “scaredy pants” when it came to walking into a shop and scamming an ignorant sales clerk?

  We got a lot more money from cashing bad checks than from picking up bottles, let me tell you. Every shop we went into I got an extra twenty-five dollars or so. The checks were fake. When you go from town to town, a couple shops here, a couple shops there, this adds up.

  This was before we went to the Clutters, when we needed money. I just wanted to mention this to show that Perry was not as smart or as tough as he looked in photographs in the newspaper.

  Back to my story now. The shotgun I took from the house was intended to frighten the Clutters. Also a hunting knife. Now this is an important point. Perry told in his confession that I was the one who said we would not leave any witnesses, meaning that we would kill the family with the gun. He said I brought the gun with the express purpose of killing the family. But if I said we would kill the family so as not to leave any witnesses, then why would Perry think of getting stocking masks to wear? We would not need masks if we were going to kill the Clutters. You see, it does not add up. Do not believe everything you read.

  Anyways, we drove up to the Clutter ranch after dark and parked within view of the place, waiting for the lights to go out. The kid was still in the back seat. He was humming that tune that he always hummed, very slowly, so that it sounded like something you would hear at a funeral ceremony. When Perry saw the house he lost his cool demeanor. He started knocking his back against the car seat as if he couldn’t wait to go on a carnival ride. I thought it was because he had never lived in a house that was so grand, and he hated anyone who did. I grew up poor, too, but live and let live, I always said. It wasn’t the Clutters’ fault if their father was better at making a living than Perry’s or mine was. This is how I thought, but I suppose no one will ever believe it.

  There was a small porch on the side of the big house, with a door that we knew led to the room that Mr. Clutter used as an office. We could go in there and not take a chance of someone seeing us go in the front. It was perfect. Perry knew about locks, so he got us in. I kept a look-out while he went through all the drawers in a big desk. There was no money there. It would have been easy if there was money in the desk. I looked around for the safe that Floyd Wells said he had seen in the room, but I could not see it. I thought it might be in another part of the house, somewhere more private.

  But we were surprised by Mr. Clutter who found us. You can imagine he was surprised, too. I was always the talker, so I took charge here. I told him to get up and open his safe, wherever it was.

  I was the one holding the shotgun at this time, and you could tell it bothered Clutter, though he did not appear to be all that frightened of us.

  Clutter said he did not have any money in the house, or not very much. He also said he did not own a safe. Clutter was actually very polite, and said he thought we could work this out, but I was getting very nervous. I had not been involved in a robbery up to this time. I thought it would all go much easier.

  The kid, who had been standing by the door as if he was ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, yelled at me, what was Floyd Wells talking about a safe! He said he had seen the safe! There must be a safe!

  Perry put up his hands and shushed the kid, and told him it was better if we did not say anyone’s name. You see, this was another hint that we would leave without hurting anyone, because if Perry did not intend to leave Clutter alive he would not have said that to the kid about not saying Wells’s name.

  When Perry got the kid calmed down he asked Clutter who was in the house, and Clutter said his wife and son and daughter but please not to wake them up because they were sleeping. He repeated that we could work this out, and he offered to write a check. Then Perry flared up all of a sudden and said what do you think we are, idiots? Perry usually acted like a cool character but he would get offended if anyone insinuated that he was not smart.

  He pushed Clutter towards an open door which we discovered was the stairs to the basement. I went to follow them down there, and that was when I wondered why the kid wasn’t with us, but when I looked around I did not see him in the downstairs area. I said this to Perry.

  Forget him, he said again, while strong-arming Mr. Clutter down the basement steps. That was when I thought we did not have masks on. Again, names did not matter if someone could tell what we looked like. But things were moving quickly by then, and I did not think about it more.

  While I stood holding the shotgun on him, Perry tied Mr. Clutter to a pipe in a room off the main basement area. He made him lay down on the floor which was cement, and very cold. I was the one who found a cardboard box standing against a wall, a big one that could have held a twin sized mattress. I put it on the floor so Mr. Clutter would not be so cold. He still looked pretty uncomfortable, with his arms stretched out over his head and wrists tied around the pipe. Then Perry wrapped duct tape around his ankles. Now Mr. Clutter began to look very fearful and kept saying please don’t hurt my family. My wife is sick.

  By the time we went upstairs to the bedrooms, we found that the kid was ahead of us. He had already locked Mrs. Clutter, Kenyon, the son, and Nancy, the daughter, in the bathroom. He had the hunting knife and was using that to make them do as he wished. At this point I kept thinking this is not how it was supposed to go, but I did not know what to do. I admit I was getting upset, beginning to lose what little cool I had when we first entered the house.

  The kid let the son out of the bathroom and took him downstairs when we told him about the basement. He said he would take care of tying up the son. While he was doing that, we tied up Mrs. Clutter in her room, and Nancy in her room. I was holding the shotgun, it was mine after all, and when they saw that they did whatever we told them to do. While Perry tied Nancy up he was telling her to be quiet and no one would get hurt. I admit at that point I could not see how we would leave with no one getting hurt.

  The girl asked where her father was, was he okay.

  I heard humming, then the kid came into the room. He had the knife tucked into his belt. I glanced at it, curious, but I did not see any blood. I was about to ask him what did he do with the Clutter boy, but he pointed at the girl on the bed and said look at this, this girl is young, about my age. Maybe younger. Dick, you would like her. Unless you think she is still too old.

  That was when I knew that Perry had talked to him about me liking little girls. Which is not true. But it made me mad. I said let’s finish up here.

  But he could see that I was agitated, moving from foot to foot, and my being agitated seemed to encourage him. Go ahead, he said. We have time. Perry and I could step outside the door if you want privacy.

  Perry laughed. It was more like a snort, because a little snot came out of his nose and he wiped it with the back of his sleeve. He looked embarrassed, like that was the worst thing that would happen that night.

  I said is there money in the house or not? You should spend your time looking for the money and stop fooling around.

  He said oh go on, Dick. Maybe she is only twelve. Or at least you could shut your eyes and pretend. We all know you like little girls. Have you ever had one? This is your chance.

  I was confused and ju
st said I don’t want to.

  He said don’t want to or can’t? Then he said you talk about having an ex-wife and children, but we don’t know that for sure. Perry did you ever see a photograph of his wife?

  Perry said no.

  I did not know what to do. The girl was staring at me, and I could not stand the terror in her eyes, wondering what would happen to her. He continued to taunt me, and Perry did nothing to stop him. He just watched me with that little smile of his.

  The girl looked like she was trying to form words maybe to say please don’t hurt me, but her lips were twitching so much they could not form the words and she had no breath.

  Stop it, I yelled. I felt like I was there but not there. I yelled stop it again and my voice, which had a buzzing quality to it, seemed to come from someone other than me.

  No one will ever know. We are the only ones who will know what you did. Or didn’t do. I don’t know which is worse. The kid said these things.

  The girl’s eyes bugged out at me. They could not have been bigger. Her breath was harsh now, in and out.

  Can you get it up? He would not stop.

  I do not know why, but I raised the shotgun and screamed shut up. I don’t know if I was screaming it because of the taunts, or at the girl because of her loud breathing. There were those eyes. I told her to turn her head to the wall. She did. Then I fired the shotgun. I will never know why I did that, but I had to stop her from looking at me that way. I hated her for being so afraid of me. Why was she so afraid? I would not have hurt her otherwise, in any way. I am not a bad man. I had never killed anyone before. Or after. Maybe I had some strange feelings now and then, but I had never even molested anyone, and I do not know where Perry came up with this.

  So that is what makes this part of my telling a real confession. Perry was telling the truth shortly after we were arrested, when he said I killed Nancy Clutter. Before we changed our confession so Perry took all the blame. I wish to be forgiven this sin before I go to the gallows.