After that the money was forgotten. Things happened fast. The kid made a whooping noise, took the shotgun from me, went into Mrs. Clutter’s room and shot her. Then he went down to the basement. We had followed him into the bedroom to see him kill Mrs. Clutter but he ran ahead down the stairs. Perry stopped to pick up the shotgun shell casing and we heard the shotgun go off again. When we got down to the basement, we saw the boy dead on the couch.
Mr. Clutter screamed my son my son. He was in the other room and did not see what happened, but he knew.
The kid grinned and reached out with the shotgun to Perry. He said, here, you have to do one. We all have to do at least one. So Perry looked a little dazed at how things were going, but he took the gun as if he wasn’t in charge, and he went into the other room. Mr. Clutter was screaming and the shouting kept on, shoot him, shoot him. But it seemed Perry could not shoot with Mr. Clutter screaming. That was when he must have put some duct tape over his mouth, and not before the way we told it, because the screaming lessened to something that happened only in Mr. Clutter’s throat. All I could hear over that was do it, do it.
I did not go into the other room just yet because I was putting a pillow under the boy’s head. I know this was crazy as he was already dead. I found the shell casing which had rolled partway across the floor. Then I heard Mr. Clutter making a different noise, more gurgling than screaming in his throat. When I went into the other part of the basement I saw his throat had been cut to make him quiet for Perry. Perry was still holding the gun. He yelled to see Mr. Clutter choking his blood away and that is when he finally shot him. Even so it was a few seconds before he was totally still, and all I was aware of was the three of us breathing hard. The boy cursed as if he was sorry it was over, as if he could not get enough killing and was sorry there were no more people to kill. I thought about this later.
There was so much blood in the basement we could not avoid stepping in it. We were afraid of leaving evidence that could come back to convict us, but with the other house nearby, and the chance that people who lived there might hear the gunshots and come to investigate or call the police, we figured we should leave quickly. I said I had two shotgun shell casings, and Perry said he had the one from Nancy’s room. He found the other close to his feet, lying in a pool of Mr. Clutter’s blood.
When we got in the car the kid put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of coins. Here is some change, he said, as he handed it to Perry over the front seat of the car. I found it in a cookie jar in the kitchen when I went to get the knife.
Perry asked him if he still had the knife and he answered yes.
Perry had blood on him from the blow-back of Clutter. The kid was bloody too because of the blow-back of Clutter’s son, and because of the blood spurting when he slit Mr. Clutter’s throat. I had just a little bit of blood on my clothes from the killing in the basement rather than from Nancy Clutter because I was away from her when I shot her, and the blood went on the wall next to her bed. No one had thought about this in advance and we had to find a creek and wash off.
I watched while they stripped off their clothes and washed them and themselves in the creek. We got back in the car, they were cold and put the heat on. It was November, mind you, and very cold. I was still driving. Perry was a little quiet like me, maybe thinking about what we had done, or the money that was not there, but the boy was talkative. It was as if the whole point of the break-in was the killing, not the money. He seemed very upbeat. No one mentioned how they made fun of me in the Clutter daughter’s bedroom. I think they did not want to rile me up again after so much emotion. Either that or it had been forgotten in all the excitement that followed.
We drove back the four hundred miles to Olathe and my parents’ farm, and arrived by noon the next day, November 15. I got out of the car myself to ask Mom to let at least Perry stay at our house. At the last second I remembered the splash of blood on the left sleeve of my shirt and covered it with my right hand, reminding myself to hide the shirt in my room. Mom looked at Perry looking out the car window at her and she said no. She probably could not see who sat in the back seat of the car on the driver’s side. She did not mention him and neither did I. It went without saying that it was definite that she would not have let the two of them stay at the house.
And that’s that part of the story. No matter what you read, the Capote account, or Perry’s and my confessions, or even something I wrote at another time, what I have just written is the absolute truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It makes me feel better than I have felt in a long time. As a matter of fact, I think of a religion study class I took when I was in prison the first time, and a line comes to mind, maybe part of scripture, though I do not know if Jesus said it.
What I have written, I have written.
That was six years ago. How funny that, as I write this, the kid is not a kid any longer. He must be at least twenty, fully grown. It’s all I can do to write it here now, I’m so afraid, and I can’t even provide the boy’s last name because he never told us. His first name was Jerry. That’s all I know. Oh, and he said his grandfather’s name was Bert, short for Bertrand. But other than that, I do not recall that his grandfather ever came up in conversation after he was left in the field.
What I remember about how Jerry looks is when he came out of the river that night, naked, his wetness reflecting the moonlight a little. He was small, with an out-sized bottom, not like a boy’s, but like a little girl too young for breasts. When he got into the car I could see his goosebumps all over. He looked so vulnerable to me, and not like someone I could grow to hate.
Forty–eight
The first thing I thought, of course, was this could not be. There had been only two people involved in the Clutter murders. Not three. Not three. This document was just one more made-up version of the many, this one made up by Hickock himself, for what purpose I couldn’t tell.
That wishful thinking was followed rapidly by a sudden flash of what definitely was. The only name I had, Jerry, and the odd description of that physical anomaly that a pedophile like Hickock would notice. Not enough on their own, certainly, but added to a long string of suspicious occurrences: Santangelo’s convenient death. Finding that Carlo had a sketch of Hickock. The burglary that was similar to others in the neighborhood except that in our house alone the burglar had searched through file cabinets and the library where there would be no valuables. Meadows getting shot just after he spoke with me. The possibilities fell together in what Carlo would call an epiphany, and following that, the shock that I had left Carlo unprotected in Arizona. That he was alone and that his life might depend on Jeremiah Beaufort thinking that what I had could convict him.
Forty–nine
The phone rang again.
Beaufort’s mouth went dry, thinking more about what he really wanted from this visit, and he took a sip of his bourbon while the phone rang. Six times. Then silence. He took a deep breath.
Then the message.
“CARLO!” the voice shouted. “PICK UP THE PHONE!”
“Ah, it’s Brigid,” Carlo said, standing and moving in the direction of the phone. “And she sounds very Brigiddy. You’ll have to ex—”
Beaufort stood, too, taking his gun out from where it had been tucked into his jeans, and moved behind Carlo toward the kitchen as the voice continued after a second’s pause. “LISTEN!” Brigid shouted. “JERRY IS A KILLER! HE’S AFTER YOU, NOT ME.”
Carlo reached out his hand to pick up the receiver, but Beaufort stepped to his side, said, “Let’s let that one go, too,” and showed Carlo the gun.
She kept on, “DON’T TALK TO HIM, DON’T LET HIM INTO THE HOUSE. CALL MAX AND HAVE HIM WAIT THERE TILL I GET BACK. HE’LL DO IT IF YOU ASK. FLIGHTS ARE DELAYED BUT I’M IN TAMPA AND ON MY WAY.”
The two men stared at the phone as if that would do either of them any good. The voice had stopped, and now a blinking light and the number one indicated a second message had been logged. “Sit down, righ
t there.” Beaufort indicated a nearby kitchen chair with the muzzle of his weapon.
When Carlo did so, slowly, Beaufort asked, “Who’s Max?”
“He’s a sheriff’s deputy and a friend of mine,” Carlo said.
“What does he know?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been in touch with him in a while.”
Beaufort thought. The woman was in Tampa, so he had Carlo to himself for a good while, at least four hours if she was able to get a flight. She would be nervous about Carlo not answering the phone. Would she call someone herself? This Max person? Would someone come busting in the door any moment? In a pretense of ease, of having time he did not have, Beaufort casually leaned his butt against the kitchen counter and asked Carlo, “Do you ever lie?”
Beaufort reassured himself again about being able to read people, like now. Carlo seemed understandably tense. His eyes were narrow and his body felt rigid even from across the room. Carlo said, “We all lie. Hopefully I lie less than some do.”
“Then tell me. What do you fear most?”
“That my wife will kill you.” He sounded sad, like it was a certainty, and one he regretted.
Beaufort didn’t ask why Carlo would fear this more than anything. Such as his own death, or Brigid’s. And why would he, Carlo, care the most about Beaufort, and him dying? He laughed. But the honesty in the man’s voice made the laugh feel pretended. What an odd thing to say.
“I want the document that Santangelo gave you.”
If Carlo didn’t draw a blank on that, he sure gave a convincing performance of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Which part?”
“Well, I knew Father Santangelo, but he never gave me any document. What kind of document?”
Beaufort slapped him, not hard, just enough to show they had reached the real business part of the meeting. “It’s what went with the sketch of Hickock. Santangelo told me about you. That’s why I’m here. I want to see what else you have. I want to know why Brigid went to Florida.”
“But that’s—”
“You don’t want to spoil your honesty record.” He motioned with his gun again, this time for Carlo to get up from the chair. “I want you to show me where you kept the sketch.”
Carlo did not rise. He shook his head, and on the second shake Beaufort backhanded him again. “That would hurt a lot more if I used my gun,” he said. “Now show me.”
Carlo rose now and led the way into the library. He went to the closet there and pulled the left door to the right side. Beaufort silently cursed himself for not continuing to search the closet on the day he’d broken in. But the time was running out then as it was now.
“Whatever you do, do it very slowly,” he said, as Carlo reached for the plastic bin on the top shelf.
Carlo pulled it down and set it on the floor.
“Take the top off and dump it,” Beaufort said.
Carlo obeyed, standing the plastic top against the wall behind him, and overturning the bin. It was paper. All paper. In a heap so high some of the papers slid off the top like an avalanche. Beaufort stared at it. Carlo looked up, and Beaufort almost thought he could detect a gleam of sympathy in the man’s eyes. “I don’t think there’s anything here,” Carlo said. He sorted through the mass of material and said, as if he were an archaeologist at a dig, “This is the level where I pulled out the sketch of Hickock. Remember when I showed it to you, it was taped to a piece of cardboard, and we never even knew there was a letter behind it until I took it to be framed. See, Brigid has always had a fascination for—”
“I know, I know. Shut up and let me think,” Beaufort said. Was there enough time to make Carlo go through every single file folder and sheet of yellowing pad before someone came to the house? Could Carlo, with that claim of honesty, be making a fool of him? Trying to stall until his wife got home?
There went that damn phone again. Beaufort made Carlo go ahead of him back into the kitchen and by the time they got there it had already gone to messaging.
Brigid shouted, “IF YOU DON’T PICK UP I SWEAR I’M CALLING NINE-ONE-ONE!”
Beaufort picked up the phone. He might have said something threatening but didn’t get the chance.
“CARLO!” Brigid shouted.
“Could you stop shouting like that?” Beaufort said.
There was no response for a while, and then, “It’s you,” she said, in a voice unnaturally quiet, unnaturally calm.
“That’s right. Now as you can tell, I’m at your house. And I heard your last message.”
“Where’s my husband?” The woman sounded as if she was asking whether it was raining in Tucson.
“What about please? Is that a nice way to ask?”
“Where’s my husband, you fat-assed little prick?”
“Let me get him for you.” Beaufort held up the phone. “Here, Carlo, it’s Brigid. Say hi.”
“Brigid! Don’t come home!” Carlo yelled.
Beaufort put the phone back to his ear. “There, you see? No one is going to get hurt. We’ve just been talking, trying to get him to give me what I came here for, or tell me where it is. Then I’ll be on my way. But two things came up. One is that your husband insists he doesn’t lie. The other is”—Beaufort had to figure out how to say this—“how do you know what you know about me?”
“Because, you dipshit, I have Hickock’s confession. Carlo doesn’t have it. He never did.”
Beaufort had tried to sound as cool as she did, but this made him gasp. She must have heard it.
She said, “That’s what you want. That’s why you’ve been hanging around. I admit I was mistaken, I thought you were after me and I hoped to find out information about you and maybe even draw you out by going to your old stomping grounds in Florida.” She told him how she got the document. “What I have incriminates you. No matter what you do, this will end up with the cops. You’re finished, Jeremiah Beaufort. Give it up. Let Carlo call the sheriff to pick you up. Listen to me. Maybe after all this time you won’t get the death penalty.”
“How do you know my name?”
There might have been a half-second pause before she said, “It’s in the confession.”
“I never told Hickock or Smith my real name.”
“It was a long time ago and you were together for more than two months. At some point you must have. So listen—”
Beaufort felt himself go light-headed as his thoughts skittered around looking for a hold on his control. He knew he was sounding hoarse, but he managed to say, “No. You listen to me. You’re at the Tampa airport. By this time you’ve figured out I have friends in that part of the country.”
“So you did have Meadows killed.”
“Stop! Shut the hell up!” Beaufort paused to think. “If you just now called Carlo to warn him, that means you hadn’t read the document until just now. That means you haven’t shared the information with anyone else yet. And I have Carlo.” Then he stopped to hear what she had to say.
She spoke calmly, reasonably. “If you don’t want to give up, then just go. You’ve got a head start. I don’t care what happens to you and I won’t follow. Leave Carlo alone.”
“That doesn’t seem like the smartest course of action,” Beaufort choked.
“Yeah, you’re a good judge of smart,” her voice whipped over the line.
“Fuck you,” Beaufort said, anger taking over.
There was another pause and then her voice continued, calm and cold again. “Do me one favor. Put me on speaker so I can hear his voice again and make sure he’s okay. What harm can I do, right?”
Beaufort agreed and pressed the button. Her voice continued. “Hello, Perfesser.”
“Hello, O’Hari.”
“Has he hurt you?”
“No. I’m okay. You just take care of getting back safely and I’ll handle things at this end.”
Then it got a little weird, from Beaufort’s way of thinking, when she said, “Hey, I’m sorry if I’ve ever been an idiot
.”
“You haven’t, I have,” Carlo said. “An insensitive, unconsciously cruel idiot.”
“Okay, you win,” she said. “I love you anyway.”
There was a pause, and then Brigid went on, speaking to Beaufort while Carlo listened. “All right, then. You and I are going to make a deal. The confession for Carlo, simple exchange. But Jeremiah Beaufort, if anything happens to that man, the law can do their thing, but I’ll personally hunt you down no matter where you go. I’ve done it before and I know how to find you better than you know how to hide.” Her voice got as cold and soft as frost on the ground. “And then I won’t kill you. I’ll keep you alive. Maybe for years. It will be my only remaining pleasure.”
Beaufort didn’t know how every last thing was going to play out, but he thought he could see the next step now that he knew Quinn had the confession. He had the time to think while the woman made her way to Tucson. There was that. “I won’t hurt him,” he told her. “Right now I don’t have any reason to. We both want the same things. Get here and then we can figure out how to make the exchange.” He prided himself on regaining his composure, and already starting to think of a plan. “And you can threaten me all you want, but if I see one funny light out front or hear so much as one chopper blade overhead I’ll know I’ve got nothing to lose. You know what happens when a man has nothing to lose, I bet.” There was no response so he finished, “I’m going to hang up now and won’t be taking calls on this phone again.”
“You have a cell number? Give me that in case I need to reach you.”
Beaufort noted the number she was calling from on the phone’s display screen. “I’ll call you,” he said.
He hung up on her. With something close to admiration he turned to Carlo. “Your wife is one crazy bitch.”
Carlo moved his jaw where Beaufort had smacked him, and then nodded, clearly troubled more by the past minute than by anything that had gone before. “I’m beginning to get that, yes.”
Fifty
We Were Killers Once Page 25