I disconnected, shaking with the adrenaline surge from the control I had had to exert over myself during the call. Of course I had lied about the confession incriminating Beaufort, because, after all, Hickock didn’t name him. Except for the first name Jerry, a common name, there was no way to undoubtedly connect Beaufort in all the ways I had figured. But Beaufort didn’t know that, or was too stupid to remember Hickock couldn’t finger him. It was critical that Beaufort stay in the dark about this. If he thought the document was useless as evidence he would have no reason to leave Carlo alive until I got there.
What would he do now? Would he head across the border with Carlo? Would Carlo stay silent as they passed the border guard? I wished I had been able to speak with him more, to give him some warning or advice. If only I had insisted on Gemma-Kate staying with him. At this point I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever be able to speak to him again and only hoped he felt some of the courage I was sending him.
What I could be sure of was that Beaufort wouldn’t take the chance of remaining in our house. He couldn’t know if I would make good on my promise to not call in the cavalry. That’s why he said he wouldn’t take any more calls on our landline. So where? To Gloria’s house?
I thought I knew how Beaufort’s mind would be working, but if Gloria was still alive, for me she was the wild card.
On the other hand, as far as Beaufort was concerned, I was the wild card.
“Yes,” I said to myself, and looked up, thinking, hardly seeing that I had stepped to the center of the concourse while I’d been talking, instinctively moving away from anyone who might have heard me.
One flight had managed to come from somewhere, and the stream of passengers rolled toward me in a slow wave. Half of them weren’t looking where they were going, focused on their iPhones. One of those, a gelled man in a shiny suit with an entitled bag that was bigger than regulation, came straight for me, texting, texting, texting. I didn’t want to get knocked over. Neither was I in the mood to give way. I let him collide with me, partly because I was in the mood to hurt someone and partly to test my physical resolve.
It felt good, watching his anger flare before he stepped around me, before the entire wave of people gave me a wide berth. Plus the resistance had focused my mind on the problem. Moving off in the direction of the TSA office, I placed another call, this one to Rising Star, my old acquaintance who was currently in Homeland Security.
When she knew it was actually me, she said, “I believe I can get you to Dallas. I’ll call ahead there, but you may have to make other plans. If there’s no flight there’s no flight.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. I’m serious, we didn’t have this conversation.” And disconnect.
By the time I got to the office I was more in control and knew enough not to burst through the glass door. Bursting is not taken kindly by TSA.
“May I help you?” the woman in uniform at the counter asked, not exactly alarmed at the look on my face, but not completely at ease, either.
“I’m here to see Mr. Holly. He’s expecting me.” I shook confusion out of my head. “That is, he’ll be expecting me in approximately forty-five seconds. Tell him Brigid Quinn is here.”
The woman looked at a colleague. I could read her eyes as well as he could, and they said keep an eye on her. She disappeared through a door behind the counter, giving me a glimpse of a long hall. She was back in forty-three, forty-four, forty-five …
Forty-six. “Mr. Holly will see you,” she said, and, shooting a now-puzzled look at her compatriot, showed me down the hall and into an unassuming little office that held a small desk behind which sat an unassuming man. He was hocking up his postnasal drip with such vigor that when he finally succeeded, I wanted to applaud.
He glanced up at me and then went back to the computer in front of him. “You know so many flights have been canceled.” He started clearing his throat again, so I interrupted.
“You know this is an emergency,” I said.
“So I’m told. Would you care to elaborate on the nature of the emergency?”
“No, thanks.”
He frowned at the screen as if blaming it for his being too low on the food chain. “I’ve got one flight here that leaves in twenty minutes. It doesn’t get you all the way, just to Dallas, and it’s already overbooked. I can’t bump someone without calling attention to the airlines.” He rocked his head back and forth a second while I waited without encouragement.
“There’s one seat that would be available to you. It’s scheduled for a sky marshal.” He examined me over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses and nearly indulged a condescending smile. “How do you do with airplane rage?”
“I’m good with it,” I said, and there was something in my voice that made the smile disappear. “I have to get to Tucson,” I said.
“I’ll phone ahead. I’m not sure what will happen in Dallas, but someone will meet you at the gate.”
“Give me a badge,” I said.
He handed me an official-looking tag which I attached to the collar of my jacket.
“I won’t give you a weapon,” he said, as if that would be my next demand.
“I don’t need a weapon,” I said, heading out the door and trotting to the gate while pondering my next move.
Someone once said, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. I took Beaufort at his word and assumed he was desperate enough to kill Carlo. That he might not be thinking clearly. Also, that there was a chance the well-abused Gloria might have become his accomplice. This was an added concern because she was an unknown, possibly dangerous, and doubled the odds of getting either Carlo or me killed.
Even if Beaufort could be proven (and so far this document was all the evidence there was) to have been at the scene of the Clutter family murder, he was twelve years old at the time. And there was no other evidence beyond this that he had actually pulled a trigger.
How bad did it have to be to risk killing Meadows? And what else would he do to prevent being found out? Answer: Meadows was closer than he knew to solving the mystery behind In Cold Blood, the solution no one had dreamed of in nearly sixty years. And if Beaufort would take the risk of killing Meadows, he was liable to do anything.
When I arrived at the gate they were boarding and I was in the last group. That gave me time to catch my breath and call Gemma-Kate. She answered with “Sorry, I have to take this.” I started to tell her what was going on, but it was a few moments before she responded with “I was in organic chem lab.”
“You were right about Hickock and Smith,” I said, not troubling to apologize for interrupting.
“About what?”
“Almost everything.”
“I missed something?”
“Listen. I never thought I’d be saying this, but I need your help.”
She asked help with what, and I think I managed to give her an explanation within three, maybe four seconds. With Gemma-Kate all she needs is a couple of words to get the picture.
“Let me organize things from here,” she said.
“No. The guy’s worse than crazy, he’s stupid crazy. Put the Tucson cops on the scene and you don’t know who’s going to get hurt. But I have an idea, if you can get something for me.”
“Can’t you just do your usual, walk in and shoot him in the face or something?”
“He has Carlo. Carlo might get hurt.”
“No.”
“Besides, he knows I’m coming and I’m pretty sure he has a gun.”
“Don’t you know how to kill someone with a credit card?”
“I’m sure he’ll take whatever I have on me. He’ll take my wallet.”
“Will he be eating anything, do you think?”
“It’s not that kind of a situation. Gemma-Kate, just listen. I need a weapon that doesn’t look like a weapon.”
“That stick of yours with the razor on the bottom?”
“He would see it. That won’t get by.”
&
nbsp; “Okay, what are you thinking? I’ll do anything.”
“Get me some pepper spray,” I told her. “Only it can’t be in one of those aerosol canisters marked ‘pepper spray.’ Understand?”
“That’s it, capsicum? That’s your plan? And you say this guy is crazy? Do you realize the chance you’re taking?”
“Just do it, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
There was barely a beat of silence before she had thought through several scenarios and I felt her nodding into the phone. “I’ll see if I can get the materials and tell you how to handle them without hurting yourself. How much time do I have?”
“I’m in the Tampa airport about to board. I’m seeing a Dallas connection on the departure board, so if I can manage the connection it puts me in Tucson by four fifteen. I’ll pick you up. Just call me back to confirm you’ve got it and tell me what to do.”
Gemma-Kate disconnected. I got on the plane to Dallas, found the seat, and buckled myself in, my mind repeating all the connections I’d missed until now. To break the useless flow I went back to reading Hickock’s confession because it was all I could do.
Fifty–one
Right from the start Perry and I had agreed that we would split up after the robbery, and then get back together to leave Kansas. If Perry told Capote that we decided to stay together in case we were picked up, that that way we could back up each other’s story, that part is true. For now, we were going to leave town together and I wanted to see my parents one last time. They are good people. Were good people. Mom is still alive but Dad is gone.
After I brought the car we had been using back to the garage, I stole a ’57 Chevy and changed the plates. When I arrived at the house Dad asked where I got the car and I said it belonged to a friend of mine. He seemed to believe me, but his face drooped a little bit in this sad look he started getting the first time I stole a car (that was what I was in jail for the first time).
Mom did not ask any questions, she just cooked my favorite dinner, fried pork chops, and I must have eaten four big ones. After dinner when the sun was down I hid the shotgun behind a cedar chest. That’s where they found the gun later.
On November twenty-first I drove into town to pick up Perry to go to Mexico, planning to kite some checks on the way to fund us. When I pulled up in front of the rooming house I saw the boy standing next to Perry. I suppose I had told myself that the boy would not stick with us. It was a shock seeing him there, I must say.
No, I said. Just no.
Before you go getting upset, wait until you hear him out, Perry said. They both got into the car, Perry in the front passenger seat and the kid making himself comfortable laying across the back seat like he had whenever we drove somewhere.
I still protested, even as I got back into the car. Not Jerry, I said. He made me as nervous as he did before. Worse now, because while we were split up, Jerry had gone to a gun shop and bought a .22 caliber pistol and some shells. He waved it back and forth while we talked. I asked where he got the money for it.
That was when he confessed he had not given Perry all the money he found in the Clutter house. I yelled at him then, thinking he might have found the ten thousand dollars we thought was there, and was holding out on us. But he said he had found a lot, not as much as ten grand, but he would share it with us if we would take him to Mexico with us when we went. He said he would not show me where the money was until we were on the road there, and he wanted Perry to know in advance so I didn’t try to kill him.
No one really knows about the money. We celebrated that night, and I felt much better.
Perry talked about his mother who ran out on him when he was a little boy, and about his father who raised him. Perry had helped his father build a tourist cabin up in Alaska but nobody came.
Jerry said he was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and had a little brother who he killed with his pop’s hunting rifle when he was twelve and his brother was eight. He said it was an accident but he still got sent to a reformatory. When he got out two years later his parents did not want him anymore. That was how he ended up walking across country with his grandfather.
Perry wiped away a tear when he heard this story. I figured some parts of this story might be true, but there was no way of telling which ones. All I could see is that it seemed unfair to kill the one person who stood by you, even if he did so for dirty reasons, but I kept this thought to myself because I could already feel the rift that was forming between Perry and me because of that boy.
They both looked at me so I told about my life, my parents, and my marriages that did not work, and about my four boys who I thought were doing pretty well though I never saw them very much. That’s how the kid found out about their names and where they live.
* * *
Jerry now told us where he had buried the money, about a mile outside of Olathe. He said it was more than six thousand dollars and he had found it in Mr. Clutter’s office, in one of the file cabinet drawers where we hadn’t looked yet because Mr. Clutter interrupted our search. He had found it when we were busy with the Clutters. He repeated that if we took him with us he would share it.
The kid is very generous Perry said. He could have just taken off with the cash instead of funding our getaway.
It would take me nearly two years to earn that much money at the garage. So we headed south through Oklahoma to the Mexico border.
Whoever reads this may already know about our trip around the country, from Kansas to Mexico to California to Florida and back to Nevada where we finally were caught. It was a trip of more than seven thousand miles, and no one ever asked how we were able to make that trip on bad checks. The money the boy had taken from the Clutters, or at least some it, slipped out at my last clemency hearing, but I do not think Perry told it to Capote. What we told about the trip around the country stuck to the facts. The only thing we both left out is that the boy was with us the whole way, right down to him being in the room when I brought in the Mexican whore.
There has been talk that I was trying to prove I was normal or something like that, but the fact was we only had the one room and Perry and the boy refused to leave. So I did it with the two of them watching and I did not care if they looked at each other and grinned as if they knew something between them they would not share with me. But after the woman (and she was a grown woman, not a young girl at all) left, the boy asked if I enjoyed myself. I said yes as a matter of fact I did, and he said good, because I paid for her. I knew what he meant, that we would not have money for anything if it had not been for him finding all that cash at the Clutter ranch, but I kept my cool and left. I passed a few checks one town over and felt better having some of my own money in my pocket.
I talk about this now because it was a continuing sign that Perry and I were not the friends we had been before. Whenever the boy and I had a difference Perry would stick up for him and it was “getting my goat.” I remembered thinking of killing him and the boy back at the Clutter ranch, and these days I thought about it more and more.
I was ready to leave Mexico and that was the one time the boy sided with me against Perry. He was as bored as I was.
A good thing about these days is all the interstate highways that have been built. I-10 which runs all the way across the country from Phoenix to Jacksonville, Florida, had been constructed just a couple of years earlier, as if the government was helping us get around the country fast. I passed a few checks along the way and we saved some money by often sleeping in the car. This was especially good because there was less chance of being spotted by someone who might recognize us or the car as we drove through the center of the country.
After a brief time in California we headed east on route I-10 all the way to Tallahassee, Florida, which is where the panhandle meets the main part of the state. When we were getting gassed up at a Standard Oil Perry went into the gas station for some snacks and came back with a map also. We looked at the map and noticed that the only highway in Florida was the Sunshine State Par
kway that ran along the east coast. But that was okay. With each day that went by we worried less about being found out, and took our time getting down to Miami.
We stayed there over Christmas, in a nice hotel, reading magazines and swimming in the pool and the ocean. But with Jerry always hanging around I had stopped having any fun. I was feeling pretty much whipped. When Perry said he wanted to head to some place with some action, like Las Vegas, I did not have any will to disagree.
I was afraid to say it is either him or me to Perry. I hated Jerry, but I thought Perry might choose him, and I hated being left by myself even more. People may think that I did not think anything about the Clutters, but I did. I did not want to be left alone with my thoughts. And I did like Perry. I thought he liked me, too, before Jerry came between us.
I sat out by the pool on our last night in Miami and made pretend conversations like, Perry either the kid has to go or I have to go. We cannot keep going on the three of us because that fat assed kid is always riling me. And then Perry said (inside my head) well, you sure make it easy to rile you. And I did not know how to answer that. Even in my head I could not win an argument with Perry. I do not think that imagining conversations makes me crazy.
* * *
On the drive north from Miami we stayed in Sarasota for a few days, which is half-way up the coast. Perry was no longer in a hurry to get to Las Vegas, I think he had just been pushing for that to see if I would do what he wanted. Even on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico the motels were very reasonable. Perry bought every newspaper with us in it and read every word aloud. It appeared he was particularly nervous about him being spotted around the scene of the crime, what with being so short and having a limp. I blended in more as my only distinguishing characteristics are some tattoos and one eye that was hurt in a traffic accident when I was younger and never healed properly.
It was very peaceful and I liked it better than Miami or Mexico even without the woman. But after a couple of days Jerry said he was bored, hanging with a couple of old men. Perry and I were maybe ten or even fifteen years older than him. Perry said it was time to head on to Las Vegas.
We Were Killers Once Page 26