In Cold Blood

 "The phone rang once. Twice? Gosh, I can't remember. Except that once the phone rang and Mr. Clutter answered it in his office. The door was open - that sliding door between the living room and the office - and I heard him say 'Van,' so I knew he was talking to his partner, Mr. Van Vleet, and I heard him say that he had a headache but that it was getting better. And said he'd see Mr. Van Vleet on Monday. When he came back - yes, the Mike Hammer was just over. Five minutes of news. Then the weather report. Mr. Clutter always perked up when the weather report came on. It's all he ever really waited for. Like the only thing that interested me was the sports - which came on next. After the sports ended, that was ten-thirty, and I got up to go. Nancy walked me out. We talked a while, and made a date to go to the movies Sunday night - a picture all the girls were looking forward to, Blue Denim. Then she ran back in the house, and I drove away. It was as clear as day - the moon was so bright - and cold and kind of windy; a lot of tumbleweed blowing about. But that's all I saw. Only now when I think back, I think somebody must have been hiding there. Maybe down among the trees. Somebody just waiting for me to leave."

The travelers stopped for di

 As the black Chevrolet regained the highway and hurried on across a country side imperceptibly ascending toward the colder, cracker-dry climate of the high wheat plains, Perry closed his eyes and dozed off into a food-dazed semi-slumber, from which he woke to hear a voice reading the eleven-o'clock news. He rolled down a window and bathed his face in the flood of frosty air. Dick told him they were in Fi

 "Burris Motors,"

 "World's Largest FREE Swim pool,"

 "Wheat Lands Motel," and, finally, a bit before street lamps began, "Howdy, Stranger! Welcome to Garden City. A Friendly Place."

 They skirted the northern rim of the town. No one was abroad at this nearly midnight hour, and nothing was open except a string of desolately brilliant service stations. Dick turned into one - Kurd's Phillips 66. A youngster appeared, and asked, "Fill her up?" Dick nodded, and Perry, getting out of the car, went inside the station, where he locked himself in the men's room. His legs pained him, as they often did; they hurt as though his old accident had happened five minutes before. He shook three aspirins out of a bottle, chewed them slowly (for he liked the taste), and then drank water from the basin tap. He sat down on the toilet, stretched out his legs and rubbed them, massaging the almost unbendable knees. Dick had said they were almost there - "only seven miles more." He unzippered a pocket of his windbreaker and brought out a paper sack; inside it were the recently purchased rubber gloves. They were glue-covered, sticky and thin, and as he inched them on, one tore - not a dangerous tear, just a split between the fingers, but it seemed to him an omen.

 The doorknob turned, rattled. Dick said, "Want some candy? They got a candy machine out here."

 "No."

 "You O. K.?"

 "I'm fine."

 "Don't be all night."

 Dick dropped a dime in a vending machine, pulled the lever, and picked up a bag of jelly beans; munching, he wandered back to the car and lounged there watching the young attendant's efforts to rid the windshield of Kansas dust and the slime of battered insects. The attendant, whose name was James Spor, felt uneasy. Dick's eyes and sullen expression and Perry's strange, prolonged sojourn in the lavatory disturbed him. (The next day he reported to his employer, "We had some tough customers in here last night," but he did not think, then or for the longest while, to co

 "Sure is," James Spor said. "You're the only body stopped here since two hours. Where you coming from?"

 "Kansas City."

 "Here to hunt?"

 "Just passing through. On our way to Arizona. We got jobs waiting there. Construction work. Any idea the mileage between here and Tucumcari, New Mexico?"

 "Can't say I do. Three dollars six cents." He accepted Dick's money, made change, and said, "You'll excuse me, sir? I'm doing a job. Putting a bumper on a truck."

 Dick waited, ate some jelly beans, impatiently gu

 The door to the men's room was still bolted. He banged on it: "For Christ sake, Perry!"

 "In a minute.".

 "What's the matter? You sick?"

 Perry gripped the edge of the wash basin and hauled himself to a standing position. His legs trembled; the pain in his knees made him perspire. He wiped his face with a paper towel. He unlocked the door and said, "O. K. Let's go."

Nancy's bedroom was the smallest, most personal room in the house - girlish, and as frothy as a ballerina's tutu. Walls, ceiling, and everything else except a bureau and a writing desk, were pink or blue or white. The white-and-pink bed, piled with blue pillows, was dominated by a big pink-and-white Teddy bear - a shooting-gallery prize that Bobby had won at the county fair. A cork bulletin board, painted pink, hung above a white-skirted dressing table; dry gardenias, the remains of some ancient corsage, were attached to it, and old valentines, newspaper recipes, and snapshots of her baby nephew and of Susan Kidwell and of Bobby Rupp, Bobby caught in a dozen actions - swinging a bat, dribbling a basketball, driving a tractor, wading, in bathing trunks, at the edge of McKi