In Cold Blood: Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Four of Herb’s closest friends go to the Clutter home in order to clean up. As they burn the Clutter’s bloodstained belongings, one of his friends reflects on his friendship with Herb. “Everything Herb had, he earned – with the help of God,” he says. Watching the smoke rise, he is taken aback by how suddenly the Clutters’ fortune was swept away.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) agent Alvin Adams Dewey is put on the Clutter case. He’s an experienced investigator and was a personal friend of the Clutters. The other primary investigators in the case are Special Agents Harold Nye, Roy Church, and Clarence Duntz. At a press conference, Alvin reveals the basic facts of the case, and reveals that neither Bonnie nor Nancy had been “sexually molested.” The agents follow a number of leads, but have little luck scraping together clues, discovering a motive, or finding a suspect. One of the only things they learn is this: “Of all the people in the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered.”

With the exception of Mrs. Clare and a few stray citizens, all of Holcomb is in a panic over the Clutter murders. The hardware store is having trouble keeping locks and bolts in stock, and many of the houses in town leave their lights burning through the night.

Perry and Dick sit in a café in Kansas City. Perry obsessively reads a front-page article in the Kansas City Star on the Clutter murders. Perry, who has had a history of “hunches,” has a serious hunch that something bad will happen. Dick shrugs this off and orders another burger. Perry presses that they could get caught, bringing up a potential “connection” named Floyd. Dick implies that he’d kill Floyd if he were to squeal.

Dick questions Perry’s premonitions. Perry shrugs. “[O]nce a thing is set up to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t,” he says. He then recounts a recurring dream in which he tries to pick diamonds from a stinking tree, but knows that the minute he reaches for a diamond a snake will fall from the tree and attack him. Knowing this, he still reaches for a diamond, only to be attacked by the snake. Fearing ridicule, he refrains from telling Dick about the dream’s end, in which he is saved from the snake by a golden parrot “taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower,” and then is allowed to ascend to Paradise. The vision of the parrot has visited Perry throughout his life, always in times of need. Having listened to Perry’s telling of the dream, Dick replies, “I’m a normal. I only dream about blonde chicken.”

The day before the Clutter family’s funeral, Susan and Bobby agree to go to Garden City in order to “see Nancy.” They go to the funeral home and are shocked to see the Clutters dressed in their formal clothes with each of their heads “completely encased in cotton, a swollen cocoon…[that], because it had been sprayed with a glossy substance, twinkled like Christmas-tree snow.”

Kansas City. Perry and Dick have been busy – Dick has been writing bad checks all over Kansas City, under the premise that Perry is getting married (they buy and subsequently pawn a suit, a ring, etc.). All this talk of marriage has Perry thinking about his own dashed dreams of marriage – he has always dreamed of meeting a girl who was a “nicely groomed, gently spoken” college graduate. (The only girl he was close to marrying was Cookie, the nurse who tended to him after his motorcycle accident.) Perry envies Dick’s two marriages - things “a man ought to have.”

After a day of pawning, Dick and Perry have made quite a bit of money. Perry is excited – finally, his dream of Mexico will become a reality. Dick, however, seems downcast. Dick worries that his family will have to suffer the consequences of his crimes. Perry reasons that the duo will be able to pay off the bad checks once they reach Mexico, where they will become rich treasure hunters.

It’s three in the morning at the Dewey household and the phone is ringing off the hook; the Deweys have been flooded with shoddy leads and false confessions. Alvin, awake, ruminates on new developments in the investigation, and wonders why the murderer(s) took the time to treat the Clutters with simultaneous tenderness and violence. (Why put Kenyon on a mattress box, with pillows under his head? Why tie Nancy up, only to tuck her into bed?)

Having loaded the Chevy with stolen goods and all of Perry’s worldly belongings, Perry and Dick cross into Oklahoma. Perry is relieved, but Dick is uneasy – in escaping to Mexico, he is leaving behind his sons, his ex-wives, and his immediate family. He hasn’t said goodbye to any of them, for fear that it would arouse suspicion.

Only days after the funeral, Beverly weds Vere English in a lavish celebration. They chose to marry early, given that all of their relatives were already in town for the funeral. The day the last of the Clutter clan left Garden City, Bonnie’s brother Howard Fox ran a letter in the Garden City Telegram asking that the locals not seek the death penalty for the murderers. “[L]et us forgive as God would have us do,” he writes.

Dick and Perry are having a roadside picnic in Mexico. Perry speculates that there must be something wrong with them, given that they murdered the Clutters. “Deal me out, baby,” Dick says. “I’m a normal.” Dick secretly scorns Perry’s habit of bed-wetting, his dreams of treasure hunting, and even his new sunglasses (which Dick refers to as “flit stuff”). Dick brings up the murder Perry had supposedly committed years ago. “But a nigger,” Perry says. “That’s different.” Perry is convinced that something bad will happen as a result of their crimes.

As they drive away, Perry reflects on their conversation. Memories of the murder haunt him. He wonders if he was fated to live a doomed life, given that his mother had been an alcoholic, his sister Fern had been killed in a freak accident, and his older brother Jimmy had committed suicide. It is revealed that Perry lied about killing the black man – he’d only said he’d done it in order to impress Dick. Perry is shaken from his thoughts when Dick gleefully swerves to hit a dog.

Weeks go by, but rumors still abound in Holcomb, particularly in Hartman’s Café. Two of the café’s “steadiest customers,” Lester McCoy and Mrs. Hideo Ashida, announce that they’re leaving town. McCoy cites his family’s unease following the murders. Mrs. Ashida claims her husband had wanted to leave for a while, and she’d always convinced him to stay; after the death of the Clutters, she stopped fighting him.

Dick and Perry are aboard a small boat off the coast of Acapulco. A young Mexican man and a “rich middle-aged German” accompany them. Their money is almost gone. Dick has already gotten himself tangled up with two women and has mentioned that the Chevy will have to be sold. Perry lands a gigantic sailfish, an act that makes him feel “as though at last…a tall yellow bird had hauled him to heaven.”

Dick and Perry are in a motel room in Mexico City. Perry has come to realize that Dick simply cannot manage money – the sum they’d earned selling the Chevy has disappeared in a matter of three days, and Dick has refused to get a job as a mechanic, citing the low wages in Mexico. Dick argues that they have to return to the States. “Diamonds,” he says. “Buried treasure. Wake up, little boy. There ain’t no caskets of gold. No sunken ship. And even if there was – hell, you can’t even swim.” Terrified that something bad will happen if he abandons Dick, Perry resolves to stick with his partner in crime. Dick borrows money and buys two bus tickets back to the States.

Checkout time at the motel is drawing near, and Perry rifles through his memorabilia, trying to decide what he can afford to take with him. Perry thinks back on his life – on his parents, on the abusive nuns at the orphanage, and on a stint in Alaska that taught Perry to “dream of gold.” The harsh Alaskan wilderness also taught Perry to dream of warmer climes – Hawaii in particular.

Perry thinks back on his time as a Merchant Marine. He’d loved the seafaring life, but Perry recalls that had been bullied (and possibly sexually assaulted) by homosexuals aboard the ship. Thinking back on his time in the Army, Perry blames a homosexual sergeant for not promoting him “[b]ecause [Perry] wouldn’t roll over.” After being discharged from the Army, Perry got into a motorcycle accident in an attempt to join his father, Tex Smith, in Alaska, where he was supposed to help him open a hunting lodge aimed at tourists. He finally joined his father after recuperating, but the lodge was a failure. Perry then recalls his time in Worcester, Massachusetts, New York City, and (finally) Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing.

Perry is shaken from his reminiscence and pulls out another letter, this time from his sister Barbara, written to him in the spring of 1958, while he was serving 5-10 years in Lansing. The letter starts out by telling Perry about the goings-on in Barbara’s family, but quickly becomes a platform for Barbara to shame her brother for his criminal behavior. (“There is no shame – having a dirty face – the shame comes when you keep it dirty.”) Barbara argues that Perry has free will and that he isn’t doomed to a life of crime.

After Perry reads this letter, it is revealed that he hates Barbara, and that he harbors a wish that she had been in the Clutters’ house the night of the murders (presumably so he could have murdered her, too). Perry only keeps the letter because his friend Willie-Jay offered a detailed typewritten analysis of the letter (“Impressions I Garnered from the Letter”), which Perry treasures due to its sympathy for Perry’s plight and its insight into his character. Willie-Jay’s analysis ends with a warning to Perry: that his letters to his sister should serve a purely social function, given that any further letters from her of this nature “can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts.”

Perry picks up a notebook: “The Private Diary of Perry Edward Smith.” Perry’s diary contains quotes, ideas for a speech (something he was never called on to do), and bits of poetry. By this time, it’s nearly 1:00 – one hour before checkout. He checks to see if Dick is awake. He is – he’s having sex with a teenage prostitute. Perry tells Dick to hurry it up.

Christmas is near. In Holcomb, Alvin Dewey is driving to River Valley Farm, and stops at Hartman’s Café for a cup of coffee. A couple of local men harass Alvin about his failure to locate the murderer. Alvin leaves the café and walks to the Clutters’ farm. Alvin’s mind turns to his now-dashed dream of living in the country; his wife is now staunchly against the idea, given that the Clutters were murdered in their “lovely country house.”

His mind then turns to other murders that had occurred in Holcomb. Alvin recalls the 1920 Hefner Slaying, in which an AWOL soldier shot and killed the town’s sheriff. Alvin then thinks back on his own experiences with murder cases in Finney County: a man who stabbed a woman in the neck with a beer bottle in 1947; “a pair of railroad workers” who “robbed and killed an elderly farmer” in 1952; a husband who beat his wife to death in 1956; and the peculiar case of a man who committed a murder and then proceeded to bury and exhume the body repeatedly.

Dick and Perry are hitchhiking in the Mojave Desert. Their plan is to get picked up by a solitary stranger, who they’ll then relieve of their life and their car. A man slows down, but is suspicious and zooms off. Undaunted, the two continue to wait.