Free I Am Scout by Charles J. Shields

Chapter 6
    â€œSee NL’s Notes”
    They arrived at twilight in garden city, a town of 11 , 000 on the high western Kansas wheat plain, as the sky was turning a deep icy green. The radio kept repeating the same bulletin at intervals: “Police authorities, continuing their investigation of the tragic Clutter slaying, have requested that anyone with pertinent information please contact the sheriff’s office.” 1 Driving down North Main Street, Truman and Nelle glanced expectantly left and right for the Warren Hotel. It was supposed to be the best and closest accommodation to the Clutter farm in Holcomb, a village of 270 residents, seven miles west on US- 50 .
    They registered for adjoining rooms and then took the elevator upstairs to rest. The drive from Manhattan, Kansas, was monotonous, the last 100 miles of it through country so flat and featureless that a willow tree by a pond seemed interesting.
    The next day, December 16 , they walked a block to the Finney County Courthouse, the headquarters of the murder investigation. The person they needed to see was Kansas Bureau of Investigation detective Alvin Dewey, who had been appointed to coordinate the investigation by KBI chief Logan Sanford. Dewey was both a former Finney County sheriff and a former FBI agent. Chief Sanford had given him the additional responsibility of handling the press because he was not easily ruffled. In the field, a team of investigators was combing western Kansas for leads.
    Nelle and Truman consulted a hand-painted directory on the first floor of the courthouse and took the stairs to the second. A secretary greeted them and escorted them to Dewey’s office.
    Alvin Dewey was “just plain handsome,” Nelle decided on the spot, and made a point of saying so in her notes. 2 Dark-haired and dressed in a blue suit, he was seated at a mahogany desk positioned catty-corner in a cramped room. His mission as a lawman seemed defined by two prominent items in the room: a large map of the United States on the wall, and a thick criminal statute book on the desk. Dewey’s brown eyes sized Nelle up—“a tall brunette, a good looker,” he thought, indicating that Nelle had dressed well to help Truman make a favorable impression. 3
    Dewey invited them to sit down. His curiosity was piqued: he hadn’t seen either of them among the reporters who had been hanging around during the past three weeks.
    Truman, about five foot four and wearing a sheepskin coat, a long scarf that reached the floor, and moccasins—his version of western wear, apparently—acted as though he thought he was pretty important. Nelle took her cue from Truman and waited for him to begin a carefully rehearsed introduction. Dewey concealed a smile behind a drag on his Winston cigarette when he heard the sound of his visitor’s babyish voice.
    â€œMr. Dewey, I am Truman Capote and this is my friend, Nelle Harper Lee. She’s a writer, too.” The New Yorker magazine, he explained, had assigned him to write an article about the Clutter case. Miss Lee was his assistant. Now they needed to get down to business. They were here to find out the facts about the murder, the family, and how the town was reacting.
    Dewey listened noncommittally. They sounded like average reporters trying to get the inside scoop. “You’re free to attend press conferences,” he said. “I hold them about once a day.”
    â€œBut I’m not a newspaperman,” Truman insisted. “I need to talk to you in depth.… What I’m going to write will take months. What I am here for is to do a very special story on the family up to and including the murders.”
    Dewey indicated that he hadn’t heard anything to make him change his original offer: they could attend press conferences with the rest of their kind.
    â€œLook,” Truman said, struggling to separate himself from newspapermen with daily deadlines, “it really