Dewey's Theories PDF

Dewey could not accept the theory that the family had been slaughtered for paltry profit---"a few dollars and a radio." To accept it would obliterate his image of the killer ---or, rather, killers. He and his associates had definitely decided to pluralize the term. The expert execution of the c...

Dewey could not accept the theory that the family had been slaughtered for paltry profit---"a few dollars and a radio." To accept it would obliterate his image of the killer ---or, rather, killers. He and his associates had definitely decided to pluralize the term. The expert execution of the crimes was proof enough that at least one of the pair commanded an immoderate amount of coolheaded slyness, and was---must be---a person too clever to have done such a deed without calculated motive. Then, too, Dewey had become aware of several particulars that reinforced his conviction that at least one of the murderers was emotionally involved with the victims, and felt for them, even as he destroyed them, a certain twisted tenderness. How else explain the mattress box? The business of the mattress box was one of the things that most tantalized Dewey. Why had the murderers taken the trouble to move the box from the far end of the basement room and lay it on the floor in front of the furnace, unless the intention had been to make Mr. Clutter more comfortable--- to provide him, while he contemplated the approaching knife, with a couch less rigid than cold cement? And in studying the death-scene photographs Dewey had distinguished other details that seemed to support his notion of a murderer now and again moved by considerate impulses. "Or"---he could never quite find the word he wanted---"something fussy. And soft. Those bedcovers. Now, what kind of person would do that---tie up two women, the way Bonnie and the girl were tied, and then draw up the bedcovers, tuck them in, like sweet dreams and good night? Or the pillow under Kenyon's head. At first I thought maybe the pillow was put there to make his head a simpler target. Now I think, No, it was done for the same reason the mattress box was spread on the floor---to make the victim more comfortable."