Livid Quotes
"The prosecution was a dog with a bone. It didn’t matter what I said."
"No matter how difficult, we have to look unflinchingly. Would you agree with that, ma’am? That we owe it to April Tupelo to see the full extent of what was done to her at the end of her very short life?"
"The only reason he’s called me to the stand at all is for that singular purpose. To dismantle me. To impeach my credibility and integrity, leaving negative impressions foremost in the jurors’ minds."
"I don’t think you ever get accustomed to—"
"After death, the heart no longer is beating. Therefore, blood isn’t circulating and it settles like sediment."
"But legally it’s not why she’s dead. I base this on evidence I’ve studied, including photographs and video of the boat itself."
"Rumors are flying about why she’s never married and lives like a recluse in the family’s eighteenth-century haunted mansion."
"The defendant never went anywhere without his combat knife, the steel blade blackened, making it invisible in the dark,"
"And yet suddenly here you are the expert? The one we’re supposed to believe?"
"Death shouldn’t be political. It’s not something to be exploited or trivialized."
"Every public embarrassment, mistake and misfortune is a gift when one’s adversary has the obsessiveness of a stalker."
"Well, it won’t be possible to reach him now."
"I derive pleasure from taking care of my world and those in it."
"The only other bathroom option is going to Raven Landing, and I’m not optimistic."
"It takes a lot of energy to worry about the next thing that might maim or kill you."
"What she comes from is the problem, and she’s had her fill of my lectures going back to when we were living together."
"We can’t. Everything is about the eventual trial."
"The only sound is the steady drip-dripping of water from trees, and the whine of mosquitoes finding me as I step barefoot around puddles and plant debris and dead insects."
"It’s as if nature is in hiding and has been shocked silent."
"Get any evidence you need." Lucy locks me in her intense green stare. "I know we have and will. Because once it ends up in the FBI labs or elsewhere, you lose control."
"I’d better check on the troops," Tron decides. "I need to get some of these folks up to the house and give them the lay of the land."
"Someday I’m getting another one." He can’t stop staring. "Maybe call him Quincy. I don’t see any reason why you can’t use the same dog name twice as long as it’s not at the same time."
"Good idea. I’ll get the lowdown," he says. "I’ll find some PPE for you, a decent pair of booties." He tries to be more thoughtful.
"I might have a partial solution for your wardrobe failure, Aunt Kay." Lucy never calls me that when her colleagues are present.
"Annie’s power is out. Meaning no air-conditioning or anything else."
"The drone cameras can zoom in on a lot of things. License tags, for example." She wheels her bike around a puddle chartreuse with pollen. "We can do facial recognition in some instances."
"Even if he didn’t touch the body, he has access to the property," I explain. "His DNA’s going to be all over the place."
"We had an unsuccessful launch," the Secret Service officer says.
"Sounds like Pixhawk problems again," she decides, and he heads along his way, cradling the drone like a broken bird.
"Everything all right?" Lucy stops walking her bike.
"We should have at least four up," Lucy explains to me. "That explains why I’m seeing livestreams from only three."
"I’m not surprised Rachael would patronize the place," I say to Lucy as we walk away from the Mercedes. "A lot of CIA people do. The question is who she was meeting. Or who might have been driving or riding with her."
"You know I’m here to help if there’s anything I can do," she says. "It doesn’t matter that it’s not Alexandria P.D.’s investigation anymore. Tough shit if my first time out of the gate I get demoted."
"You’re already doing plenty." I can tell it pleases her to hear me say it. "Marino and I are grateful that you notified us. Thank you."
"What would be most appreciated is if you and your officers could help secure the perimeter," Lucy tells her as if they’re friends and comrades.
"That sucks," Fruge says. "I knew when the Hooke trial was moved up here that they were towing a damn Trojan horse into our backyard. I was totally against it. Why not other places like Roanoke, Charlottesville, even Richmond? Why way up here where traffic is a nightmare already? Why lure some of these rough people this close to D.C.? Because you ask me, that’s not smart. Not that anybody cared about my opinion."
"Unless Bose Flagler can be in two places at once, he wasn’t here," I add, old oak trees arching over the driveway like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral.
"You won’t get an argument from me. Why would someone hurt Wally Potter? He couldn’t have been nicer, if you ask my wife. What did he ever do to anyone…?"
"Trace evidence is going to be crucial because the killer was inside the store."
"I don’t want the two bodies inside the same cooler, room or vehicle at any given time."
"Keep an eye out for paper receipts that might tell us when the last purchases were made."
"The killer likely was getting in and out of a vehicle. I don’t see how else he could be moving around otherwise."
"I do my best to shake the image of his sparkling eyes, his friendly face and wispy white hair."
"I wonder if Wally might have been sitting in here doing paperwork when the killer took out the power."
"The steel filing cabinets on either side of the window would have blocked the radiation. As would the large floor safe that’s wide open."
"The safe has been cleaned out, and it’s unlikely everything in it would have had value to the killer."
"The missing desk chair is in the middle of the floor, Wally’s body slumped back in it."
"The tape is twisted, often cutting into the wrists, the ankles as the person resists like mad."
"This room might be where his throat was cut, but I suspect it isn’t where he died."
"We’ll want to do touch-DNA on all of the clothing."
"The body’s core temperature is 82 degrees."
"Knowing all this only makes it worse when my smart ring rats on me with a noisy, somewhat violent vibration reminiscent of a stinging insect."
"How about you? Did you get sent to the principal’s office?"
"The threat level is higher than it was last night."
"Oh, God. More cop cars and flashing lights. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any duller."
"Maybe it will come out that our lovely health commissioner had something to do with the Hooke trial ending up here in Alexandria."
"Hard to prove, and not everybody will care."
"All I ask is that people see Maggie and Elvin for what they are. That’s all I ever ask about anyone."
"My ring vibrates, and I don’t put Benton on speakerphone. I’d like what little privacy I can have."
"Got to go, and not sure when we’ll talk next," Benton is saying. "Don’t forget I love you."
"Kay, you’re surrounded by treachery, if you’ve not figured it out by now. It’s high time you had an administrative assistant who can kick some arse."
"Polyethylene terephthalate," He tells us the results of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.
"I’d live in a place like this if I had my way about it," Marino says, looking around.
"It’s like what they do to cars these days," Marino says. "Vinyl wraps instead of painting them, and you can pick anything you want."
"Don’t think I won’t talk to her," I reply as I see from the breaking news that two terrorist arrests have been made in Northern Virginia.
"I’ve not been in here in a while." Piper looks around the room with a startled expression on her face, avoiding the area where that tragic scene took place.
"Well, I do hope the two of you are planning to have a little supper." She leads us inside the house, charming with braided rugs on the heart pine flooring.
"Come on, Doc. Let’s get the fuck out of here." He puts his big arm around me, helping me through the door, outside into the warm brackish-smelling air, the tide quietly lapping.
"Are you hurt?" He’s steady and quiet, the way he sounds when frantic.
"… I made it clear we wouldn’t be ordering any more of them…," Bailey writes at 8:35 that September night not quite two years ago.
"… Can’t do this. Can’t do this," he writes repeatedly. "What happened to Midas? What happened to my poor fish…? What happened to me? So scared…!"
"The only one I’ve ever looked at is the last one he was keeping. I tried to read the final few pages to see if he said why…" She pulls the notebook out of the cabinet, handing it to me.
"I’ll take it up again with Elvin but nothing will come of it," Bailey muses in his diary.
"If you suited up in Mylar like we do in Tyvek, it would protect you from microwave radiation as long as all of you is covered."
"But Mylar doesn’t have to be bright or gaudy. Old tarnished metal birdhouses and dull aluminum window screens deflect radiation just as well as mirrored finishes."
"Bailey’s goldfish. It died when the power went haywire," Piper says what I expect.
"Don’t call nine-one-one," Marino tells her. "You haven’t, have you?"
"I truly believe we’re making matters only worse if we do to others what they’re doing to us. That’s not justice." The more Annie drinks, the more it sounds like she’s instructing the jury.
"That’s right." Dorothy nods her head. "And he very well could have partnered with what’s-his-name, the person blamed for the murders? Maybe both of them were involved. Who’s to say? Partners in the worst crimes imaginable."
"Be careful about categorizing." Annie is suddenly somber.
"He didn’t strangle her to death." I help myself to another Flash-Bang, a sip of my drink. "But he could have pushed her overboard and left her to drown. It wouldn’t have taken long. He may not have been able to save her even if he’d tried."
"What if reopening the cases goads him into action and he starts hunting down couples or who knows what?" Dorothy is on a roll.
"I had my Norfolk deputy chief Rena Peace work the death scene and conduct the postmortem examination. It wasn’t for me to do. I thought it fitting since she’d taken care of Bailey Carter."