The Night Fire Quotes
"It wasn’t a bad way to go—doing what you loved."
"Amazing Grace echoed mournfully across the cemetery."
"It was a nod to John Jack’s former standing in the department."
"He was a good man, Margaret. I learned a lot from him."
"He took great pride in all of the cases you closed."
"The service for Thompson lasted a half hour."
"His generation was losing the war of attrition."
"Human tumbleweeds moving with the winds of fate."
"Take every case personally and you get angry."
"The smell of kerosene mixed with that of burned flesh was overpowering."
"She was in charge of the scene until the fire experts arrived."
"I might not know about that mariscos truck out there, but I know about you."
"He wanted to survive the interview unscathed."
"He was treated and held in the jail ward."
"His confession was not freely, voluntarily, nor intelligently given."
"He sat frozen, catatonic, staring down at the table."
"You work for him, you work for the devil."
"He was the busiest retired guy I think I’ve ever seen."
"He wanted to know ahead of time if this was going to break in the media."
"He didn’t want to break the rule about smoking in the building."
"He didn’t respond to multiple questions from Gustafson."
"We don’t know exactly when he took the murder book."
"They mainly just work DNA cases over there."
"If you find that, you might be able to close it out."
"How long had you been treating Jeffrey before this incident occurred?"
"I was going to take a look at it for you."
"She walked over to the waiting firefighters."
"I don’t really understand the question."
"Your Honor, where is he going with this?"
"I’m going to go brew a fresh pot in the break room."
"There were not that many old gangsters on the street. Many never got out of their twenties alive, many were incarcerated with life sentences, and many simply grew out of gang life after realizing only the first two alternatives awaited them."
"The overlap meant they could have known each other, though one was white and one was black and groups in state prison tended to self-segregate."
"John Hilton had been murdered in a drug alley controlled by a man he had obviously known and even sketched while at Corcoran State Prison."
"I know your parole officer—the one you never showed up to meet after you got out of Wasco. We’ve worked cases together. You help me here and I’ll go talk to him. Maybe he lifts the VOP and you’re back on the street."
"She had found new life on the late-show beat. The department brass thought they were exiling her to the dark hours, but what they didn’t know was that they were redeeming her. She had found her place."
"The guy got shot in the alley off Melrose where you used to sell drugs."
"He kept homicide away from you when they wanted to talk to you about John Hilton."
"Tell me who gave the clear-out order and then I talk to your PO. That’s the deal, Dennard. You want it or not?"
"I don’t want to find out? You want to find out? I need you to tell me about that murder from twenty-nine years ago. Tell me what you know and what you remember and then that piece of paper disappears and you don’t have to worry about it ever again."
"Sometimes people deserve what they get."
"He said he was tired of having no friends and being overweight."
"It was him, we had him, and then you blew it up. Good job. You should be proud. You just undid everything you ever did with a badge."
"Don’t be so pushy. It’s only a short one."
"We all want proper credit for what we do, don’t we?"
"Is that a ‘lifestyle choice’ or are you just hetero?"
"I’m not going to lie to you. A lot of time has gone by."
"We were both, you could say. Nothing serious but sometimes things would happen."
"To me it’s a victim and that’s all I see, okay?"
"We’re calling it a suspicious death after all and that’s the protocol."
"I hope you weren’t planning to hit me up for a greenie on your crispy critter, are you?"
"This isn’t like the old days. I’ve got your GPS markers on my screen."
"It’s always good to get the fuller story, but sometimes the more you knew, the more you saw conflicts with other information."
"Submarining was a team leaving their assigned patrol area and cruising close to the station so they could return quickly when the shift was over."
"All right, people," Washington said. "Let’s get out there and do good work."
"I got a couple leftover things from last night, a phone number I need to trace. Let me know when I’m needed."
"I call, my friends come running," she said.
"The police, they protect me," Digoberto said. "Like you."
"We can’t be here all the time. I don’t want to get a call and find out you got robbed or hurt."
"You’re going to make me el gordo," she said. "Pero gracias."
"If you have one charge that’s a dunker and one that has issues, you drop the wobbler and go with the sure thing."
"This room stinks," Ballard said. "I’m going to go out and get some fresh air. When I come back, you tell me whether you want us to make a case against you or Elvin Kidd."
"We have no doubt that these are the right guys," Stout said.
"You can’t dwell on it. She made a choice. It was the wrong one."
"I don’t think so. It wasn’t that. She was going to shoot. I could feel it."
"And I want the summary report on this on my desk before that meeting."
"It’s not a big thing, Mads. In fact, it’s just a pill."
"They should pay. They should pay you a lot of money."
"You want to make deputy chief, don’t you?"
"Well, we have two different cases with the same law firm involved."
"It’s like buying the Tito’s vodka. She could have done it anywhere, but she bought it two blocks from where Banks was murdered—and at a place she knew had cameras that we would eventually get to."
"The only thing I did was read an e-mail that came up on his screen."
"You have to be registered to vote to be included in the jury pool."
"It’s supposed to be random selection. But every time they pull out a new pool of jurors, they winnow out those who have recently served, or who haven’t responded to summons in the past and have been referred for action."
"That’s a hell of an average. All because of you."
"True heroes are hard to come by, I guess."
"I know I should, but it doesn’t seem to matter in California."
"If she had walked in one door of the courthouse and out the other, they would have known it was her. She stayed around so Reyes could find her, interview her, and move on."