The law could bend. If there were lawyers involved, then there was always a deal to be made.
The doctor told her that more than thirty cops had showed up the night of her surgery to donate blood for her. He gave her a list of names. Many were from the late.
I don’t remember what it stood for,” Ballard said. “I was on patrol in Pacific Division and I remember filling out the forms on the MDC. Geographic something or other.” “Geographic Reporting and Safety Program,” Bosch said. “The guys down in the ASS Office really worked some OT on it.” “Ass Office?” “The Acronym Selection Section. You never heard of it? They got about ten guys down there full-time.
It was the Holy Grail of detective work. It had nothing to do with evidence or legal procedure or probable cause. It was just knowing it in your gut. Nothing in her life beat it.
I told him through the door that he could take his job and shove it up his ass. ‘Course, a week later I had to ask him to pull it out of his ass and give it back to me.
The tunnel was the place where vision narrows and the investigator sees only the bird in hand.
Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it. I treat it with the passion and precision of an undertaker – somber and sympathetic about it when I’m with the bereaved, a skilled craftsman with it when I’m alone.
You had to have an emotional response. It was that response that lit the match that started the fire of relentlessness.
Bosch took a step toward him. “Olivas, let’s get something clear before we go anywhere. You call me ‘Hotshot’ again and I’m going to shove the file up your ass without taking it out of my briefcase.
The sins of the father, he thought. His life and his world had once again clobbered his daughter. If he vowed to make those who did this pay, didn’t that include himself?
We’re all junkies. It’s just different drugs. I wish I had yours, but I don’t.
For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.
I fully acknowledge that it is easier to knock something down than to build it in the first place. But.
You know what they call a guy who switches sides in homicide? They call him a Jane Fonda, as in hanging with the North Vietnamese. You get it? It’s crossing to the dark side.
But when Bosch opened the files as part of his cold-case review, he took a different approach. He had always operated according to the axiom that everybody counts in this world or nobody counts. This belief dictated that he must give each case and each victim his best effort.
The truth was, there was nothing in the law that I objected to more than the death penalty. It was not that I had ever had a client executed or even tried such a case. It was simply a belief in the idea that an enlightened society did not kill its own.
He believed that war brought out the true character in a person, good or bad. He had no sympathy for Banks or the others.
Okay, Harry. We can work cases. But we bend the rules. We don’t break them.
The paying jobs were few and she was often taken advantage of by the leeches who were part of the entertainment industry. But she persevered.
It was a stock answer and I noted that going beyond government requirements when there were no such requirements meant nothing.