Memory Man (Amos Decker, #1)

by David Baldacci

The rear bumper had a sticker. It read, MY KID IS AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT AT THORNCREST ELEMENTARY. Congrats, you’ve just told a psycho exactly where to snatch your very smart kid.

Her hair was a pasty blonde, her skin wrinkled and splotchy. Her nose was crooked—some said from an encounter with a mean drunk when she was a beat cop. Her small, pointy chin seemed overwhelmed by her disproportionately large mouth where uneven and nicotine-stained teeth lurked like bats hanging in a cave.

Bad stuff starts in the hands and the eyes. It’s an early warning, like a canary in a coal mine.

Decker was a brave man, because you did not go into his line of work without being braver than average. But he was also scared, because you did not go into his line of work, or at least survive very long in it, without a commonsensical understanding of your own mortality.

“I have an ace in the hole.” “What’s that?” she said curiously. “I don’t give a shit.”

“And human beings have limits,” said Decker. “And you can say all you want about the world being unfair and people rising above the atrocities done to them, but everyone is different. Some are hard as steel, but some are fragile, and you never know which one you’re going to get.”