The Poet (Jack McEvoy, #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #5)

by Michael Connelly

I’m always interested in what cops drink. It tells a lot about them. When they’re taking it straight like that, I always think that maybe they’ve seen too many things too many times that most people never see even once.

My brother once told me the theory of the limit. He said every homicide cop had a limit but the limit was unknown until it was reached. He was talking about dead bodies. Sean believed that there were just so many that a cop could look at. It was a different number for every person. Some hit it early. Some put in twenty in homicide and never got close. But there was a number. And when it came up, that was it. You transferred to records, you turned in your badge, you did something. Because you just couldn’t look at another one. And if you did, if you exceeded your limit, well, then you were in trouble. You might end up sucking down a bullet.

twenty years.”

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools

Eventually, troubled thoughts gave way to exhaustion. I put the book down and collapsed back into my bed’s shell. I slept the sleep of the dead after that.

greeting and questions about where I was and what I

“I wonder if that choice of car was intentional?” he asked. “A pale yellow Mustang.” “Why’s that?” I asked. I saw Rachel nodding. She knew the answer. “The Bible,” Backus said. “Behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death.” “And Hell followed with him,” Rachel finished.

“You sound like you sympathize with Gladden.” Wrong thing to say. I saw the anger flare in her eyes. “You are damn right I sympathize. It doesn’t mean I condone a single thing he’s done or that I wouldn’t drop him with a bullet if I got the chance. But he didn’t invent the monster that is inside of him. It was created by someone else.”

“So, aside from what he told you,” I asked, “what was your take on Gladden? Did he seem to have the smarts that everyone around here is attributing to him?” She seemed to compose her thoughts before answering. “William Gladden knew his sexual appetite was legally, socially and culturally unacceptable. He was clearly burdened by this, I think. I believe he was at war within himself, attempting to understand his urges and desires. He wanted to tell us his story, whether it was third person or not, and I think he believed that by telling us about himself he would in some way help himself as well as maybe somebody else down the road. If you look at these dilemmas he had, I think it shows a highly intellectual being. I mean, most of these people I interviewed were like animals. Machines. They did what they did… almost by instinct or programming, as if they had to. And they did it without much thought. Gladden was different. So, yes, I think he is as smart as we are saying he is, maybe smarter.”

On the way back to the car I couldn’t resist. “I guess you never heard that you supposedly can catch more flies with sugar than with lemon.” “Why waste the sugar on flies?” he replied.

The excitement in the room and coming over the phone lines seemed almost palpable. It was all coming together, all the pieces. And tomorrow the agents were going to go out and get this son of a bitch. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” Thorson said. “Smells like…” “Victory!” shouted those in the room and on every

Backus looked at me as if I had just reported that I had seen the Marlboro Man wink at me.

Backus said the story was like a sheet hanging on a clothesline in high wind. Barely held on by a few clothespins, it was ready to fly away.

“They’ll start with the father,” she said. “I heard Brass was going up to New York to see him today. That’s one visit I wouldn’t want to have to make. Your son follows you into the bureau and turns out to be your worst nightmare. What’s that line that Nietzsche said? ‘Whoever fights monsters…’ ” “ ‘Should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.’ ” “Yeah.”