In Plain Sight (Joe Pickett, #6)

by C.J. Box

To a man, they were stupid. Even the ones with some intelligence had a stupid blind spot that later tripped them up. They deserved to go to prison. They didn’t think, they just did. They were nature’s mistakes, human bowel movements.

Where had that little chatterbox gone? The one who verbalized everything? The little girl who once provided play-by-play commentary of her own life in wild bouquets of words?

It was one of those schizophrenic spring/summer/winter May days when storm clouds shot across the sky in fast motion dumping both slashing rain and wet snow as if ditching their payloads in a panic, then darting away leaving sunshine and confusion, only to be followed by a second and then a third wave of clouds doing the same thing. There was something wildly adolescent about days like this, Joe thought, as if the atmosphere were supercharged with hormones and just didn’t know what in the hell to do next.

ARLEN TALKED for twenty-five minutes without notes, his melodious voice rising and falling, his speech filled with thunderous points and pregnant pauses. It was the speech of a politician, Joe thought, one of those stemwinders that, at the time you were hearing it, seemed to be all profundity and grace, but as soon as it was over, there was nothing to remember about it, as if the breeze had carried the memory of it away.