The Last Policeman (Last Policeman, #1)

by Ben H. Winters

“Depressed?” she says, smiling faintly, ironically. “Aren’t we all depressed, Detective? Under the weight of all this unbearable immanence? Aren’t you depressed?”

Peter Zell certainly had a lot of people in his life with whom he wasn’t that close.

He loved my mother a whole heck of a lot, was the explanation, and he just wanted to be where she was.

Her expression is intent, fixed, a woman with a story to tell.

classic noir line

“Naomi,” I say, and her eyes flicker in quick teasing recognition that I’ve never used her first name before.

“I feel like I wasn’t made for these times.” “I don’t know, kid,” she says. “I think maybe you’re the only person who was.”

me irl

I’m wishing now I had stopped to change from my day-at-the-office, my gray jacket and blue tie, to something more appropriate for dinner with a lady. Truth is, all my jackets are gray, all my ties are blue.

“Henry, just know that no matter what else—no matter how this ends—this was all real and good and right.”

so many people are feeling so awful these days that they had to close down this little room, move the nightly worship service to a bigger space, elsewhere in the building. That’s just how things are.

Missing, possibly dead, possibly in jail. Another catastrophe I failed to predict or prevent.

I can tell he’s about to try to talk to me, have some sort of human moment, and I don’t have time, I can’t do it. I have work to do.

It’s exhausting. People hiding behind the asteroid, like it’s an excuse for poor conduct, for miserable and desperate and selfish behavior, everybody ducking in its comet-tail like children in mommy’s skirts.

“No, thank you. I need information.” “I don’t sell that. I sell coffee.”

me irl

Although, when you look at it from inside this cramped room with the cross on the door, full of boxes of guns and canned foods and pills and syringes, you start to think: well, afterward has started already.

“I had to kill her.” “No one has to kill anyone.”