I don’t make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me for a sicko or—worse—a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don’t show up crying outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry about what it’ll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.
