Tonya

“Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Workers new to the job, rookie cops and ambulance drivers, struggle with the mess. Their eyes reel at ripped distortions that blur a formerly human identity. Experienced death workers throw a professional switch in their brains and see the face more clearly. Their eyes methodically link dismembered limbs, realign a rictus grin, and separate identity from wreckage. Cooly. As connoisseurs. For the investigators a dead body is not so much victim as evidence, the ultimate clue to the workings of the perpetrator. Banked”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

“Loss changes you. Sometimes that’s bad. Sometimes it’s good. Either way, you eat your goddam pork chop and go on.”
― Stephen King, Sleeping Beauties

“What the do-gooders label “de-sensitization” has a value as well as a price. Some of us can’t afford to be shocked by catastrophe. The surgeon, the burn ward nurse, emergency room attendants, paramedics, firefighters and cops, all those who scrape the still-screaming remains out of car wrecks, must cultivate their off-switch. Those who can’t learn to crack wise and discuss baseball over a corpse must find a gentler line of work. The rumor is that city cops get strange from what they see, their eyes flattening or sinking into sockets as deep and hollow as rat holes.”
― Sean Tejaratchi, Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook