Amos Decker Quotes

More guns! No guns! Second Amendment! Guns kill! No, people kill!

Dark, cool, musty, smoky, where light fell funny and everyone looked like someone you knew or wanted to know. Or, more likely, wanted to forget.

She works in the intelligence field. They’re trained to lie and sell it like the truth. They obviously undergo the same indoctrination as politicians.

He got into the car thinking that people were interesting. Sometimes they just couldn’t distinguish the truth from bullshit. Sometimes they didn’t want to. It was often easier just to believe a lie.

What grade does she teach?” “Eighth. Where kids make the jump from nice, innocent kids to something a lot more complicated and emotional drama runs deep and hormones are out of control. Some days she comes home looking like she got hit by a bus.” “In my book, all teachers are underpaid,” said Decker.

He knew exactly what it was like to lose a child. And that fact wouldn’t matter in the least in this circumstance. There could be no commiseration among such people despite the seeming commonality of loss, because it was actually each parent’s totally unique hell.

But then he put aside the awkward encounter, which his mind allowed him to do quite easily. He could compartmentalize at an astonishing level. It came from not giving a shit.

It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.

The opportunity came up here, and presto, there you go. Sometimes that’s all you need for a major life change: a dream.

Businesses don’t give a crap about creating jobs. They care about making money. With robots, you’ll just need some tech guys to maintain and repair them.

His jumpsuit was white, and on the back were the letters D and R printed in black. They stood for “death row”. Mars had equated it to a snake’s rattle, warning folks to stay the hell away.

He filled a bowl with cereal that looked like twigs a squirrel had pooped out.

posting will be at the unemployment office.” “I don’t think

You know people who read are a lot more tolerant and open-minded than those who don’t.” “Great,

Kids make everything better. And harder.

I hate the world,” said Lancaster, looking miserable. “I don’t hate the world,” said Decker. “I only hate some of the people who unfortunately live in it.

Look at social media. I could post something about saving orphans and I’d be attacked as a sex-trafficking pedophile. People are such animals online.

I let circumstances beyond my control define me. That’s not good. That’s worse than lying to yourself. It’s like you’re lying to your soul.

He tried several keys he had taken from her purse until one worked.

I guess all judges get threats and stuff. Hell, these days, who doesn’t? Look at social media. I could post something about saving orphans and I’d be attacked as a sex-trafficking pedophile. People are such animals online.

But if your brain went, you were also gone, though your body lingered and became dependent on someone else to take care of it. And that would be your loved ones’ last impression of you, even though it wasn’t really you, at least not anymore.

Decker shook his head and stood. “It goes beyond mere eccentricity. She also has a run-down farmhouse and a crappy car that she drives to work and on her rounds as the proverbial Good Samaritan.” “What does that tell you?” “If you were a spy and had

But still, this was his hometown, his home state. He had played for the mighty Buckeyes and then, albeit briefly, the Cleveland Browns. He was a product of the Midwest. He never got too high and never got too low. He looked at the world realistically. He was a jeans and beer kind of guy. He could never fit inside a Ferrari, not that he would ever want to. He always tried to do the right thing. He helped others when they needed it. And he tracked down killers nonstop. And that was pretty much the sum total of Amos Decker.

Decker looked behind him. 'That's nice.' 'What?' said Mars, looking too. 'Where the NAACP office was they built a public library. You know people who read are a lot more tolerant and open-minded than those who don't.' 'Great, so let's get everybody in the world a library card.

The prisoners had also turned to look at Mars. Those doing push-ups and pull-ups stopped. They wiped off their hands and moved back against the wall. And waited. Their expressions were clear. Thank God it’s not me. The news had spread fast. Mars might be getting out after nearly being put to death.

Life had coincidences. Serendipity abounded. Wrong place, wrong time. It came as the result of seven billion people jostling each other within the span of a single planet. But there was an unwritten rule in police work: There are no coincidences. All you needed was more in-depth investigation to show that there are no coincidences.

He had avenged the murders of his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law. But that did nothing to take away the loss, the pain. Nothing ever could. Time did not heal wounds for Decker. The passage of time was irrelevant to his unique mind. Everything he had ever experienced in life was as freshly minted in his brain as the moment it was created.

ON HIS BED at the Residence Inn, Decker laid out all the construction plans for the American Grill that David Katz had built about fifteen years ago. The plans seemed pretty normal for such a restaurant buildout, but he didn’t recognize the name of the architect set forth on the plans. In fact, the address of the business showed that it was from out of state

And it was a good thing. Because despite all the unsettling things that his mind had been doing while he was here, the ability to be hugged or have your hand clenched by another without flinching, that simple act, which just about everyone else took for granted, had brought Decker a bit closer to the person he had once been. Before he had died on a football field and woken up as someone else entirely.

Decker blinked awake and sat up in his bed. He looked around, for a few moments unsure of where he was. Virginia. Quantico. The FBI gig. Right. He got up and padded to the bathroom. After that he walked into the kitchen and looked out the window. It was still well dark. He slid out the coffeepot with the intent to make and drink a pot while he went over case notes. Then he looked down at his massive gut and the slight wheezing apparently caused by merely getting out of bed and taking a leak, and sighed. “Shit,” he muttered.

her room now?” They were led down the hall by Beth. Before she turned away she took a last drag on her smoke and said, “However this comes out, there is no way my baby would have had anything to do with something like this, drawing of this asshole or not. No way. Do you hear me? Both of you?” “Loud and clear,” said Decker. But he thought if Debbie were involved she had already paid the ultimate price anyway. The state couldn’t exactly kill her again. Beth casually flicked the cigarette down the hall, where it sparked and then died out on the faded runner. Then she walked off. They opened the door and went into Debbie’s room. Decker stood in the middle of the tiny space and looked around. Lancaster said, “We’ll have the tech guys go through her online stuff. Photos on her phone, her laptop over there, the cloud, whatever. Instagram. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Wherever else the kids do their electronic preening. Keeps changing. But our guys will know where to look.” Decker didn’t answer her. He just kept looking around, taking the room in, fitting things in little niches in his memory and then pulling them back out if something didn’t seem right as weighed against something else. “I just see a typical teenage girl’s room. But what do you see?” asked Lancaster finally. He didn’t look at her but said, “Same things you’re seeing. Give me a minute.” Decker walked around the small space, looked under piles of papers, in the young woman’s closet, knelt down to see under her bed, scrutinized the wall art that hung everywhere, including a whole section of People magazine covers. She also had chalkboard squares affixed to one wall. On them was a musical score and short snatches of poetry and personal messages to herself: Deb, Wake up each day with something to prove. “Pretty busy room,” noted Lancaster, who had perched on the edge of the girl’s desk. “We’ll have forensics come and bag it all.” She looked at Decker, obviously waiting for him to react to this, but instead he walked out of the room. “Decker!” “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder. She watched him go and then muttered, “Of all the partners I could have had, I got Rain Man, only giant size.” She pulled a stick of gum out of her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Over the next several minutes she strolled the room and then came to the mirror on the back of the closet door. She appraised her appearance and ended it with the resigned sigh of a person who knows their best days physically are well in the past. She automatically reached for her smokes but then decided against it. Debbie’s room could be part of a criminal investigation. Her ash and smoke could only taint that investigation.

The lights blazed from every window and Decker could hear the music blasting out of the place. It was country, with a dash of rock and roll, at least to his ear. It shot through the air like a sound cannon.

The gal likes to have fun. But I’m in my fifties. Hell, I could be her father.” “Hasn’t stopped people in the past.

me. Usually it starts

It’s like Mark Twain said, everybody complains about the weather, but no one ever does a damn thing about it.

Everything you said is exactly right, Frederica. And you will carry that with you for the rest of your life, as I will. But if you let it be what leads your life and defines who you are, then your existence on this earth will not be nearly as positive or productive as it could be.

You were walking stiffly when you came in. Bone ache is a classic symptom.” He pointed to her forehead. “And it’s cold outside but your head is sweating. Another classic. And you’ve crossed and uncrossed your legs five times in the brief time you’ve been sitting there. Bladder problems. Another symptom.

And I can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

human beings, for better or worse, were undeniably social creatures. Without interaction they went mad.

synesthesia

long time, and he gets the balance just right.” “And it sounds like he taught you well,” commented Jamison. Dawson brightened. “He has taught me well. Sometimes too well, such that I’m sitting in a restaurant with two strangers talking about cow pens and nitrogen levels.” Jamison said, “The closest I’ve ever gotten to livestock is at a petting zoo.” “What else did Hal Parker tell you about finding the body?” asked Decker. “That he threw up. That he’d never seen anything that awful in his life. And he fought in the Middle East.” “But he couldn’t have known it was Irene Cramer. She was identified after she was brought in.” Dawson sat back and looked at Decker in a new, perhaps sobering light. “I’m good friends with Liz Southern. She told me. But I don’t want her to get into trouble. I was just curious after Hal told me he’d found a body of a woman.” “That’s okay,” said Jamison. “It’s a small town and news was bound to get around.” “Got any suspects?” “None that we can talk about,” advised Decker quickly. “Did you know Ms. Cramer?” “No. But I knew that she taught school over at the Brothers’ Colony.” “Do you know the folks there?” “I can’t say I really know them all that well.” She glanced at Decker. “So, Stan also told me that you’re his brother-in-law.” “Soon to be ex-brother-in-law, as I’m sure he also told you.” “I wouldn’t be seeing him if he were still happily married,” she said firmly. “That’s good to know,” replied Decker. “I have to admit that I went to the OK Corral Saloon and watched you two dancing. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him more uncomfortable.” Dawson smiled. “He is very

America didn’t have prisons. It had chaos pens where men were transported back seventeen centuries. Where the strong survived until it met something even stronger, and where the weak died every time.

This is not the 1950s,” replied Pierce. “The problem is not everyone seems aware of that,” said Decker.

The problem is not everyone seems aware of that,” said Decker.

The world hasn’t changed that much. In fact, I see the pendulum swinging back to where it should be. You can see it all over the place. People want to take their country back. Politicians are saying it. Laws are being passed. Hell, Hugh, you see that from where you sit. People don’t want to take this crap anymore. And it’s about damn time. Hell, for future generations of Americans if nothing else.

You give an inch and they take a mile. And little coloreds grow up into big coloreds. And now it’s the homos and the lesbos. And the trans-freaks. You telling me you think this looks like America? Are you?

You know people who read are a lot more tolerant and open-minded than those who don’t.

Make a reader early, you make one for life.

Results in the real world came from slow, dogged work, compiling facts and building conclusions and deductions based on those facts. And a little luck never hurt either. A

Montgomery dude said he killed my parents.

People are going to eat you alive over this article. And the witch even included the fact of where you’re currently living.” “I have an ace in the hole.” “What’s that?” she said curiously. “I don’t give a shit.

He could compartmentalize at an astonishing level. It came from not giving a shit. And

He typed in a request and sent

box. I’m sure of that.

But he was also scared, because you did not go into his line of work, or at least survive very long in it, without a commonsensical understanding of your own mortality.

He would have been forty-two years old in two months. His forty-first had been his very last birthday, as it turned out.

No.

There are no coincidences. All you needed was more in-depth investigation to show that there are no coincidences.

I don’t believe in ghosts or magic.” “I don’t either, Mary. But I do know one thing.” “What’s that?” “That this guy is not going to get away.

lugar,

So why do you think he’s involved?” This came from Agent Lafferty. Bogart turned to her, seemingly surprised that she had uttered actual words. Decker stared dead at her. “Because he’s inexplicable. And I don’t like people who are inexplicable.

complementary

Decker had worked his way onto the Cleveland Browns by busting his ass on the practice field, sacrificing his body in idiotic ways that had come back to haunt him in

Small observations can lead to large breakthroughs.

Decker gazed over at him. “You can still marry again. Have kids, Ross.” “I think raising kids is a younger man’s game. I’m not far off the big five-oh.

looking at her but not really seeing her, and his baby girl sure as heaven not seeing her daddy either

rooms one by one until they came to the stairs.

town.

I can be fat or I can smoke. I can’t be both.” They

there?” When

45 H

So the criminals win, that's what you're saying? For now they do. But it's a long game, Jamison. And I always play for the long game.

This guy had taken great care to not allow even a piece of his skin to be observed. They didn't even know if he was black or white. Although most mass murderers were white. And male.

down.

the parking lot out there, the right and left are reversed.

there show

But most of

comments because he needed Slick to

He looked up at Wyatt, who was

shirt cuffs, and said, “Mr. Leopold has been charged with three counts

I’ll be back,” he called over

In his mind progress was always to be measured in inches, especially when you didn’t have yards or even feet of success to show off.

Her face held the wonderful enthusiasm of youth as yet unblemished by life. That age was a nice time in anyone’s life. And it was necessary. To get through what was coming in later years. If we all started out cynical, what a shitty world that would be.

DECKER

more

Fall was nearly here, but summer was still hanging on, dragging its heat-flamed and moisture-rich knuckles across the stark tundra.

We have not one but two killers. And as implausible as it sounds, I don’t think either one knew about the other.

That was the thing about life. You actually had to spend time living it. Or else what the hell did any of it really matter?

She did ask for the name. And I gave it to her. Okay, now I remember. After

Decker’s longtime FBI partner, Alex Jamison, had been transferred to New York and found what looked to be love with a Wall Street investment banker. His old boss at the FBI, Ross Bogart, had retired and was learning to play golf—badly, he had heard—in Arizona.

that neither of them had seen before. “If people

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.

The cooler here holds twenty bodies. That used to be plenty. Never got filled up. Then the opioid crisis hit full force and the city had to buy a refrigerated trailer for excess capacity.

sort of thing. Think you

You don’t make widgets for a living. You find justice in this fucked-up world we all live in. You give the dead a voice. You hold guilty people accountable.” “I used to think that. Now I believe I was just chasing something I’ll never catch.” “You never used to believe that. I lost count of the number of times you told me that the only thing that matters is that when someone does something bad, they cannot be allowed to get away with it. Nothing else mattered, you said, if we let that slide. Because that one thing dictates the sort of world we will all live in.

So it was a true sunrise, where the colors changed at first subtly and then suddenly transformed the heavens in a way that no other occurrence could. Short of a nuclear bomb and its towering mushroom cloud. Yet both were transformative in their own right. One side of the world was lit, the other enveloped in blackness. The bomb’s kiss was for real. The sun’s movement was a metaphor for either darkness descending or light arising.

if you don’t grow, you wither,

me a way

The number 88. That was the numerical equivalent (the eighth letter of the alphabet being H) of “Heil Hitler.” Then the shamrock and the swastika, taken together, was often the mark of the Aryan Brotherhood. The Blood Drop Cross, which was the primary insignia of the KKK and known by the acronym MIOAK, meaning “mystic insignia of a Klansman.” And the initials KI, which might refer to another hate group, though Decker didn’t recognize them. Still, there were some Decker had had to Google. The Aryan Terror Brigade symbol, and Weiss Macht, which was German for “white power.” The sonnenrad, which was an ancient Indo-European sun-wheel and had been co-opted by the Nazis, who had placed the swastika dead center. Then there were the SS bolts, another Nazi symbol, and the triangular Klan symbol, which looked like three triangles within a triangle, but upon

any type of nearby threat. Finally, he opened his eyes