Quotes from Robert Crais

When I got home that evening the cat was sitting by his bowl in the kitchen. I talked it over with him while I was making dinner, and said, "What would you do?" The cat blinked, then bent over and licked his anus. Cats lead simple lives.

Grebner shuffled warily to his feet. Pike turned him around, tied off his hands, then pushed him back to the floor. Grebner squinted at Pike, trying to read him, but saw only the mirrored surface of Pike's sunglasses—blue bug eyes in an expressionless face. Pike knew Grebner would find this unnerving. Like Walsh when she had him at Parker Center, he was psyching the edge.

Truly said, "We've talked to people, Mr. Cole. You've an outstanding reputation for diligence, and your integrity is above reproach.

I said, "Okay, Luke. Here's my problem. I suspect that your mentor, Mr. Green, is suborning testimony. I think he may even be involved in murder, only I can't figure out why a man in his position and of his stature would risk his ass by so doing. Do you understand that?

There are two crime scenes at every kidnapping. The first crime scene is where they snatch you, the second is where the cops find your body.

I parked in the basement, then took an elevator to the lobby where I went through a metal detector and gave my name to a guy who looked like he ate a Pontiac for breakfast. Then I took another elevator up to seventeen.

Lauren and Gina, maybe. We're all friends.

Mr. Locano lowered the note. His cool expression told me I had insulted him. "My practice is immigration law. I help clients obtain visas and green cards, and fight deportation and removal orders. If you believe I'm involved in something illegal, you misunderstand the nature of my work." "That isn't what I meant to suggest, Mr. Locano. If I sounded that way, I apologize." He didn't look mollified. "Nita

He turned and went out the back of the kitchen, the midget swaggering behind him. Eddie Tang went with them, walking backward and keeping his eyes on Joe Pike. He stopped in the door, gave Pike a nasty grin, then peeled up his sleeves to show the tattoos. He worked his arms to make the tattoos dance, then snarled and flexed the huge traps so they grew out of his back like spiny wings. Then he left.

We said our good-byes and I called Joe Pike to tell him that we were once more employed. His answering machine picked up on the first ring and beeped. He used to have a one-word message that just said, "Speak," but I guess he felt it was long-winded. Now, there was just the beep. When I asked him how people were supposed to know who they had gotten or what to do, he'd said, "Intelligence test." That Pike is something, isn't he?

She blushed and we went into a small lab that looked not unlike a doctor's office and smelled of naphtha. A black Formica counter ran along one wall with a shelf of little bottles above it and three light trays. A single steel sink was sunk into the counter, with a binocular microscope on one side of it and a large magnifying glass on a gooseneck stand on the other. Modern crime fighting at its cutting-edge finest.

POLLARD CALLED IT the blood tingle. She blasted up the Hollywood Freeway, high-fiving the dashboard and pumping her fist, feeling the electric buzz in her fingers and legs that had always come with making a breakthrough in a case—the blood tingle.

I put everything back into the envelope, then called my friend Eddie Ditko at the Examiner. Eddie has been a reporter for about ten million years, and he answered with a voice that was maybe three weeks away from throat cancer. "Ditko.

Are you pleased to hear her living? Is this what you wanted?" Pike hesitated. Keeping his voice level was more difficult this time. He nodded to let Cole and Barkley know she was alive.

It was eighteen minutes after seven, and I was getting ready to take a shower when the phone rang. Adrienne. I said, "Hi, Adrienne." Elvis Cole, Too Hip Detective, pretends he can read minds.

She looked at me with clear eyes that were free of doubt or equivocation. "Of course. I knew that we would.

The lifter didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention, but the buzz cut was looking at everything. He scanned the storefronts and alleys and rooflines, his ice blue eyes moving in an unhurried, practiced sweep. I wondered what he was looking for, and I wondered where he had picked up the habit. I said, "Afghanistan." The ice blue eyes never stopped their search.

The arrows. What they mean is, you control who you are by moving forward, never back; you move forward. That's what I do. That's what we're going to do.

The rocks and rotten branches cut into Daniel's back. He took a tentative breath, and heard a wet popping in his chest. He coughed, but all that came out was aborted vomit. Daniel

You may be interested in why I am waiting for Adrienne to call." "I'm sure I don't want to know." "Do I detect coolness?" "You detect indifference. They are not the same.

I stood with Sherman, watching them go, and wondered at Jonathan Green's lack of concern. I was thinking that maybe he was crazy, or arrogant, or brimming with the fatal flaw of hubris, but you never know. Maybe he was just used to winning.

A black Chevy coupe with acne corrosion passed in the opposite direction, and two aging black pickups.

I went to bed at twenty minutes after one that night, and still the networks were on the air, rehashing the landing, replaying the interviews, offering taped "live" coverage of something that was no more alive than a nightmare.

Larkin pushed the accelerator and felt the wind lift her hair. She bore south on Vine, then east on Wilshire, laughing as her eyes grew wet. Light poles flicked past; red or green, it didn't matter and she didn't care. Honking horns were lost in the rush. Her long hair, the color of pennies, whipped and lashed. She closed her eyes, held them closed, kept them shut even longer, then popped them wide and laughed that she still flew straight and true—