Quotes from Robert Crais

What the fuck are you doing in my house? I could've shot your ass." "Is someone in Los Angeles selling military munitions?" Talk about non sequitur. Jon

KELLY WALSH STOOD twelve inches from the table, close enough so he was forced to look up, but not so close as to touch the table. Pike recognized this as a controlling technique. By assuming a superior position she hoped to create a sense of authority. Like unplugging the camera. She was demonstrating she had the power to do as she wished, even at Parker Center. Pike

Jon glanced at his bedroom again. Nothing moved within the black rectangle framed by the doors. "Al-Qaeda." Pike nodded. "Listen, so you know, just because some idiot sells this crap doesn't mean it's going to terrorists. All-American morons turn grenades into paperweights, and RPGs into lamps." "The woman doesn't care about morons. She's been trying to contact an FTO." FTO. Foreign terrorist organization. Jon

Bishop had the muscle tone of Jell-O. Rossi

Chee was clearly mystified and impressed at the vagaries of the federal system.

He said, "Have you heard of two bank hitters named Marchenko and Parsons?" Holman watched her stiffen and knew she was finally interested. Now she wasn't just being nice or killing time until she could jump up and run. She took off her sunglasses. He saw that the skin around her eyes had grown papery. She had changed a lot since he had last seen her, but something beyond her appearance was different that he couldn't quite place. She

Holman studied the two cops. They were both in their thirties with solid builds and burnished faces as if they spent time outdoors. They were fit men and young, but neither had Holman's heavy shoulders and weight. The man seated beside Holman was wearing a wedding ring. Holman

Martin nodded, his head snapping up and down. He was wearing baggy gray sweatpants and no shirt. His torso was soft and undeveloped and covered with a thick growth of fine hair. He squinted against the bright morning sun. "Yeah, sure. What do you want?

Jack called to his friend. "Mañana, dude. We're gonna hang." "We

Tyson looked miserable as we drove to The Carl, and neither of us said much. We each had our reasons, but our reasons were different.

Jon found the phone and took it outside. This particular phone, the phone Jon used for business, scrambled its signal into garbage only a phone with a similar chip could unscramble. Deep

Hey, we've got this guy, Dan! He's ours!" Dan Tomsic stared at her with the disdain he reserved for shitbirds, defense attorneys, and card-carrying members of the ACLU. He said, "It's easier to cut off your own goddamned leg than convict a rich man in this state, detective. Haven't you been around long enough to know that?

Behind him, McIntosh whispered. "What if it's people?" "It's not." "I know these are animal heads, but this could be human blood. These organs could be from people." "They aren't. Butchered people smell different." McIntosh studied Pike as if wondering how Pike knew that, then pointed out the wall behind the counter. "Check

He snuggled closer, spooning into her back, both of them staring at nothing. Jack wondered what she was seeing. Krista

videographer stopped taping and looked me up and down as if he found me lacking but wasn't quite sure how. Then it hit him. "Don't you have a gun?" He glanced around the office as if there might be one hanging on a wall hook.

He nodded, approving. When he nodded, the two lesser attorneys nodded, too. No one had bothered to introduce them, but they didn't seem to mind.

Jonathan Green sat in one of the leather director's chairs across from my desk and the two lesser attorneys went to the couch. Truly stayed on his feet. The videographer noticed the Pinocchio clock on the wall, then hustled around to the opposite side of my desk so that he could get both me and the clock in the frame. The Pinocchio clock has eyes that move side to side as it tocks. Photogenic. Like Green.

both Neptune and Pluto were predicted long before they had ever been seen because of peculiarities in the orbits of the other outer planets. It made me think that planets weren't so very different from people. Seeing what happened around them was enough to tell you where they were and what they were.

That's right. He was tied in with a boy down there about the time of the murders. Wasn't enough money up here for him in hijacking; he wanted to bring in drugs, so he worked out something with a—lemme think a minute—a boy named Gonzalo Lehder. Made a few trips down there working out the deal, and I guess they hit it off. When we put the indictments on him, that's where he went." Cole wrote down the name. Lehder.

The tears were his. Tyson had earned them.

Scott parked in plain view by a gnarled podocarpus tree, nose to nose with the Jeep. He tucked the suspect sketch into his pocket, got out, and went to the edge of the slope. Cole and his buddies were watching him like three crows on a fence. A rumpled black cat with a crooked ear was watching him, too. The cat's eyes were hateful. Cole

I worried, but I couldn't bring myself to trap him inside and make him a prisoner, so I'd put in his door. The house felt empty without him.

Pike noticed details. The Marines had trained him to maintain situational awareness

Stone checked his watch. Tempus fugit. "Gotta