I Am Pilgrim

But there was nothing, just a gale of fear blowing down the lonely corridors of his mind.

Life was duty. Like any soldier going into battle, I thought of the conflict that lay ahead. To be honest, I didn’t hope for success or glory. I just hoped that I would acquit myself with honor and courage.

everybody knows this—or cares probably—but the first law of forensic science is called Locard’s Exchange Principle and it says “every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace.”

every case I cited included those tiny details, that strange patina of circumstance and motivation, that allows good investigators to separate the genuine from the fake.

codicil

say that when men are dying in battle their fingers nearly always twist into the soil, trying to hold on to the earth and all the pain and love it holds.

It is fair to say a lot of my work has been a row through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat, but even by those low standards Markus Bucher was memorable.

“Still, it’s been a rewarding life compared to a lot of men. But you’d be a fool not to think—has anything I’ve done really made a difference?

was a dead British orator and writer who was on my mind. Edmund Burke said the problem with war is that it usually consumes the very things that you’re fighting for—justice, decency, humanity—and I couldn’t help but think of how many times I had violated our nation’s deepest values in order to protect them.