Third Degree QUOTES

4 " Danny knew he should dive, but now that it had come to this, he found himself unable to do it. He had betrayed this man. And he couldn't consign him to the grave without accepting responsibility for what he'd done.

Warren's gaze cut through him like the eye of God, to the darkest reaches of his soul. Danny sensed no judgment in the gaze, though, only grief. A profound sadness that a man Shields had believed to be noble had turned out to be merely, even terribly, human. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

5 " What do you think, Doc?"

The patient's question penetrated Auster's reverie. "I think you're doing about as well as you're going to do, Mr. Johnston. You're not going to play ball for the Yankees, but you're not going to drop dead anytime soon either. You'll probably still be fishing when they bury me."

Johnston gave a little laugh. "I hope so, no offense. But I was thinking, Doc, you know. . . . I might need some tests."

Auster looked back in puzzlement. Johnston had the tone of a patient who'd read some article on preven tive medicine in [i]Reader's Digest[/i]. He probably wanted a goddamn sixty-four-slice CAT scan of his heart. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

6 " It was so easy to forget the man was dying. Danny wondered if Shields forgot it himself sometimes. For the first second or two after he woke up in the morn ings, maybe. Danny had a paraplegic friend who'd ex perienced that. He said there was nothing worse than the crushing weight of remembering that he was para lyzed and couldn't get out of bed. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

7 " Do you think I haven't been tempted?" Warren shouted. "Do you think I haven't had nurses offer me any damn thing I wanted, no strings attached?" "I'm sure you have."

"Not only nurses. Wives of friends, teachers at the school, friends of yours! The signs are always up: 'Pussy for rent'! Nobody has any honor anymore. Nobody keeps their promises. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

8 " Biegler, you remind me of every REMF I ever met in a combat zone. You want a guaranteed result with zero risk, and your ass covered if the shit hits the fan. But that's not how it works in the real world. So please shut the fuck up and let me work here. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

9 " circa 1985. Vida's great claim to fame was winning a televised wet T-shirt contest in Destin she'd beaten 150 other competitors-but two children and ten thousand cheeseburgers had deflated her prized assets and hidden her waist in a roll of hard fat. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

10 " Most of his fellow TRU deputies were white country boys of a type Carl knew well. The majority were ten to fifteen years older than he, and some were over fifty. In a town with high unemployment, men didn't give up jobs with benefits unless they were pushed out usually after an election. But despite the age and background of the men, there was an attitude of benign tolerance toward black officers in the unit. Prejudice still existed, but it was an amorphous thing, difficult to point at and impossible to prove, except in a few cases. Even the hardcore, Southern-rock NASCAR types accepted that civil rights reforms were here to stay, and they tried to make the best of it. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

11 " Has anybody even talked to Dr. Shields yet?"

Willie shrugged. Then his radio crackled again.

"We've set up the command post in the Shieldses' front yard, under a stand of trees. Tell Carl to get his ass up here, ricky-tick."

"You heard the man," said Willie.

Carl exhaled long and slow, trying to prepare himself for the blast of testosterone he would encounter a few hundred yards up the street. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

12 " Carl nodded soberly. Warren Shields had been treating both his mother and father for the past six years, and they spoke of him almost reverently. Or they had until Carl’s mother had her stroke, which was what had brought Carl back to Athens Point rather than to Atlanta, where his girlfriend lived. Now only Carl’s father could praise Dr. Shields in intelligible words. Dr. Shields had spent several hours with Carl and his father over the past year, advising them on how best to care for Eugenia Sims, and Carl had instinctively liked the man. Shields treated his father with the respect due an older man, and he treated Carl just as he would anybody else, no better or worse. Carl liked that. Shields reminded him of doctors he’d known in the service, truly color-blind and focused on their work. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

13 " But inevitably, after all the hardware questions had been answered, Breen would circle down to the question he’d really wanted to ask: What’s it like to blow some unsuspecting raghead’s shit away from a thousand yards? Carl always answered the same way: I tried not to think about that side of it, sir. It was a job, and I focused on the mechanics of it. Guys like Ray Breen never grasped the true nature of sniping. It was as much about concealment as it was about shooting. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

14 " All human beings, Carl had learned, were fascinated with death. Only those who knew death intimately, as he did, understood its essential mystery. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

15 " Dad!” called Grant, staying put. “I think Mom’s sick.”

I’m not sick, baby, I’m watching the goddamn world end. . . . “I’m fine, sweetie,” Laurel choked out. “Perfectly fine. Did you brush your teeth already?”

Silence now, a listening silence. “You sound funny.”

Laurel felt herself gearing down into survival mode. The shock of the positive pregnancy test had caused a violent emotional dislocation; from there it was only a small step to full-blown dissociation. Suddenly her pregnancy became a matter of academic interest, one small factor to be weighed in the day’s long list of deceptions. Eleven months of adultery had schooled her well in the shameful arts. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

16 " this would "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

17 " I know you're listening to me," Kyle said stubbornly. "You're a control freak, Warren. Everybody knows it. And that's fine most of the time. Good for business. But now things are slipping out of control. That's how life is, okay? It's in the nature of things. Entropy, whatever. And a guy like me, when the water starts rising, I go with the flow. I let the current carry me, and I make the necessary adjustments to keep things in proper trim. You, on the other hand, are like a robot optimized to run within a certain set of parameters. When life breaks outside those parameters, you're lost. Your programming no longer suits the environment. You're like a submarine stranded in the middle of an interstate. And partner, there is a big-ass tractor-trailer headed straight for you. I'm trying to drag you out of the way, but you just won't let me. You're staying where you are because you don't know how to move "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

18 " All your life you've done the right thing. All your life you've been the golden boy. But this past year, you've done some things you don't feel good about. Things you probably never thought you'd do."

Laurel watched her husband, trying to judge the effect of these words.

"Your reasons are your own business," Kyle went on, "but right now, you're overcome with guilt. You think you're about to be exposed. Ruined. You're going to lose the respect of all those patients who think you're Albert Schweitzer. So what do you do? Try to pull the whole house down around you before that happens. You want to show the world that nobody's more disgusted with Warren Shields than Dr. Shields himself."
Auster laughed ruefully. "Partner, I know about self-disgust. And I know about confession. I can tell you from experience, it doesn't help the soul one bit. You'll feel better for about five seconds. Then you'll pay for the rest of your life. And if you keep doing what you're doing now, all those bad things you're dreading will come true. Patients won't ever look at you the same way again. You may even lose your right to practice medicine. Is that what you want? "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

19 " Look at your wife. You're brow beating her, trying to make her confess that she fooled around with somebody. Well, what if she did? Whose fault is that? You want to feel bad? Ask yourself that. Laurel's a good woman, a beautiful woman, and if she's looking somewhere else for love, then you haven't

been taking care of business at home." Warren's eyes ticked up from the computer, but Kyle pressed on.

"If she confessed right now and gave you what you think you want all the dirty details-where would you be then? Fucked, that's where. Nine ways from Sunday. The two of you would have nowhere to go, because you're never going to get over it. I know you, man."

Warren's eyes smoldered. "I didn't know you'd spe cialized in psychiatry."

Kyle actually laughed. "I wouldn't waste my time. I already know more about human weakness than most of those cranks ever will. I went to school on myself. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree

20 " I think about all my patients who've died. Older people, most of them. But not all. Looking back, I try to remember if the young ones were marked somehow. Whether they might have done something to bring their fates down on themselves. But they didn't, Danny. One day God or Fate just said, 'I will not let you be happy. I will not give you children. I will not let you breathe another day. I will take away your ability to move."'"

"Warren-" "No, listen. This is important. I've tried to believe, all my life. To have faith that there was justice in life, some larger plan or meaning. But I can't do it any more. I've watched some of the best people I ever met get crippled or taken before they reached thirty, forty, whatever. Babies, too. I've watched babies die of leuke mia. I've watched infants die from infections, bleeding from their eyes and ears. Terrible birth defects...I look for a reason, a pattern, anything that might justify all that. But nothing does. Nothing does. Until I got sick myself, I played the same game of denial that all doctors do. But, Danny, my cancer ripped the scales from my eyes. I go to these funerals and listen to smug preachers telling grieving people that God has a plan. Well, that's a lie. All my life I've followed the rules. I've toed the line, given to the less fortunate, followed the Commandments . . . and it hasn't mattered one bit. And don't tell me about Job, okay? If you tell me God is testing me by killing me... that's like saying we had to destroy a village in order to save it. It's a cruel joke that we play on ourselves. And don't tell me it's all made right in the afterlife, because you know what? The agony of one infant dying senselessly mocks all the golden trumpets of heaven. I don't want to sit at the right hand of a God who can torture children, or even one who sits by and allows them to be tortured. Free will, my ass. I made no choice to die at thirty seven. This one's on God's account, Major. We look for meaning where there is none, because we're too afraid to accept randomness. Well, I've accepted it. Embraced it, even. And once you do that, the world just doesn't look the same anymore. "

― Greg Iles , Third Degree