An excerpt from The Legend of Sasquatch:
On the way to Parkland, Clint continued applying pressure to the wound, and he tried to figure out why this had happened. A man was dead, and that is no small matter. Regardless of circumstances, no matter the justification, anyone who can cause the death of another human being and not feel some ambivalence about it is one sick bastard. Normal, compassionate people just can’t feel good about killing and dying, even when killing and dying are necessary.
This was textbook self defense, excusable homicide. The dead guy drew first; in fact, he’d gotten off the first shot. Clint’s only choice was between the snub-nose .38 on his ankle and the .44 mag in his shoulder holster, and that was only a choice in the most technical sense. Clint had been reaching for the big six-inch revolver when he felt the small slug hit him in the chest, and he’d gotten off his only shot after he realized that he’d already been shot. Could there be a clearer case of self defense?
Why had this guy come after Clint? Was it a simple robbery attempt, and had Clint merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a seemingly random victim chosen by virtue of convenience alone? Or was it something else, and had Clint himself set the wheels in motion? The more questions Clint asked, the more he realized that it was likely that this man had been sent to kill him. If so, it had to be Mike reaching out from behind bars to exact his revenge.
Clint’s body count was now up to five—six including the vegetable. Killing was becoming a habit, and Clint realized that it was starting to bother him less each time. He feared that he was becoming desensitized to death, too accustomed to killing.
An excerpt from The Education of Clint Buchanan:
As the young husband and wife lay in each other’s arms, each contemplating past, present, and future, Clint recognized the music as the adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony. It was one of the most famous movements in the entire symphonic repertoire, but it was also one of the most debated. Mahler ostensibly composed the adagietto as a love song to his wife, Alma, but when played at the much slower tempo preferred by many conductors, the music instead evokes a feeling of profound melancholy. After almost eighty years, musicologists and aficionados still couldn’t agree whether the music was supposed to be happy or sad, whether it was an expression of intense love and devotion or of unmitigated despair. Clint was struck by the irony that this music would be playing at this moment in his life, and his mouth curled into an ambivalent smile. Was he happy? Was he sad? Would he ever again be certain?
