"But he wouldn’t be able to say why we’d killed him. He’s expert at the whats and whens and wheres, but he leaves the whys to me."

"He lifted his rag to wave back, and on the sidewalk, where he'd been polishing, a dime-sized spot of something bright as gold caught the lowering sun."

"But the night the bird came, they sounded a bell I'd never heard before, a single low tone that you felt in your chest and in the backs of your eyes."