- David Simon, "Homicide : A Year On The Killing Streets", pages 20-23"...until one day the phone bleats twice and the body on the ground is that of an eleven-year-old girl, an all-city athlete, a retired priest, or some out-of-state tourist who wandered into the projects with a Nikon around his neck.
Red balls. Murders that matter.
In this town, a detective lives or dies on the holy-shit cases that make it clear who runs the city and what they want from their police department...
For each body, he gives what he can afford to give and no more. He carefully measures out the required amount of energy and emotion, closes the file and moves on to the next call. And even after years of calls and bodies and crime scenes and interrogations, a good detective still answers the phone with the stubborn, unyielding belief that if he does his job, the truth is always knowable.
A homicide detective endures."