"Just one hour to go. My last day on the job. Not my idea. Doctor's orders; heart condition. Angina, he calls it. I'm polishing my badge and getting myself used to the idea of saying goodbye to it. It and the thirty odd years of protecting and serving and...blood and terror and triumph it represents. I think about Eileen's slow smile, about the thick fat steaks she picked up from the butcher's today. I think about the one loose end I haven't tied up. A young girl who's out there, somewhere, helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic."
January 1, 1970