Lay Down My Sword and Shield by James Lee Burke

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Listen a minute. I don't enjoy driving three hundred miles in one-hundred-degree heat with a hangover and a bloody nose. But this man has five years hard time to do because of a scuffle on a picket line. He doesn't have a god damn cent and he can't get a white lawyer to file an appeal for him. Next week he'll be chopping cotton on the prison farm and there won't be a thing I can do for him.

In the Moon of Red Ponies by James Lee Burke

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I called Temple at home, but no one answered. I called the agency where she worked as a private investigator with a man and another woman. "He was waiting for me outside the office," I said.

"He's going to reoffend. Just wait him out," she said.

"Temple?"

"Yes?" she said.

"If he comes around the house and I'm not there, shoot him," I said.

"I'll shoot him whether you're there or not," she replied.

Rain Gods: A Novel by James Lee Burke

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Amid the litter on the floor, she felt the coldness of a metal cylinder touch her bare ankle. She reached down with her right hand and picked up the can of wasp spray, one that the manufacturer guaranteed could be fired steadily into a nest from twenty feet away. Vikki stuck the spout directly into the Nissan drive's face and pressed down the plastic button on the applicator. A jet of foaming lead-gray viscous liquid struck his mouth and nose and both of his eyes. He screamed and began wiping at his eyes and face with his coat sleeves, spinning around, off balance, all the while trying to hold on to his pistol and open his eyes wide enough to see where she was. She got out of the car and fired the spray into his face again, backing away from him as she did, spraying the back of his head, hitting him again when he tried to turn with her. He slammed against her vehicle and rolled on the ground, thrashing his feet, dropping the revolver in the grass.