True Detective

What'd you think, you paired up with him?

What I think?

Well, you don't pick your parents, and you don't pick your partner.

You know, they used to call him "The Tax Man" for a while?

He come out of Texas, so nobody knew him.

Seemed a bit raw-boned to me. Edgy.

Took three months till we got him over to the house for dinner.

Around our big 419.

That's what y'all want to hear about, right?

Dora Lange. The kids in the woods.

Yeah, sure.

But talk about Cohle. We heard some stories.

Kind of a strange guy, huh?

"Strange."

Yeah.

Rust would pick a fight with the sky, he didn't like its shade of blue.

But when we finally got him over to the house,

this is when that case was hot,

poor bastard looked like he was on his way to the firing squad.

Dora Lange.

The "Occult Ritual Murder."

You can thank The Advertiser for that.

Could you hold off on that?

Yeah, you can't do that here no more.

Don't be assholes. You want to hear this or not?

Vermilion Sheriff requested assistance with a 419, cane fields outside of Erath.

I'd been on the job about three months till then.

Two previous cases were open and shut.

On January the 3rd, 1995, my daughter's birthday,

I remember.

Hart and Cohle, State CID.

Who found her?

A farmer and his son.

This spread wasn't scheduled for a burn.

Let's keep them here, and let's tape off this road,

and give me your log.

Go ahead.

- You ever see something like this? - No, Sheriff.

Eight years, CID.

Them symbols, it's Satanic.

They had a 20/20 on it a few years back.

- ID? - No, sir.

We're gonna need more men for a grid search.

Set up a perimeter wide as possible on those three roads.

Post up, take license plates of anything that passes.

I-23.

Go ahead, I-23.

We're gonna need investigator assist on that 419,

all you can spare for a canvass.

Roger that, Detective.

Okay. Tell me what you see.

Ligature marks on her wrists, ankles and knees.

Multiple shallow stab wounds to the abdomen.

Hemorrhaging around throat.

Lividity at the shoulders, thighs, and torso.

She'd been on her back awhile

before he moved her.

That's why they called him "The Tax Man."

The rest of us had these little note pads or something.

He had this big ledger.

Looked funny walking door to door with it like the tax man,

which ain't bad, as far as nicknames go.

Yeah. Of course, I've always taken a lot of notes.

I mean, you never know what the thing's gonna be, do you?

That little detail, somewhere way down the line, makes you say, "Oh!"

Breaks the case.

You know, I've seen all the different types.

We all fit a certain category.

The bully.

The charmer.

The surrogate dad.

The man possessed by ungovernable rage.

The brain.

And any of those types could be a good detective,

and any of those types could be an incompetent shit-heel.

Which type were you?

I was just

a regular-type dude

with a big-ass dick.

A lot of it had to do with how they manage authority.

There can be a burden in authority, in vigilance.

Like a father's burden.

It's too much for some men.

A smart guy who's steady is hard to find.

I was all right. Better than some.

But I knew how to talk to people, and I was steady.

Rust,

now his Texas files were classified, or redacted.

And he wasn't big on talking except when you wanted him to shut up.

But he was smart.

Yeah. Second week we were together, I saw where he was living.

Kind of made me feel for the guy.

I'd offer you a seat, but...

Don't mention it. I... I can't stay.

Yeah, I'll tell you guys, and believe me,

past a certain age, a man without a family can be a bad thing.

We'd encountered a meta-psychotic.

Which I had to explain to Marty what meta-psychotic was.

This is gonna happen again.

Or it's happened before.

Both.

Go on.

It's fantasy enactment. Ritual.

Fetishization, iconography.

This is his vision. Her body is a paraphilic love map.

How's that?

An attachment of physical lust to fantasies and practices forbidden by society.

You get that from one of your books?

I did.

Her knees are abraded, rug burns on her back.

Cold sores, gum line recession, bad teeth.

There's decent odds she was a Prost.

He might not have known her,

but this idea goes way back with him.

You got a chapter in one of those books on jumping to conclusions?

You attach an assumption to a piece of evidence,

you start to bend the narrative to support it.

Prejudice yourself.

Wait and see on the ID.

All right.

This kind of thing does not happen in a vacuum.

I guarantee this wasn't his first.

It's too specific.

Listen... this is

a stupid time to mention this,

but you got to come to dinner.

Can't put Maggie off anymore, so you just got to.

All right.

- Gordon, thanks for coming. - Marty.

Anyway, that evening, it wasn't even sundown,

he decided it was a good time to invite me over for dinner,

which I got a problem with.

All right, 'cause I'm thinking about Marty's wife and his two kids

and how it's my daughter's birthday,

and I know...

There's nothing I can do about it.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,

but I'm gonna have a drink.

- Let me get up! - Daddy!

You're gonna meet him. I got to get the door.

Hey.

People out here, it's like they don't even know the outside world exists.

Might as well be living on the fucking moon.

There's all kinds of ghettos in the world.

It's all one ghetto, man.

A giant gutter in outer space.

Today, that scene,

that is the most fucked up thing I ever caught.

Ask you something?

You're a Christian, yeah?

No.

Well, then what do you got the cross for in your apartment?

That's a form of meditation.

How's that?

I contemplate the moment in the garden,

the idea of allowing your own crucifixion.

But you're not a Christian. So what do you believe?

I believe that people shouldn't talk about this type of shit at work.

Hold on, hold on.

Three months we been together, I get nothing from you.

Today, what we're into now.

Do me a courtesy, okay? I'm not trying to convert you.

Look, I'd consider myself a realist, all right,

but in philosophical terms, I'm what's called a pessimist.

Okay. What's that mean?

It means I'm bad at parties.

Let me tell you, you ain't great outside of parties either.

I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution.

We became too self-aware.

Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself.

We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.

That sounds god-fucking-awful, Rust.

We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self,

this accretion of sensory experience and feeling,

programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody

when, in fact, everybody's nobody.

I wouldn't go around spouting that shit if I was you.

People around here don't think that way. I don't think that way.

I think the honorable thing for our species to do

is deny our programming.

Stop reproducing.

Walk hand in hand into extinction.

One last midnight.

Brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

So what's the point in getting out of bed in the morning?

I tell myself I bear witness,

but the real answer is that it's obviously my programming.

And I lack the constitution for suicide.

My luck, I picked today to get to know you.

Three months I don't hear a word from you, and...

- You asked. - Yeah.

And now I'm begging you to shut the fuck up.

I get a bad taste in my mouth out here.

Aluminum, ash.

Like you can smell the psycho sphere.

I got an idea.

Let's make the car a place of silent reflection from now on.

Okay?

What should I bring for dinner?

A bottle of wine would be nice, I guess.