Sheriff Bell and his fellow sheriffs seem to recognize that a change is happening in their jurisdictions. The kind of crimes, the number and violence of them, overwhelms and saddens them. Drugs have brought great evil into southwest Texas.

Bell in particular wrestles with this form of evil—in contrast with normal human stupidity, exemplified by Llewelyn taking the drug money—in trying to save Llewelyn and Carla Jean Moss. Sheriff Bell recognizes that in order to understand and defeat a man like Chigurh he would have to start thinking like him. Thinking like a cold-blooded, soulless killer would change him and take him to the edge of a moral abyss. Bell refuses to go there; he states this in the opening of the novel, foreshadowing that the serial killer with no soul, Chigurh, is never caught and never brought to account, legally, for his crimes.

Bell finds it impossible to reconcile what he learns of human nature during this investigation with his desire to make a positive difference in his community. As a result, he retires, unable to cope with the changes in the criminals that he sees taking over the world around him. There is no real legal justice anymore: no possibility of righting an evil so disturbing and wrong.