All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 22

22

In the woodland one fine frozen morning she found Chief Nix casting his rod out into the lake. She silently sat beside him because he was closer to Patch, her only link now, her only chance. Over coffee topped with brandy he breathed the steam.

“You need to check on Mrs. Macauley,” Saint said.

“I do.”

Despite the cold he had his shirtsleeves rolled back. Soft, dark hair covered his arms. Saint heard the women in town talk of him, perhaps the most eligible man in Monta Clare. She had not seen him step out with any one of them, and for some reason it made her glad.

“She takes drugs now,” Saint said.

She watched his handsome face, his blue eyes and dark moustache. He lit a cigar from a silver case.

Saint flexed her fingers to bring the feeling back. “If Patch…if he’s dead, I know I won’t be able to—”

“You will.” He spoke with such certainty as he watched the bevel of ice clips felling reed tops like snow was due.

“Get on, Saint.”

“I am—”

“You don’t sleep. I pass by your place and I see your light burning no matter the hour.”

She did not tell him she was studying her maps. That she knocked on doors, that she had filled her blackboard not with math problems but with names and addresses she had gotten by begging a Cedar Rapids cop, who

had shown mercy. Everyone who owned a navy van. And that sometimes after school she went to watch houses and rotten timber garages.

“The newspaper said Callie Montrose came to see you a month before she was taken,” Saint said. “Why?”

He licked the dry from his lips and watched the water. “That’s between

me and the girl.”

“Even if she’s dead?”

He reeled slow and she watched the bobber.

“Even then,” he said, finally.

“Her daddy is a cop,” Saint said.

“A good one, the way I hear it.”

“Is he—”

Nix exhaled. “He’s broken. Like Mrs. Macauley. Like you.”

“And like you?”

He watched the bobber. “You believe in God, Saint?”

She did not hesitate. “Yes, sir.”

“You pray for your friend. And you leave everything else to me. You

promise me that now.”

She did not speak.

“I mean it, kid. Your grandmother…you’re all she’s got. Swear it, that you’ll let it go now.”

She stood, and she lied, and she went on her way.

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