All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 70

70

He took books from the small library in Pecaut.

Modern Art; Cityscapes; Realizing Portrait.

He studied them on buses.

The 74 took him to Lewisville, where he walked Main Street and placed his posters on each of the streetlamps. One time he tried to tape one to the white-washed windows of an old barber shop but drew angry words from a local cop. The guy softened when he saw the drawing; in this one Patch had made her hair lighter and her jaw softer. His posters listed the phone number of the Monta Clare PD. Chief Nix bitched about the number of calls they received from time wasters. Patch would have put down his own number, but the letters turned so red the people at Southwestern Bell finally cut them loose.

He rode the 50 to Le Masco, Saint beside him as they plastered the town.

Three buses to Afton, a township of no more than a couple of hundred homes, some of them trailers. Rusting bottles of gas threatened to topple as they knocked wafer-thin doors and were met with blank stares.

He traveled alone to Saddlers Clay and Lenard Creek, Newton Bale, and near a dozen colonies. He shaded parts of a map so large he could no longer bear to unfold it fully.

“You know my granddaughter didn’t sleep while you were gone.”

Norma skirted a pothole.

“I know.”

“I’m guessing you also know she skipped school the other afternoon.

She’s all heart. Makes it easier for her to get it broken,” Norma said.

“I know that, too.”

“I’m not sure that you do,” she said, and it was not unkind.

A small radio played Sinatra, the only music she allowed on the bus.

Norma dropped him at the corner of Loess Hills. “I’ll swing by here at four.”

“That’s not on the return route,” the old man behind said.

Norma scowled. “It’s my bus and I’ll take it where I please. And if that doesn’t please you then maybe walking will.”

In the town of Darby Falls he stood on the doorstep of the Montrose house. Richie Montrose let him in, and Patch followed him into a tired living room where a television played baseball and a couple of dozen empty beer cans made a tower beside it.

Richie sat and through red eyes looked up at Patch with a little confusion and disinterest. Patch saw his uniform laid over a chair, his belt

and badge, his hat on the floor.

“You’re the kid that keeps calling me?”

Patch nodded.

“You think you were held with my Callie?”

“There’s a chance.”

“I have to hope that you’re wrong. I have to hope she…that this man didn’t take her.” Richie did not tear his eyes from the game.

“Can I take a look in her bedroom?” Patch said.

“Upstairs first door on the left. Don’t touch nothing.”

Pink drapes and bedcover, and a carpet burnt orange. Patch stood in the center beneath a low-hanging lampshade and looked at the order and the dresser and the posters tacked to the wall. Bowie and Hendrix and no one he could recall Grace mentioning. On her bookshelf was a framed photo, and he stared at her face and tried to recognize the shape of her, the flat of

her forehead, the arch of her eyebrows.

Are you her?

He breathed deep and wondered if he would recall her. Her skin and hair

and sometimes her sweat.

And then he heard it.

Patch walked down the stairs slow.

Richie Montrose was slumped in his chair, and in the corner the old

record player spun.

Patch stood in the doorway.

And listened to the bass-baritone of Johnny Cash.

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