All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 80

80

Inside the small police station Sammy placed the painting on Nix’s desk.

“Grace Number One. Copy it.”

Nix might have said something, might have unloaded the sheer madness of it all, but for the painting, when he glanced at it and it took all his attention so fully. In that harsh light he saw nothing drawn from imagination, a print so clear and forensically detailed it was like looking at a photograph. Had he not known of the haunted provenance, Nix might have guessed a young girl had sat for some aging master.

He did not move for a long time, transfixed as he stood and looked

down at the face. “You did this?”

Patch nodded.

And beside him Sammy simply looked bored with the awe in the chief’s

eyes.

“It’s her?” Nix said.

“Grace Number One,” Patch said.

Nix handled it with great care, hovered the heavy lid of the old copier above it so as not to make contact.

Patch watched closely, knew the mechanics involved because he had read of powder imaging, negative charge, and photoconductors. When the machine spat out image after image, he held one up and was pleased with

what remained.

Nix ran fifty copies.

“We’ll circulate them. Send one to police departments in every state in the country,” Patch said.

Sammy drew a small flask from his pocket and sipped from it.

“I’ll do it,” Nix said, still staring at the girl. “I’ll make sure it gets where it needs to go.”

Patch walked back into the gallery and sat, stared at his Grace and lost himself in the cleanest contours of her.

Misty appeared at the door, only noticed because her sweet perfume lilted over the chemical air and snapped Patch from his trance.

She stood there in a green dress, hair tucked back behind a white band among the littered corpses of near a hundred Graces.

Misty stood before the final canvas. “She’s so…she’s so beautiful.”

He looked down at her feet buried beneath the lake of canvases.

“It should be on the wall…in the window or something. In a big gallery.”

She knelt and picked up the lost girls and thumbed through them, the difference between each almost invisible, but Patch knew his circumspect progress would one day bring her closer, till he was certain he saw her before him, heard her voice and felt her fingertips fathom him entirely.

“There’s so many,” Misty said.

Last count Patch owed Sammy an even thousand bucks. Patch was not sure of the mathematics involved, only that an errant stroke could somehow add much to the tally.

He set the brush down gently and turned and finally saw the delicacies of the girl that stood beside him, the fine strokes and boldened shades. He saw Misty in mixes, her skin titanium and singed umber and alizarin. Her Prussian eyes. Her hair would be lain darks softened with sienna before light layering.

“I see you at school. And I miss you,” she said.

He stared at her and saw cadmium steeled with Winsor Violet and Phthalo Blue.

“You look at me like no one else,” she said, and her cheeks reddened.

In her hand was an envelope. She handed it to him and turned and left.

He stood in the doorway and watched her walk away.

Patch knew it then.

He could use each color he owned painting Misty Meyer, and they would still not come close enough.

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