That first night was like none Saint had known.
She sat cross-legged on the front porch, the soles of her feet dark with dirt. Her grandmother standing when the low lights of a police cruiser passed by. Norma did not offer comfort or platitudes. Saint did not know a tougher woman to fear or emulate.
She could not smell the barbecue smoke or see church lanterns or the verdancy of Monta Clare, so beautiful it clung to memory when you left. Patch hung over the small town like city smog so turgid mothers ushered their children inside and made sure the news was deadbolted at the door. Saint had felt the pervade of those passing minutes as cops came from the towns of Pecaut and Lenard Creek. Chief Nix sent them out armed with a photograph that showed her friend smiling widely, eye patch in place.
At nine her grandmother climbed the stairs and told Saint that she should not stay up late because the boy would likely return soon enough, and she would need her energy to receive him.
At ten Saint climbed onto her rusted Spyder and pedaled hard in the direction of Main Street, breaking her grandmother’s strict curfew.
Main Street was lit with locals gathered outside Lacey’s Diner. She propped her bike outside the Aldon Funeral Parlor and listened as they talked of calls coming in from Jefferson City and Cedar Rapids and even one of the Amana Colonies. Later that night she would fix pins to the map that hung above her bookshelf.
I hear they got a guy over by Pike Creek.
I heard that.
Alibi has him working a double shift at the Roan Arnold Energy Center.
Could be. Midwest derecho wrecked a cooling tower.
And so it went.
She ducked through a cluster of onlookers and made it to the window of the station, and inside saw the kind of bustle that calmed her a little. The phone rang out as cops gathered around maps and pored over files. At the far end she saw Chief Nix pinch the bridge of his nose like the unfurling was too much.
In the state of Missouri two high school girls and a college kid had gone missing in the past eight months. Cops had shown up at Monta Clare High School and told the students the importance of vigilance, said it while they hooked their thumbs into their waistbands, fingers meeting the steel of their Model 39s. For a while the town hung in the kind of rampant fear that meant Saint was no longer allowed out of her yard when the sun dropped.
They’ll catch this devil, her grandmother had said as she sucked on a Marlboro and rocked on her chair.
“Go home, kid. Ain’t you heard, there’s a bad man out there,” a Pecaut cop said as he passed by.