“Goddamn, kid,” Nix said, lowering his gun.
He helped her down.
“Breaking and entering,” he said, his big frame illuminated by the window.
“It’s Tooms.”
“This again.”
She looked down at her torn dress. She thought of Jimmy Walters as she moved from room to room and began opening closets and tossing out clothes.
“Enough,” he said, and she barreled past him and went into another room.
Her heart racing as she dumped drawers out onto the carpet.
She went to pass him again, but this time he barred her with a strong arm around her waist.
“Get the fuck off me.”
He held her firm, said nothing and did not react to her curses.
She couldn’t stop the tears then.
The frustration of the past years, of losing her friend, of the stranger that came back to her. How he didn’t smile. Most days didn’t even notice her in the street. Of Patch and Misty. Of Jimmy Walters.
She sobbed it out.
Nix held her, did not tell her things would be okay, and for a moment she loved him for it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she knew that he meant it.
Outside they met the moonlight.
She breathed and calmed.
“I saw you in church when he was gone. You prayed for this, kid. Take the win.”
She looked at the Tooms house.
He cleared his throat. “To hold on to your faith…when you do this job. It’s something I never managed. God is a first call and a last resort, from christening to death bed. In between is where faith is tested. The mundanity. Anyone can drop to their knees when they’re facing crisis, but doing it when everything is steady…”
“I made a promise. I think about it every day,” she said, and did not know why she was sharing it with him on that night.
He watched her.
“I promised God that I wouldn’t sin. If he’d bring back Patch.”
Nix did not laugh or mock. “You’ll do the best you can. You’ll take your plaudits and head forward. Norma tells me you’ll go to Dartmouth.”
“Grace is out there,” Saint said.
“And you’re here. And you’re missing your senior prom. Come on, I’ll take you back.”
She was about to turn when another cruiser pulled up and Deputy Harkness got out.
“Ain’t nothing,” Nix said, waving him back, but Harkness took the moment to light a cigarette.
Saint stopped in front, keeping the cops with her in the mad place she existed in. “I know he did something bad. Please. Just for a moment imagine there’s one more girl out there. One more set of parents. You all said Eli Aaron might’ve worked with someone else.”
“The town doctor?” Harkness said, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t do it because I ask, or because most of Patch is still missing. Don’t even do it because you’re cops. Do it because she should be somewhere now, standing in her prom dress and smiling for cameras. And—”
“We already searched the house,” Nix said.
Harkness crossed the gravel and stood before a pile of firewood.
“What?” Nix said, following him over.
Harkness frowned. “I used to come up this way when I was a kid. There’s a trail that leads to the back of Adler land, we used to race through the corn, get ourselves lost and scared.”
He began shifting the wood.
Saint bent and helped him.
“There was a storage cellar. Right here, I’m certain of it.”
The car lit the mountain of firewood, leaves, and gutter mulch. By the time they reached the base layer they were sweating hard, her dress streaked with dirt.
“We don’t have a warrant,” Nix said.
At that Harkness finally stopped.
Saint pleaded, said it could be something but saw in both of their eyes it was over, that she was chasing the last lost cause.
Nix led her to his car, let her ride up front as Harkness started his engine.
The two cruisers eased up the track.
Saint reasoned Nix was right, that her friend had come home. However distant, whatever remained of him, he was back in Monta Clare. And each night she thanked God for that.
“You want to go change? I can take you to prom,” Nix said.
Prom. Saint thought of Grace. She thought of Callie Montrose. Maybe they had no one like her, no one fighting hard enough.
Saint popped the door open as Nix hit the brakes.
She heard him curse as she sprinted back toward the firewood.
She fell to her knees and heaved sheets of rotten timber from the ground, laid there like cover.
“Goddamn, kid,” Nix yelled.
Both cruisers turned and drove back, pulled up like a V, their high beams crossing over her.
And over the old wooden doors she had bared.
Saint heaved the double doors open.
The steps led down into deeper darkness.
Saint went down before they could reach her.
The steps shook a little, the wood soft, the frame bowed and ached.
Harkness aimed his flashlight down.
It gave them just enough light.
Saint cried then. A hand over her mouth.
Harkness lay on his stomach, not risking the steps.
He cast light over the scene. “Jesus.”
A single mattress.
And a lot of blood.