The next morning she woke early and strolled downtown past painted buildings that dated back to the first gold rush and to the Blue River diggings. She raised her camera to the Chinese Laundry House, the Pollock House, joined a trail and captured the Iowa Hill Boarding House, wondered to herself what those miners would make of it all. They were laying the bedrock for a town that would shrug off wildfires, a call to modernize, a place where a young girl would lose her life at the hands of a man who remained out of reach despite all they knew about him. She found a horse chestnut case and split it, removed the glossy conker and placed it into her pocket.
In a small toy store she looked at a wooden train and studied it carefully. She stared at shelves of books on subjects as varied as outer space and fine art, American history and wildlife. And, of course, storybooks from Dr. Seuss to Rudyard Kipling. Saint watched a mother and her son, the little boy aiming a smile, and Saint smiling back. They selected Where the Wild Things Are. Saint made a note of the title.
At her motel she saw the old Buick in the lot, Patch leaning on the hood.
He looked beat, like he’d grabbed his keys the moment their call ended, driven through the night and much of the day.
“Are her parents here?” he said.
There was so much she could have said. Instead she simply nodded and led him back down Main Street to the police station. He carried a large package, and when he saw Mrs. Reynolds she broke from her place beneath the old clock and met him. Though many years had passed she hugged him like he was family.
She left them alone in the back office, where Patch unwrapped the painting of their daughter and gifted it to them. Saint had heard the numbers from Sammy, that it was a gift worth many thousands of dollars. She also knew it was a gift they would not ever part with.
Over a long afternoon she sat with Patch in the Blue River Café as he mourned the memory of another girl he had not ever had the honor of knowing.
“I got the DNA results from the Tooms farm,” she said. “Lot of samples but none of them matched. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. It was such a long time ago. It was likely cleaned with bleach…I don’t—”
He hit the table with the flat of his fist so hard the cups smashed to the floor. Saint held a hand toward the waitress as she led him out.
And as the afternoon burned off she made him promise to drive straight back. He had broken the terms of his parole. She would not offer the truth, nor would she lie for him if asked.
“Summer Reynolds. How long had she been there?” he said.
“A long time.”
“Callie Montrose. Nothing on her?”
“Nothing,” Saint said, her mind on Richie Montrose. Last Saint heard a bar fight had gotten out of hand and Richie spent the night in county jail. Only got it squashed because of who he used to be, and maybe because everybody knew.
“How many more of them, Saint? How many more of these girls I paint are buried out there?”