She checked in with Himes once each month.
He had taken her resignation with an even hand, told her she would be back, that he understood, but that she was destined for greater things.
“Anything?” she said, as she looked through the glass wall of her office and out into the twilight street.
“If there was anything, don’t you think I would have called?”
“What are you eating?”
“An egg.”
“Whole. Like a snake.”
“Eli Aaron. Each month ahead of speaking with you I get the team to reach out. Nothing.”
“It’s possible he changed his MO,” Saint said. It was a fear she would not ever shake. Each night when she sat on the porch with her grandmother and a car slowed up the street she would feel a slight flutter in her chest, that she had the acute responsibility of keeping Charlotte safe from whoever was out there.
“It is. Carl Eugene Watts. He—”
“Stabbed. Strangled. One time raped. Weapons. Hands,” she spoke with dispassion.
“I forget who I’m talking to.”
On her desk was a coffee cup and inside it warm milk. In her drawer was a romance novel.
“Sister Isabelle wears trifocals,” Himes said.
“I like that you know that, Himes.”
“Poor sight. Good chance she was mistaken.”
“You’ll send me the case file.”
“It won’t do you any good.”
He said that each time they spoke.