That evening Saint sat at her desk with the Macauley file.
Patch had derailed her thinking, her process. The fallout from Richie Montrose and Nix would amount to more work than she had handled since she took over.
Deputy Michaels took a call out back, his girlfriend riding him about the hours. Though Saint told him to head home, he’d sat there like he knew he’d be needed.
She ran through what she knew and what she needed to know.
Nix had taken his gun and driven fifty minutes to Darby Falls, where he’d walked into the home of Richie Montrose and fired a single shot into his chest. She knew that Tooms might’ve been telling the truth about the dog, but also how that didn’t mean shit. That he could’ve been searching for it, and an opportunity presented itself in the shape of Misty. So many variables, nothing made sense but the coldest fact. Callie Montrose’s blood was found in Marty Tooms’s farmhouse.
She was about to head out when the phone rang. Saint expected to hear Himes’s voice but instead it was Lucy Alston from the lab.
“Got some prints for you,” Lucy said.
“The letter,” Saint said, her mind running to Richie Montrose and the envelope she found beside him. I’ll see you in hell.
“Got a match to Nix.”
“Right.”
Saint closed her eyes and rubbed her temples at the beginning of a headache. “Nothing else.”
“Actually a couple. Lifted clear enough from the paper.”
Saint gripped the receiver tight.
“Match to Martin Tooms. And Joseph Macauley.”