In Chap­ter 217 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Saint dri­ves six­ty miles to the small town of Dar­by Falls, feel­ing a deep nos­tal­gia as she pass­es by famil­iar sights, includ­ing a church whose bells she longs to hear. Upon arriv­ing, she encoun­ters a young, anx­ious police offi­cer wait­ing out­side a house. The offi­cer informs her that they’re still wait­ing on the foren­sic team as he wor­ries about Richie, a for­mer cop, who has missed his news­pa­per deliv­ery and is now sus­pect­ed to be deceased.

Inside the house, a somber atmos­phere pre­vails as the grand­fa­ther clock ticks heav­i­ly. The lounge is devoid of any smell, except for the pres­ence of Richie Mon­trose, who lies dead with a bul­let hole in his chest. The scene dis­plays an eerie clean­li­ness, sug­gest­ing that Richie knew his killer, evi­denced by the lack of strug­gle or dis­or­der around him—it was an exe­cu­tion car­ried out smooth­ly and method­i­cal­ly.

On the man­tel­piece is a haunt­ing pho­to­graph of Cal­lie Mon­trose, remind­ing Saint of the girl’s vig­il which still res­onates in her mem­o­ry. This per­son­al con­nec­tion deep­ens the emo­tion­al weight of the scene. Beside Richie’s body lies a let­ter addressed to him, con­tain­ing the omi­nous mes­sage: “I’ll see you in hell.”

Saint swift­ly locates secu­ri­ty cam­era footage from a neigh­bor, which reveals the killer’s iden­ti­ty. The per­pe­tra­tor shows no sign of attempt­ing to hide or escape, rais­ing the stakes of the unfold­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. As she absorbs this infor­ma­tion, a wave of sor­row wash­es over her, inten­si­fy­ing her emo­tion­al tur­moil. The chap­ter con­cludes with a sig­nif­i­cant shift in tone, cap­tur­ing the heav­i­ness of loss and the inevitabil­i­ty of con­fronting the dark real­i­ties that the inves­ti­ga­tion will unveil.