In Chap­ter 229 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” the nar­ra­tive fol­lows Saint as she delves into the intri­ca­cies of a case involv­ing Joseph Macauley. Himes informs her about Owen Williams, a con­struc­tion work­er impli­cat­ed in a pow­er out­age, not­ing that Williams claims it was a sim­ple mis­take. Sain­t’s frus­tra­tion is pal­pa­ble as she antic­i­pates famil­ial ties—guessing cor­rect­ly that Williams has a daugh­ter named Lucy. A sub­se­quent phone call to War­den Thomp­son at the James Con­nor Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty proves fruit­less at first, but Thomp­son casu­al­ly reveals that Macauley had a con­nec­tion with a guard named Dar­nell Richard­son dur­ing his incar­cer­a­tion.

Sain­t’s inves­ti­ga­tion leads her to the attic, where she retrieves the Macauley abduc­tion file after twelve years. She immers­es her­self in case mate­ri­als, revis­it­ing record­ings and doc­u­ments, piec­ing togeth­er Macauley’s past while grap­pling with mem­o­ries of her grand­moth­er and the phan­toms of the case. Sig­nif­i­cant items emerge from the file: soil reports, pho­tographs, and a map that traces Macauley’s move­ments in rela­tion to crime scenes where he had pre­vi­ous­ly been.

As dusk set­tles, Saint reflects on a sus­pect, Mar­ty Tooms, whose nar­ra­tive regard­ing search­ing for a stray dog high­lights his emo­tion­al tur­moil. The dia­logue between Nix and Tooms rais­es eth­i­cal ques­tions about life, death, and the con­cept of play­ing God, reveal­ing Tooms’ inter­nal con­flict regard­ing the loss of life. Despite Tooms’ claims, his sto­ry rais­es sus­pi­cion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to the stray dog that appeared on his prop­er­ty. This sug­gests deep­er impli­ca­tions regard­ing his involve­ment in the case.

The chap­ter cul­mi­nates when Saint uncov­ers a gold dog tag inscribed with the name “Scout,” hint­ing at the inter­twin­ing themes of mem­o­ry, loss, and the search for truth. The case and its char­ac­ters con­tin­ue to haunt her, lead­ing her to ques­tion the bound­aries of her inves­ti­ga­tion and the con­nec­tions between past and present.