All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 206

206

Patch wrote letters to the supreme court asking for a stay for the man who had abducted him, the date looming like a swell on calmer water.

He wrote ministers at a dozen churches, asked them to lobby the district attorney to slow the runaway train. He read books on the history of capital punishment, legal tomes fatter than his arm. He learned of loopholes that would not benefit Tooms, precedents that had been set and rescinded.

In his first month he had learned of Teddy Fawn Durston, a Democratic candidate who would run for governor of Missouri. Patch found an old newspaper interview where the man talked moratoriums. That evening he’d called Sammy and told him to donate twenty thousand dollars to the campaign.

And then, on September 14, Cooper carried in a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and gently set it down on the desk beside Patch.

Patch picked it up and read.

“I’m sorry,” Cooper said.

Patch read it again, knowing it would come, not believing it would come.

In a little over two weeks Marty Tooms would be put to death, and with him, Patch knew, Grace would die.

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