With Marty Tooms’s execution date approaching, Patch throws himself into a last effort to keep the condemned man alive. Because Patch believes Tooms may still be the only path to the truth, he writes to the Supreme Court asking for a stay even though Tooms was once his abductor.

Patch widens the campaign beyond the courts. He writes to ministers at many churches and asks them to pressure the district attorney, hoping public and moral pressure might slow what he sees as an unstoppable process.

At the same time, Patch studies the system himself. He reads histories of capital punishment and dense legal books, searching for loopholes or precedents that could help Tooms, but he finds no useful opening. Earlier, he had also identified Teddy Fawn Durston, a Missouri gubernatorial candidate who had spoken about moratoriums, and told Sammy to donate twenty thousand dollars to that campaign in hopes of backing a possible ally.

On September 14, Cooper brings Patch a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and quietly leaves him to the news. The paper confirms that Tooms will be executed in a little over two weeks. Although Patch had expected it, the finality lands hard, and he concludes that when Tooms dies, Grace will die with him.