In Chap­ter 206 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Patch takes sig­nif­i­cant steps to try and pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of Mar­ty Tooms, the man who abduct­ed him. He writes let­ters to the supreme court, urgent­ly seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion as the date approaches—an immi­nent threat hang­ing over him like the calm before a storm. Patch also reach­es out to min­is­ters from var­i­ous church­es, ask­ing them to appeal to the dis­trict attor­ney in a des­per­ate bid to delay the process. To fur­ther equip him­self, he immers­es in legal lit­er­a­ture con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, absorb­ing details about its his­to­ry and dis­cov­er­ing legal loop­holes that would prove unhelp­ful for Tooms, as well as cas­es that have been reversed in the past.

Dur­ing this time, Patch learns about a polit­i­cal fig­ure, Ted­dy Fawn Durston, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date run­ning for gov­er­nor of Mis­souri, who speaks about imple­ment­ing mora­to­ri­ums on the death penal­ty. Moti­vat­ed by a sense of urgency, Patch instructs Sam­my to con­tribute twen­ty thou­sand dol­lars to Durston’s cam­paign, hop­ing to influ­ence the polit­i­cal cli­mate sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

How­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion takes a somber turn when Coop­er deliv­ers a copy of the *St. Louis Post-Dis­patch* to Patch’s desk. The grav­i­ty of the arti­cle hits Patch hard, despite his antic­i­pat­ed aware­ness of the news. After read­ing it, he con­fronts a dev­as­tat­ing real­i­ty: in just over two weeks, Mar­ty Tooms is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion. The knowl­edge of Tooms’ impend­ing death brings a pro­found real­iza­tion for Patch—he under­stands that Grace, a sig­nif­i­cant fig­ure con­nect­ed to him, would also suf­fer dire con­se­quences as a result of this event. The chap­ter clos­es on a note of des­per­a­tion and an acute aware­ness of the inter­twin­ing fates of those involved, mark­ing a piv­otal moment in Patch’s ongo­ing strug­gle against the sys­tem.