All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker

“Maybe one day I’ll be the first to see him after the Resurrection.” “Mary Magdalene was the first to see Jesus after the Resurrection,” Himes said. “And if I’m chosen, he’ll send me back to the three persons.” “The Trinity,” Himes said. “And they’ll hollow me out. Watch my blood flow over black rock like I never even was.” “What does it mean?” Himes said. “Something,” Saint said. “It all means something.”

Grace trying to tell Patch something. How does she know where the bodies are? Did she have to participate in burying them?

“Sometimes I convince myself she wasn’t real. We know Tooms is crazy, he’ll say anything, but she…you never found a thing. Nothing. So if she wasn’t real, I’d take that now. Even if I had to look back at so much loss it can’t even be counted.”

Patch

At ten he found his way to a reservation in Barbetta and took a seat alone and ate garganelli in tomato and basil sauce. He drank red wine and tipped heavily.

A Pirate Takes Manhattan Charlotte turned away because she could not check her smile. Her father had made it into The New York Times.

“Maybe one day I’ll be the first to see him after the Resurrection. And if I’m chosen, he’ll send me back to the three persons. And they’ll hollow me out. Watch my blood flow over black rock like I never even was.”

The town was Black Rock. She stepped back and looked at the sign. St. Mary Magdalene Trinity Road

She thought of Grace.

Was Grace a nun?

And then. The rosary beads they carried.

But these are cedar wood. Black glass. Sister Agnes made them, and she had an eye for the beautiful. The medal. It’s Mary Magdalene.”

Eli Aaron

“Robert. He was an altar boy. I remember them all.” “Robert?” Saint said. “Robert Peter Frederick. I haven’t seen him in…” “He went missing. Likely died.”

So was Eli this Robert?

“We teach forgiveness. Ours is not a vengeful God. Robert would have been in the care of Sister Agnes before she passed.”

Sister Cecile

“We know him as Eli Aaron,” Saint said. Sister Cecile sighed. “And he stands in judgment.” “How did you—” “Eli, son of Aaron. He officiated in the judgment seat. The Old Testament.”

“I set him on fire,” Saint said, reaching for the photograph. There was a moment when she knew. Despite the time that had passed. She read the look in Sister’s Isabelle’s eyes. The look of a woman who had just seen a ghost.

Is Sister Isabelle Grace? Does she know Grace?

prophylactics

Medicine to prevent disease

Jimmy Walters.

Ahhh i knew he was the one with Patch when he woke up he's kind of suspicious to me, I think he has some secret

Patch knew there were moments when you made your bad decision even when you were fully aware of what would come.

Uh oh, is Patch going to attack Jimmy?

Patch knew about the notion of purpose, of free will and a divine goal. He knew about determinism and the need to shape a future.

But nothing that could change what would happen next.

The prison was the third oldest in the country,

So Patch is in prison again

sedulous

Showing dedication and diligence

“I always thought I knew you, always thought your heart was in the right place, but why the hell did you go kill that zookeeper?” Blackjack said, same each time.

Yeah that was what I figured he did

Riley slumped into a brown leather chair, and as he moved to pull it in Patch saw the large wall behind him, and the single painting that hung in the center beneath a satin nickel wall light, like it had been placed there by God’s hand as a reminder.

Was this a painting by Patch?

“I want…I turn to reading when times get hard. Lose yourself for a while, we all need that sometimes. People say they don’t deserve it, that none of us do. But we’re serving our time. A lot of us won’t breathe free air again. Reading isn’t a privilege, sir. I believe we all have the right to leave our problems and escape into another world, if only through the written word.”

Patch

The next day he would visit C Level. Death row.

Is he gonna try to see Tooms?

Chief,”

Is Saint the police chief now?

In truth it was perception, the FBI veteran who returned to her hometown to become the youngest police chief in the history of the state of Missouri. The respect and fear fell short of acceptance, for she would always carry the trace of Jimmy Walters.

For a long time Patch could not find the words he had practiced. He could not even remember to breathe. He could not imagine how a man could exist for nineteen years without even the company of hope. And then, finally, their eyes met. “Hello, Joseph,” Marty Tooms said.

I knew it

“Did you really kill her?” Patch said, a tremor in his voice. Marty Tooms kept his eyes on the skyline. And then began to cry.

“Matt Leavesham,”

Boy that Charlotte is dating

“Men don’t start out as good husbands. You didn’t give him time. Jimmy is a good man. I know it. I was the one that pushed the two of you together. I made you give him a chance because I saw him at church, and I knew…I knew he was what you needed. And you tried for the baby, and when it happened you—”

Norma

“What about Jimmy?” Norma said. Saint closed her eyes and leaned her head on her grandmother’s shoulder. “He’s not Patch.”

“My grandmother said hatred is misplaced fear. And maybe she’s right, because when I lie down to sleep each night, I still feel scared that he’ll come do it again. No matter that I’m a cop. That I carry a gun. I’m scared—”

“You never asked why I did it,” Patch said. Sammy buried his hands deep in the pockets of his velvet blazer and straightened his rabbit felt hat. “I never needed to.”

Why did Patch do it? Love? A debt to Saint? Or a way to get to Marty?

“Eli Aaron just visited here.”

I'm worried Eli is going to try to kidnap Charlotte

“I guess maybe someone all wrong for me in the ways that counted least. We fell in love and it was like…you know when all of a sudden there’s meaning. Actual true meaning and purpose.”

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.

Why? To get more time with Tooms or did something happen between Patch and Tooms?

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

Sister Cecile told how he had gone into the chapel afterward and lit a dozen candles, told Sister Isabelle he was doing God’s work, that he was heading south, where it was hotter in many ways.

Jesus

“Ashlee Miller. She’s twenty-two. Taken two hours ago from the corner of Crystal Avenue. Van mounted the sidewalk.”

Eli's latest victim

“Damn noble what you do. Quickest way to shed ignorance is to read a book. Strips it each page you turn, letting knowledge in, you know. You want your shell?”

Patch knew he could fight most, but knew he could never fight his own fate.

Tug once told him the solitary cells had been out of use since the seventies, but with workmen tearing down the old seven block, Patch found himself staring at a slice of history best forgotten.

Patch in solitary

“They…all of them call me White. I don’t got my birth certificate or nothing. Lou, he’s my foster father. He called me Tommy, but I never felt it, you know. Maybe Tom. Just Tom.”

“Grace Falls. The town in the painting is Grace Falls, Alabama.”

Omg Grace!

He stared at it, Tooms’s handwriting a beautiful sweep of cursive so archaic that for a moment Patch did not register the name on the front of the letter. And how he knew it.

“Bones,” Saint said. “A whole lot of bones.” Charlotte stood as breeze shifted thickening trees, giving glimpses of the land behind. Where the old Tooms house stood.

Richie had known his killer. Maybe they sat and talked first.

Eli? Who killed Richie?

He had made no attempt to conceal himself or evade being seen.

Who???

She closed her eyes. Her heart ached.