Alvarez immediately contacted the attorney general and demanded a seventy-two-hour delay of the execution. The prosecutor protested that the case had been closed for five years. Everything was scheduled. But Alvarez refused to back down. Finally, the prosecutor reluctantly granted seventy-two hours and warned that if nothing came from it, Alvarez’s career would be finished.
Miles away, retired defense attorney Margaret Cole was eating dinner alone when the news appeared on television. The report mentioned a condemned inmate whose execution had been postponed after an emotional visit from his daughter.
Margaret nearly dropped her fork when she saw Mateo’s face.
She didn’t know him personally, but she recognized that desperate look. Decades earlier she had failed to save another innocent man with the same expression. That memory had haunted her ever since.
Ignoring her doctor’s warnings, Margaret called her former assistant Ryan and told him to gather every file related to the case.