Free The Partner by John Grisham Page A

abandonment, and the petition alleged all sorts of heinous sins. He posed for some pictures in the hallway outside the clerk’s office.
    Word spread quickly about yesterday’s lawsuit, theone in which Northern Case Mutual sued Trudy Lanigan for the return of the two-point-five million. The court file was ransacked for details. The attorneys involved were contacted. A leak here, a casual word there, and before long a dozen reporters knew Trudy couldn’t write a check for groceries without court approval.
    Monarch-Sierra Insurance wanted its four million dollars back, plus interest and attorneys’ fees, of course. Its Biloxi lawyers hurriedly threw together a suit against the law firm for receiving the policy limit and against poor Patrick for defrauding everyone. As was becoming customary, the press got tipped off, and copies of the lawsuit were in hand only minutes after its filing.
    Not surprisingly, Benny Aricia wanted his ninety million from Patrick. His new lawyer, a flamboyant mouthpiece, had a different approach in dealing with the media. He called a press conference for 10 A.M., and invited everyone into his spacious conference room to discuss every insignificant aspect of his client’s claim before he filed suit. Then he invited his new pals in the press corps to stroll with him down the sidewalk as he went to file it. He talked every step of the way.
    The capture of Patrick Lanigan did more to create legal work on the Coast than any single event in recent history.
    With the Harrison County Courthouse bustling to a near frenzy, seventeen members of the grand jury quietly entered an unmarked room on the secondfloor. They had received urgent phone calls during the night from the District Attorney himself, T.L. Parrish. They knew the nature of this meeting. They got coffee and took their designated seats around the long table. They were anxious, even excited to be in the middle of the storm.
    Parrish said hello, apologized for the emergency session, then welcomed Sheriff Sweeney and his chief investigator, Ted Grimshaw, and Special Agent Joshua Cutter. “Seems we suddenly have a fresh murder on our hands,” he said, unfolding a copy of the morning paper. “I’m sure most of you have seen this.” Everyone nodded.
    Pacing slowly along one wall with a legal pad in hand, Parrish recited the particulars: background on Patrick; his firm’s representation of Benny Aricia; Patrick’s death, faked now, of course; his burial; most of the details they’d read in the morning paper Parrish had just laid on the table.
    He passed around photos of Patrick’s burned-out Blazer at the site; photos of the site the next morning without the Blazer; photos of the charred brush, soil, the burned weeds and trunk of a tree. And, quite dramatically and with a warning, Parrish passed around color eight by tens of the remains of the only person in the Blazer.
    “We, of course, thought it was Patrick Lanigan,” he said with a smile. “We now know we were wrong.”
    There was nothing about the blackened hulk to suggest it was human remains. No distinguishable body parts, except for a protruding pale bone which Parrish gravely explained came from the pelvis. “A human pelvis,” he added, just in case his grand jurorsgot confused and thought that perhaps Patrick had murdered a hog or some other beast.
    The grand jurors took it well, mainly because there was little to see. No blood, tissue, or gore. Nothing to get sick over. He, or she, or whatever it was, had come to rest in the right front passenger seat, which had been burned to the frame, like everything else.
    “Of course it was a gasoline fire,” Parrish explained. “We know that Patrick had filled his tank eight miles up the road, so twenty gallons exploded. Our investigator did, however, make a note that the fire seemed unusually hot and intense.”
    “Did you find the remains of any containers in the vehicle?” asked one grand juror.
    “No. Plastic containers are