Free The Partner by John Grisham Page B

typically used in fires such as this. Gallon milk jugs and antifreeze containers seem to be the favorite of arsonists. They don’t leave a trace. We see it all the time, though rarely in a car fire.”
    “Are the bodies always this bad?” asked another.
    Parrish answered quickly, “No, as a matter of fact they are not. I’ve never seen a corpse burned this badly, frankly. We would try to exhume it, but, as you probably know, it was cremated.”
    “Any idea who it is?” asked Ronny Burkes, a dockworker.
    “We have one person in mind, but it’s only speculation.”
    There were other questions about this and that, nothing of significance, just little inquiries served up in hopes of taking something from the meeting that the papers had left out. They voted unanimously to indict Patrick on one count of capital murder—murder committed in the perpetration of another crime, to wit, grand larceny. Punishable by death, by lethal injection up at the state penitentiary at Parchman.
    In less than twenty-four hours, Patrick managed to get himself indicted for capital murder, sued for divorce, sued for ninety million by Aricia, plus punitive damages, sued for thirty million by his old law firm buddies, plus punitive, and sued for four million by Monarch-Sierra Insurance, plus another ten million in punitive, for good measure.
    He watched it all, compliments of CNN.
    The prosecutors, T.L. Parrish and Maurice Mast, once again stood glumly before the cameras and announced, jointly, though the feds had nothing to do with this indictment, that the good people of Harrison County, acting by and through the office of its grand jury, had now moved swiftly to lay charges against Patrick Lanigan, a murderer. They deflected the questions they could not answer, evaded the ones they could, and hinted strongly that more charges would follow.
    When the cameras left, the two men met quietly with the Honorable Karl Huskey, one of the three circuit judges for Harrison County, and a close friend of Patrick’s, before the funeral. Cases were supposedly assigned at random, but Huskey, as well as the other judges, knew how to manipulate the filing clerk so that he could receive, or not receive, any particular case. Huskey wanted Patrick’s case, for now.

    While eating a tomato sandwich in the kitchen, alone, Lance saw something move in the rear yard, near the pool. He grabbed his shotgun, eased from the house, around some shrubs on the patío, and spotted a chubby photographer squatting by the pool house, three bulking cameras dangling from his neck. Lance tiptoed barefoot around the pool house, gun at the ready, and crouched to within two feet of the man’s back. He leaned forward, placed the gun near the man’s head with the barrel pointed upward, and pulled the trigger.
    The photographer lurched forward and fell on his face, screaming frightfully and floundering on top of his cameras. Lance kicked him between the legs, then again as he rolled over and finally got a glimpse of his assailant.
    Lance ripped off the three cameras and threw them into the pool. Trudy was on the patio, horrified. Lance yelled at her to call the police.

Nine
    I’m going to scrape the dead skin away now,” the doctor said, gently probing a chest wound with a pointed instrument. “I really think you should consider some pain medication.”
    “No thanks,” Patrick said. He was sitting on his bed, naked, with the doctor, two nurses, and the Puerto Rican orderly, Luis, huddled around him.
    “It’s gonna hurt, Patrick,” said the doctor.
    “I’ve been through worse. Besides, where would you stick me?” he asked, lifting his left arm. It was covered with purple and dark blue bruises where the Brazilian doctor had relentlessly poked him during his ordeal. His entire body was a rainbow of bruises and scar tissue. “No more drugs,” he said.
    “Okay. As you wish.”
    Patrick reclined and gripped the side rails to his bed. The nurses and Luis held his ankles as the