54 pages • 1 hour read
John GrishamThe Partner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 35-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 35 Summary
With the federal deal done and the paperwork signed, Patrick and Sandy turn their attention to the murder charge. Pepper Scarboro is still presumed to be the body in the car. Sandy asks Patrick what happened to Pepper. Patrick says that as far as he knows, Pepper is still alive.
Patrick tells Sandy the story of his relationship with Pepper. They met years earlier when Pepper was living alone in the woods. Pepper was an expert woodsman. He also had a miserable home life and some minor legal troubles. Patrick talked him into disappearing. He acquired a new ID for Pepper and a few hours before Patrick’s own disappearance, he put Pepper on a bus headed for Oregon, where Pepper dreamed of becoming a hunting guide. Patrick’s intention was for everyone to think—once it became obvious that Patrick was still alive—that Pepper had died in the car crash, thus ensuring that Pepper will get an entirely new start.
Chapter 36 Summary
Benny Aricia is on the run. Eva is released from jail. She calls her father and learns that he has been released unharmed. A letter from Patrick tells her to go first to New York and then to London. She thinks of Patrick bored in his room with nothing to do but think of places to send her. She desperately wants to go home to Rio. She has no clothes or toiletries with her. She thinks to herself that Patrick is going to pay for the trouble he has put her through. When she gets to London, she is going on a very expensive shopping junket.
Chapter 37 Summary
Patrick finally begins to tell Sandy the story of the body in the car. Some years earlier, Patrick had been representing a family filing an insurance claim after a car accident. 81-year-old Clovis Goodman witnessed the accident. Clovis and Patrick struck up a friendship. Clovis’s family had no interest in him. Patrick was his only friend. Clovis agreed to say whatever Patrick wanted about the accident. Patrick won the case and got his client a generous settlement.
Clovis died shortly before Patrick’s planned escape, and Patrick had charge of all the funeral arrangements. He stole Clovis’s body and kept it in a freezer on the front porch of his cabin. The only charge that would actually apply is a felony offense of mutilating a corpse.
The prosecutor, Parish, wants to try Patrick for the murder of the person in the car. If Patrick tells him about Clovis, Parish will drop the murder charge and try Patrick for burning the body. However, having no other evidence, he can’t convict without Patrick’s testimony in court, and he can’t force Patrick to testify. Given everything else Patrick has done, Parish can’t let him walk away. The situation is impossible for the prosecution.
Patrick’s solution is to pay off Clovis’s family to tell Parish they don’t want to press charges. Parish might still take the case to trial, but he has no way to win. The family then gives Parish a plausible reason to drop all charges. To make it more palatable, Patrick will agree to plead guilty and pay a fine with the agreement that there will be no jail time.
Chapter 38 Summary
In London, Eva is waiting for wire instructions telling her where to send the money that is to be paid back to the government. She now considers herself a wealthy woman, and she spends her time shopping, buying the most expensive designer brands.
The FBI chooses the most inconvenient or embarrassing moments to arrest the senior partners from Patrick’s former firm. Due to their connections to judges and to Senator Nye, they are released from custody almost immediately, but the charges against them remain.
Sandy tracks down Clovis Goodman’s only remaining relative, a granddaughter, Deena. She had never even met Clovis. Sandy pays Deena off in exchange for agreement not to press charges against Patrick for burning Clovis’s body.
Chapter 39 Summary
Patrick meets with Judge Huskey. Huskey tells him he has recused himself from Patrick’s case. Patrick tells him there isn’t going to be a trial and explains how and why all the charges have been dropped—except for the corpse mutilation change. He tells Huskey how he stole Clovis’s body and stored it in his freezer until he needed it. Huskey is shocked by the act. Patrick admits that he feels bad about it, but he needed a body. Huskey can’t help being amused and impressed by Patrick’s deviousness.
Chapter 40 Summary
When Patrick and Sandy inform Parrish, the prosecutor, of the circumstances of Clovis’s death and the disposition of his body, Parrish realizes the case against Patrick is not winnable. Just to be sure, he has Clovis’s grave exhumed and finds four concrete blocks inside.
In London, Eva wires the money back to Washington DC, the last step before Patrick is free. There are still several million dollars scattered in several banks around the world.
Chapter 41 Summary
Sandy receives a visit from Stephano. Stephano tells Sandy that Benny Aricia has been captured in London. Stephano claims he has no more interest in Patrick now that the case is over. He does, however, have one nagging question. He suspects that Eva is the one who turned Patrick in. He asks Sandy, if he ever learned the truth, to give him a call and tell him the truth.
Chapter 42 Summary
Patrick asks Karl Huskey whether he has ever thought of throwing it in and running away. Karl says that it isn’t the same for him; he loves his wife, and he has grandchildren. Patrick had nothing he cared about to leave behind. Patrick replies that everyone wants to run away at some time in their life.
Once all the paperwork is settled and Patrick is finally free, he phones Eva in London and arranges to meet her in the South of France in two days.
Sandy tells Patrick about his visit from Stephano and asks if Stephano is right that Eva is the one who turned Patrick in. Patrick explains that he had set it all up. He was tired of running, so he had Eva contact Stephano through the Pluto Group. Sandy is shocked.
Chapter 43 Summary
Patrick hasn’t seen Eva for a month. He reflects on his last few days with Eva before his capture. Now a free man, he arrives in the south of France, hoping for Eva to meet him at the train. She isn’t there, so he goes to the hotel they had arranged. Eva had made reservations in their real names, which warms Patrick’s heart. He is relieved to be free of the subterfuge of the past four years.
Eva isn’t there. She isn’t there the next morning, or the next day. He phones her father, but he doesn’t know where she is. Patrick is heartbroken. He searches for Eva, desperate to find her, but he knows he won’t; he taught her himself how to hide. No one will find her unless she wants them to. He contemplates selling his house and car in Ponta Pora, giving him $35,000 for a new start, or he might work as an English tutor. He dreams that Eva will find him someday.
Chapters 35-43 Analysis
As is characteristic of crime and legal thriller, the final section centers on the resolution of mystery and the assignment of consequences to the various characters in the narrative, exploring Justice, Mercy, and Revenge. In this way, the conclusion is cathartic, allowing Patrick to go free having learned a moral lesson. The gradual revelations maintain suspense for the reader, as these are told slowly through the details of Patrick’s legal proceedings. Although none of the characters have suspected this, the narrative has been providing clues that Patrick somehow acquired an already dead body. This final part of the story answers the question of whose and how, finally vindicating Patrick in full, and providing a satisfaction for the reader in “solving” the mystery.
Patrick’s character is still shown to be flawed, however. His willingness to commit a felony by knowingly soliciting (probably) false testimony in court underlines that he was never of really sterling character. Patrick’s friendship with Clovis balances the dishonesty of the (possibly) false testimony by reminding the reader that Patrick is capable of acting as a good friend. Tampering with a corpse violates a strong social taboo. This would lower Patrick in the reader’s opinion, so Grisham gives Clovis a backstory to make it palatable—he has no family closer than Patrick, and he isn’t overly concerned with niceties of right and wrong. The reader can infer that although Patrick broke the law by stealing Clovis’s body, Clovis himself would have been amused to donate his body to a good cause, and Patrick’s scheme would have struck him as a very good cause. The revelation of what happened to Pepper shows again that Patrick is capable of acting out of friendship. He also shows his morally compromised nature by helping Pepper disappear rather than extracting him honestly from his family situation. Allowing the FBI to believe it was Pepper’s body in the car prevents anyone from bothering to try to trace Pepper’s whereabouts. The link to Pepper does nothing to help Patrick; he would have been better off if the body had remained completely anonymous, suggesting that Patrick is willing to risk himself for others even while acting out of his own self-interest, reinforcing his status as an anti-hero.
In this final section, Eva’s loyalty ultimately breaks down completely. Stressed and frightened without Patrick on hand to support her, she is turning more toward the money for a sense of security. She is beginning to see that she has lost everything she valued at home, and her life is losing its meaning. The shopping trip in London shows her starting to act as if the money is her own, which she then follows through to its conclusion. With her taking the money, the narrative frees Patrick from its corrupting influence and his culpability as its thief. He has returned to his original dream of freedom without wealth.
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