60 pages • 2 hours read
Stacey AbramsWhile Justice Sleeps
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A 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 40-48Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 40 Summary
Rita is at a bar when Phillips approaches her and suggests they leave together; Rita agrees and willingly goes with him. Meanwhile, Avery continues her research. She gets an anonymous call from Nigel, who tells her: “Governments are good at cleaning up messes. If I were you, I’d find out all I could about a company called Hygeia. I’d follow the money” (273). After she ends the call with Nigel, Avery asks Agent Lee if his team has made any progress on finding Betty. They haven’t. Agent Lee urges Avery once again to let him into what she knows: “If she [Betty] had some knowledge from Homeland Security that would make her a target for foul play, now’s the time to tell me, Avery. I can help” (275). Avery, still not trusting Agent Lee, refuses.
Chapter 41 Summary
Avery learns that the justice ingested an unregistered pharmaceutical compound designed to induce a coma. The doctors, unfamiliar with the drug, don’t know if the coma is reversible. Avery gets a message from Nigel, passing on the information that Betty sent him. The documentation Betty obtained includes proof that the US government paid hundreds of millions to Hygeia. Jared, Noah, Ling, and Avery discuss the proof, Jared realizing, “If the [GenWorks-Advar] merger succeeds, the president’s archenemy, Nigel Cooper, will have access to data proving his administration sanctioned research into biogenetic genocide” (279). The question remains whether President Stokes knew about the situation or whether Major Vance acted alone. Avery believes that Ani will be able to tell them. Luckily, she has figured out the “in the square” riddle and knows to meet Ani at Seward Square.
Chapter 42 Summary
Avery and Jared meet Ani at a coffee shop. Ani reveals that the Tigris Project was successfully tested on human subjects, prisoners:
We perfected the weapon. Tested it. […] What I have given you is a video of the experiments, as well as other information. The virus works almost perfectly. Three hundred subjects tested. A twenty-four percent survival rate (284).
The test subjects who did survive were killed for discretion. Ani gives Avery and Jared a USB with the information and tells them that he plans to disappear. He is the only scientist involved in the Tigris Project who is still alive; he must hide or he’ll be killed too.
Chapter 43 Summary
Avery and Jared meet Ling and Noah. The four of them review the information provided by Ani. It includes video footage of the experiment—testing on human subjects. The footage is grotesque, showing the test subjects bleeding out on camera. Ling guesses that the virus targets the body’s clotting factors, “like some supercharged version of Ebola or Marburg” (292). The video shows Major Vance on camera; they now have proof that Major Vance knew about the experiments. However, this still doesn’t prove that President Stokes knew what was happening. The group’s discussion is interrupted when Avery gets an anonymous call from Phillips, telling her that he has Rita: “You have a simple choice, Ms. Keene. By tomorrow at five p.m., either Howard Wynn dies or your mother does” (296).
Chapter 44 Summary
Jared, Noah, and Ling discuss what to do. Avery points out that, even if she kills Justice Wynn, she won’t get Rita back: “If they know I have proof, their only recourse is to finish us all” (299). Luckily, Justice Wynn has left Avery one last useful clue, which she now figures out: Avery leads Jared, Noah, and Ling to Justice Wynn’s home, where she finds a pill bottle with the words “FINGERPRINTS” written across it. The reader will later learn that Justice Wynn obtained President Stokes’s fingerprints when he shook the president’s hand at the commencement ceremony mentioned in the Prologue; the fingerprints on the pill bottle will frame President Stokes for Justice Wynn’s attempted murder.
Chapter 45 Summary
Avery, Jared, Ling, and Noah return to Avery’s apartment. Avery purposefully sets a trap for Major Vance by saying in range of the bugs: “I can’t kill him [Justice Wynn]. They have to call” (305). This spurs Major Vance to call her; Avery hopes to get him on the phone long enough that Jared—using his military background—can track the location and determine where Rita is. As planned, Major Vance calls Avery, believing himself anonymous. He suggests that Avery contact President Stokes, to which Avery replies, “If I offer [Justice Wynn’s] resignation and the president accepts, you’ll let Rita go?” (306). Major Vance agrees. The phone call doesn’t last long enough for Jared to pinpoint Rita’s location.
Chapter 46 Summary
Avery speaks to President Stokes on the phone, informing him about Rita’s kidnapping and her call with the kidnappers. Avery suggests that, if she—as Justice Wynn’s legal guardian—hands in Justice Wynn’s resignation on the judge’s behalf, and the president accepts it, Rita will be freed. President Stokes, having been briefed by Major Vance, pretends like he doesn’t know about the situation, and makes a big (fake) show of accepting Justice Wynn’s resignation, which is exactly what the president wanted: “Yes, Avery. With a heavy heart and deep regret, I will accept his letter of resignation” (310). Avery calls Nigel and tells him she wants to meet him and Indira at the St. Regis Hotel the next day at 7:00 a.m. Avery then gets a call from Phillips, who is holding Rita; the call lasts long enough that Jared can pinpoint Rita’s location. Avery calls Agent Lee for help freeing Rita.
Chapter 47 Summary
President Stokes holds a press conference announcing Justice Wynn’s resignation. Avery, acting as Justice Wynn’s guardian, has signed and handed over the letter officially tendering his resignation. Meanwhile, Agent Lee and a team of FBI agents save Rita, who has been detoxing cold turkey since she’s been kidnapped. In the process of rescuing her, the agents kill Phillips.
Chapter 48 Summary
Avery and Rita reunite at the FBI offices. Avery is sorry that she put her mother in danger. Rita jokes that the experience was the “cheapest rehab yet” (326). One of the agents assures Avery that they will help Rita continue detoxing in a professional treatment center. Agent Lee meets with Avery, Noah, Ling, and Jared, annoyed that they hid the truth from him for so long but on their side. The problem is that Phillips can’t be linked to Major Vance or President Stokes. Jared points out the futility of trying to Agent Lee:
You can go and question Vance about his attaché. He’ll tell you Phillips was freelancing, and you’ll have nothing to contradict him. I’m sure Vance has manufactured evidence of a right-wing group that Phillips will be conveniently aligned with (328).
Chapters 40-48 Analysis
A common characteristic of thrillers is that the tension grows throughout. At the beginning the narrative, danger may be foreshadowed. By the end of the narrative, that danger usually has become tangible, with real implications (often deadly) for the protagonist. While Justice Sleeps fulfills this conceit when Rita’s taken hostage. Avery is forced to choose between the life of Justice Wynn or that of her mother, an impossible moral decision. This tension is heightened by the revelation that Justice Wynn has ingested a drug that induces a coma without harming the body’s organs. This implies that the judge could, theoretically, come out of his state unharmed—making it even more imperative that he isn’t taken off life support.
These final chapters also delve deeper into the intricacies of proving a crime, something unique to legal thrillers. Betty’s character is a pivotal plot device, providing proof of US funds being used for Hygeia’s illegal research and giving Nigel, “the president’s archenemy,” the “data proving his administration sanctioned research into biogenetic genocide” (279). However, the question remains whether President Stokes knew about the research, or whether Major Vance acted alone. Although the reader knows, thanks to the omniscient narrator, that the president is aware, Avery can’t confirm this. She still needs evidence. Ultimately, Avery will not be able to prove that the president knew what happened at Hygeia. However, Major Vance will betray the president and provide evidence of a different crime: In the book’s final chapters, Major Vance will give Avery a video of then-Vice President Stokes killing former President Cadres with an air-embolism injection.
The fact that President Stokes is never explicitly linked to the criminal Hygeia activity speaks to The Pervasive Nature of Corruption and how hard it is to catch powerful people doing bad things. They inevitably avoid getting their hands dirty by having other people, cogs in the machine, do the dirty work for them. Many of the minor characters speak to this fact, from Major Vance and his men to Jamie. Phillips is the prime example of this. He gives up his life serving Major Vance. However, Major Vance makes sure that Phillips can’t be linked to him. As Jared explains:
You can go and question Vance about his attaché. He’ll tell you Phillips was freelancing, and you’ll have nothing to contradict him. I’m sure Vance has manufactured evidence of a right-wing group that Phillips will be conveniently aligned with (328).
The difficulty of holding powerful people accountable for corrupt actions is exemplified by the fact that Justice Wynn feels the need to frame President Stokes for his murder, leaving behind the pill bottle with President Stokes’s fingerprints for Avery. Ultimately, Avery will use this to get the president arrested for Justice Wynn’s murder—even though the president is innocent of this crime. The lack of evidence to put the president away for other crimes he’s committed makes this is the only way to incarcerate him. It’s not ethical to frame someone for murder, but, in the grand scheme of things, this is the “right” thing to do. Still, it shows how corruption spreads, as Justice Wynn and Avery resort to unethical practices to take down “the bad guy.”
A pivotal moment in these chapters occurs when Avery meets Ani. This concludes a major mystery—throughout the narrative, Avery has been trying to figure out who Ani is and how to contact him. As expected, Ani proves integral to unlocking the mysteries surrounding Tigris when he tells Avery and Jared that the project was tested, successfully, on human subjects, and that he has valuable evidence proving this claim: “What I have given you is a video of the experiments, as well as other information. The virus works almost perfectly. Three hundred subjects tested. A twenty-four percent survival rate” (284).
Avery’s choice to watch the video of the experiments results in gruesome descriptions of crimes against humanity. The author’s choice to include these details creates a sense of horror in the reader, who—through the eyes of Avery, Ling, Noah, and Jared, watching the videos—witnesses the test subjects die. Through character dialogue, the reader learns what happens. Ling explains that the virus targets the body’s clotting factors, “like some supercharged version of Ebola or Marburg” (292). Throughout the narrative, Ling’s character serves to provide scientific explanations of this kind, filling in the gaps for readers who may not have a medical background. The author’s choice to make Ling a doctor is no accident.
