While Justice Sleeps

In the Prologue, the omniscient third-person narrator describes the last evening of Howard Wynn before he enters a coma. A Supreme Court judge, Justice Wynn purposefully puts himself into this brain-dead state as part of a plan to unveil high-level corruption in the US government: The US president, Brandon Stokes, approved illegal government funding of genetic research that aimed to produce a genetic virus to kill Muslim people. The Indian company behind that research, Hygeia, has been succeeded by Advar Biogenetics, Ltd., which is trying to acquire a US company, GenWorks. If the merger goes through, the Hygeia research and the president’s knowledge of it will be revealed. President Stokes denied the merger, citing his opposition to genetic research as the reason. In reality, he’s protecting himself. Now, the potential merger is to be decided by the US Supreme Court, which currently has nine justices. Four justices want to block the merger, while four justices want to allow it. Justice Wynn is the swing vote that could decide the outcome.

Justice Wynn wants the truth of the corruption he’s discovered to be unveiled. He’s critical of the rampant corruption he sees in Washington, DC, where he lives and where the book takes place:

He felt equally dismissive of willful ignorance—his description of the modern press—and smug stupidity, his bon mot for politicians. To his mind, they were a gang of vapid and arrogant thugs all, who greedily snatched their information from one another like disappearing crumbs as society spiraled merrily toward hell (1).

However, Justice Wynn faces a personal dilemma that prevents him from outing the corruption. Justice Wynn has Boursin’s syndrome, a fictional progressive genetic illness that’s killing him. His son, Jared Wynn, has inherited the disease. The GenWorks-Advar merger could support research that could potentially cure Boursin’s, saving Jared’s life. Justice Wynn is thus torn between his moral desire to reveal the unethical research and his personal desire to save Jared by protecting the company’s work. Justice Wynn’s solution is to put himself into a coma and assign his law clerk, Avery, as his legal guardian, giving her power of attorney over his medical decisions while he’s in a coma. He also leaves Avery clues that will encourage her to discover the corruption scandal and, he hopes, expose it.

Justice Wynn’s plan isn’t yet apparent in the Prologue, which simply describes the man’s final night before he puts himself into a coma. Earlier that day, Justice Wynn spoke at a commencement ceremony; the other commencement speaker was President Stokes. Justice Wynn is portrayed as possibly having a mental illness, as he seems paranoid, accusing his nurse, Jamie Lewis, of spying on him, saying, “Of course you’re spying on me” (8). He also talks apparent nonsense, rambling about “Lasker-Bauer,” a famous historic chess game, telling Jamie: “In the middle game, both bishops will die to save him. To save the endgame” (9). In fact, Justice Wynn is describing his own strategy to unveil the corruption he’s discovered—something that the reader will learn later.

Before he goes brain-dead, Justice Wynn instructs Jamie to contact Avery and deliver a message: “Tell her…tell her to look to the East for answers. Look to the river. In between. Look in the square. Lask. Bauer. Forgive me” (12).

The reader’s first hint that Justice Wynn isn’t irrational occurs after he enters the coma, when Jamie calls “the man she’d never met” (12) from a burner phone to let him know that the justice appears to have tried to kill himself. The man mentions that Jamie will get a payment, and it becomes clear that Jamie, who is being extorted, really was spying on Justice Wynn.