Read Online Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts by F. Paul Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

He's a judge in Philly now, you know."
    "I'd heard."
    "He's on his third wife now. Saw him briefly over Christmas. I didn't see it when you were younger, but you and he look amazingly alike. Put on ten years and twenty pounds, add a little gray to your hair, and you could be twins."
    "My big brother," Jack said, frowning as he shook his head. "Of all things, a judge."
    Wondering at Jack's tone of chagrin, she raised her glass for another sip but found only ice cubes.
    "Time for another," Jack said, taking it from her.
    Before she could protest he was up and moving away from the table.
    Moves like a cat, she thought as she watched him go.
    Time to change the subject. So far the conversation had been pretty much a one-way street. Now it was his turn.
    "So," she said as he set the second drink before her. "Enough about me. I need some answers from you. Most of all, I want to know why you simply disappeared from our lives. Was it what happened to Mom?"
    Jack nodded. "Indirectly."
    I knew it! Kate thought. Knew it, knew it, knew it!
    "We were all devastated, Jack, but why—?"
    "You weren't there in the car when that cinderblock came through the windshield, Kate. You didn't see the life seep out of her, see the light fade from her eyes."
    "Okay. I wasn't there. Neither was Tom. But Dad was and he—"
    "Dad didn't do anything about it. I did."
    "I don't understand," she said, baffled. "Did what?"
    He stared at her a long moment, as if weighing an important decision. Finally he spoke.
    "I found him," he said softly. "Took me a while, but I found the guy who did it."
    "Who did what?"
    "Who threw the cinderblock off the overpass."
    The words jolted her. Jackie had gone out looking… hunting… by himself?
    "How come you never said anything? Did you tell the police?"
    He shook his head. "No. I took care of it myself."
    "What… what did you…?"
    Suddenly it was as if a mask had dropped from Jack's face. She looked into his eyes now and for an instant, the span of a single agonized heartbeat, she felt as if she were peering into an abyss.
    His voice remained low, flat, as cold as that abyss. "I fixed it."
    And then the mask was back in place and an old memory flashed though Kate's brain… a newspaper article about a dead man, battered beyond recognition, found hanging upside down from a Turnpike overpass not too long after Mom's death, and she remembered wondering if it might be the same overpass, and if so it should be torn down because it must be cursed.
    Could that have been the "guy" Jack said he'd tracked down? Was that why the body had been hung from that particular overpass?
    No… not Jackie… not her little brother. He'd never… he couldn't kill. It had been someone else hanging from the overpass. And this man he'd mentioned… Jack had simply beaten him up.
    Kate wanted very much to believe that. She turned her mind from the other possibility, but it lingered like a shadow across the table.
    "Did… what you did solve anything? Did it make you feel better?"
    "No," he said. "I'd thought it would, I was so sure it would, but it didn't do a damn thing for me. And after I… afterward nothing seemed to make much sense. College seemed particularly pointless. I had to get away before I exploded. I dropped out, Kate— way out. Spent years in- a blind rage, and by the time I'd blown off some of it and locked up the rest, I'd burned too many bridges to go back."
    "Maybe you told yourself that. Maybe that made it easier for you, but it wasn't true."
    "It was. And is. My life and your life… they're different worlds. No way you'd understand."
    "Understand what? This repair business of yours? Just what is it you fix?"
    "Hard to say. Situations, I guess."
    "I don't get it."
    "Sometimes people have problems or get themselves into situations where the legal and judicial system can't help, or they're involved in something they can't bring to the system. They pay me to fix it for them."
    An appalling thought struck her. "You're not some