On the Fifth Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

to say it, but there it was. It was the truth.
    "Where did he die?"
    "I'm sorry?" said Thomas.
    "You said he had a case or two with him. He was on vaca
    tion somewhere?"
    "Kind of," said Thomas, glancing out of the window, "I don't really know."
    "And you don't know where?" Parks sounded faintly in
    credulous, even irritated.
    "No," said Thomas, weary and with a swelling sense of failure and humiliation. "Overseas somewhere. I'm sorry. Does it matter?"
    The lawyer hesitated for a second, his eyes uncertain, and then the smile snapped back on, reassuring and dismissive.
    "I shouldn't think so," he said.
    "Do you mind if I just leave you to it?" said Thomas. "I'm just going to get in the way."
    "Sure," said the lawyer. "If I need you, I'll holler."
    Gratefully, Thomas descended.
    Thomas sat at the kitchen table for twenty minutes, staring at his chipped mug, wishing there were something to fill the si
    lence, wishing he could go home. There was, after all, nothing 22
    A. J. Hartley
    for him here. It was as he had expected. If this was closure it was amorphous and deeply unsatisfying, though what else he could have hoped for he really didn't know. Abruptly he got up, snatched a pen from inside his jacket, and fished for some
    thing to write on in his pockets. He spread a creased napkin onto the tabletop and scribbled quickly:
    "Jim. Gone home. Barring anything surprising, see that Ed's stuff goes to the people and causes he cared for. Neither include me, and you are a better judge of what he would have wanted. Sorry about the game. Thanks, TK."
    He looked at the note. It would do. It felt a little cheap, a little easy, but this was not the time to be his brother's keeper. He hadn't been so for the last six years; why pretend other
    wise now?
    He was on his way to the front door when he heard it open and men's voices drifted through to him from the windswept street: Jim, and someone else. Thomas grabbed the note and stuffed it quickly into his pocket as the priest entered the kitchen.
    "All right, Thomas?" said Jim. "This is Father Bill Mor
    retti. We met on the street."
    The other man was sixty and stooped, but his eyes were bright and shrewd.
    "I'm very sorry for your loss," he said, extending his hand.
    "Thank you," said Thomas.
    "Do you want to get started right away?" said Jim, looking expectantly from Thomas to the other man, who was shrug
    ging out of a heavy, old-fashioned overcoat.
    "Started with what?" said Thomas.
    "I'm sorry," said Jim, grinning at his absentmindedness.
    "This is the lawyer who has come to go through your brother's possessions with you."
    For a second Thomas just stood there.
    "If you're the lawyer," he said, at last, "who's upstairs?"
    CHAPTER 4
    Thomas was the first to move, but even so he was halfway up the stairs before he hit his stride, driven by a vague outrage he couldn't explain. Jim followed, the lawyer a slow third at his back. At his brother's bedroom door, Thomas twisted the han
    dle as he crashed his shoulder against the timber, but the door did not give. For a second he thought he could hear movement on the other side, and then he was slamming repeatedly against it with all his weight and strength, suddenly angry.
    "Thomas, wait!" said Jim, grasping his arm. "He could be armed. He could be . . ."
    But Thomas wasn't listening. He gritted his teeth and rammed the door again. Distantly through the noise of his ef
    forts Thomas heard Jim tell the lawyer to go and call the police, and then the jamb splintered and the door shuddered open. The room was deserted, the window open. He blundered in with Jim at his heels, grabbed the window frame and looked out, but could see no sign of tracks in the snow. It all happened in a second: movement behind him, a muffled crunch, and a groan as Jim slipped to the floor. Parks--if that was his name--had been behind the door waiting for them. With Jim down, he now took a menacing step toward Thomas.
    "Hold it," said Thomas, raising one hand defensively,