Repairman Jack [05]-Hosts Read Online Free PDF Page A

shooter's family and have them sue him for wrongful death and excessive use of force. And how long before the papers learned that he didn't have a job, or a known address, wasn't registered to vote or licensed to drive—hell, didn't even have a Social Security number? Then the tax boys would want to know why he'd never filed a return. On and on it would go, spinning out of control, engulfing him, ensuring that he never took another free breath for the rest of his life.
    Jack picked up his pace a little once he crossed Columbus, leaving the shops and restaurants behind and walking through the ultra-high-rent district. Almost to Central Park West, he passed the two liveried gatekeepers outside the Dakota who kept watch on the spot where another gun-wielding lunatic had done his bloody work in 1980 and ended an era.
    He crossed CPW and stopped at the mossy, soot-encrusted, rib-high wall of textured brownstone. The park lay just beyond… tempting… but if he entered here he'd have to exit somewhere else; his best bet would be to get out of sight as soon as possible. His apartment was less than half a mile from here. An easy walk. But first…
    He stepped through an opening in the wall and entered the shadowed underbrush. Once out of sight he pulled his shirt from the cap and dropped it in a puddle. A dozen feet farther on he shoved the cap into a tangle of vines, then angled around and made his way back out to the sidewalk.
    Keeping to the park side, he lengthened his stride and headed uptown. To his left, echoing along the concrete canyons, sirens began to wail.

4

    Sandy Palmer crouched in an uptown corner of the Seventy-second Street subway platform with The Light's editor on the other end of his cell phone. The connection was tenuous from this underground spot, and he feared losing it at any second.
    George Meschke's voice growled in his ear. At first he'd been pissed at being disturbed at home, now he was all ears. "You're sure you've got that number right?"
    "Absolutely."
    "Six dead?"
    "As doornails. Two men and four women—I counted them twice before 1 left the car." Sandy peered through the controlled chaos farther down the platform. "A seventh victim, a black woman, was still alive but with an ugly head wound. The EMTs are just taking her away."
    "You're amazing, kid," Meschke said. "I don't know how you kept your cool. I'd 've lost it after going through what you've just told me."
    "Cool as a cucumber," Sandy said. "That's me."
    He neglected to mention that he'd given up dinner soon after the train had stopped. Even now—what, fifteen minutes later?—his hands were still shaking.
    Those first moments were something of a blur. He remembered seeing the GPM run out, and his abrupt exit had seemed to throw a switch in the crowd. Suddenly everybody wanted out—immediately if not sooner. Sandy had had to pull aside the still sobbing film student from the mass exodus to keep her from being trampled.
    As he'd helped her to her feet he'd realized he had a golden opportunity here: he was a trained journalist who'd witnessed a front-page crime. If he could gather his senses, focus on the details, and make the most of the fact that he was his own primary source, he could accomplish something here, something big.
    "What's your name?" he'd asked the shaken young woman. "Your real name?"
    "Beth." Her voice was barely audible, her skin so white she looked almost blue.
    "Come on. Let's get you out of here."
    As he'd moved behind her, guiding her, half supporting her, he turned and checked out the front end of the car… the sprawled bodies of the victims… the killer, whose upper half had fallen through the doors when they opened, lying half in and half out of the car… the OR tech still tending to the wounded woman… and the blood, good Christ, the blood—the whole end of the car was awash in pools of it. Who'd have thought people could hold so much blood? And the smell—books always described the smell of blood as coppery,