Desperate Measures (20 page)

“A broken window.”

“You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

Pittman didn’t answer.

“We’re not going to get anywhere if you’re not honest,” Jill said. “I’m taking a big chance by helping you. I know you’re
not a policeman. You’re Matthew Pittman, and the police are hunting you.”

The shock of her statement brought Pittman upright.

“No,” Jill said. “Don’t try to sit.”

“How long have you—?”

“Lie back down. How long have I known? Since about thirty seconds after you started talking to me at the hospital.”

“Dear God.” This time when Pittman tried to sit up, Jill put a hand on his chest.

“Stay down. I wasn’t kidding. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, you’ll have to go to a hospital.”

Pittman studied her and nodded. Adrenaline offset his light-headedness. “Matt.”

“What?”

“You called me Matthew. My friends call me Matt.”

“Does that mean I’m supposed to think of you as a friend?”

“Hey, it’s better than thinking of me as an enemy.”

“And you’re not?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“It’s not as if you never lied to me before.”

“Look, I don’t get it. If you knew who I was at the hospital, why didn’t you call the police?”

“What makes you think I didn’t? What if I told you I played along with your charade because I was afraid of you? You might
have hurt me if I let on I knew who you really were.”

“
Did
you phone the police?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Jill asked.

“Remember? Where would we have… ?”

“I’m not surprised. You were under a lot of stress. About as much as anybody can take.”

“I still don’t…”

“It’s only in the last six months that I’ve been working in adult intensive care.”

Pittman shook his head in confusion.

“Before that, I worked in the children’s section. I left because I couldn’t stand seeing… I was one of Jeremy’s nurses.”

Pittman felt as if his stomach had turned to ice.

“I was on duty the night Jeremy died,” Jill said. “In fact, I’d been on duty all that week. You’d received permission to sit
in a corner of the room and watch over him. Sometimes you’d ask me about the meaning of some of the numbers on his life-support
machines. Or you’d get a look at his chart and ask me what some of the terms meant. But you weren’t really seeing me. Your
sole attention was toward Jeremy. You had a book with you, and sometimes if everything was quiet, you’d read a page or two,
but then you’d raise your eyes and study Jeremy, study his monitors, study Jeremy again. I got the feeling that you were focusing
all your will, all your energy and prayers, as if by concentrating, you could transfer your strength to Jeremy and cure him.”

Pittman’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “That’s what I thought. Dumb, huh?”

Jill’s eyes glistened. “No, it was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen.”

Pittman tried to sit up, groping for the glass of water on the table beside the sofa.

“Here, let me help.” Jill raised the glass to his lips.

“Why do you keep looking at me that way?” Pittman asked.

“I remember,” Jill said, “how you helped take care of Jeremy. Little things. Like dipping a washcloth into ice water and rubbing
it over him to try to bring down his fever. He was in a coma by then, but all the while you washed him, you were talking to
him as if he could hear every word you said.”

Pittman squinted, painfully remembering. “I was sure he could. I thought if I got deep enough into his mind, he’d respond
to what I was telling him and wake up.”

Jill nodded. “And then his feet began curling. The doctor told you to massage them and his legs, to try to keep Jeremy’s muscles
limber so they wouldn’t atrophy.”

“Sure.” Pittman felt pressure in his throat. “And when his feet
still
kept curling, I put his shoes on him for an hour, then took them off, then put them on in another hour. After all, when Jeremy
would finally come out of the coma, when his cancer would finally be cured, I wanted him to be able to walk normally.”

Jill’s blue eyes became intense. “I watched you every night of my shift all that week. I couldn’t get over your devotion.
In fact, even though I was due for two days off, I asked to stay on the case. I was there when Jeremy went into crisis, when
he had his heart attack.”

Pittman had trouble breathing.

“So when I read the newspapers and learned all the murders you were supposed to have committed, I didn’t believe it,” Jill
said. “Yes, the newspapers theorized you were so overcome with grief that you were suicidal, that you wanted to take other
people with you. But after watching you for a week in intensive care, I knew you were so gentle, you couldn’t possibly inflict
pain on anyone. Not deliberately. Perhaps on yourself. But not on anyone else.”

“You must have been surprised when I showed up at the hospital.”

“I couldn’t understand what was going on. If you were suicidal and on a killing rampage, why would you come to the intensive-care
ward? Why would you pretend to be a detective and ask about Jonathan Millgate’s last night in the ward? That’s not how a guilty
person would act. But it
is
how a person who’s been trapped would act in order to get answers, to try to prove he didn’t do what the police said he did.”

“I appreciate your trust.”

“Hey, I’m not gullible. But I saw the way you suffered when your son died. I’ve never seen anyone love anybody harder. I thought
maybe you had a break coming.”

“So you let me pretend I was a detective.”

“What was I supposed to do, admit I knew who you were? You’d have panicked. Right now, you’d be in jail.”

“Or dead.”

A knock on the door made Pittman flinch. He frowned toward Jill. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Jill looked puzzled. “No.”

“Did you lock the door after I came in?”

“Of course. This is New York.”

Again someone knocked.

Pittman mustered the strength to stand. “Bring my overcoat. Put those bandages under the sink in the kitchen. As soon as I’m
out of sight in the closet, open the door, but don’t let on that I’m here.”

The third knock was louder. “Open up. This is the police.”

Jill turned toward Pittman.

“The police,” he said. “Maybe. But maybe not. Don’t tell them I’m here.” Apprehension overcame his unsteadiness. He took the
overcoat Jill gave him. “Pretend you were sleeping.”

“But what if it
is
the police and they find you?”

“Tell them I scared you into lying.”

Someone knocked even harder, rattling the door.

Jill raised her voice. “Just a moment.” She looked at Pittman.

He gently touched her arm. “You have to trust me. Please. Don’t tell them I’m here.”

As he hurried toward the closet, he didn’t let Jill see the .45 he took from his overcoat pocket. Heart pounding, he entered,
stood between coats, and closed the door, waiting in darkness, feeling smothered.

After a moment during which he assumed Jill was hiding any further indication that he had come to the apartment, Pittman heard
her put the chain on the main door, then unlock the dead bolt. He imagined her opening the door only to the slight limit of
the chain, peering through a gap in the doorway.

“Yes? How can I help you?”

“What took you so long?”

“You woke me up. I work nights. I was sleeping.”

“Let us in.”

“Not until I see your ID.”

Startled, Pittman heard a crash, the sound of wood splintering, the door being shoved open, the chain being yanked out of
the doorjamb.

Heavy footsteps pounded into the hallway. The door was slammed shut. Someone locked it.

“Hey, what are you—?”

“Where is he, lady?”

“Who?”

“Pittman.”

“
Who?
”

“Don’t look so damn innocent. We know he came up here. One of our men was watching this place and called us. After Pittman
went to the priest, we figured he might be making the rounds to anybody else who’d talked to Millgate before he died. And
we were right.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I checked the bedroom,” another voice said. “Nothing.”

“Is there a back way out of here, lady?”

“No one in the bathroom,” a third voice said.

“Answer me, lady. Damn it, is there a back way out of here?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“He’s not in this closet.”

“Check the one in the hall.”

“Where
is
he, lady?”

As Jill screamed, Pittman heard footsteps approach the closet.

A heavy set man yanked the door open, exhaled at the sight of Pittman, raised a pistol with a silencer, and lurched back as
Pittman shot him.

The gun’s report was amplified so loudly by the confines of the closet that Pittman’s ears rang fiercely. He surged from the
closet and aimed the .45 at two husky men in the living room, one of whom was twisting Jill’s arm so severely that she’d sunk
to her knees, her face contorted with pain.

They both had silenced pistols, but as they spun, startled, the frenzied look on Pittman’s face made them freeze.

“Raise your hands!” Pittman screamed.

Seeing the outraged expression on his face, staring at the .45’s barrel, they obeyed. Jill fell away.

“Take it easy,” one man said. “The way you’re shaking, that gun might go off on its own.”

“Right,” the other man said. “Don’t make it any worse for yourself. We’re police officers.”

“In your dreams. Keep your hands up. Drop the guns behind you.”

They seemed to calculate their chances.

“Do it!” Pittman tensed his finger on the .45’s trigger.

The guns thunked onto the floor.

Pittman walked past Jill, picked up one of the silenced pistols, and shook less violently—because after he’d left the church,
there had been only one bullet left in the .45, and he had used it on the man who had opened the closet door. There’d been
no time to grab that man’s pistol. In order to catch the remaining gunmen off guard, he’d been forced to threaten them with
an empty weapon, first making sure to press the lever that closed the .45’s ejection slide so they wouldn’t realize the weapon
was empty, easing it shut so they wouldn’t hear a noise.

The men had slammed and locked the main door after they entered.

Now someone else was banging on the door, a frail, worried voice asking, “Jill? Are you all right?”

Pittman frowned at her. “Who is it?”

“The old man who lives next door.”

“Tell him you’re not dressed or else you’d open the door. Tell him you had the TV too loud.”

As Jill moved down the hall, Pittman ordered the men, “Open your jackets. Lift them by the shoulders.” Two years ago, he’d
done a story about training techniques at the police academy. An instructor had invited him to participate in a session about
subduing hostile prisoners. He strained to remember what he’d learned.

When the men lifted their jackets, Pittman walked around them. He didn’t see any other weapons. That didn’t mean there weren’t
any, however. “Down on your knees.”

“Listen, Pittman.”

“I guess you don’t think I’d shoot you the same as I shot your buddy.”

“No, I’m a believer.”

“Then get down on your knees. Good. Now cross your ankles. Link your fingers behind your necks.”

As the men assumed that awkward position, Jill returned.

“Did your neighbor believe you?”

“I think so,” Jill said.

“Wonderful.”

“No. He says when he heard the shot, before he knocked on my door, he called the police.”

“Jesus,” Pittman said. “You’d better hurry. Put on some clothes. We have to tie these men up and get out of here.”

“
We?
”

“You heard what they said. After I went to the priest, they figured I might go to anyone else who had talked to Millgate before
he died.”

“What priest?”

“The one you told me about. Father Dandridge. Look, I don’t have time to explain. The priest is dead. They killed him. And
I’m afraid they think you know too much. You might be next.”

“The police will protect me.”

“But
these
men said they were the police.”

Jill stared at the gunmen on the floor, her eyes wide with understanding.

While she dressed quickly, Pittman used bandages and surgical tape to bind the gunmen’s arms and legs. Hearing police sirens,
he and Jill ran nervously from her apartment. Neighbors, frightened by the gunshot, peered from partially open doors, then
slammed and locked the doors when they saw Pittman charging along the hallway.

He reached the elevator but then thought better. “We might be trapped in there.” Grabbing Jill’s hand, he rushed toward the
stairs. She resisted only a moment, then hurried with him. Her apartment was on the fifth floor, and they rapidly reached
the third floor, then the second.

On the ground floor, they faltered, hearing sirens approaching.

“Where does that door lead?” Pittman breathed deeply, pointing toward a door at the end of the corridor behind him. It was
the only one that didn’t have a number on it. It had a red light over it. “Is that an exit?”

“Yes, but—”

“Come on.” He tugged at Jill’s sleeve and moved quicky along the hallway, through the door, and outside into the shadowy bottom
of an air shaft. Garbage cans lined its walls.

“It’s a dead end!”

“I tried to tell you.” Jill turned to run back into her apartment building. “There’s nowhere to—”

“What about
that
?” Pittman pointed toward a door directly across from him. He rushed over to it, twisted its knob, and groaned when he found
that it was locked. Doing his best to control his shaky hands, he pulled out his tool knife and used the lock picks, exhaling
with relief when he shoved the door open. It led into a hallway in the apartment building behind Jill’s. The moment he and
Jill were inside, he shut the door and turned the knob on the dead bolt. By the time the police got it open, he and Jill would
be out of the area. As they hurried onto Eighty-sixth Street, Pittman imagined the police cars arriving at Jill’s apartment
building on Eighty-fifth Street.