Desperate Measures (26 page)

He crept through the trees and soon emerged again into moonlight, crouching on an open ridge, staring down a grassy slope
toward the murky silhouettes of Grollier’s buildings. The time was almost midnight, and lights were off in every structure
except the administration building. Exterior lights illuminated the square and the front of every building. There wasn’t any
sign of activity.

Nonetheless, Pittman waited, thinking, sensing. The weather report on the car radio had predicted a low of thirty-five degrees,
and Pittman believed it, seeing frost come out of his mouth. He shivered, but only partially from the temperature, mostly
from fear. He couldn’t help contrasting how he had felt the night he entered the estate in Scarsdale with how he felt now.
Back then, he’d been nervous but fatalistic. What did a man about to commit suicide have to lose? But now…

Yes? Pittman asked himself. What about now?

You’re scared. Which means you
do
have something to lose. Are you suddenly afraid of dying?

Why?

Jill?

The thought came unexpectedly. What are you hoping for?

Hope. Pittman realized that the word hadn’t been part of his vocabulary in quite a while. And with hope came fear.

He started down the grassy slope. The night was silent, making him conscious of a subtle breeze. His jogging shoes became
wet, chilling his feet with moisture from the grass. He ignored the sensation, concentrating on the shadows of the equestrian
ring that he passed and then the football field. The buildings of the school were outlined against the mountains.

He’d done enough newspaper stories about the military to be aware that someone with a sniper’s rifle and a nightscope would
have no trouble seeing him in the dark and killing him. With each step that brought him closer and with each second of awareness
that he hadn’t been shot, he gained confidence. Maybe the school is safe, he thought. Maybe it won’t be as difficult as I
feared.

A horse whinnied from somewhere behind him, and he froze, self-conscious, worried that the noise would attract someone’s attention.
The second time the horse whinnied, Pittman became mobile again, hurrying forward, reaching the shadows at the back of one
of the buildings.

The night became quiet once more. Moving as rapidly as caution would allow, he skirted the perimeter of other buildings, taking
care to avoid spotlights. When he came to the side of the square that was opposite the ridge from where he had entered, he
pressed himself against a classroom building, intensified his senses, and concentrated on every detail in the darkness around
him. The fact that he’d gotten this close continued to encourage him. But fear persisted in making him tremble, and he knew
he couldn’t take anything for granted.

Mustering his determination, he crept from the side of the classroom building and reached the library building. He didn’t
dare go to the front and expose himself to the spotlights. Instead, he approached the back door, turned the knob, and discovered
that the door was locked. Remembering how the librarian had bragged that the school’s successful honor system made it unnecessary
for doors to be locked, Pittman realized the degree to which he and Jill had made the academy’s headmaster nervous. Almost
certainly, Bennett had been warned to watch out for strangers. But why? Pittman thought. What are Millgate’s people trying
to hide?

Earlier, when he’d been in the library building, Pittman hadn’t seen any indication of a security system. At least that was
one thing he didn’t have to worry about as he took out his tool knife and used its lock picks. The scrape of metal made him
wince. It seemed terribly amplified, certain to draw someone’s attention. Nonetheless, he kept working, freeing one pin, then
another, continuing to apply pressure to the cylinder, suddenly feeling it turn. As the lock’s bolt slipped free, Pittman
turned the knob, worrying that someone might be waiting for him on the other side. He drew his pistol, lunged through the
opening, aimed toward the darkness with his right hand, and quickly used his bandaged hand to shut the door.

He listened. The echoes of his rapid entrance diminished. Enveloped by silence, he held his breath, straining to see in the
darkness, on guard for the slightest sound. A minute passed, and in contrast with the chill he had felt outside, his body
now streamed sweat.

He locked the door behind him, felt his way upstairs to the main floor, listened, crept up to the second floor, listened again,
and approached the door to the archives. Its opaque window revealed a hint of moonlight glowing into the room. It, too, was
locked, but this time he wasn’t surprised.

Quickly he freed the bolt on this door, as well. He entered cautiously, shut the door behind him, crouched, and waited. If
gunmen were in here, they had ample opportunity to move against him. After thirty seconds, he decided to take the risk. First
he twisted the dead bolt’s knob, locking the door behind him. Then he crossed to the windows and pulled down blinds. Finally
he crept toward the middle shelves, turned on his flashlight, made sure that its modest beam was aimed toward the floor, where
it wouldn’t cast a glow on the windows, and reached for the yearbooks that he and Jill had examined that afternoon.

The gap on the shelf dismayed him. The yearbooks from 1929 to 1936 were gone. Hoping that they might still be on the desk
where he and Jill had left them, he spun, but the flashlight revealed that the table was bare. Bennett must have taken them
away.

Jesus, what am I going to do? Pittman thought.

Sweat continued to stream from him. He shut off his flashlight and slumped on the floor, propping his back against a shelf.

Check the other yearbooks, he told himself. Look at 1937.

Why? What’s the point?
The grand counselors had graduated by then.

Well, what other choice do you have?

Maybe there are other records.

Earlier, when Pittman and Jill had searched the room, they had concentrated on finding the most obvious research tool—the
yearbooks. Pittman hadn’t paid much attention to binders and boxes. Many of them were labeled
SEM REP
, followed by sequential, overlapping numbers—51–52, 52–53, 53–54, et cetera—and the pressure of a time limit had prevented
him from investigating the contents. Now, with no alternative, he roused himself, stood, turned on his flashlight, and approached
other shelves in the room.

The box he opened, chosen at random, contained neatly arranged smaller boxes, each of which held a roll of microfilm. It occurred
to Pittman that
SEM REP
possibly meant semester report and that the numbers referred to the fall and spring sessions of each school year—the fall
of 1949, for example, and the spring of 1950. The next school year would begin in the fall of 1950 and continue to the spring
of 1951, thus the overlapping numbers—49–50, 50–51. Over the years, the accumulation of documents had become difficult to
store, not to mention a fire hazard, so the pages had been transferred to microfilm, convenient for the school but a major
frustration for Pittman.

What am I supposed to do, steal the rolls for the years the grand counselors attended Grollier? I still wouldn’t be able to
read them.

Unless you take them to a library that has a microfilm reader.

But the rolls I steal might not have the information I need. I can’t leave here until…

Wait a minute. There wouldn’t be microfilm if there wasn’t a…

Pittman recalled from his previous visit that a bulky object covered by a cloth had stood on a table in a corner to the right
of the door. Its shape was distinctive. He shifted toward it, pulled off the cloth, and found, as he had hoped, a microfilm
reader. When he turned it on, he didn’t know which made him more nervous—the hum of the machine’s fan or the glow on its screen.
He went back to the boxes, checked labels, and sorted among rolls of microfilm, soon finding one for 31–32. He attached it
to the spools on the machine, wound the microfilm past the machine’s light and its magnifying lens, and studied what appeared
on the screen.

What he squinted at was a class list and final grades for students in Ancient History I. None of the grand counselors’ names
was on the list. He spooled forward through individual reports about various students, reached Classical Literature I, and
again was frustrated to discover that none of the grand counselors had been in that course.

At this rate, it’ll take me hours to read the entire roll. There’s got to be a more efficient way to…

Ancient History I? Classical Literature I? The numeric designation implied that there were later sections of those courses,
Pittman thought—II, III, maybe IV. Heat rushed into his stomach as he understood. Grollier was a four-year prep school. The
grand counselors had been juniors in 1931–1932. They would be in the class reports for juniors, three-quarters through the
roll.

Pittman swiftly turned the roll forward, ignoring classes marked II, reaching III, and immediately slowing. He found a course
in British History in which all the grand counselors were registered and had received top grades. He found a number of other
courses—British Literature, European History, Greek Philosophy, and Latin—in which the grand counselors had also been registered
and received top grades. But in none of those classes did he find anyone named Duncan.

He spooled onward to a course in Political Science, and immediately his attention was engaged: While the other courses had
contained numerous students, this course contained only six—the five grand counselors, plus a student named Derrick Meecham.

Pittman hesitated. When he and Jill had separated the yearbooks, hers had been for 1929–1932, his for 1933–1936. As he had
learned, the grand counselors had graduated in 1933. But it now seemed to him that when he had concentrated on the
M
category, looking for Millgate’s name, he hadn’t come across any reference for a student named Meecham in the 1933 yearbook.

He knew he could be wrong. All the same…

He spooled forward to the spring semester for that course, and now he frowned with puzzlement. The roster had dropped from
six names to five.

Derrick Meecham was no longer enrolled.

Why?
Had Meecham gotten sick? His grade from the previous semester had been an A, so he couldn’t have found the course so difficult
that he’d dropped it. Besides, Pittman had the suspicion that at Grollier, students didn’t have the option of dropping courses.
Rather, Grollier dropped students.

Then
why!
Pittman thought again. He became more convinced that his memory hadn’t failed him, that Derrick Meecham had, in fact, not
been in the yearbook for the following year. Pittman rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze wandered to the bottom of the screen,
where the course’s instructor had signed the grade report, and suddenly he felt as if he had touched an exposed electrical
wire, for the instructor’s ornate signature seemed to come into focus. Pittman tried to control his breathing as he stared
at the name.

Duncan Kline.

Jesus, Pittman thought. Duncan hadn’t been a student. He’d been a teacher. That was the connection with Grollier. Duncan Kline
had been Millgate’s teacher. All of them. He had taught
all
the grand counselors.

A noise made Pittman stiffen. Despite the whir of the fan on the microfilm machine, he heard footsteps on the stairs beyond
the door. Angry voices rapidly approached.

Startled, he shut off the machine.

“… can’t believe you didn’t leave someone on guard.”

“But the two of them left. I made sure.”

The voices became louder.

“Were they followed?”

“To the edge of campus.”

“Stupid…”

“It’s a good thing we flew up here.”

“The outside door was still locked. That proves the records are safe.”

“It proves nothing.”

Lights came on in the hallway outside the door. Their illumination glowed through the opaque window. The shadows of men loomed
beyond it.

“I took the yearbooks they were looking at.”

“But what else might they have come back to look at?”

Someone tried to turn the knob on the door.

“It’s locked.”

“Yes, I secured that door, as well. I told you no one’s been here.”

“Just get out your key and unlock the damned door.”

Pittman’s chest cramped. He couldn’t get enough air. In desperation, he swung toward the murky room, trying to figure out
where he could hide, how he could stop the men from finding him.

But he remembered how the room had looked during daylight. There’d been no other door. There was nothing to hide behind. If
he tried to conceal himself beneath a table, he’d be found at once.

The only option was…

The windows. As he heard a key scraping in the lock, a voice saying, “Come on, hurry,” Pittman rushed to a window, raised
its blind, freed its lock, and shoved the window upward.

“Stop,” one of the voices in the hallway said. “I heard something.”

” Somebody’s in there.”

Bennett’s unmistakable nasally voice said, “What are you doing with those guns?”

“Get out of the way.”

Pittman shoved his head out the window, staring down. He had hoped that there might be something beneath the window to break
his fall, but at the bottom of the two-story drop, there was nothing except a flower garden.

“When I throw the door open, you go first. Duck to the left. Pete’ll go straight ahead. I’ll take the right.”

Pittman studied the leafless ivy that clung to the side of the building. The vines felt dry and brittle. Nonetheless, he had
to take the chance. He squirmed out the window, clung to the ivy, and began to climb down, hoping that there weren’t other
men outside in the darkness.

“On three.”

Pittman climbed down faster. The ivy to which he clung made a crunching noise and began to separate from the bricks and mortar.

Above him, he heard a crash, the door being thrust open. Simultaneously the ivy fully separated from the wall. As Pittman
dropped, his stomach soaring, his hands scrabbled against the wall, clawing for a grip on other strands of ivy. The fingers
on his bandaged left hand were awkward, but those on his right hand snagged onto vines. At once those strands snapped free
from the wall, and he dropped farther, grabbing still other ivy, jolting onto the ground, falling backward, desperately bending
his knees, rolling.