Desperate Measures (7 page)

A crisis would come. Soon. Millgate's color was worse. His chest heaved with greater distress. He clutched at his blankets as if they were crushing him.

He can't get his breath, Pittman thought.

The oxygen. If he doesn't get those prongs back into his nostrils, he'll work himself into another heart attack.

The son of a bitch is going to die.

Pittman had a desperate impulse to turn, race down the steps, surge toward the estate's wall, scurry over, and run, keep running, never stop running.

Jesus, I should never have done this. I should never have come here.

He pivoted, eager to reach the stairs down from the sun deck. But his legs wouldn't move. He felt as if he were held in cement. His will refused to obey his commands.

Move. Damn it, get out of here. Instead, he looked back.

In agony, Millgate continued to struggle to breathe. His pulse was now 160. Red numbers on his blood-pressure monitor showed 170/125. Normal was 120/80. The elevated pressure was a threat to anyone, let alone an eighty-year-old man who'd just had a heart attack that placed him in intensive care. Clutching his chest, gasping, Millgate cocked his head toward the French doors, his anguished expression fixed on the windows. Pittman was sure Millgate couldn't see him out in the darkness. The dim lights in the room would reflect off the panes and make them a screen against the night. Even so, Millgate's tortured gaze was like a laser that seared into Pittman.

Don't look at me like that! What do you expect? There's nothing I can do! Yet again Pittman turned to flee.

Instead, surprising himself, Pittman reached into his pants pocket and took out his keys and the tool knife-similar to a Swiss army knife-that he kept on his key ring. He removed two pieces of metal from the end of the knife. He was fully prepared to shoot himself to death in eight days. But there was no way he was going to stay put and watch while someone else died-or run before it happened and try to convince himself that he didn't have a choice. Millgate was about to go into a crisis, and on the face of it, the most obvious way to try to prevent that crisis was to reattach his IV lines and put the oxygen prongs back into his nostrils.

Maybe I'm wrong and he'll die anyhow. But by God, if he does, it won't be because I didn't try. Millgate's death won't be my responsibility.

Thinking of the .45 in the box at the diner, Pittman thought, What have I got to lose?

He stepped to the French doors and hesitated only briefly before he put the two metal prongs into the lock. The tool knife from which he had taken the prongs had been a gift from a man about whom Pittman had once written an article. The man, a veteran burglar named Sean O'Reilly, had been paroled from a ten-year prison sentence, one of the conditions being that he participate in a public-awareness program to show homeowners and apartment dwellers how to avoid being burglarized. Sean had the slight build of a jockey, the accent of an Irish Spring commercial, and the mischievously glinting eyes of a leprechaun. His three television spots had been so effective that he'd become a New York City celebrity. That was before he went back to prison for burglarizing the home of his attorney. When he had interviewed him at the height of his fame', Pittman had suspected that Sean would end up back in prison. In elaborate detail, Sean had explained various ways to break into a house. Pittman's enthusiasm for information had prompted Sean to elaborate and dramatize. The interview had lasted two hours. At its end, Sean had presented Pittman with a gift-the tool knife he still carried. "I give these to people who really understand what an art it is to be a burglar," Sean had said. What made the knife especially useful, he explained, was that at the end of the handle, past miniature pliers, screwdrivers, and wire cutters, there were slots for two metal prongs: lock-picking tools. With glee, Sean had taught Pittman how to use them.

The lesson had stuck.

Now Pittman worked the prongs into the lock. It was sturdy-a dead bolt. It didn't matter. One prong was used to free the pins in the cylinder, Sean had explained. The other was used to apply leverage and pressure. Once you did it a couple of times, the simple operation wasn't hard to master. With practice and watching, Pittman had learned to enter a locked room within fifteen seconds. As he freed one pin and shoved the first prong farther into the cylinder to free the next, Pittman stared frantically through the French door toward Millgate's agonized struggle to breathe.

Pittman increased his concentration, working harder. He worried that when he opened the door, he would trigger alarm. But his worry had vanished when he'd noticed a security-system number pad on the wall next to the opposite entrance to the room. From his interview with the Bugmaster, Pittman remembered that owners of large homes often had their security company install several number pads throughout their homes. These pads armed and disarmed the system, and it made sense to have a pad not just at the front door but at all the principal exits from the dwelling.

But in this case, the security company had installed the pad in the wrong place-within view of anyone who might be trying to break in through the French doors. From Pittman's vantage point, as he freed another pin in the cylinder of the lock, he could see that the illuminated. indicator on the number pad said READY TO ARM. Because so many visitors had been coming and going, the system had not yet been activated.

Pittman felt the final pin disengage. Turning the second metal prong, he pivoted the cylinder, and the lock was released. In a rush, he turned the latch and pulled the door open.

The opposite door was closed. No one could hear Pittman as he hurried into the dusky room. Millgate was losing strength, his effort to breathe less strenuous. Pittman reached him and eased the prongs for the oxygen tube into Millgate's nostrils.

The effect was almost magical. Within seconds, Millgate's color had begun to be less flushed. His agitation lessened. A few more seconds and the rise and fall of Millgate's chest became more regular, less frenzied. Throughout, Pittman was in motion. He grabbed the IV tubes that Millgate had inadvertently jerked from the needles in his arms. As Pittman inserted the tubes back onto the base of each needle, he noticed that liquid from the tubes had trickled onto the floor. How would the nurse account for that when she came back into the room? he wondered. Then he noticed the water tracks that he had brought in from the rain, the moisture dripping off his overcoat.

I have to get out of here.

A final look at the monitors showed him that Millgate's blood pressure, respiration rate, and heartbeat were becoming less extreme. The old guy's going to make it a while longer, Pittman thought. Relieved, anxious, he turned to leave the room.

But he was shocked as an aged clawlike hand grabbed his right wrist, making him gasp. Pittman swung in alarm and saw Millgate's anguished eyes staring at him.

Pittman clutched the old man's fingers and worked to pry them off, surprised by the ferocity of the -old man's grip.

Jesus, if he yells ...

"Duncan." The old man spoke with effort, his voice thin and crackly, like cellophane being crumpled. He's delirious. He doesn't know who he's talking to.

"Duncan." The old man seemed to plead.

He thinks I'm somebody else. I've been in here too long. I have to get out.

"Duncan." The old man's voice thickened, now sounding like crusted mud being stepped upon. "The snow."

Pittman released the old man's fingers.

"Grollier. " The old man's throat filled with phlegm, making a grotesque imitation of the sound of gargling.

To hell with this, Pittman thought, then swung toward the French doors.

He was suddenly caught in a column of light. The entrance the room had been opened. Illumination from the hall silhouetting the nurse. She stood, paralyzed for a minute. Abruptly she dropped a tray. A teapot and cup crashed onto the floor. She screamed. And Pittman ran.

Pittman's brief time in the room had made him feel warm. As he raced onto the sundeck, the night and the rain seemed much more chilling than they had only a few seconds earlier. He shivered and lunged through puddles, past the dark metal patio furniture and toward the stairs that led down from the deck. At once he was blinded, powerful arc lamps glaring down at him from the eaves of the mansion above the sundeck, reflecting off puddles. The nurse or a guard had switched on the lights. From inside the building behind him, Pittman heard shouts.

He ran harder. He almost lost his balance on the stairs. Gripping the railing, flinching from a sliver that rammed into his palm, he bounded down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he almost scurried in the direction from which he had come, toward the tree-lined driveway and. The gate from the estate. But he heard shouts from the front of the house, so he pivoted toward the back, only to recoil from arc lights that suddenly blazed toward the covered swimming pool and the flower gardens. There, too, he heard shouting.

With the front and rear blocked to him, Pittman charged to the side of the house, across concrete at the entrance to the large garage, over spongy lawn, toward looming dark trees. Rapid footsteps clattered down the stairs from the walk.

" Stop! "Shoot him!"

Pittman reached the fir trees. A needled branch pawed his face, stinging him so hard that he didn't know if the moisture on his cheeks was rain or blood. He ducked, avoiding another branch.

"Where the-?"

"There! I think he's over-!"

Behind Pittman, a bough snapped. Someone fell. "My nose! I think I broke my fucking-!"

"I hear-!"

"In those bushes!"

"Shoot the son of a bitch!"

"Get him! If they find out we let somebody-!"

Another branch snapped. Behind him, Pittman's hunters charged through the trees.

Just in time, Pittman stopped himself. He'd come to a high stone wall, nearly running into it at full force. Breathing deeply, he fiercely studied the darkness to his left and then his right.

What am I going to do? he thought in a frenzy. I can't assume I'll find a gate. I can't keep following the wall. Too obvious. They'll listen for the sounds I make. They'll get ahead of me and behind me and corner me. Turn back?

No! The police will soon arrive. The house has too manyoutside lights. I'll be spotted.

Then what are you going to ... ?

Pittman hurried toward the nearest fir tree and started to climb. The footsteps of his pursuers thudded rapidly closer. He gripped a bough above him, shoved his right shoe against a lower branch, and hoisted himself upward along the trunk. Bark scraped his hands. The fir tree smell of turpentine assaulted his nostrils. He climbed faster.

"I hear him!"

Across from the top of the wall, Pittman reached out along a branch, let his legs fall away from the tree trunk, and inched hand over hand toward the wall. The branch dipped from his weight. Dangling, he kept shifting along. The bark cut deeper into his hands.

"He's close!" "Where?

Moisture dropped from the fir needles onto Pittman. Even greater moisture dropped from the branch to which he clung. Water cascaded onto the ground.

"There!' "That tree!

Pittman's shoes touched the top of the wall. He swung his legs toward it, felt a solid surface, no razor wire or chunks of glass along the top, and released his grip, sprawling on the top of the wall. The gunshot was deafening, the muzzle flash startlingly bright. A second shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without thinking, flipping sideways off the top of the wall. Heart pounding, he dangled. The rough wall scraped against his overcoat. He didn't know what was below him, but he heard one of his pursuers trying to climb the tree. Another man shouted, "Use the gate!" Pittman let go. His stomach swooped as he plummeted.

Exhaling forcefully, Pittman struck the ground sooner than he anticipated. The ground was covered with grass, mushy from rain. He bent his knees, tucked in his elbows, dropped, and rolled, trying desperately to minimize the impact. That was the way a skydiver he had once interviewed had explained how parachutists landed when they were using conventional equipment. Bend, tuck, and roll.

Pittman prayed it would work. If he sprained an ankle, or worse, he would be helpless when his pursuers searched this side of the wall. His only hope would be to hide. But where? As he had swung toward the top of the wall, his impression of the dark area behind it had been of unnerving open space.

Fortunately he had an alternative to being forced to try to hide. Using the momentum of his roll, he surged to his feet. His hands stung. His knees felt sore. But that discomfort was irrelevant. What mattered was that his ankles supported him. His legs didn't give out. He hadn't sprained or broken anything.

On the other side of the barrier, Pittman's hunters cursed and ran. Noises in a tree suggested that one of them continued to climb toward the top of the wall. His chest heaving, Pittman charged forward. The murky lawn seemed to stretch on forever. In contrast with the estate from which he'd just escaped, there weren't any shrubs. There were hardly any trees.

What the hell is this place?

It felt unnatural, eerie. It reminded him of a cemetery, but in the darkness, he didn't bump into any tombstones. Racing through the drizzle, he noticed a light patch in the lawn ahead and used it as a destination. At once the ground gave away, a sharp slope that caused him to tumble in alarm, falling, rolling.