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.”
13
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?”
P
ittman 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.
14
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.
Two blocks to the east was an entrance to Central Park. Jill’s casual clothes—sneakers, jeans, and a sweater—made it easy for her to run. She clutched her purse close to her side. At the hospital, Pittman had sensed from her comfortable, graceful movements that she was an athlete, and now her long legs stretched in an easy runner’s rhythm, proving that he’d been right.
They slowed briefly to avoid attracting attention, then increased speed again after they entered Central Park, racing east beyond the children’s playground, then south past grown-ups playing baseball on the Great Lawn. Finally, below the Delacorte Theater, Belvedere Lake, and Belvedere Castle, they chose one of the many small trails that led through the trees in the section of the park known as The Ramble.
It was almost two in the afternoon. The sun continued to be strong for April, and sweat beaded Pittman’s forehead as well as made his shirt cling to his chest while he and Jill rounded a deserted section of boulders and gradually came to a stop.
In the distance, there were other sirens. Leaning against a tree whose branches were green with budding leaves, Pittman tried to catch his breath. “I… I don’t think we were followed.”
“No. This is all wrong.”
“What?”
Jill’s expression was stark. “I’m having second thoughts about this. I shouldn’t be here. At my apartment, I was scared.”
“And you’re not scared now?” Pittman asked in dismay.
“Those men breaking in… When you shot one of them… I’ve never seen anybody… The way you were talking… You confused me. I think I should have waited for the police to come.” Jill drew her fingers through her long blond hair. “You should have waited. The police can help you.”
“They’d put me in jail. I’d never get out alive.”
“Have you any idea how paranoid you sound?”
“And apparently you think it’s normal for gunmen to break into your apartment. I’m not being paranoid. I’m being practical. Since Thursday night, everywhere I’ve gone, people have been trying to kill me. I’m not about to let the police put me in a cell, where I’ll be an easy target.”
“But the police will think I’m involved in this.”
“You are involved. Those men would have killed you. You can’t depend on the police to keep you safe from them.”
Jill shook her head in bewilderment.
“Listen to me,” Pittman said. “I’m trying to save your life.”
“My life wouldn’t have needed to be saved if you hadn’t come to my apartment.”
The remark made Pittman flinch, as if he’d been slapped. Although he heard children laughing on another trail, the trail he was on was suddenly very silent.
“You’re right,” he said. “I made a mistake.”
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
Pittman nodded. “I am, too.” He walked away. Draped over his left arm was his overcoat, heavy with his .45 and one of the gunmen’s pistols with ammunition magazines from the others in his pockets.
“Hey, where are you going?”
Pittman didn’t answer.
“Wait.”
But Pittman didn’t.
“Wait.” Jill caught up to him. “I said I was sorry.”
“Everything you said was true. The odds are that those men would have left you alone if I hadn’t shown up. For certain, Father Dandridge would still be alive if I hadn’t gone to see him. Millgate might still be alive, and my friend Burt would be alive, and…”
“No. Pay attention to me.” Jill grabbed his shoulders and turned him. “None of this is your fault. I apologize for blaming you for what happened at my apartment. You meant no harm. You only came there because you needed help.”
Pittman suddenly heard voices, rapid footsteps, what sounded like runners on the trail ahead. He stepped to the side, among bushes, his hand on the pistol in his overcoat pocket. Jill crowded next to him. Three joggers—two young men and a slender woman, all wearing brightly colored spandex outfits—hurried past, talking to one another.
Then the trail was quiet again.
“You’d be safer if you didn’t stay with me,” Pittman said. “Maybe
you’re right. Phone the police. Tell them I forced you to go with me. Tell them you’re afraid to show yourself because you think the men who broke into your apartment have friends who’ll come after you. You might even tell them I’m innocent, not that they’ll believe you.”
“No.”
“You won’t tell them I’m innocent?”
“I won’t tell them anything. The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with you. The police would question me and let me go. But I’d still be in danger. Or maybe I could convince them to put me in protective custody. But for how long? Eventually I’d be on my own, in danger again.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Stay with you.”
“Me?”
“Tell me how I can help.”
15
The bank Jill used, Citibank, had a branch south of Central Park, at Fifty-first and Fifth Avenue. As usual on a Sunday afternoon, the avenue wasn’t busy. Making sure that passersby didn’t overhear him, Pittman explained how the police had arranged for his bank’s automated teller machine to seize his card. “But they haven’t had time to do anything about your card. What’s the maximum the bank allows you to take out?”
“I’m not sure. It could be as much as a thousand dollars.”
“That much?” Pittman shook his head. “Not that it does us any good. I doubt you’ve got it in your account.”
Jill assumed an odd expression. “I might have.”
“Well, I know it’s a lot, but this is an emergency. Please, get as much as you can.”
They entered the bank’s vestibule. Jill shoved her card into the machine and responded to the computer screen’s inquiries, pressing buttons. A minute and a half later, she was stuffing a wad of twenties and tens into her purse.
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