David Morrell - Desperate Measures

Pittman slowly straightened. His legs were stiff. His calves prickled as blood resumed its flow through arteries that had been constricted. He turned toward the French doors for a final look at Jonathan Millgate helpless in his bed, surrounded by monitors, bottles, and tubes.

Pittman’s pulse faltered.

Through the gaps in the draperies, what he saw seemed magnified by the glass panes in the French doors. At the same time, he felt as if he watched helplessly from a great distance. The nurse had left the room, leaving Millgate alone. She had shut the door. Millgate had not been asleep, contrary to what she evidently believed. Instead, he was attempting to raise himself.

Millgate’s features were twisted, agitated. The oxygen prongs had slipped from his nostrils. His IV tubes had become disengaged from the needle in each of his arms. He pawed with both hands, trying to grasp the railings on his bed with sufficient strength to raise himself. But he wasn’t succeeding. His face had become an alarming red. His chest heaved. Abruptly he slumped back, gasping.

Even at a distance, through the barrier of the French doors, Pittman thought he heard Millgate’s strident effort to breathe. Before Pittman realized, he stepped closer to the window. The warning buzzer on the heart monitor should have alerted the nurse, he thought in dismay. She should have hurried back by now.

But as Pittman stared through the window, he was close enough that he knew he would have been able to hear an alarm, even through the glass. Had the sound been turned off? That didn’t make sense. He studied the pattern of blips on the monitor. From so many days of watching Jeremy’s monitors and insisting that the doctors explain what the indicators said, Pittman could tell from Millgate’s monitor that his heartbeat was far above the normal range of 70 to 90 per minute, disturbingly rapid at 150. Its pattern of beats was becoming erratic, the rhythm of the four chambers of his heart beginning to disintegrate.

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 sundeck. 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 Sean watching, Pittman had learned how 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 had worried that when he opened the door, he would trigger an 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.