David Morrell - Desperate Measures

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.

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.”