Desperate Measures

5

Eight hours later, in midafternoon, Pittman was back in Fairfax, Virginia, quickly passing through it, taking 29 west, then 15 north toward Eustace Gable’s estate. During his second telephone call to Gable, which Pittman had made exactly at ten as promised, using a pay phone in Washington, Gable had given him instructions how to get to the estate. As Pittman drove toward the rendezvous, squinting from the sun, he glanced toward his rearview mirror and was reassured to see that despite congested traffic, the gray Ford van remained behind him, Jill visible behind the steering wheel. The van and the equipment inside it had been rented using George’s credit card, and Pittman thought morbidly that George certainly deserved a bonus, the trick being for all of them to stay alive so he could receive it. Pittman passed farms and strips of woods, the sunlight making them seem golden, and he prayed that he would have a chance to see them again, to see Jill again. He thought about Jeremy, and as much as he missed his son, he felt strangely close to him, as if Jeremy were with him, helping him. Give me strength, son.

As instructed, Pittman came to a sign-EVERGREEN COUNTRY CLUB-then headed to the left, trees casting shadows from the sun. A mile later, he went right, along an oak-lined gravel road. This time when he glanced toward his rearview mirror, he saw Jill stopping the van, parking it among bushes at the side of the gravel road. She was doing what they had agreed upon. Nonetheless, he wished she didn’t have to. Until now he hadn’t felt alone.

He rounded a curve and proceeded up a gentle rise flanked by April-lush fields, and he couldn’t help contrasting his increasing fear with the peaceful setting. More, he couldn’t help contrasting his apprehension as he approached Gable’s estate with the indifference to his safety that he had felt a week earlier when he had snuck into the estate in Scarsdale to find out why Jonathan Millgate had been removed from the hospital.

Back then, Pittman’s only motive had been to get a story for Burt Forsyth, to relieve his obligations to his friend. Obsessed with the need to commit suicide, Pittman had felt liberated from apprehension as he had crept through the rainy darkness, circling the Scarsdale mansion, finding Millgate surrounded by a nurse, a doctor, and the grand counselors in a makeshift hospital room off a deck above the five-stall garage. The effort had been easy, the sense of danger nonexistent, because Pittman hadn’t cared what might happen to him. Prepared to kill himself, he had felt immune to any risks.

Not anymore.