Desperate Measures

10

Pittman hoped he seemed just one of many Sunday-morning strollers. In contrast with the week’s cool, rainy weather, the day was warm and bright. Joggers and bicyclists sped past street musicians and portrait painters, indigents and street vendors. Near the Washington Arch, students with New York University T-shirts played with a Frisbee while a beard-stubbled man holding a bottle in a paper bag stumbled past them.

Pittman didn’t pay attention to any of it. Concealed in his overcoat pocket, his hand continued to throb against a handkerchief that he had wrapped around it to staunch the flow of blood. Obviously he was hurt worse than he’d thought. He felt light-headed again, but this time he was sure it was from the blood he’d lost. He had to get to a hospital. But a hospital wouldn’t give him treatment unless he showed ID and filled out an information form. If the receptionist recognized his name or if the police alerted the hospitals to be on the lookout for someone with a bleeding hand… No. He had to find another way to get medical help.

And then what? he kept insisting to himself. Where will you go after that? Father Dandridge was supposed to have all your answers, and now he’s dead and you don’t know anything more than when you started.

Why did they kill him? Pittman thought urgently. If they were after me, why didn’t they wait until I left the church?

Because they wanted both of us. They must have been watching him. They were looking for any sign that he was going to act on what Millgate had told him in earlier confessions. And when I showed up, they assumed we were working together.

But what did Father Dandridge know that was so important?

Grollier, the prep school Millgate had attended.

It must have some significance. Damn it, somebody’s worried enough to kill anybody I come in touch with who might know anything about the thoughts that tortured Millgate in his final hours.

Final hours.

Pittman suddenly knew where he had to go next.