Double Image

by David Morrell

“She lived next to me for six months and never said a word to me. I can’t imagine why she’d bother to give me her address.”

  “You saw a van? I don’t suppose you happened to notice the name on—”

  7

  Y EAH , I REMEMBER YOU ,” the overweight man in the Pacific Movers work shirt said. “We delivered that load of unusual furniture to you. Tubular stuff. Metal.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just a minute.” The foreman turned to his two young helpers as they came out of an apartment building in Santa Monica. “Make sure you put all those pads back in the truck.” He looked back at Coltrane. “You say you’ve been looking for me?”

  “Your dispatcher told me where you’d be. I’ve got five hundred dollars for you if you’ll do me a favor.”

  “It must be a hell of a favor.”

  “Not really. All you have to do is go back to headquarters and look up the computer file on a customer named Natasha Adler.”

  “And?”

  “She’s an old girlfriend of mine.”

  “So?”

  “I need to know her new address.”

  The man nodded conspiratorially.

  8

  A S THE ROAD TWISTED HIGHER INTO THE S AN B ERNARDINO Mountains, the slopes became more rugged. Pine trees fought for space among granite outcrops. The temperature dropped, making Coltrane turn up the car’s heater and be grateful that he’d thought to bring a ski jacket along with a hat, scarf, and gloves. Although dawn had been a half hour earlier, dense gray clouds cast everything in twilight. Sporadic snow flecked his windshield and added to the roadside accumulation. Steering with one hand, he drank hot black coffee from a thermos and peered toward his rearview mirror. For a while after he had turned off the interstate to follow this secondary road into the mountains, he had been able to see the glow of San Bernardino behind him, but now all he saw were snow-covered boulders and fir trees, not even the headlights of a pickup truck that had followed him for about fifteen minutes and then veered off. It won’t be long now, he promised himself.

  What he had been given wasn’t really an address, just a post office box. Tash had evidently supplied directions to the van’s driver but not his dispatcher. There wasn’t even a telephone number. But a PO box will do just fine, Coltrane thought bitterly. BIG BEAR LAKE , a road marker indicated, 25 MILES . Soon, he vowed. Soon. Meanwhile, he had plenty to think about: nagging questions that wouldn’t stop threatening to tear his mind apart. Tash!

  9

  T HE COLD AIR PINCHED HIS NOSTRILS AND CAUSED HIS BREATH TO come out as vapor. After parking his car on a side street where it couldn’t be seen from the main road, Coltrane walked past rustic-looking shops, ignoring their Alpine exteriors. Christmas decorations still hung in some windows, but he ignored those also, his waffle-soled hiking boots squeaking on new-fallen snow as he strode around a corner and saw Big Bear’s post office across the street. In contrast with the mountain-resort appearance of many buildings in town, this was the usual antiseptic institutional-style building, with a fake redwood and stone exterior, a low-pitched roof, drop boxes for mail, and an unobscured parking lot in front.

  He checked his watch: 8:25. Although the post office staff wouldn’t be on duty until nine, a few people going in and out the front door made clear that the building had been opened earlier so that customers with PO boxes wouldn’t have to wait to pick up their mail. That meant there was a slight chance Tash had already been here to check if she had any. But I doubt it, Coltrane thought. She’ll be tired after shipping her furniture two days ago and then trying to sort through the chaos of boxes yesterday. She’ll give herself a break this morning. She won’t be up to speed for a while yet.

  He entered a chalet-style House of Pancakes and asked the waitress for a table at the window.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Yes. But I’m not sure what I want to eat. I might take a while to order.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  Believe me, I intend to, Coltrane thought. Pretending to study the menu, he kept his attention on the post office across the street.

  10

  T WO HOURS LATER , after the slowest-eaten pancakes, eggs, and sausages of his life, after pretending to read a newspaper over yet another cup of coffee, he decided that he couldn’t hang around any longer without attracting attention. Outside, the air remained gray and cold. He pretended to study merchandise in shop windows within view of the post office. He feigned taking photographs of the area, training his zoom lens on the post office.

  By 12:30, the parking lot at the House of Pancakes was almost full. One more vehicle wouldn’t be noticed. He moved his car from the side street, found an inconspicuous spot that gave him a good view of the post office, and settled in to wait. Periodically, he turned on the engine to get warm. A little after two, he went in for lunch. Snow started falling again. While he stalled over a hamburger, fries, and coleslaw, he prayed the weather wouldn’t become so bad that he couldn’t see the parking lot. Unable to put off going to the rest room, he did so as quickly as possible, afraid that Tash would pick up her mail while he was away. Returning to his table, he was tortured by the misgiving that he had failed to see her. At ten after four, standing to pay his bill, he needed all his self-control not to reveal his excitement when he saw Walt getting out of his Mountaineer over there.

  “This ought to cover it,” he told his waitress. “Keep the change.”

  “That’s very generous.”

  “I guess I’m still in the Christmas spirit.”

  Outside, seeing Walt go into the post office, Coltrane raced through flurries to get to his car before Walt came out and drove away. He slipped on a patch of ice, struggled to keep his balance, and barely avoided a pickup truck that drove from the restaurant. Breathing rapidly, the cold air burning his throat, he unlocked his car, hurried in, and started it. He was troubled by how much his hands were shaking. Then he concentrated on Walt coming out of the post office, his mustached square face sullen, his gloved hands empty, his trip apparently fruitless.

  But not mine, Coltrane thought. He let Walt get a half-block lead, three vehicles between them, before he pulled out to follow. Does Walt know my car? He saw it the night I first met Tash, but in the dark, he didn’t get a good look at it, and anyway, it’s different now—it’s covered with snow.

  Two of the cars took side streets. Then Big Bear’s outskirts merged into postcard scenery, Walt’s car, the car in the middle, and Coltrane’s car proceeding along a partially cleared road that paralleled, on the left, the ice-rimmed, pine tree–bordered lake. Making Coltrane nervous, the flurries thickened. Dark clouds hung lower, obscuring the peaks. Ahead, Walt switched on his lights. So did the driver in the middle. Wanting to be invisible, Coltrane resisted. Then, slowing, its signal light flashing, the middle car turned to the right onto a plowed driveway that led to a cabin, and Coltrane found himself fifty yards behind Walt’s Mountaineer.

  He dropped back farther, hoping that the increasingly difficult driving conditions would make his sluggish pace seem appropriate. But Walt slowed also. Don’t tell me he figured out who’s behind him, Coltrane thought in alarm. Walt slowed more. Jesus. Then Walt’s right signal light flashed, and the Mountaineer headed up a road. At first there were cottages, then only snow-laden pine trees. After a quarter mile, Walt steered to the left up a lane. By the time Coltrane reached the turnoff, the Mountaineer had disappeared.

  He eased to a stop and stared out his driver’s window toward the tracks leading up the lane, toward the curtain of snowflakes that prevented him from seeing past the trees. Is this where Walt was headed, or did he notice me and he’s trying to lead me where there’ll be only the two of us?

  The falling snow made a hissing sound, beginning to fill the tracks. So what’s it going to be? Coltrane brooded. If I wait too long, there won’t be any tracks to follow. He shut off the car, put on his hat, gloves, and scarf, adjusted the neck strap on his camera so that the camera w
as under his ski jacket, then zipped up the jacket and got out of the car.

  The cold had deepened. It didn’t matter. Finding Tash mattered. Getting answers mattered. He followed the tracks along the tree-flanked road. The snow came up to his ankles, an inch away from the top of his thick leather hiking boots. The increasingly heavy flakes brushed against his eyelids, making him blink repeatedly. Wary, he studied the drift-covered undergrowth on each side in case Walt might be hiding there. Then the road reached a Y; the tracks headed to the right, and Coltrane followed them nervously.

  Except for the hiss of the snow and the muffled tread of his footsteps, the late afternoon was totally silent. Dusk thickened. He went another fifty paces before he lurched to a stop, a huge shadow towering over him, lights punctuating it. This isn’t a road, he realized with a start. I’m on a driveway. I’ve reached a house.

  11

  A CABIN , he corrected himself, although it certainly looked as sizable as a house: two stories, a roofed porch, a massive chimney. He barely took in these details before he ducked off the driveway into the cover of the pine trees and waited uneasily for any indication that he had been spotted. After a minute passed and the only sound was the intensifying hiss of the falling snow, he slowly rose and took a harder look at the cabin, or as much of it as he could see through the snowfall. The cabin’s base was built from huge rocks held together by concrete. Mortared logs formed the rest of the structure, except for the chimney, and two others that now became apparent, all made from the same huge stones along the cabin’s base. Solid, substantial.

  Keeping to the trees, he eased along the edge of the clearing, all the while studying the cabin. The porch continued along the right side. A small balcony projected from the second story. The roof was sharply peaked. A small structure to the side had tire tracks leading into it.

  I’m still too exposed, he thought. Even with the snow falling, if I can see the cabin, someone inside can see me.

  So what? Now that you’ve found Tash, what difference does it make if you’re seen? Go up on the porch and pound on the front door. Demand to know what’s going on.

  But I don’t know for certain Tash is in there. Just because I saw Walt go into the post office, that doesn’t mean he has the same PO box she does. She might be staying in town or at another cabin. If I barge in on Walt and he’s all by himself, what’s that going to look like?

  A shadow moved beyond a window, prompting Coltrane to tense. He backed deeper into the forest and relaxed only when the falling snow prevented him from seeing the cabin. The time was a little before five. Dusk, intensified by the weather, became more pronounced. It would soon be dark. The thing to do is find a place to hole up and wait, he thought. It’s not like I haven’t been in snow in the mountains before.

  Sure, in Bosnia.

  The thought startled him. Where the hell did that come from? Pushing it away, he glanced around and saw a wooded slope behind him. From its top, he would have a vantage point on the cabin as soon as the weather lifted. A drift spilled over the tops of his hiking boots, but his wool socks kept most of it from chilling his ankles. Breathing rapidly from the unaccustomed altitude, he arrived on the bluff, assumed he was in line with the unseen cabin, and took shelter beneath the snow-laden boughs of a fir tree. Its limbs were bent over him in a tent shape.

  Again, he had the feeling that he’d done this before.

  In Bosnia.

  I haven’t come far, he dismally thought.

  12

  A T SIX , the weather moved on. Stars glistened. Moonlight sparkled off drifts, as did lights from the cabin, now visible below him. His cold-pinched nostrils were pinched even more by the smell of smoke that drifted from the biggest chimney. It was the only imperfection in the Norman Rockwell homeyness of what he saw.

  Muscles compacting, he noticed someone move beyond the lamp glow in a window down there. Even though he was confident that the illumination in the house would make the windows like mirrors and prevent anyone from seeing him in the night-cloaked forest, he reflexively crouched behind a fir-tree branch, peering cautiously over its snow-covered needles. At a distance of what he judged to be a hundred yards, he couldn’t make out who was at the window, so he hurriedly unzipped his ski jacket, pulled out his camera, and rezipped the jacket against the cold that attacked his chest. He fumbled with a gloved hand to remove the camera’s lens cap, pocketing it. He peered through the viewfinder and simultaneously held his breath so that frost from his mouth wouldn’t waft up and cloud his vision. Then he zoomed in on the window, adjusted the focus, and felt his chest turn cold again when he saw Walt facing the window, looking down at something, making a stirring motion.

  Walt wore a red checked shirt. The magnification of the camera wasn’t strong enough to reveal the slight scar above his right eyebrow, but the sand color of his mustache was readily discernible. Walt turned to his right, Coltrane’s left, and spoke to someone. With the zoom lens at its maximum, Coltrane concentrated on Walt’s lips but couldn’t read them. Someone came into view at a sliding glass door farther to the left. Coltrane aimed the camera in that direction, and if he hadn’t already held his breath to avoid clouding the viewfinder, he would have done so now, for what he saw made his soul ache.

  Wearing jeans and a gray rag-wool sweater that accentuated her lush hair hanging loosely, framing her heartbreakingly beautiful features, Tash had both hands gripped around a coffee mug. Coltrane so projected himself within her that his hands could feel the heat from the mug. She looked out at the snow-covered porch, then turned to speak to Walt, who moved toward her, his imposing body close to her. She was tall, but he was taller. He placed his large hands on her shoulders in a gesture of domination. She returned his stare.

  He kissed her.

  Coltrane flinched, almost charged from cover, almost raced toward the porch. But shock overwhelmed him. He heard a click and whir, and discovered that he had taken a photograph. What am I seeing? he thought. Walt’s hands remained on her shoulders. She made no effort to set down the coffee cup and embrace him. She didn’t move her head to avoid his kiss, but she didn’t accept it, either.

  Walt studied her. He asked her a question. Whether Tash’s response was one of rejection or affection, Coltrane couldn’t tell.

  I need to get closer. Not caring whether his tracks would be seen in the morning, Coltrane responded to his sense of urgency and headed down the slope. Failing to look down, he stumbled over a snow-covered log and barely managed not to fall. With a lurch that jarred him, he came to the bottom half-running and strained to avoid tree limbs he scraped past. Frantic, he took slower steps and at last came to a stop, alarmed by how forceful his breathing was, how fierce his heartbeat.

  In the trees at the edge of the clearing, he was only a hundred feet from the cabin. He didn’t need his zoom lens to see Tash and Walt beyond the sliding glass door. Walt continued to grip her shoulders. Tash continued to stare up at him.

  Then Walt kissed her again, and this time, Tash set the mug on a table, raised both hands, and kissed him back. She held him tightly, receiving, giving, and Coltrane heard another click and whir as he took a second photograph. Then he heard something else—an unwilled sound that came from his throat, as if he was being choked.

  13

  S TUNNED , he sank into a drift. With his back against the rough bark of a pine tree, he hugged himself but couldn’t subdue the spasms shaking him. This can’t be happening, he thought. He shook his head insistently from side to side. From where he was slumped, he could still see the sliding glass door, see them kissing. Walt’s hands were under Tash’s sweater. Her mouth was pressed against his. She fumbled at his belt, and Coltrane screamed.

  Before he knew it, he was on his feet, surging from the trees. He raced across the clearing and charged onto the hollow-sounding wooden porch, seeing the startled look on their faces when he yanked at the sliding glass door. His shoulder felt a shock of pain as the door held firm.

  “I want to talk to you!”<
br />
  Tash stumbled back.

  Walt lunged toward something on the right.

  “You told me I meant something to you!” Coltrane yelled.

  His belt still dangling, Walt reappeared, jabbed at the lock, and shoved the door open.

  Coltrane tried to veer past him. “Why did you lie to me?”

  Walt struck him.

  Coltrane lurched back. Ignoring his bleeding mouth, the same spot where Nolan had struck him in Mexico, he again tried to get to Tash. “Why did you make me think you loved me?”

  Walt knocked him off the porch. But the moment Coltrane landed in a drift, he scurried to try to stand, only to lose all power of movement when he saw the revolver six inches from his face, aimed between his eyes.

  “I could blow your head off.” Walt’s breathing was hoarse.

  “Why did you lead me on?” Coltrane screamed at Tash.

  “With your history. With the two men you’ve already killed,” Walt said.

  “What?”

  “Peeking through windows, taking pictures. Stalking a law-enforcement officer, trying to break into my home. There isn’t a grand jury anywhere that would blame me for defending myself.”

  Tash backed away in fright.

  “Especially if I put an unregistered pistol in your hand,” Walt said, “and squeezed a shot through that glass door, so you’d have powder residue on your glove and there’d be no doubt about your intentions. So go ahead. Try to get past me. Give me a reason to pull this trigger.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “You just don’t pay attention,” Walt said.

  The gunshot was deafening. The heat of the bullet sped past the left side of Coltrane’s head, singeing his hair. He didn’t hear the impact of the bullet behind him. Couldn’t. Could hardly hear Walt shout in his face, “Get out of here! Before I think twice and aim where I should have! If I ever see you around here again, if I ever see you anywhere—”