David Morrell - Double Image

Jennifer shook her head. “These streets weren’t here back then. There’s no way to tell which route Packard used.”

“And all these trees cut off the view, so we don’t know where we are in relation to Falcon Lair.”

Six hours later, dogged determination was all that kept them going. “This assignment needs an explorer, not a photographer,” Coltrane said as he steered onto yet another side street.

Jennifer squirmed. “My rear end hurts. I feel as if I’ve driven to Vegas and back.” Empty coffee cups, along with scrunched-up junk-food wrappers, littered the floor of the passenger seat – from several bathroom trips to West Hollywood. “I bet I put on ten pounds.”

“Maybe getting me to do this project was Packard’s idea of a practical joke.” Coltrane reached the crest of what seemed the hundredth side street and pointed toward a walled estate on the left. “Do you think this is where he took the photograph?”

Jennifer glanced from the estate toward the barely glimpsed view to the right. “Let’s give it a try. Anything to get out and see if my legs still work.”

A breeze smelled sweet. Despite the recent rain, Coltrane heard a lawn sprinkler.

“Could be.” He studied the estate. It was higher than the street. In fact, it was on the highest spot around. “From inside, we might be able to see over the trees toward the opposite side of the canyon.”

Jennifer checked her watch. “Ten after two. The light will soon be perfect.”

“Yeah, maybe the day won’t be a total waste. Maybe I can still get some shots.”

The rhododendron-lined driveway had a closed metal gate. A smaller closed gate had a sidewalk leading onto the property. An intercom was mounted on an ivy-covered wall.

Coltrane pushed the button.

“Hello?” A female voice, sounding tinny, came from the intercom.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a photographer for-”

“You’re early.”

Coltrane exchanged a puzzled look with Jennifer.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” he said to the intercom.

“You’re not supposed to be here until Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“For our daughter’s wedding.”

“I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“My God, don’t tell me you can’t be here for the wedding!” the woman said.

“I don’t know anything about that. I work for Southern California Magazine and-”

“Magazine? But I don’t want any magazines.”

Jennifer started to giggle.

“Ma’am, I’m not selling magazines. What I want to do is take some photographs of a house across-”

“ Photographs of our house ? My husband will go insane. He hates anybody knowing anything about our private life. The last movie he produced was about Arab terrorists. He says, if they find out where we live, they’ll blow us up in our sleep.”

Jennifer bent over, trying to stifle her laughter.

“Ma’am, I have no intention of photographing your house. I want to photograph Rudolph Valentino’s house.”

“Rudolph Valentino? You’re not making sense! For all I know, you’re a terrorist. Young man, I can see you from the house. If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police!”

“Please, let me explain!”

The intercom had been making a slight buzzing sound. Now it went dead.

When Coltrane turned to Jennifer for moral support, he found her slumped on the curb, holding herself, laughing. “Only nineteen more houses to go,” she managed to say between guffaws. “At this rate, you’ll be done by next summer.”

“Maybe not,” a voice said.

JENNIFER STOPPED LAUGHING. They spun toward the gate, where an attractive, delicate-looking woman in her late twenties studied them. She was tall and slim, wearing tan slacks and a brown cardigan. Her arms were crossed. A kerchief covered her hair.

“Are you really from Southern California Magazine ?”

Jennifer stood and showed her best winning smile, gesturing toward the logo on her sweatshirt. “Cross my heart.”

“Just a second.” The woman reached through the bars on the gate and pressed the intercom.

The tinny voice responded immediately. “Young man, I told you-”

“Mother, don’t call the police. These people seem all right. I’m going to let them in.”

“But-”

The woman took her finger off the intercom’s button, then pressed numbers on a keypad on the other side of the gate, freeing an electronic lock. “You’re serious about photographing a house across the canyon, Mr…”

“Mitch Coltrane. This is my editor, Jennifer Lane.”

“Diane Laramy.”

They shook hands and stepped through the gate.

“What’s this about Rudolph Valentino?”

Coltrane explained the assignment as they climbed a smooth slanted lawn, stopping with their backs to a lemon tree at the hill’s highest point.

“And there it is.” Jennifer sounded amazed. She showed Packard’s photograph to Diane, then pointed down toward a curving street of houses on an opposite but lower hill. One sprawling red-roofed structure stood slightly apart, perched on an eroded slope, solitary on a dead-end road. Its walls were still white. It still looked like a Spanish monastery. But there the similarity ended. The invasion that Packard’s photograph had predicted made Falcon Lair look besieged.

“I was beginning to think this project couldn’t be done,” Coltrane said.

“Eerie,” Diane said. “Looking at that photograph and then at the house, I feel as if I’m in the past and the present simultaneously.”

“That’s the idea,” Coltrane said.

He and Jennifer crisscrossed the hill, leaning this way and that, all the while comparing their view of Falcon Lair to the perspective in Packard’s photograph, trying to find the exact spot where Packard had set up his camera.

Scraping his back against the lemon tree, Coltrane smiled. “Well, I’ll be… Yes. Right here.”

“Let me see.” Jennifer hurried to Coltrane’s left.

Bemused, Diane joined Coltrane on his right. He raised the photo so that it obscured the view, then lowered it, the Falcon Lair from the 1920s replaced by the Falcon Lair of the present.

“It’s like a weird kind of double exposure,” Diane said. “This lemon tree wouldn’t have been here then.”

“Or the lawn,” Jennifer added. “And obviously not your house.”

“And none of these other houses.” Coltrane continued to raise and lower the photograph, the effect hypnotic.

“So many years ago. Someone stood exactly where I’m standing now and took that picture.”

“He died on Sunday,” Coltrane said.

Diane suddenly shivered.

“Is something wrong?” Coltrane asked.

“No. There’s just a chill in the air.”

But Coltrane couldn’t help wondering if Diane had shivered for another reason. Her delicate features began to trouble him. Her skin was so translucent that he could see the hint of blue veins in her cheeks. Her eyes seemed sunken, possibly because she had lost a lot of weight. Her slacks and cardigan hung on her. Her kerchief covered her head so completely that he didn’t see any of her hair.

“Well…” Coltrane felt awkward. “We’re taking up your time.”

“No problem,” Diane said. “I’m enjoying this.”

“Even so…” Coltrane studied the sky. “The light’s about as good as I can hope for. I’d better get started.”

WHEN HE AND JENNIFER WENT BACK TO THE CAR TO GET THE camera, the tripod, and the bags of equipment, Diane insisted on helping, out of breath even though she carried only a small camera bag to the crest of the hill. Coltrane didn’t have time to think about the implications. He had only about two hours of effective light remaining and needed to hurry.