David Morrell - Double Image

Glancing at his watch, seeing that the time was already almost three o’clock and that he was close to wasting the day, he calculated that it might take him another twenty minutes to backtrack and get over to the road he wanted. That was assuming the road would be marked and he wouldn’t have more difficulty finding it. Why bother when his destination was practically before him? Jennifer’s request that he take her photograph had produced the effect she intended. Responding to old habits, he had brought his camera with him. Now he slung it around his neck. After getting out of his car and locking it, he buttoned his sport coat against the increasing chill of the day and pushed his way through the crackling branches of the scrub brush.

He heard the pounding of surf before he saw the ocean below him. He was on a steep ridge that looked down on the road he wanted, a line of impressive homes hugging the coast, no one in sight. In contrast with Malibu’s famous beaches, the shoreline here was almost entirely gray rock. Intrigued by the whitecaps hitting those rocks, as well as by the red tile roofs on some of the homes, Coltrane raised his camera, chose a fast shutter speed to freeze the waves, and took several photographs.

Then he made his way carefully down a zigzag path on the bluff, some of which had been eroded by the recent heavy rains. He grasped an exposed tree root to help lower himself, clawed at clumps of grass, dug his heels firmly into the soft soil, and finally reached the bottom, where concrete barriers had been put up to protect against mud slides.

The surf pounded louder, and yet he was terribly conscious of the noise of his breathing. It’s just from the exertion of coming down the slope, he told himself. Sure. When he reached a mission-style home, he saw that the number on the mailbox was 38, but he was looking for 24, so he proceeded farther along, too preoccupied to pay attention to the cree-cree-cree of seagulls floating overhead.

Yesterday, after he had obtained Natasha Adler’s address and telephone number from the private investigator that Packard’s attorney used, he had called that number and been frustrated when a computerized voice had told him that the number was no longer in service. Had the investigator given him the wrong information, or had Natasha Adler moved? Maybe she’s living in the estate in Mexico now, Coltrane thought.

Continuing along the road, he passed another mission-style home, then a Spanish colonial. But his gaze was directed toward a house farther along, which his count of the remaining mailboxes told him was the address he wanted. It was substantial, sprawling, modernistic, an assemblage of two-story all-white blocks silhouetted against the stark blue sky, tinted by the lowering sun.

Struck by the geometry of the image, he again raised his camera. The contrast of light and shadow might be hard to capture, he knew, so he adjusted his exposure to favor the middle shadows of the image and took the photograph. As a precaution, he made two further exposures, the first favoring darker elements of the image, the second favoring lighter ones. The technique, known as “bracketing,” would give him a choice of contrasts.

Having pressed the shutter button a final time, he lowered the camera and felt as if he had been away for a moment. It was a feeling that he hadn’t experienced since the day he had come upon Packard’s house and taken the last photographs in his update on Packard’s series. He began to realize how truly numbed he had been by the intervening horrors. A new year, a new start, he thought, recalling Jennifer’s encouragement before they had separated earlier in the day.

Then what am I doing here?

LIKE MOST MALIBU SHORELINE HOMES, the house was close to the road. On the right, a tall metal fence enclosed a small garden. On the left, a red Porsche was parked in the short driveway, the closed doors of a two-car garage beyond it. Otherwise, no vehicles were in sight. At least someone’s home, Coltrane thought. He verified that the number on the mailbox was what he wanted: 24.

And now what? he asked himself. Are you going to knock on the door in the middle of the afternoon on New Year’s Day? That’ll certainly make an impression.

He peered through the metal fence toward the front windows, looking for movement in the house, some indication that a family gathering was in progress. The windows were blank eyes. The rooms were still. Maybe I wouldn’t be interrupting anything, he thought. Maybe knocking on the door wouldn’t be as inappropriate as I first thought. If I come back and knock on the door tomorrow or the day after, I’ll still be intruding.

Barely aware of the ornate shrubs in the garden, he approached the front door. Instead of knocking, he pushed the doorbell and heard it ring hollowly inside. After waiting a moment, he pushed it again, the echoing doorbell making the place seem deserted. He rang it a third time, holding it a little longer. Someone has to be home, he thought. Otherwise, why would the Porsche be in the driveway? Whoever lives here wouldn’t have gone on a trip and left an expensive sports car in the open. He switched from ringing the bell to knocking on the door, but still no one answered.

Maybe a couple are making love in there, he thought. Maybe if I keep ringing this bell and they finally do open the door, they’ll be very explicit about how much I’ve annoyed them. I’m here to get some questions answered, not to antagonize the person I need to answer those questions.

Self-conscious, he hesitated, his finger an inch away from the doorbell. Yeah, tomorrow’s better. Except maybe no one will answer the door then, either. If only the phone was in service.

Retreating to the road, Coltrane scanned the front windows to see if anyone was peering out at him, and finally he decided to give up. I should have gone with Jennifer, he thought. But as he prepared to walk back the way he had come, he suddenly realized that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the presence of the car and the failure of anyone to come to the door when he rang the bell.

Whoever’s here is outside walking along the ocean.

He moved toward the left side of the house, intending to use the space between this house and the next to give him access to the shore. A wall blocked his way. On the right side, a similar wall stopped him. His excitement changing to frustration, he noticed that all the other homes had barriers, preventing outsiders from intruding on the beach.

When he walked past the remaining properties, he discovered a fence that went down to the waterline. The cree-cree-cree of the gulls became more pronounced. The crash of waves intensified as he stepped around the end of the fence, his shoes getting wet. It’s one thing to ring a doorbell and disturb someone on New Year’s Day, but it’s quite another if I come across someone taking a walk, he thought. It would be natural for us to say hello. It wouldn’t seem as intrusive for me to explain who I am and to ask a few questions.

Approaching the rear of the house, he saw a white deck perched over shelves of uneven gray rock that led down to the ocean. Stretching in both directions, the shelves of rock glistened as the spray from waves drifted over them.

But no one walked along those rocks. The shore was deserted.

Coltrane shook his head. Forced to admit that, for today at least, he truly had wasted his time, he began to turn to go back to the road, then stopped as movement among the rocks attracted his attention. Narrowing his eyes against the glare of the lowering sun (how could the sun be so bright and the air so shiveringly cool?), he thought he was hallucinating, for the movement wasn’t just among the rocks – it was the rocks. One of them was rising from the others.