David Morrell - Double Image

“And enough to make a jury put him away,” Coltrane said.

“Maybe not for long. But hey, the complainant would breathe easier for a while at least. Hell, maybe this jerk would use the time to reconsider how he shows affection.”

“You don’t have any idea who he is?”

“No, and neither does the complainant. The obvious temptation is to suspect he’s someone she knows. But that’s not always the way these things work. He might be someone she met five years ago and doesn’t remember. Maybe he’s a clerk at the bank she uses. Sometimes it takes only one look for a creep like this to get fixated on someone. We do know he orders the flowers by sending a letter of instructions along with cash to various flower shops. The wreath and the bull’s heart were delivered by a parcel service. The return address on the packages was bogus. While the phone was still working, the guy frequently left his voice on the complainant’s answering machine, but she doesn’t recognize it.”

“The best tactic we could think of,” Walt said, “was to try to entrap him.”

Lyle explained further. “Before the complainant had her phone disconnected, we told her to tell this guy when he called that it was time to put up or shut up, that she’d be waiting for him here this afternoon. She made certain he understood how angry she was with him and that she wanted to see him face-to-face to guarantee he got the point that she wanted nothing at all to do with him.”

“It was an ultimatum we hoped he couldn’t refuse,” Nolan said. “Especially because, when the phone was disconnected yesterday, the creep had no way to get in touch with her to try to renegotiate the terms of the meeting.”

“Then we sent for the cavalry,” Walt said. “Lyle and I are officially on duty. These other guys are friends helping out.”

“On New Year’s Day. I’m impressed,” Coltrane said. “Friends wouldn’t normally give up New Year’s Day to-”

“The complainant’s generous,” one of the other men said.

The rest of the group looked at the man as if he had said too much.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Walt said. “When we’re off duty, she hires us to be her protection. One or the other of us goes into L.A. with her.”

“Speaking of…” One of the state troopers glanced around nervously. “Where is Tash?”

The group tensed.

“Jesus.” Walt snapped to attention. “What happened to her? The last time I saw her, she was coming out of the water and we were chasing-”

“I NEEDED TO GET INTO SOMETHING DRY,” a voice said from above, on Coltrane’s right.

He turned toward a stairway, seeing a bare foot appear on the landing. The voice was full-throated, making Coltrane think of similar-voiced actresses in films from the thirties and forties. In his memory, they were always in a sparkling evening gown, standing next to a piano in a nightclub, exchanging repartee with a handsome hero in a white dinner jacket.

But the woman who descended the white carpeting on the stairway wasn’t wearing an evening gown. She wore a cotton sweatsuit, the raspberry color of which enhanced her tan face, dark eyes, and even darker hair. Although the exercise suit was oversized, a dramatic opposite to the tight wet suit she had worn a little while ago, her present outfit was nonetheless almost as revealing. The loose seat suggested the trim firmness of the hips it concealed. The similarly loose top moved up and down in the front and suggested that the woman had not put on a bra.

Everyone watched as she reached the bottom. Coltrane had the sense that the men liked to see her bare feet touch the plush carpeting, but his own attention was directed toward her face: the broad forehead, high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, slender nose, curved lips, angular chin, and narrow jaw that were the elements of classical beauty and that Rebecca Chance had been blessed with. But a catalog of her features couldn’t communicate the animation of those features. Even in a sweatsuit, this woman had come down the stairs with the same fluid ease that Rebecca Chance had shown descending a staircase, wearing a sarong in Jamaica Wind . Her hair, still wet from having been in the ocean, was pushed back, clinging to her head, the way Rebecca Chance had pushed it back as she waded out of a river in The Trailblazer . That pose coming out of the river had been the same as the pose in Randolph Packard’s photographs of Rebecca Chance stepping out of the ocean, the same pose that this woman had assumed as she came out of the ocean onto the rocks not long ago.

Coltrane’s mind was aswirl.

“Hello.” She approached Coltrane, her gaze locked intimately on his as she held out her hand. “I’m Tash Adler, and I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.”

Coltrane felt a spark when their hands touched. Only static electricity from the carpet, he told himself. And yet…

“I hope you aren’t hurt.”

“No, I’m fine.” Coltrane suddenly felt foolish holding the blanket around him. “A little cold is all.” He eased the blanket off him. “Nothing serious.” He repressed another shiver, his wet clothes clinging to him. “Tash?”

“It’s short for Natasha. You should get into something dry before you catch pneumonia.” The concern in her voice made him feel that at that particular moment he was the most important person in the world to her. “But where am I going to find dry clothes for you? I don’t think you’ll fit into one of my bathrobes.”

The fact was, she was only about three inches shorter than Coltrane’s six-foot height, and he might indeed have fitted into one of her bathrobes.

“I know,” Tash said. “Why don’t you go into the bathroom down the hall, take off your wet clothes, and give them to me. I’ll put them in the dryer.”

“I…”

“It’ll take only fifteen minutes,” Tash said. “We’ll leave the door ajar so you can be part of the conversation and not feel you’re in limbo. I’ll make a pot of strong hot coffee for everybody and hand a cup in to you.”

Coltrane’s face felt warm, only partly because his cheeks were losing their numbness from the cold water. “Sure.”

“This way.”

Tash gripped his arm, the feeling intimate, guiding him past the white stairway, down a white corridor, to the open door of a white bathroom. A white kitchen was farther along the corridor.

“I’ll wait,” Tash said.

Self-conscious, Coltrane entered the bathroom and shut the door. For a moment, his automatic impulse was to lock it, but he stopped himself, imagining how ridiculous the snap of the lock would sound, as if he was afraid she would barge in on him while he was undressing. He peeled off his wet sport coat, shirt, pants, and socks, took his belt, wallet, keys, and comb from his pants, hesitated, then decided that he didn’t want her to have to deal with his underwear. Even as things were, he didn’t feel comfortable that she would have to touch his wet clothes. He solved the problem by wrapping them in a towel. Despite the underwear he kept on, he didn’t think he had ever felt quite so naked as when he stood behind the door and opened it a foot, peering out at her.

“I’m sorry to put you through the inconvenience,” he said.

“Nonsense.” Tash’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “I’m hoping that if I’m nice to you, you won’t sue me.”

Coltrane couldn’t help smiling.

“Be back in a jiff.” She carried his towel-wrapped clothes down the corridor.

Coltrane took another towel from the rack, dried himself, then sponged the towel against his wet underwear. That done, he combed his hair, folded his sport coat over the toilet seat, rubbed his arms to try to get warmth into them, and was surprised to hear Tash’s voice behind him.