David Morrell - Double Image

Esmeralda’s frail voice dwindled.

Her husband helped her to drink more juice, then told Coltrane and Tash, “You must leave now, so she can rest.”

“We understand,” Coltrane said. “Just one question. Señora, if you got ahead of Packard, you should have been able to escape to Los Angeles. But Tash’s mother said that you and Winston and the child roamed from village to village here in Mexico, where he earned food by working as a carpenter. He was rich. Why didn’t he take advantage of his wealth?”

“Winston said that if we went to Los Angeles, we would never be safe from so powerful a man as Randolph Packard. Our only way to disappear was by doing something that Randolph would never have dreamed of, by becoming poor. Only after several years did he think Randolph’s anger would have cooled enough for him and the child to enter the United States.”

“You didn’t go with him?”

“Please,” Esmeralda’s husband objected, “no more questions for now.”

“I would have given anything to continue to take care of Rebecca Chance’s daughter,” Esmeralda said, “but Winston insisted that I had my own life to lead, and he made me go back to the village. As soon as he returned home, he promised to send payment for my years of service. He kept his word. One day a messenger arrived with photographs of the child and more money than anyone in the village had ever seen.”

“And now.” Esmeralda’s husband stood.

“Thank you, señora.” Tash clasped her hands.

“No, I thank you . Seeing you is like seeing Rebecca again.” A tear rolled down the old woman’s cheek.

“May we come back after you’ve rested?”

“Please.”

Coltrane and Tash followed the old man into the house. At the last moment, Coltrane looked back, seeing the old woman pick up one of the photographs.

“Where did you get those, señora?”

“Rebecca gave them to me. She’s still alive as long as they exist. The more people who see them, the more she remains alive. I have put them throughout the village. Once a year, on the day of her death, a Mass is said for her. The village prays over her photographs.” Esmeralda shook her head dismally. “But in this climate, the images decay.”

“And Randolph Packard?”

“He abandoned the village, as I always knew he would.”

THE ROAD UP TO THE ESTATE WAS SO OVERGROWN THAT Coltrane wasn’t sure the rented car would make it to the top. Leaves blocked his windshield. Branches scraped the doors. As the Ford’s wheels jounced over a fallen tree limb, sunlight gleamed, butterflies scattered, and the estate was spread out ahead.

What had seemed white from the distance of the village was now revealed as the gray of concrete from which stucco had fallen, a few surviving patches indicating that the original color had been coral. Some buildings had one level, others two. All had an elegant simplicity that reminded Coltrane of pueblo architecture. A jumble of fallen poles and decayed thatching visible through an open doorway showed where woven palm-leaf roofs supported by timbers – peaked as in the village – had long ago collapsed.

“Imagine how magnificent this place once looked,” Tash said as they stopped outside a low vine-covered wall that enclosed the compound.

“And how everything went wrong.” As Coltrane stepped from the car, he admired the gardens that had run wild, hibiscus, bougainvillea, and orchids seemingly everywhere. He raised his camera and took a photograph.

“I don’t know what I expected to find here,” Tash said. “The truth is down in the village. With Esmeralda.”

“I’m not so sure. Some inconsistencies bother me.”

Tash looked puzzled.

“If Randolph Packard killed Rebecca Chance, why did he keep hunting Winston Case? Revenge couldn’t have been a factor. Rebecca’s death was Packard’s fault, not Case’s.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Winston he was hunting. Maybe he wanted the child.”

“Why? If the child was Winston’s, as Esmeralda claims, why would Packard have wanted her?” Coltrane asked.

“Maybe he wanted to kill the child to get even with Winston.”

“For what? For making Rebecca Chance pregnant? Packard had plenty of opportunity to hurt the child when it was born.”

“And risk losing any hope of making Rebecca love him?” Tash said.

“True.” Coltrane brooded about it. “But that still doesn’t explain why Packard was so desperate to get the child after Rebecca was killed. Unless… Do you suppose he believed he was the father? He was trying to get his daughter back.”

Tash raised a hand to her throat. “You’re suggesting Randolph Packard is my grandfather?”

“It explains why he put you in his will. He spent most of his life trying to find his daughter. But she was dead by the time he did, and he was near death when he learned about you . He couldn’t reveal his connection with you without incriminating himself. Still in love with the woman he had killed, all he could do was give you the place where she gave birth to your mother.”

“A ruin.”

“Fitting, given all the lives that were ruined in the name of love.” For a moment, Coltrane couldn’t help thinking of the ruin his own father had caused. But not me, Coltrane thought. He dismally surveyed the husks of the buildings. “Well, as long as we’ve come this far…” He walked along the wall, passing a gigantic aloe vera, approaching the back of the estate.

“Where are you going?”

“To see where your grandmother died.”

Tall cacti stood like sentinels as Coltrane approached the cliff. Ignoring a lizard that scurried underfoot, he concentrated on the catlike rock formation before him. “Definitely the formation in the photographs that Packard took of Rebecca Chance.”

He paused a few careful steps from where the cliff fell away to the sea. The pounding of surf against rocks rumbled up, making him uneasy.

“The lantern was behind this rock formation,” Tash said. “The path down the cliff is… over here, where the coastline curves toward the village, forming the bay. This is where Randolph Packard and Winston Case fought.”

“And where Packard inadvertently pushed the love of his life over the cliff. He spent the rest of his days mourning for having killed the woman he worshiped. He couldn’t let the world know what had happened, so he built a secret monument to her, where he achingly studied the photographs he had taken of her.”

Although the day was hot, Tash hugged herself and shivered.

“Stay there for a moment. Just like that,” Coltrane said.

He stepped back from her, moving farther along the ridge, putting the cliff on his left and Tash’s profile ahead of him. As a breeze pushed her hair, he raised his camera, sighting through the viewfinder. Reality and his memory coincided. “Packard once stood on this very spot, taking a photograph of your grandmother on the spot where you are now, in that same pose.”

Tash shivered again.

Coltrane pressed the shutter release. “If you were wearing a white shawl, the images would be virtually identical.”

“This gives me the creeps.”

“The height doesn’t help much, either,” Coltrane said.

“Good-bye.” Tash peered down, as if addressing the soul of her grandmother.

“I warned you,” a voice said from behind.

Spinning, Coltrane just had time to see the blur of a fist before it jolted him off his feet.

SPRAWLED NEAR THE ROCK FORMATION, Coltrane struggled numbly to raise his head. Blood streaming from his mouth, he stared up dizzily at the impossible towering presence of Carl Nolan.

“I gave you a fair chance.” Nolan’s face was livid, twisted with fury. “I told you nicely.” The sergeant’s powerful arms, his weight lifter’s muscles bulging in a short-sleeved flower-patterned shirt, dragged Coltrane to his feet and shook him so hard that Coltrane’s teeth snapped together. “But a smart guy like you just can’t listen, can you? You always know better. Well, maybe you’ll listen to this .”