David Morrell - Double Image

“We can’t take him with us.”

Coltrane frowned toward the ruins.

“All those snakes. You’re not suggesting we go back there and get his body.”

“Of course not,” Coltrane said. “But we can’t just drive away. Somebody has to be told.”

“The police? No way.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“You bet we do,” Tash said. “We can get back to the States as fast as we can. The Mexican police scare me to death. They have a different kind of law down here. It’s based on the Napoleonic Code. You’re not innocent until proven guilty, the way we’re used to. The reverse. You’re guilty until you prove you’re innocent, and this might not look like self-defense to them. They might decide it’s manslaughter. What if someone thinks you pushed him onto those snakes? Down here, they don’t believe in the right to a speedy trial.”

“But the village knows we went up here,” Coltrane said. “It’s a safe bet they’re also aware of another stranger in the area, that Nolan went up here. So what are they going to think when you and I come down but Nolan doesn’t? Some of them are going to get curious enough to hike up and look around. As soon as they find Nolan’s body, the police will be looking for two outsiders in a car that fits this one’s description. They’ll be waiting for us at the airport. Because we tried to run, we really will look guilty. Don’t you see that we have to go to the police before the police come to us ?”

A RED PONTIAC WITH A RENTAL-CAR STICKER ON IT WAS PARKED among ferns at the bottom of the overgrown lane. Nolan must have left it there and hiked up, Coltrane thought. That’s why we didn’t hear him. The rumble of the surf muffled his footsteps as he walked up behind me.

About to turn left onto the jungle-lined road that led into the village, he had to wait for an exhaust-spewing yellow bus to rattle past. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tash fidgeting. Sweat stuck his back to the seat.

“Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop,” Tash said.

“What for?”

“If the driver says it’s going farther north to Acapulco, I’m getting on it.”

“Getting on it?” Coltrane looked at her in astonishment.

“A woman with my features isn’t going to have a pleasant time in a Mexican jail.”

“There’s no guarantee you’ll spend any time in a Mexican jail.”

“I’m not going to take the chance.” Tash kept hugging herself. “I saw the way those soldiers looked at me when they were checking for drugs and guns.”

“Tash, nothing’s going to happen.”

“You bet it isn’t – because the Mexican and U.S. police are going to sort this out after I get home.”

“But the local police will find out we were together.”

“Not if you tell them you went up there alone, that I wasn’t feeling well and took the bus back to Acapulco.”

“Tash-”

“ Please . I’m asking you. Pull ahead of that bus and make it stop.”

“THAT VINE IS WHERE HE TRIPPED,” Coltrane said. His mouth throbbed where he had been punched. “Be careful. There were snakes inside that building the last time I was here.”

“Yes, I see one in the corner.”

“What?”

“An especially nasty type.”

Coltrane’s skin turned cold. He had needed all of his willpower to guide the policeman through ferns and flowers toward this spot. Now he needed even stronger willpower not to bolt back to the car.

“A team of medical experts will have to drive here from Acapulco to examine the body before they move it.” The policeman, the only one in the village, was middle-aged and heavy, with a thick dark mustache and solemn eyes. “You say you had a fight.”

“Yes.”

Coltrane had considered inventing a story in which he had happened to find Nolan already dead, but he couldn’t think of a way to explain his mangled lips, not to mention the bruises that the medical examiner would find on Nolan’s groin.

“Over a woman,” the policeman said.

“Yes.”

“And this woman…”

“Isn’t here. As I explained, she wasn’t feeling well. She took a bus back to Acapulco while I came up here.”

“But meanwhile, this man…”

“Came up here also.”

“He followed you from Los Angeles.”

“Yes. He was very angry about the woman. He and I had a similar argument about her back in Los Angeles.”

“But this time, while you tried to defend yourself, he stumbled back and…” The policeman gestured toward motion inside the building.

“I never meant for that to happen.”

“Of course.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you.”

“Yes?”

“The dead man is a U.S. police officer.”

IT TOOK A WEEK TO STRAIGHTEN THINGS OUT. Coltrane endured most of that time in a crowded, noxious-smelling cell, not in the village, which was too small to have a jail, but in Acapulco, where his belongings were brought from the hotel, and where he learned that Tash had flown to the United States the day Nolan died. In Los Angeles, she had hired an attorney to fly to Acapulco and consult with a Mexican attorney about gaining Coltrane’s freedom. The Los Angeles Police Department was disturbed that another of its officers had died, and equally disturbed about Nolan’s behavior. For the sake of public relations and morale, it was decided to say only that Nolan had been on vacation and had died by misadventure: snakebite. Privately, the policeman whom Coltrane had first spoken to expressed severe reservations about Tash’s sudden departure from Mexico the day of the death – “She was extremely ill,” Coltrane emphasized – but the Mexican attorney earned his substantial fee, and Coltrane was eventually on a plane to Los Angeles. He had suffered doubts about how soon he would be released. He had definitely suffered from the privations of a Mexican jail. But throughout he had kept his emotional strength.

Because Tash had not gone to jail.

“THE NUMBER YOU HAVE CALLED IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE,” a computerized voice said.

In his kitchen, Coltrane set down the phone and frowned. His travel bag was at his feet. I must have rushed and pressed the wrong numbers, he thought. He picked up the phone and tried again.

“The number you have called is no longer in service.”

This time, he knew that he hadn’t made a mistake. What the… As soon as he had been released from jail in Acapulco, he had called Tash’s cellular phone but had failed to get an answer. At LAX, he had phoned her again and had still not gotten an answer. Now, in the forty minutes it had taken a taxi to drive him home in the congestion of evening traffic, her phone had been disconnected. What on earth was going on?

At once, he realized that he had another way to try to contact Tash: Walt.

“The number you have called is no longer in service.”

This is crazy, he thought.

He tried the Malibu sheriff’s station. “I need to get in touch with Walt Halliday. Is he on duty tonight?”

“No, sir, and he won’t be on duty tomorrow, either. He isn’t with us anymore.”

“Isn’t with…”

“He resigned a couple of days ago.”

Speechless, Coltrane set down the phone.

EXCEPT FOR A LIGHT OVER THE FRONT DOOR AND THE GARAGE, Tash’s house was in darkness, its modernistic assemblage of cubes silhouetted against the moonlit sky. No lamp was on in any of the windows. That wouldn’t have been unusual in the middle of the night, but the time was only ten after nine, and even if Tash had gone out, Coltrane would have expected her to do what most people did – leave a few lights on. There was absolutely no sign that anyone was at home. But there was a sign of a different sort. Leaving his headlights on, Coltrane got out of his car to study it: FOR SALE, OCEAN REALTY.