David Morrell - Double Image

This can’t be happening, he thought. He walked quickly to the front door, rang its doorbell, listened to the hollow echo from inside, and pounded on the door. “Tash!” he yelled. The front of the house was scorched from the fire that had been set on New Year’s Day. Peering through the metal fence that enclosed the incinerated flower garden, he strained to get a view through a window. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the room was totally empty, its furniture removed. “Tash!” Dismayed, he ran to the end of the street and along the fence to the water, hurrying toward her house from the back. The deck light wasn’t on. The only illumination was from the stars and moon. He tripped on the deck stairs but ignored the pain and scrambled the rest of the way up, his urgent footsteps reverberating as he ran to a window. The metal shutters had not been lowered. Staring in, straining to decipher the blackness, he realized that there wasn’t any furniture in this room, either. “ Tash !” Despite the chill of the ocean breeze, sweat poured off him, soaking his clothes.

“I’M NOT COMFORTABLE GIVING OUT THAT INFORMATION,” the severe-faced woman said. She was in her forties, had frosted hair and long red fingernails, and wore a black designer pantsuit with a blue silk scarf.

“But I’m a friend of hers. I didn’t know she’d moved. I’m trying to get in touch with her.” It was nine in the morning. Coltrane stood in one of the cubicles in the Ocean Realty office. Outside, trucks rumbled by on the Pacific Coast Highway. “Surely she gave you the phone number and the address where she moved.”

“She also gave me strict instructions not to let anyone else know it.” Behind her desk, the woman pressed her back rigidly against her chair, as if wanting to keep as much distance as possible between Coltrane and her. “She told me one of the reasons she was moving was that she’d been threatened by a stalker.”

“I know . I helped identify the man who was doing it.”

“Then I’m sure you can appreciate my dilemma.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For all I know, you’re the man who was stalking her. She instructed me not to give out her new phone number and address.”

“For Christ sake.”

The woman flinched.

“Okay,” Coltrane said. “I understand your obligation to your client. But would it be violating any confidence if you phoned Tash, gave her my name, and told her I wanted to speak to her? I really am a close friend of hers.”

“I happen to know she won’t be in today. I’ll phone her tomorrow and tell her you want her to get in touch with you.”

Tomorrow ? Coltrane mentally groaned.

JUST IN TIME, Coltrane steered from the PCH as Lyle came out of the coffee shop and approached his cruiser. After skidding to a stop, the squeal of his tires attracting Lyle’s attention, Coltrane hurried from his car and reached the heavyset officer, whom he had never seen in uniform before and who seemed even more heavyset with all the equipment on his gun belt.

Lyle’s hair was cut short, military-style. He looked as wary as the woman in the real estate office.

“The dispatcher at the station told me you usually have coffee here about this time,” Coltrane said. “I’m glad I caught up to you.”

For his part, Lyle didn’t look glad at all. He just nodded and waited.

“Listen, I’m confused about a couple of things,” Coltrane said. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

Lyle shrugged, nothing relaxed about the gesture.

Coltrane had to raise his voice to be heard above the passing traffic. “I’ve been trying to find Tash Adler.”

“She moved.”

“I know that. Do you have any idea where?”

“No.”

“Why did Walt Halliday resign from the sheriff’s department?”

“He didn’t tell me. We weren’t really that close. I just assumed it was on account of the stress of the job.”

“Well, maybe he knows where Tash moved. I tried phoning, but his number’s out of service. Do you have any idea where he lives, so I can talk to him?”

“Lived.”

“Excuse me?”

“The same day Walt resigned, he left town.”

“ What ?”

“He said he needed a change of scene.”

The asphalt of the parking lot seemed to ripple, threatening to swallow Coltrane. “I don’t get it. What the hell is happening?”

“Seems obvious to me ,” Lyle said.

“How?”

“It’s too big a coincidence, both of them making a sudden decision to move at the same time. I had a suspicion there was something between them.”

“ What ?”

“Even if there wasn’t, it isn’t any mystery why she would have moved: the stress of being stalked.”

“But that’s over . Now that you know Duncan Reynolds was doing it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Duncan Reynolds. Didn’t Tash explain to you?”

“Who the hell is Duncan Reynolds?”

“She didn’t show you the photographs?”

“ What photographs?”

Perplexed, Coltrane did his best to organize his thoughts, explaining.

“And you found something in these photographs?” Lyle asked.

“A man taking pictures of her. Duncan Reynolds. I know him. Tash met him once, but he used a different name.”

“So where are these pictures?”

“Tash has them.” The briefcase containing them had not been with Coltrane’s travel bag when the Acapulco police had brought his belongings from the hotel. He had assumed that Tash had gone to the hotel to get her things before she went to the airport, that she had taken the briefcase back to Los Angeles with her – to show the police and make sure Duncan Reynolds didn’t threaten her anymore. “Or maybe…”

“What?”

“Maybe she doesn’t have them. Maybe they were lost when the Mexican police brought my stuff from the hotel. That would explain why she didn’t tell you. She forgot to bring them with her, so she decided to wait until I came back with the proof. In the meantime, Duncan Reynolds kept harassing her, and she moved.”

“Without even a hint to us that she knew who was after her? Does that make sense?”

“No. Not when you put it that way.”

“And you don’t have the photographs, either?”

The asphalt beneath him seemed more unsteady. Instantly, he felt on solid footing. “I have the negatives at home. I can make others.”

“Then make them and bring them to me. But I have to tell you, I think this is bullshit.”

Coltrane blinked as if he’d been slapped.

“I heard about what you claim happened with Carl Nolan in Mexico. He was a damned fine police officer. If you expect me to believe he was jealous of you and flew down to Mexico to get even with you-”

“But that’s the truth.”

“Sure. Except Tash told me a different version. She said Carl went down to rescue her. From you .”

Coltrane’s mind reeled.

“She said she was moving because you were smothering her so much that she had to get away from you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

The parking lot seemed to spin. “Jesus Christ, am I losing my mind?”

COLTRANE ALMOST DIDN’T CLOSE HIS FRONT DOOR, so great was his need to rush down to the vault, grab the negatives he had stored there, and hurry into the darkroom to make new prints of Duncan Reynolds spying on Tash.

But after unlocking and opening the vault, Coltrane stood frozen in place, his mouth agape. The envelope of negatives that should have been on the nearest shelf wasn’t there. Telling himself that he must have forgotten which shelf he had put the negatives on, he charged into the vault and examined every shelf, but he still didn’t find them. The darkroom, he thought. I must have left them in… He rushed to search it, but they were gone.