David Morrell - Double Image

“I’M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU.” Hoping that his eyes didn’t look as wild as he felt, Coltrane pointed toward Tash’s house next door. “Your neighbor moved recently.”

The spectacled gray-haired woman held an artist’s brush, wore a painter’s smock, and looked annoyed that Coltrane had rung her doorbell. “The day before yesterday. I saw the van.”

“Did she happen to give you her new address? I’m supposed to deliver some legal documents to her and-”

“She lived next to me for six months and never said a word to me. I can’t imagine why she’d bother to give me her address.”

“You saw a van? I don’t suppose you happened to notice the name on-”

“YEAH, I REMEMBER YOU,” the overweight man in the Pacific Movers work shirt said. “We delivered that load of unusual furniture to you. Tubular stuff. Metal.”

“That’s right.”

“Just a minute.” The foreman turned to his two young helpers as they came out of an apartment building in Santa Monica. “Make sure you put all those pads back in the truck.” He looked back at Coltrane. “You say you’ve been looking for me?”

“Your dispatcher told me where you’d be. I’ve got five hundred dollars for you if you’ll do me a favor.”

“It must be a hell of a favor.”

“Not really. All you have to do is go back to headquarters and look up the computer file on a customer named Natasha Adler.”

“And?”

“She’s an old girlfriend of mine.”

“So?”

“I need to know her new address.”

The man nodded conspiratorially.

AS THE ROAD TWISTED HIGHER INTO THE SAN BERNARDINO Mountains, the slopes became more rugged. Pine trees fought for space among granite outcrops. The temperature dropped, making Coltrane turn up the car’s heater and be grateful that he’d thought to bring a ski jacket along with a hat, scarf, and gloves. Although dawn had been a half hour earlier, dense gray clouds cast everything in twilight. Sporadic snow flecked his windshield and added to the roadside accumulation. Steering with one hand, he drank hot black coffee from a thermos and peered toward his rearview mirror. For a while after he had turned off the interstate to follow this secondary road into the mountains, he had been able to see the glow of San Bernardino behind him, but now all he saw were snow-covered boulders and fir trees, not even the headlights of a pickup truck that had followed him for about fifteen minutes and then veered off. It won’t be long now, he promised himself.

What he had been given wasn’t really an address, just a post office box. Tash had evidently supplied directions to the van’s driver but not his dispatcher. There wasn’t even a telephone number. But a PO box will do just fine, Coltrane thought bitterly. BIG BEAR LAKE, a road marker indicated, 25 MILES. Soon , he vowed. Soon. Meanwhile, he had plenty to think about: nagging questions that wouldn’t stop threatening to tear his mind apart. Tash!

THE COLD AIR PINCHED HIS NOSTRILS AND CAUSED HIS BREATH TO come out as vapor. After parking his car on a side street where it couldn’t be seen from the main road, Coltrane walked past rustic-looking shops, ignoring their Alpine exteriors. Christmas decorations still hung in some windows, but he ignored those also, his waffle-soled hiking boots squeaking on new-fallen snow as he strode around a corner and saw Big Bear’s post office across the street. In contrast with the mountain-resort appearance of many buildings in town, this was the usual antiseptic institutional-style building, with a fake redwood and stone exterior, a low-pitched roof, drop boxes for mail, and an unobscured parking lot in front.

He checked his watch: 8:25. Although the post office staff wouldn’t be on duty until nine, a few people going in and out the front door made clear that the building had been opened earlier so that customers with PO boxes wouldn’t have to wait to pick up their mail. That meant there was a slight chance Tash had already been here to check if she had any. But I doubt it, Coltrane thought. She’ll be tired after shipping her furniture two days ago and then trying to sort through the chaos of boxes yesterday. She’ll give herself a break this morning. She won’t be up to speed for a while yet.

He entered a chalet-style House of Pancakes and asked the waitress for a table at the window.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Yes. But I’m not sure what I want to eat. I might take a while to order.”

“Take all the time you need.”

Believe me, I intend to, Coltrane thought. Pretending to study the menu, he kept his attention on the post office across the street.

TWO HOURS LATER, after the slowest-eaten pancakes, eggs, and sausages of his life, after pretending to read a newspaper over yet another cup of coffee, he decided that he couldn’t hang around any longer without attracting attention. Outside, the air remained gray and cold. He pretended to study merchandise in shop windows within view of the post office. He feigned taking photographs of the area, training his zoom lens on the post office.

By 12:30, the parking lot at the House of Pancakes was almost full. One more vehicle wouldn’t be noticed. He moved his car from the side street, found an inconspicuous spot that gave him a good view of the post office, and settled in to wait. Periodically, he turned on the engine to get warm. A little after two, he went in for lunch. Snow started falling again. While he stalled over a hamburger, fries, and coleslaw, he prayed the weather wouldn’t become so bad that he couldn’t see the parking lot. Unable to put off going to the rest room, he did so as quickly as possible, afraid that Tash would pick up her mail while he was away. Returning to his table, he was tortured by the misgiving that he had failed to see her. At ten after four, standing to pay his bill, he needed all his self-control not to reveal his excitement when he saw Walt getting out of his Mountaineer over there.

“This ought to cover it,” he told his waitress. “Keep the change.”

“That’s very generous.”

“I guess I’m still in the Christmas spirit.”

Outside, seeing Walt go into the post office, Coltrane raced through flurries to get to his car before Walt came out and drove away. He slipped on a patch of ice, struggled to keep his balance, and barely avoided a pickup truck that drove from the restaurant. Breathing rapidly, the cold air burning his throat, he unlocked his car, hurried in, and started it. He was troubled by how much his hands were shaking. Then he concentrated on Walt coming out of the post office, his mustached square face sullen, his gloved hands empty, his trip apparently fruitless.

But not mine, Coltrane thought. He let Walt get a half-block lead, three vehicles between them, before he pulled out to follow. Does Walt know my car? He saw it the night I first met Tash, but in the dark, he didn’t get a good look at it, and anyway, it’s different now – it’s covered with snow.

Two of the cars took side streets. Then Big Bear’s outskirts merged into postcard scenery, Walt’s car, the car in the middle, and Coltrane’s car proceeding along a partially cleared road that paralleled, on the left, the ice-rimmed, pine tree-bordered lake. Making Coltrane nervous, the flurries thickened. Dark clouds hung lower, obscuring the peaks. Ahead, Walt switched on his lights. So did the driver in the middle. Wanting to be invisible, Coltrane resisted. Then, slowing, its signal light flashing, the middle car turned to the right onto a plowed driveway that led to a cabin, and Coltrane found himself fifty yards behind Walt’s Mountaineer.