David Morrell - Double Image

The effect was dizzying: Coltrane in the middle of his bedroom, turning, peering outward, watching Tash sprint from one section of the balcony to the next. Walt was slowing, his chest heaving. For her part, Tash seemed to have an endless reservoir of energy, skipping, spinning, evading Walt. She wore an all-white ankle-long cotton dress of a type that Coltrane had seen in Mexico. Loose, it flared provocatively as she skipped and spun. A red shawl was draped over her shoulders, tied at her cleavage. Watching her and Walt round another corner, Coltrane turned, dizzier, amazed at the sudden burst of speed that Walt mustered. Thrusting out a hand, Walt grabbed the back of Tash’s shawl and jerked her up short, causing her to gasp, but before Walt could pull her toward him, she ducked her head and slipped free of the shawl’s tied loop. He shot out another hand, clutching her arm as she started to run. When he spun her toward him, he tossed away the shawl and drew back his hand to strike her.

She stared defiantly.

He hesitated.

“What’s the matter? Are you afraid to hit a woman?”

“You’re not a woman.”

“You sure thought I was three hours ago when I-”

“That doesn’t make you a woman.”

Tash laughed. “No? What does it make me?”

Walt said a word, the crudity of which was devastating.

The laughter halted.

“I don’t know what I saw in you,” Walt said. “I’m going to have to burn my clothes and scour myself with bleach to get rid of the slime you left on me.”

Tash’s eyes darkened.

“You’re a cesspool.” Walt turned to enter the bedroom.

“Hey,” Tash said.

Seeing Walt come through the doorway, Coltrane was overwhelmed by the look of absolute revulsion on Walt’s face.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tash demanded.

Walt came farther into the bedroom.

“I’m not through with you,” Tash said.

“The important thing is, I’m through with you .” Walt kept crossing the bedroom, not bothering to look at her.

“Nobody walks away from me!”

“Watch.”

“Come back here!”

“Go to hell.”

“You first!” Tash grabbed a heavy pot from a row of flowers, rushed into the bedroom, and hurled it against the back of Walt’s head.

For an instant, Coltrane thought that the cracking sound he heard was the pot breaking, but then the pot thudded intact onto the floor, and Coltrane realized that the sound had come from Walt’s skull. The burly policeman staggered toward Coltrane, reached for support, but never got that far. His eyes rolled up. His body became a collapsing rag doll. When his face struck the carpeted floor, the back of his head had an indentation covered with blood.

“Oh,” Tash said.

The room seemed to shrink.

“Now look what you’ve made me do.”

COLTRANE WAS SO STARTLED THAT HE COULDN’T MOVE. Next to him, Jennifer gaped at Walt’s unmoving body.

The next thing, Tash was hunkered next to Walt’s body, fumbling through his pockets. “It’s not supposed to happen this way.” She glared up at Coltrane. “You’ll pay for this.”

For the first time, Coltrane noticed that her hands were shiny.

She was wearing plastic gloves.

From Walt’s leather jacket, she pulled out a small black electronic object that resembled a miniature remote control. She picked up Walt’s left hand, wedged his fingers around the device, and used his thumb to press a button on it. “Make you pay.”

“I’m calling the police,” Coltrane said.

Starting toward the bedside phone, he saw Tash grope hurriedly beneath Walt’s jacket, understood, and yelled to Jennifer, “Get back down the stairs!”

Immediately, Tash pulled Walt’s semiautomatic free of its holster, pressed it into his right hand, inserted his index finger into the trigger guard, and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot was deafening, not as loud as the shotgun blast had been, but ear-slamming all the same. The unaimed bullet missed Coltrane by a wide margin, blasting into a wall, but he had the sense that the next bullet would be very deliberately aimed. He scrambled toward the stairs as Tash removed the weapon from Walt’s hand and sighted expertly along it.

“Jesus.” Diving, Coltrane heard the shot as he felt a bullet whiz by him. He hit the stairs on his side, winced, and tumbled to the landing, seeing the blurred figure of Jennifer racing down the continuation of the stairs.

He rolled, the next gunshot making his ears ring, plaster exploding from the wall, stinging his face. Jolting to a painful halt in the living room, he only then realized that he was still holding the revolver that he had picked up before climbing the stairs to the bedroom. Reflexively, he pointed it upward and pulled the trigger, his aim bad, missing Tash as she ducked back from the landing above him.

Her surprise at being shot at slowed her enough that Coltrane had time to race down to the front-door landing before Tash fired again. He collided with Jennifer, who was fumbling to unlock the front door. “No time!” he yelled, dragging her down the further continuation of the stairs an instant before two bullets whacked holes in the door.

They were on the bottom level now, but the overhead light exposed them, and Jennifer flicked switches, sending the bottom level of the pool area into darkness. The next moment, Tash appeared at the landing, fired three times into the shadows, and dove back out of sight. Before his eyes could tell his brain to stop the impulse, Coltrane fired at the empty landing, the gun awkward in his hand, the recoil unnerving.

“Jennifer?”

“Here.” Her voice was unsteady behind him.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Coltrane’s heart pounded so hard that he feared his arteries would burst. Crouching behind a concrete pillar, he aimed up toward the landing.

“The garden.” Jennifer’s voice shook. “We can get away through the back.”

“No, we’d be trapped. There’s a wall around it. We’d only have bushes for cover. She could pick us off from the living room balcony. Tash!”

No answer.

“Tash!” Coltrane raised his voice louder.

Still no answer.

“Melinda!” Jennifer called.

“What?”

“The neighbors will have heard the shots! They’ll have phoned the police!” Jennifer said. “It’s finished!”

“Not yet!” Tash/Melinda said. “But it soon will be!”

What’s she talking about? Coltrane wondered. She isn’t stupid enough to hang around until the police come. Why is she waiting ?

And why is she wearing plastic gloves?

So she won’t leave fingerprints, he thought.

Then why did she press Walt’s semiautomatic into his hand and use his finger to pull the trigger?

So his hand would have gunpowder residue. Isn’t that what Walt said up in Big Bear? He threatened to shoot me, then put a pistol in my hand and squeeze off a shot. “So you’d have powder residue,” Walt had said. So it would look like I’d shot at Walt and he was forced to defend himself.

That’s what she’s doing. She wants to make it look as if Walt did the shooting, not her.

But there’ll be other evidence she can’t hide, he thought. How does she plan to -

What was that remote control she pressed Walt’s thumb on?

“Do you smell smoke?” Jennifer murmured.

Coltrane whirled. Even in the darkness, he could see thick gray smoke billowing behind him.

From the darkroom.

It wafted up his nose and made him bend over, coughing, his eyes watering, the smoke so dense that it cloaked the exit to the pool.

Walt must have planted an incendiary device among the chemicals in there. The remote control Tash pressed Walt’s thumb on set off -