Double Image

“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?”

5

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.

6

“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 a

“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-”

7

“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.

8

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!

9

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.”