Double Image (43 page)

WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Coltrane had trouble getting his muscles to work. Only after two more rings was he able to avert his eyes from the prints and pick up the phone. Concerned that Jennifer might have broken her word and decided to call, he kept his voice neutral, or tried to. The stress of having identified Duncan Reynolds made him hoarse. “Hello.”

“Not very enthusiastic.” Tash sounded mischievous. “I thought you’d be a little more pleased to hear from me.” Her tone was wonderfully sonorous.

“‘ Pleased’ is an understatement.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I’ve been working.” Coltrane frowned toward the prints. He continued to strain to adjust to what he had discovered.

“I’m sorry I took so long. I didn’t want to phone you until after I talked to Carl, but I’ve been ringing his number for the past hour and all I get is his answering machine.”

“That’s because he’s probably in a car up the street from me, watching my house.”

“You’re kidding.”

“
Someone’s
in a car up the street. It looks like the kind he drives.”

“Jesus,” Tash said. “I guess we were right to have me go home instead of to your place.”

“Maybe not. This time, he wouldn’t be catching me by surprise. Maybe I should go out there and—”

“No, there doesn’t have to be more trouble,” Tash said. “I think I can get him to calm down. I just need a chance to talk to him and make him understand that he got the wrong idea.”

“That’s something
I’d
like to understand, too,” Coltrane said. “What wrong idea are you talking about?”

“I promised to tell you, and I’m going to.”

“Then how about now?”

“No. Not like this. Not over the phone. I need to see your eyes. I need to make sure that
you
understand.”

“It’s that bad?”

“There’s nothing bad at all. But this is going to take awhile, and I remembered what you said about not using the cellular phone. Lyle and the state trooper are still with me. I had them drive me to a pay phone at a gas station on the Pacific Coast Highway. I’m not exactly where I can talk about this.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. That’s another reason I’m calling. Do you have anything you can’t get away from for the next few days?”

“Only from seeing you.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “That gave me shivers.”

“The good kind, I hope.”

“In the right places. Can you meet me tomorrow morning at LAX?”

“LAX?” he asked in surprise.

“At the Delta counter? Nine-fifteen? That ought to give us enough time to buy our tickets and catch a ten-ten flight.”

“To
where
?”

“Acapulco. The estate I inherited. I can’t bear looking over my shoulder any longer. I want to get away to where no one knows who we are. Where no one can bother us — not Carl, not the creep who’s after me, nobody. Where it’s just the two of us. Where we can talk and swim and lie on the beach.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do other things.”

“Sounds better.”

“You’ll go?”

“Twist my arm.”

Tash laughed.

“I like it when you laugh,” Coltrane said.

“The only time I laugh is when you make me. Maybe in Mexico I’ll do more of it.”

“Delta. Nine-fifteen. I’ll bring the photographs I developed. I think I found something.”

“What?” Tash asked quickly.

“I’m still not sure what it means. A face. I’m curious if you’ll recognize it.”

“
You think you found him
?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s the best news.”

“I might be mistaken.”

“No. I’ve got a good feeling.”

COLTRANE TURNED OFF ALL THE LIGHTS IN THE HOUSE. Taking care that he couldn’t be seen, he peered past the blinds in his living room and surveyed the darkness outside. On the hill, a streetlight cast a glow, illuminating the upper part of the slope. The car was gone.

He couldn’t tell if he was relieved or more troubled.

THE MOMENT THE DELTA AIRLINES 757 LIFTED OFF, its engines roaring, Tash said, “Let me see the photographs.”

But when Coltrane tried to lean forward to pick up the carrying case in the storage compartment under his feet, his seat belt prevented him. He started to unbuckle it, then thought better as the jet continued its steep climb. From his right-hand window seat, he noticed that they were passing above the yachts and sailboats at Marina del Rey. He had a painful mental image of Jennifer’s condominium down there. Saturday morning, she might be sitting on her balcony, drinking coffee, perhaps looking up at the jet flying over.

“I’d better wait until we level off,” he said.

“I could barely sleep for worrying that I wouldn’t be able to identify the face you’re suspicious about.”

“Identifying the face isn’t the problem. I already know who he is. The question is, will he look familiar to you?”

“
You know who he is
?”

“It came as a big surprise. In the photographs, there’s a man taking photographs of you. Randolph Packard’s assistant, Duncan Reynolds. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No.” Confused, Tash searched her memory. “I don’t understand. What does Packard’s assistant have to do with me? Why would he single me out if I don’t know him?”

“Maybe you’ll soon have an answer.”

Glancing out the window again, Coltrane saw the gleam of sails on the wave-scudded ocean. Then the jet banked inland, heading south over the smog-shrouded L.A. basin. To the right, in the distance, he saw the tiny outline of Santa Catalina Island and was reminded that Packard’s mother and father had died in a sailing accident near there. Packard, then sixteen, had been the only survivor. According to his biographies, the family had just returned from a voyage to Mexico. Had they been to Acapulco, just as he and Tash were going there?

“The pilot isn’t climbing so steeply now,” Tash said.

His thoughts interrupted, Coltrane turned from the window and looked at her. Again, he was struck by her beauty. She had dressed casually: deck shoes, khaki pants, a yellow cotton pullover, and a linen jacket, it too khaki, the cuffs folded up. A turquoise necklace. Hardly any makeup, only subtle eyeliner that echoed something in the turquoise, and a touch of peach lipstick. But for all her casual appearance, she looked stunning.

“Yes.” He unbuckled his seat belt, leaned forward, and picked up the black case. When he opened it and handed her some of the photographs, he had never seen a more intense expression on anyone’s face.

“Which one?” Tash asked.

“I don’t want to prejudice you. I’m going to start with the first exposure I made. We’ll go through the locations in the order you visited them, starting with the Beverly Center.”

As Tash examined each one, she pursed her lips in concentration. “I don’t see anybody I recognize.”

“Here’s the next set.”

Again, Tash concentrated. “Nobody I recognize here, either.”

“No repeated faces?”

“None.”

She went through the third set with the same result. “There’s too much to pay attention to. I’m worried that I’m missing something.”

“Keep trying. Here’s the fourth set. We’re almost finished.”

Coltrane had put the photographs that troubled him into the middle, where they wouldn’t be conspicuous.

“Nope. Nothing on this one, either. And not on this one. And . . .” Words catching in her throat, Tash raised the next photograph, then went back to the three previous ones. Tensing, she looked at several of the next ones. “Him. The one with the camera.”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned the camera. It prejudiced you.”

“No. In fact, I went right by it. Your eyes for this are better than mine. But
this
man . . .” She tapped a face. “This man I recognize. He was with the attorney who came to my house and told me that Randolph Packard had included me in his will.”

Coltrane stared.

“But the name he used wasn’t Duncan Reynolds. It was William Butler. He said he worked for the attorney. What’s going on? Why did he lie to me?”

“Maybe he didn’t want you to know his connection with Packard. Obviously, if you knew who he was, you’d have asked him all kinds of questions about why Packard included you in his will.”

“Questions he didn’t want to answer.”

“It’s a reasonable guess.”

“But
why
wouldn’t he have wanted to answer my questions?” Tash’s voice had become so strong with anxiety that an expensively dressed couple in the adjacent row frowned at her. She leaned close to Coltrane and lowered her voice. “
Why is he doing this to me
?”

“I told you I did a photo assignment for the LAPD Threat Management Unit,” Coltrane said.

“Yes.”

“It taught me a lot. People think that stalkers are either rejected husbands and boyfriends, or fans obsessed with celebrities and politicians. But there are other categories. I found out some stalkers have only a casual relationship with their victims. A checkout kid at a supermarket becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman who shops there. He stands close to her while she pays by check, and he gets a look at her name and address. He starts driving by her house. When that doesn’t satisfy him, he watches the house at night. Then that’s not enough, and he follows her. He phones the house, hoping to hear her voice. He sends her flowers and notes. He takes surreptitious photographs of her. He wants desperately to have a relationship with her, but he knows that’s impossible, and as his frustration mounts, he gets angry. Finally he decides to punish her for being too good for him, so he gets a can of gasoline or a knife or a gun and . . .”

Tash shuddered. “You’re suggesting Duncan Reynolds fits that profile?”

“I wouldn’t have believed it without the evidence. To tell you the truth, I kind of like him. He doesn’t seem the type,” Coltrane said. “But then, what
is
the type? When neighbors find out the man living next door to them just went to where he works and shot five people, they always say, ‘But he was so quiet. I never would have expected him to do anything like that.’ Who knows what anybody’s capable of?”

Tash shuddered again. “What you said about the knife is a little too vivid.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Coltrane touched her hand to reassure her. A crackle of static electricity jumped from her.

They both stared at where it had happened.

“Maybe what I’m really giving off is fear.” Tash reached for the telephone attached to the seat back in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Coltrane asked.

“I’m phoning Walt. Now that we finally know who’s been threatening me, the police can arrest him. They can make the bastard admit he’s been stalking me.”

“No. Stop,” Coltrane said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Walt can’t do anything without evidence. He’ll want to see the photographs.”

“Then we’ll show them to him.” A thought struck her. “Oh.”

“You see what I’m getting at? You’ll have to explain why you can’t show him the photographs. A vague excuse about taking a brief trip first is only going to puzzle him. If your evidence is so convincing, why are you waiting a couple of days to bring it to him?”

“I’ll seem like a flake.”

“Unless you tell him the whole story,” Coltrane said. “That you didn’t see the photographs until you were on a jet to Acapulco. But once he knows where you’re going, he’ll ask why.”

“And our quiet getaway becomes everybody’s business.” Tash exhaled in discouragement. “If Carl finds out, he might even come after us.”

“Right.”

Her hand unsteady, Tash returned the phone to the seat back. “Duncan Reynolds doesn’t know where I am, either. For now, there are just the two of us.”

“You’re sure you weren’t followed to the airport?”

“I used a taxi. I told the driver to drop me off at United. Once inside, I hurried over to Delta. What was anyone following me going to do? He couldn’t just abandon his car in all that traffic at the departure doors. His car would be towed away while he was trying to find me in the terminal.”

“Is everything all right?”

Coltrane and Tash looked up in surprise at a female flight attendant.

“We just realized we had some business we forgot to take care of before we left,” Coltrane said. “I guess there’s no good time to take a vacation.”

“Well, the movie we’re showing is a comedy. Maybe it’ll help get you in a holiday mood.”

“I certainly hope so.”

IF THEY HADN’T BEEN SO PREOCCUPIED, the rest of the three-and-a-half-hour flight would have been a pleasure. The service was first-class, especially the Mexican lunch of sea bass with tomato sauce, olives, and sweet and hot peppers. The scenery was spectacular. Glancing out his window, Coltrane saw the blue of the Gulf of California, with the rugged coastal cliffs of Baja California on the right. Then Baja ended in a series of dramatic rock formations, and the Pacific Ocean was spread out before him, breathtaking, as the jet continued along its southeast route far down Mexico’s coast toward Acapulco.

When Cortés’s soldiers had discovered the area in 1521, it was obvious that the deep C-shaped bay would make one of the finest harbors in the world, an article in Delta’s seat-pocket magazine said. For hundreds of years, it had been a major trading depot, but not until the 1920s had the sleepy village with its pristine beaches and impressive mountainous background become prized as a recreation area. Rich vacationers from Mexico City were soon followed by the powerful and famous from other countries. B. Traven, Malcolm Lowry, and Sherwood Anderson had been there, as had Tennessee Williams, whose
The Night of the Iguana
was set there. But from its zenith in the fifties and sixties, Acapulco’s popularity had declined due to overbuilding and overpopulation. Only in the late eighties had the authorities made a major effort to refurbish the resort and return it to its former glory.

To get a good view, Tash and Coltrane had to leave their seats and shift over to the left windows as the pilot announced his descent past the city.