Double Image (33 page)

He heard the pounding of surf before he saw the ocean below him. He was on a steep ridge that looked down on the road he wanted, a line of impressive homes hugging the coast, no one in sight. In contrast with Malibu’s famous beaches, the shoreline here was almost entirely gray rock. Intrigued by the whitecaps hitting those rocks, as well as by the red tile roofs on some of the homes, Coltrane raised his camera, chose a fast shutter speed to freeze the waves, and took several photographs.

Then he made his way carefully down a zigzag path on the bluff, some of which had been eroded by the recent heavy rains. He grasped an exposed tree root to help lower himself, clawed at clumps of grass, dug his heels firmly into the soft soil, and finally reached the bottom, where concrete barriers had been put up to protect against mud slides.

The surf pounded louder, and yet he was terribly conscious of the noise of his breathing. It’s just from the exertion of coming down the slope, he told himself. Sure. When he reached a mission-style home, he saw that the number on the mailbox was 38, but he was looking for 24, so he proceeded farther along, too preoccupied to pay attention to the
cree-cree-cree
of seagulls floating overhead.

Yesterday, after he had obtained Natasha Adler’s address and telephone number from the private investigator that Packard’s attorney used, he had called that number and been frustrated when a computerized voice had told him that the number was no longer in service. Had the investigator given him the wrong information, or had Natasha Adler moved? Maybe she’s living in the estate in Mexico now, Coltrane thought.

Continuing along the road, he passed another mission-style home, then a Spanish colonial. But his gaze was directed toward a house farther along, which his count of the remaining mailboxes told him was the address he wanted. It was substantial, sprawling, modernistic, an assemblage of two-story all-white blocks silhouetted against the stark blue sky, tinted by the lowering sun.

Struck by the geometry of the image, he again raised his camera. The contrast of light and shadow might be hard to capture, he knew, so he adjusted his exposure to favor the middle shadows of the image and took the photograph. As a precaution, he made two further exposures, the first favoring darker elements of the image, the second favoring lighter ones. The technique, known as “bracketing,” would give him a choice of contrasts.

Having pressed the shutter button a final time, he lowered the camera and felt as if he had been away for a moment. It was a feeling that he hadn’t experienced since the day he had come upon Packard’s house and taken the last photographs in his update on Packard’s series. He began to realize how truly numbed he had been by the intervening horrors. A new year, a new start, he thought, recalling Jennifer’s encouragement before they had separated earlier in the day.

Then what am I doing here?

LIKE MOST MALIBU SHORELINE HOMES, the house was close to the road. On the right, a tall metal fence enclosed a small garden. On the left, a red Porsche was parked in the short driveway, the closed doors of a two-car garage beyond it. Otherwise, no vehicles were in sight. At least someone’s home, Coltrane thought. He verified that the number on the mailbox was what he wanted: 24.

And now what? he asked himself. Are you going to knock on the door in the middle of the afternoon on New Year’s Day? That’ll certainly make an impression.

He peered through the metal fence toward the front windows, looking for movement in the house, some indication that a family gathering was in progress. The windows were blank eyes. The rooms were still. Maybe I wouldn’t be interrupting anything, he thought. Maybe knocking on the door wouldn’t be as inappropriate as I first thought. If I come back and knock on the door tomorrow or the day after, I’ll still be intruding.

Barely aware of the ornate shrubs in the garden, he approached the front door. Instead of knocking, he pushed the doorbell and heard it ring hollowly inside. After waiting a moment, he pushed it again, the echoing doorbell making the place seem deserted. He rang it a third time, holding it a little longer. Someone has to be home, he thought. Otherwise, why would the Porsche be in the driveway? Whoever lives here wouldn’t have gone on a trip and left an expensive sports car in the open. He switched from ringing the bell to knocking on the door, but still no one answered.

Maybe a couple are making love in there, he thought. Maybe if I keep ringing this bell and they finally do open the door, they’ll be very explicit about how much I’ve annoyed them. I’m here to get some questions answered, not to antagonize the person I need to answer those questions.

Self-conscious, he hesitated, his finger an inch away from the doorbell. Yeah, tomorrow’s better. Except maybe no one will answer the door then, either. If only the phone was in service.

Retreating to the road, Coltrane scanned the front windows to see if anyone was peering out at him, and finally he decided to give up. I should have gone with Jennifer, he thought. But as he prepared to walk back the way he had come, he suddenly realized that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the presence of the car and the failure of anyone to come to the door when he rang the bell.

Whoever’s here is outside walking along the ocean.

He moved toward the left side of the house, intending to use the space between this house and the next to give him access to the shore. A wall blocked his way. On the right side, a similar wall stopped him. His excitement changing to frustration, he noticed that all the other homes had barriers, preventing outsiders from intruding on the beach.

When he walked past the remaining properties, he discovered a fence that went down to the waterline. The
cree-cree-cree
of the gulls became more pronounced. The crash of waves intensified as he stepped around the end of the fence, his shoes getting wet. It’s one thing to ring a doorbell and disturb someone on New Year’s Day, but it’s quite another if I come across someone taking a walk, he thought. It would be natural for us to say hello. It wouldn’t seem as intrusive for me to explain who I am and to ask a few questions.

Approaching the rear of the house, he saw a white deck perched over shelves of uneven gray rock that led down to the ocean. Stretching in both directions, the shelves of rock glistened as the spray from waves drifted over them.

But no one walked along those rocks. The shore was deserted.

Coltrane shook his head. Forced to admit that, for today at least, he truly had wasted his time, he began to turn to go back to the road, then stopped as movement among the rocks attracted his attention. Narrowing his eyes against the glare of the lowering sun (how could the sun be so bright and the air so shiveringly cool?), he thought he was hallucinating, for the movement wasn’t just among the rocks — it
was
the rocks. One of them was rising from the others.

His skin prickled. He shivered harder, but no longer from the cold. The gray hump of rock rose higher, emerging from the shelf.
What am I seeing
? Coltrane asked himself, compelled to step forward. At once, something equally startling happened, for as the hump of rock rose high enough to detach itself from the shelf, Coltrane saw that the rock had an oval of white within the gray — a face. Gray arms detached themselves, one of them reaching up toward what had become a head and neck. A gray hand pulled at the gray on the head and, to Coltrane’s amazement, peeled it off as if it were skin, revealing lush dark hair that clung wetly to the head of an amazingly beautiful woman. What he had been seeing, Coltrane realized, was a woman in a wet suit emerging from the ocean. The gray rubber of the suit was the same color as the shelves of rock. Rising from the waves, she had seemed to be born from them.

Immediately, he raised his camera, opened the aperture so that the waves would be indistinct behind her, and pressed the button as the woman emerged from the ocean. Her pose was so familiar that he felt he had to be hallucinating. He took another photograph, then another, each time stepping closer. Noticing him, the woman paused, one leg in front of the other, the knee slightly bent, about to transfer her weight from her back leg to her front. She wasn’t wearing a scuba tank or a mask. She hadn’t been diving, only swimming, using the insulation of the wet suit to keep her warm in the cold water. Her hands were covered with gray rubber gloves, one of which she had used to peel off the cowl of her suit. With the other gloved hand, she now brushed back her wet hair, and Coltrane had seen
that
pose before also. He pressed the shutter button again, catching her in midmotion. If it hadn’t been for the wet suit, Coltrane would have been shaken by the most powerful déjà vu he had ever experienced. Even
with
the wet suit, the parallels were so striking that Coltrane didn’t know if he could keep his hands steady as he continued taking photographs. The suit clung to the woman like skin. Its wet slickness enhanced the sinuous movement of her legs, the fluid motion of her body, the sensuous contours of her hips, her waist, her breasts, her . . .

He lowered the camera, his dazed mind demanding to know how it was possible that he could be looking at Rebecca Chance.

AS HE TOOK ANOTHER STEP, a look of fear crossed the woman’s face. She stumbled backward, lost her balance, and slipped to her knees in the waves.

“No!” he told her. “You don’t need to be afraid! I’m not here to hurt you!”

He raised his hands, causing her to raise her own gloved hands as if to protect herself.

“Please!” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you! All I want is to ask you some questions! I’m not going to hurt you!”

The slap of waves against the rocks wasn’t loud enough to mute the sudden noises behind him: doors banging open, shouting, shoes scrabbling over rocks. Pivoting to look behind him, Coltrane was astonished to see a half dozen men racing toward him, two from the house, two from hiding places under the deck, one from shrubs on each side of the house.

“Stop right there!” one of them yelled, his face twisted with anger. “Don’t move!”

As fast as he could, Coltrane turned and ran.

“You son of a bitch! Stay where you are, or I’ll—”

Coltrane didn’t hear the rest, the noise of the waves and his frenzied breathing blocking it out. His shoes slipped on the wet rocks, but he managed not to fall as he strained to increase speed, all the while hearing barked curses behind him. Without warning, ahead of him a man lunged from the side of another house, shoving out a hand, yelling at Coltrane to stop. Just when it seemed that he and the man would collide, Coltrane changed direction, veering around him, charging away from the shore, but two of the men racing behind him had anticipated that move and were running parallel to him, ready to grab him.

He changed direction yet again, hurrying back toward the shore. The man who had appeared from the side of the house had assumed that Coltrane would continue to rush inland. As a consequence, the man had left his strategic position and was racing inland, as well. Coltrane outmaneuvered him, continuing to charge along the shore.

“Damn it!” someone yelled.

Coltrane avoided a difficult shelf of rock and felt something twist in his stomach when he saw that the shore curved inward. To avoid the waves facing him, he would have to go inland again. His pursuers racing closer, he hurried around the half circle of the shore.

As one of the men darted at him from the side, Coltrane recalled how he had used his cameras to defend himself in Bosnia. He pulled the camera from around his neck, gripped its cord, and reached back to swing the camera toward the head of the attacking man.

“Hey!” The man lurched back.

Simultaneously, Coltrane lurched also, the backward motion of his arm causing him to lose his balance. His feet slipped out from under him. The next thing, all he saw was the sky as his body arched backward. The shock of cold water took the remainder of his breath away.

Not that it mattered. He couldn’t breathe anyhow. He was submerged in a hollow among the rocks, flailing to reach the surface. The current of a wave gripped him. Thrashing with cold-cramped arms, he heard a roaring in his ears. When he broke through the surface, the sun was almost blinding. Buffeted by another wave, he gasped and fought to inhale. Swallowing water, he coughed and tasted salt, then struggled against the weight of his water-filled shoes and soaked clothes and pawed toward a shelf of rock.

“Let him drown,” a man said.

Peering up through water-bleared eyes, he saw the men standing along the shore, just beyond the reach of the waves, their faces as craggy as the shelves of rock. They wore sneakers, jeans, and windbreakers, and looked like the only thing they had wanted for Christmas was a renewal of their exercise-club memberships.

“Yeah, let’s do the world a favor,” another said.

“Sure,” a third said. “He ran. He fell. We couldn’t get him out before he drowned.”

“But think about the lousy paperwork.”

Coltrane’s right hand gripped the shelf of rock. A wave thrust him toward it but as quickly tugged him away. His numbed hand lost its hold.

“The paperwork’s worth it,” the first man said. “Can you think of any better way to spend New Year’s than watch this prick drown?”

“Not me,” the fourth man said.

Aching from the cold, Coltrane got another grip on the rocks and strained to pull himself up. A wave knocked him against the shelf, making him groan. But despite the undertow, he mustered the strength to grip the shelf harder, pulling himself higher.

“Hold it.” The first man stepped forward and pressed the sole of his sneaker against the back of Coltrane’s right hand.

Coltrane winced.

“You didn’t ask, ‘May I?’” the man said.

“What do you think, Carl?” The second man turned toward someone approaching. “Do we let this jerk drown or pull his sorry ass out?”

Coltrane struggled as another wave splashed over him, his numbness worsening. He coughed and fought for air. Despite the bleariness in his salt-irritated eyes, he peered helplessly upward and managed to get a look at the person joining them, a man in sneakers, jeans, and a windbreaker similar to what the others wore, a man whose brown hair was trimmed to almost-military shortness and whose matching brown eyes had a no-nonsense steadiness, showing no reaction as he gazed down at Coltrane.