Double Image

1

“BUT THIS IS CRAZY.” Jennifer’s voice echoed in the empty house. “We don’t have a right to be here. The neighbors will think we broke in. They’ll call the police.”

“This late, I doubt anybody noticed, but just in case, we won’t turn on the lights,” Coltrane said. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll go around to the neighbors and explain that I’m buying the place, that the estate let me move in a little early.”

He paused on the entryway’s landing, peering toward the darkness of the bottom floor. The vault was down there, and he had no intention of going in that direction. Upstairs, a night-light guided the way to the living room. Despite shadows, the white walls and hardwood floor looked clean and pure, myriad windows along the back wall enhancing a glow from streetlights and stars.

“But suppose the neighbors don’t believe you,” Jennifer said. “Suppose the estate gave them a number to call if anything seemed wrong.”

“The estate won’t have a problem.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Before I phoned you tonight, I called Packard’s assistant. While the Realtor’s getting the paperwork ready, it’s okay for us to stay here. That’s how I got the code for the security system. And we don’t have to worry about Ilkovic. He doesn’t know about this place.”

“But he followed you to all the houses you photographed.”

“Not this one,” Coltrane said. “When I saw the photographs he took of me, something seemed missing. Later, I realized what it was. There wasn’t any photograph of me at this house. He didn’t follow me that day.”

“You can’t be sure. His camera might not have been working.”

“That still doesn’t make a difference. Even if he did follow me, as far as he knows, this is just one more house in Packard’s series. He has no way to tell I’m planning to buy it. Granted, I went back there yesterday with you and Daniel, but we definitely know Ilkovic didn’t follow us then – because while we were gone, he was in my bedroom, setting up his surprise. He can’t know I’m interested. He doesn’t have the slightest reason to suspect I’d hide here tonight.”

Clouds must have obscured the stars, because the room became darker.

“You feel that certain,” Jennifer said.

“Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come.”

“You just can’t keep away from this house.”

“Hey, it’s better than staying in a hotel.”

“Is it? What kind of hold does Packard have on you?”

2

EVEN WITH SUNLIGHT STREAMING THROUGH THE WINDOWS, they managed to sleep until almost eleven.

Jennifer stood awkwardly and rubbed her back. “Ouch.”

Coltrane knew what she meant – from sleeping on the hardwood floor, his neck felt as if he’d been karate-chopped.

“You really know how to show a girl a good time,” Jennifer said. Rummaging through a bag of toiletries that Coltrane had bought at a convenience store on the way from the airport, she pulled out toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a bottle of shampoo. “Salvation.”

“Don’t forget the doughnuts I bought.”

“If I weren’t so hungry, I would. Really, this would be paradise if only we had clean underwear.”

Her sarcasm made him chuckle.

“Some towels wouldn’t hurt,” she added.

“Let’s make a supply run down to Hollywood Boulevard. First things first, though. I’d better speak to the neighbors.”

“In that case, you’re going to need this.” Jennifer handed him shaving cream and a razor.

By early afternoon, they returned with a fresh change of clothes, a coffeemaker, a few dishes and pans, and enough food to last them a couple of days. They scanned the street but didn’t see anyone who aroused their suspicion. They felt encouraged when they found that the alarm system was still engaged. But they didn’t relax until they had searched the house – except for the vault, which Coltrane had locked after showing it to Jennifer and Daniel the previous day, and which, Coltrane assured himself, remained that way.

Only then did they carry in their purchases. Coltrane had never been much for Christmas decorations, but saying that he might as well make the house a home, he had bought a two-foot-tall artificial Christmas tree that had ornaments attached to it. He placed it in the middle of the living room and spread out two sleeping bags.

“All the comforts,” he said.

They showered and put on jeans and pullovers they had bought. Then they made coffee and munched on bagels topped with smoked salmon, sliced tomato, cream cheese, and capers.

“I’m beginning to feel like a human being.” Jennifer stretched.

“Don’t move.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That pose is too good to…” Coltrane had kept his Nikon and his photographs when he abandoned his Blazer at the airport. He snapped her picture. “Beautiful.”

“I hate to say this.”

“Then you’d better not.”

“No, you’ll want to hear it. This house is beginning to appeal to me. The space and-”

“The light.”

Jennifer nodded. “I imagine it with Art Deco furnishings.”

“That would have been the style when this place was built.”

“I wonder what it looked like when… Were you serious about wanting to rip out the vault and restore the house to its original design?”

“Top of my list.”

“Then maybe…”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’ll be right back,” Jennifer said.

“Where are you going?”

“The garage. When we carried the groceries in, I noticed something.”

Coltrane raised his eyebrows with interest when she came back with a long cardboard tube.

“This was on a shelf,” Jennifer said. “Whoever moved everything out of here was meticulous – no junk left behind, nothing. Except for this.”

“You’re thinking it might not be junk?”

“When my parents bought an old Victorian five years ago over on Carroll Avenue” – Jennifer referred to an area near Echo Park that was famous for its Victorians – “they found a tube like this in the garage.”

Coltrane didn’t understand what she was getting at.

“The tube contained the house’s original blueprints,” Jennifer explained.

“You’re not suggesting…”

“It’s a logical place to leave them for a new owner.” She opened the tube and upended it, gently pulling out its contents.

Coltrane stared at a set of tightly rolled sheets of thick blue-tinted paper. They were faded and smelled musty with age. Helping her spread them out on a clean section of the counter, he marveled that the detail of the diagrams and notations was still visible.

“By God.” He ran his finger down the top sheet, stopping at a matted-off section on the lower right side that indicated the name of the architect and the year the house had been built. “Lloyd Wright – 1931.”

3

“AS MUCH AS I CAN TELL” – Jennifer studied the entrance to the vault, then shifted her gaze to the blueprints – “there was a bedroom here.”

“That’s what Packard’s assistant said.”

“Its dimensions were the same as the garage above it.”

“No, that doesn’t sound right,” Coltrane said.

“How come?”

“The garage has room for only one car – typical of the thirties. But the vault seems bigger, almost the size of a double garage.”

“So the renovation was more like an addition,” Jennifer said.

“I could be wrong. I felt a little queasy in there.”

“Well, I felt the same, and I’ve never been claustrophobic. The vault can’t be that much bigger than the garage if we both felt hemmed in.” Jennifer checked a detail on the blueprints. “The garage is fifteen feet square. Since we don’t have the blueprint for the renovation, I guess there’s only one way to tell how much room was added. Pace it off. Have you got the key?” Jennifer unlocked the door and pushed it open.

As cool air cascaded out, the darkness made Coltrane shiver. “Ah, if you don’t mind, I’ll wait out here.”

“Since when have you been claustrophobic?”

“Only when I’m in that vault.”

Reaching to the left, Jennifer flicked the light switch on the inside wall. An oppressive overhead glare made Coltrane squint, seeming to reflect off the concrete floor, revealing the stark gray metal library shelves.

“One, two…” Jennifer entered, pacing the vault.

“Definitely bigger,” she said when she came back. “The garage is fifteen feet wide, but this is twenty-five.”

“Closer to thirty,” Coltrane said.

“What do you mean?”

He gestured toward a corridor next to the vault. “I paced it from the outside.”

“Thirty? Are you sure? We must have paced it differently.”

“Probably we did. But since my feet are longer than yours, I’m the one who should have the lower number. You should have needed more paces and have had the higher number.”

“We’re doing something wrong. Let’s try it again. This time, you go in.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’ve never seen you so timid.”

She’s right, Coltrane thought. What’s the matter with me? I have to get over this. Ignoring pressure in his chest, he braced himself. The glare became harsher, the temperature cooler, the air thicker as he forced himself to enter the vault. “One, two…”

He restrained himself from walking fast. It’s only a windowless room, he told himself. He breathed easier when he returned to Jennifer in the welcoming light. “I got more or less what you did: twenty-five feet.”

“Then we’re still doing something wrong.” Jennifer frowned. “I paced off the corridor and got what you did: thirty feet. How can a room be-” She spun in alarm. “Somebody’s in the house.”

4

AS THE FRONT DOOR CLICKED SHUT, Coltrane rushed toward the stairs. Above him, the landing creaked. A figure appeared, hands raised.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said.

Coltrane faltered, his heart no longer hammering as he took in the red jacket that Duncan Reynolds wore.

“It’s just that we weren’t expecting visitors,” Coltrane said.

Duncan put a key in his jacket. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and see how you were settling in. I’d have phoned, but…”

“There isn’t a phone.”

“Exactly. I don’t want to intrude. If this is a wrong time.”

“Not at all,” Coltrane said. “I want you to meet my friend Jennifer Lane. Jennifer, this is Randolph Packard’s assistant, Duncan Reynolds.”

They shook hands.

Still calming herself, Jennifer smiled. “It must have been fascinating working for a genius.”

“Fascinating’s one word. So is hair-raising. I finally decided to call it an adventure.”

“Can I get you some coffee?” Coltrane led him up to the living room.

Duncan surveyed the sleeping bags next to the small artificial Christmas tree. “This looks like an adventure. About the coffee – no thanks. But something stronger would do nicely.”

“I’m afraid we didn’t buy…”

Duncan’s face drooped.

“But we did pick up some wine,” Jennifer said.

Duncan brightened. “Forgive the pun, but any port in a storm.”

“White or red?”

“Whatever you have more of.”

Jennifer headed to the left, toward the kitchen.

“We found a set of blueprints in the garage,” Coltrane said.

“Yes, I put them there,” Duncan said. “I discovered them when I was going through Randolph’s things at the Newport Beach house. I decided to bring them here before they got mislaid.”

“You didn’t happen to come across the blueprints for the renovation, did you?”

Duncan shook his head no. “I’ve still got a lot of things to sort through. Why?”

“Just curious. There’s a discrepancy that puzzles us.”

“Come into the kitchen,” Jennifer called.

“Excellent,” Duncan said. “We can talk while you pour.”

They crossed through the dining room, its chromium bead-draped walls reflecting light, and entered the sun-bathed kitchen. It had a butcher-block island in the middle, where Jennifer uncorked the wine. “Paper cups will have to do.”

“It’s the only way to go when you’re roughing it.”

“And I hope you like cabernet sauvignon.”

“I have what might be called an indiscriminate palate. It all tastes good to me.” Duncan sipped and nodded. “Perfect. You mentioned a discrepancy?”

“We were trying to figure out how much space had been added when the vault was installed,” Coltrane said. “We kept getting conflicting numbers. Do you have any idea when the vault was put in?”

Duncan took another sip. “All I know is, it was here when I came to work for Randolph in 1973.”

“Was he living here then?”

“No. If he ever lived in this house, I never heard him say so. But he certainly adored it. With the exception of the vault, he went to elaborate lengths to keep the property, including the landscaping, exactly the same as it had appeared when he took his photograph of it in 1933. Too bad the furniture was gone by the time you saw the interior.”

“Why?” Jennifer asked.

“It was the same furniture that was in the house when he photographed it.”

“You can’t be serious.” Coltrane leaned forward. “You mean imitations, right? The original furniture would have fallen apart by now.”

“Not this furniture.” Duncan wiped a purple drop from the edge of his mustache. “The furniture was designed by Warren McArthur, a noted modernist of the thirties. His work is characterized by shiny metal and glass. The supports were tubular. Everything glinted. Of course, the cushions eventually had to be replaced, but Randolph was careful to replicate the textured red fabric. Here and there, he also had some Mies van der Rohe chrome tables. You can understand why the furniture was removed. Those tables and sofas have considerable value. Christie’s is going to auction them.”

“I want you to bring them back,” Coltrane said.

Duncan almost spilled his wine. “Bring them back?”

“I want to buy them.”

“But you’re talking about an enormous price.”

“I want the house to be exactly as it was.”

Jennifer looked astounded.

“And I think it would be great if you could get me more information about the house’s history,” Coltrane said. “You told me Packard used this for an office, a darkroom, and an archive. But who lived here before he owned it? His biographers say it was designed for a film producer named Winston Case. Is that who Packard bought it from, or did somebody else own it in the meantime? What about after he bought it? Did someone else live here then?”

“But it was all so long ago. Why should it matter?”

Coltrane didn’t have an answer.

5

THE LAST RAYS OF SUNSET AGAIN OUTLINED SIX BASKETBALL players on a court at Muscle Beach in Venice: the same court where Coltrane had met Greg the previous day. Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago, Coltrane thought. Seated with Jennifer on the same level of the same concrete bleacher at the sideline, an eerie sense of doubling overtook him.

“Greg ought to be here anytime now,” Coltrane said.

An ocean breeze made Jennifer shiver. “I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to meet him at the police station.”

“He lives only a few blocks away. I guess he figured it would be more convenient to meet down here.”

The sun dipped into the ocean, its crimson now so faint that the players stopped. Coltrane overheard their conversation: gibes at one another, plans to get a beer, promises to meet next week. Déjà vu made him squirm.

The players headed along the walkway. The sun eased below the horizon. Skateboarders became fewer as the temperature cooled. Streetlights struggled to dispel the darkness.

“He’s fifteen minutes late,” Coltrane said.

“Maybe he got held up by a phone call.”

“Greg has a thing about being on time. I’ve never known him to keep me waiting.”

Another fifteen minutes passed.

“It must be an awfully long phone call,” Jennifer said. “So what do you think we should do?”

“I guess we don’t have any choice except to stay here until-”

“Is that him?”

Coltrane looked toward where Jennifer pointed. A heavyset man wearing sneakers, jeans, and a leather windbreaker stepped from behind a shadowy wall next to the court and approached them.

“No.” Uneasy, Coltrane stood.

“Does he look like Ilkovic?”

“I can’t tell in the dark at this distance. He doesn’t have a mustache. But Ilkovic might have shaved his.”

They stepped from the bleachers.

“He keeps coming in this direction,” Jennifer said.

“Then why don’t we walk in that direction.”

They started past palm trees, heading up the beach.

The man followed.

“Shit,” Coltrane said.

They started to run.

“Wait!” the man called.

They ran faster.

“Mr. Coltrane, stop! Lieutenant Bass sent me!”

They faltered.

As the man hurried to catch up, Coltrane turned, straining to see in the shadows, wondering if he was making a mistake. His misgivings lessened when a streetlight revealed the badge the man pulled out.

“I work with Lieutenant Bass in the Threat Management Unit,” the man said. Tall, he had a solid-looking body, his chest, shoulders, and upper arms developed like a weight lifter’s. His brown hair was trimmed to almost military shortness. His matching brown eyes had a no-nonsense steadiness. “Sergeant Nolan.”

Coltrane shook hands with him – not surprisingly, Nolan’s grip had force – then introduced Jennifer.

“Greg couldn’t get here?” Coltrane asked.

“It’s complicated. He didn’t think it would be safe.”

Jennifer visibly tensed.

“I’ve been watching you to see if anybody else is watching you,” Nolan said.

“And?” Apprehensive, Coltrane glanced around. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but the beach seemed deserted.

For the first time, Nolan’s gaze lost its steadiness. “Why don’t we get out of the open? We need a place to talk.”

6

THE RESTAURANT HAD A CHEERY CHRISTMAS ATMOSPHERE – a tinsel-covered tree in a corner, strings of winking lights on the walls, tiny wreaths around candles on the tables, all of which were lost on Coltrane as he and Jennifer sat across from Nolan. Again, Coltrane endured an intense overlapping of time, as though he still sat across from Greg the previous evening.

“Okay, the good news first,” Nolan said. “Lieutenant Bass contacted the FBI, who in turn got in touch with the UN war-crimes tribunal. Interpol got involved. They’re trying to find how Ilkovic left Europe. The FBI’s doing the same on this end – to learn how he entered the country. They’re checking the passenger manifests on all flights that came into this country from Europe during a one-week time frame: from when you left Bosnia to when you started getting the messages on your answering machine. The UN tribunal has asked various European nations to compare the names on those airline manifests to lists of sanctioned passport holders. The FBI’s doing the same with passports issued by the United States. If we can determine the alias Ilkovic is using, that’ll take us a long way toward tracking him down.”

“Assuming he keeps the name he traveled under,” Coltrane said.

“Assuming.” Nolan looked uncomfortable. “Meanwhile, an LAPD bomb squad went through your town house. Behind your furnace, they found enough plastic explosive to level half the block.”

“That’s the good news?” Jennifer murmured.

“After the bomb was disabled, a team of LAPD electronic-surveillance specialists went through your home. Ilkovic had microphones in every room. I hope you didn’t discuss any secrets there.”

Coltrane felt as if a chunk of glass was wedged in his throat.

“They also found microphones in your friend’s place next door,” Nolan said, “and at your place, Ms. Lane.”

“Jesus,” she said.

“I don’t know what you mean by good news,” Coltrane said. “I haven’t heard any so far.”

“It’s very good. Where did Ilkovic get the plastic explosive? The microphones – where did they come from? Every alphabet-soup agency you can think of is following those leads. A lot of muscle is being flexed to give you help.”

“Then if everything’s so positive, why do you look like you need root canal?”

Nolan glanced down at his hands, then fixed his gaze on Coltrane, reluctantly continuing. “The reason Lieutenant Bass didn’t meet you as planned is that you were followed when you went to talk to him yesterday.”

“What?”

“After you and he concluded your conversation and separated, the person who followed you – we have to assume it was Ilkovic – shifted his attention to Lieutenant Bass.”

“Are you telling me something happened to Greg?”

“No. Lieutenant Bass-”

“Stop calling him that. Please. He’s my friend. Call him-”

“Greg hasn’t been harmed. Nor has his family.”

Coltrane breathed out.

“But last night, his home was broken into.”

“What?”

“That doesn’t mean it was Ilkovic.” Jennifer tried to sound hopeful. “It might have been a crackhead breaking in, looking for something to steal to sell for drugs.”

“Unfortunately, we know for certain it was Ilkovic,” Nolan said. “The message left absolutely no doubt.”

“Message?” Coltrane felt pressure behind his ears.

Nolan hesitated. “Before I explain, I want you to know how sorry I am about all this. So is Lieutenant Bass. Greg. He wants me to tell you he’d have been here to talk to you himself, but that would have compromised your safety. Now that you’ve disappeared, there’s too great a risk that Ilkovic might be following Greg in the hopes that Greg will lead him to you.”

“Sergeant Nolan, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing your damnedest not to.”

Coltrane had seldom seen anyone appear more uneasy. The sergeant glanced down again, seemed to muster his resolve, looked up, sighed, and pulled out a Walkman from his windbreaker pocket. “Ilkovic left an audiotape on the coffee table in Greg’s living room.”

Coltrane reached.

“But I’m not sure you want to listen to the copy we made,” Nolan said.

“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t I want to?”

“Sometime after midnight last night, Ilkovic went to the hospital where your friend worked.”

“Oh my God,” Jennifer whispered.

“The nurses and physicians your friend worked with in the emergency ward say he went to the cafeteria to get something to eat around one A.M. He never came back.”

Coltrane felt so great a tightness in his chest that he feared he might be having a heart attack.

“The break-in at Greg’s house occurred around four A.M.,” Nolan said. “We know that because when he left, he threw a lamp through a window so Greg would be startled awake. A little after four – that’s when Greg found the tape.”

“From one until four.” Jennifer’s voice was taut.

Nolan seemed to be waiting for them to make conclusions.

“That’s how much time” – Jennifer shook her head – “Ilkovic had with…”

“It’s Daniel on the tape?” Coltrane’s stomach cramped.

“I deeply regret having to tell you. The bomb squad found his body in his living room when they went in to search his town house this morning.”

Coltrane’s mind swirled. I’m going to pass out, he thought.

Jennifer’s hand found his and squeezed. He held her, feeling her tears mixing with his own.

After what seemed forever, he eased away, hardly aware that customers in the restaurant were staring at him – because the only thing that occupied his attention was the Walkman.

He reached for it.

“I don’t recommend that,” Nolan said. “Greg felt you had a right to hear it if you were determined to. But I really don’t-”

“I have to know.”

The Walkman had a set of small earphones. Hands shaking, Coltrane put them on. He felt disturbingly remote from his body, as if he was seeing everything through the reverse end of a telescope. With a finger that didn’t seem to belong to him, he pressed the Walkman’s play button.

A scream made him flinch. It was the most pain-ridden sound he had ever heard. Daniel.

It stopped.

“Say a few words to your friend,” a guttural voice with a Slavic accent ordered, sounding amused.

Daniel’s scream reached a new pitch of agony. It dwindled and became strident breathing.

“Speak to him!”

“Mitch…” Daniel sounded pathetically weak. “I didn’t tell him a thing.”

“You didn’t betray him because you don’t know anything!” the guttural voice said. “But you would have!”

Daniel shrieked again, on and on, communicating agony beyond endurance.

Silence again. Coltrane had no doubt that he had just heard Daniel dying.

“Photographer,” the guttural voice said. “I’ve got pictures of the party. I’ll mail them to your home. Why don’t you stop by and pick them up?”

A click was followed by the hiss of blank tape.

Tears streaming down his face, Coltrane removed the earphones. Jennifer took them and put them on, her normally tan face ashen as she rewound the tape and pressed the play button.

Coltrane’s throat felt paralyzed. “There’s an echo. It sounds like” – he strained to make his voice work – “like they’re in a cellar or something.”

“Which your friend’s town house doesn’t have, although it does have a garage underneath,” Nolan said. “But the garage showed no evidence that your friend was killed there.”

“You’re talking about blood.”

Nolan spread his hands, seeming to apologize. “There would have been a lot of it. Ilkovic used a knife.”

Jennifer yanked off the earphones and jabbed the Walkman’s stop button. Her eyes were dilated, the black of their pupils so huge that the blue of her irises had almost disappeared. “I’ve never heard… What kind of monster…”

“I’m not sure there’s an answer to that question,” Nolan said. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this. You need to move to a safe site where we can protect you.”

“Move?”

“A hotel we’re familiar with. A place where we can control the environment and watch you around the clock.”

“You mean put us in a trap and make us targets,” Coltrane said.

“It wouldn’t be like that at all. Security would be so tight, Ilkovic wouldn’t have a chance of finding where you were.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Coltrane said. “Jennifer and I aren’t going to let ourselves be prisoners in a hotel.”

“Then we can guard you where you’re staying now. If you think it’s more comfortable-”

“It’s safer,” Coltrane said. “The reason it’s safer is that nobody knows where it is, including the police. Suppose I told you where we’re staying. What if Ilkovic grabbed you? What if he did to you what he did to Daniel? From what I heard on the tape, I think Ilkovic was right: The only reason Daniel didn’t tell him where I was is that Daniel didn’t know.”

7

AFTER GREAT PAIN, A FORMAL FEELING COMES. Coltrane remembered having read that in an English class when he was in college at USC. A poem by Emily Dickinson. It had impressed itself upon him because it had so perfectly described the emotion with which he most identified: grief. This is the hour of lead – He felt like that now. Having struggled to maintain his survival instincts, to get back to the sanctuary of Packard’s house, he had only enough energy left to make sure that the doors were locked and that he and Jennifer were alone.

In shadows, he sank onto one of the sleeping bags in the living room. After a time, he heard Jennifer settle wearily next to him. The house was so perfectly quiet that he heard her weeping. Hollowness overtook him. He stared up at the murky ceiling, absolutely emotionally exhausted, but he knew that a further torture awaited him, that no matter how much he craved the release, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He shivered. As freezing persons recollect the Snow – /First Chill – then Stupor, then the letting go – But he couldn’t manage to let go. “Daniel,” he whispered. “Daniel.”

8

HE AWOKE AS EXHAUSTED AS WHEN SLEEP HAD FINALLY overtaken him. The faint light of dawn glowed through the windows. Turning onto his side, toward Jennifer, he groggily noted that she wasn’t there. He assumed that she must have gone to the bathroom. He closed his eyes. But when he opened them again and the light was brighter and she still wasn’t next to him, he sat up, worried.

Various explanations occurred to him. Perhaps she had decided to lie down in another room. Then why hadn’t she taken her sleeping bag with her? Perhaps she was showering. Then why didn’t he hear the muted hiss of water?

When he stood, his body ached, grief racking it. The hope that this had all been a nightmare and that Daniel was still alive dwindled the more his troubled consciousness took control. He glanced at his watch. A little after seven. Perhaps she’s getting something to eat in the kitchen, he thought. But when he checked, she wasn’t there. Perhaps she was using the tub instead of the shower. In that case, the water would already have been run; sleeping, he wouldn’t have heard it. But the bathroom on this floor wasn’t occupied.

There was a bathroom on each of the two upper levels, however. He wondered if she had gone up to one of them – to avoid making noise and waking him. Hopeful, he climbed the steps to the next level, failed to find her, continued to the last level, but he didn’t find her there, either. He peered onto the flower-filled terrace. It, too, was deserted.

“Jennifer?” Taking two steps at a time, he hurried down to the entryway and stared anxiously toward the bottom level. Until now, the silence in the house had seemed so profound that he had felt reluctant to call her name, concerned that she might in fact be dozing somewhere and he would wake her. “Jennifer?” he called again, and again received no answer.

About to descend toward the vault, he decided to look into the garage and see if the rented car was still there. But when he raised a hand to press the numbers on the security system’s keypad to deactivate the alarm so that he could open the garage door, his hand froze – because an illuminated message on the keypad’s display screen indicated READY TO ARM. The security system had already been deactivated.

Why? Where had Jennifer gone? Breathing rapidly, Coltrane yanked open the garage door. In the reverberating echo, he saw that the Saturn was where he had left it. Wild, he stared down the steps toward the vault, then charged lower, fearful that Jennifer had somehow become trapped in there. But as he reached the bottom, about to open the hidden white door that concealed the metal entrance to the vault, another door caught his attention – across the large open area at the bottom of the stairs – one of the French doors that led out to the lap pool.

That door was open. He hurried outside, his nostrils tingling from the early morning’s chill. Mist floated over the long, narrow rose-tinted pool. He rushed along it, afraid that he might find her facedown in the water. Oblivious to the glint of dew on flowers and shrubs, he studied the ivy-covered slope at the back and the privacy wall that capped it.

“Jennifer?”

“What?” She appeared around the far left corner.

His knees became weak with relief.

“Is something else wrong?”

Coltrane shook his head. “I couldn’t find you. I got worried.”

“Sorry.” Jennifer looked as fatigued as he’d ever seen her. Her blond hair was lusterless. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe if I went outside…”

“You look cold.” Coltrane put an arm around her.

She leaned against him.

“Don’t let Ilkovic do this to you, Jennifer. Don’t let him win.”

She shrugged. “Not that it matters – I solved our little mystery.”

Coltrane didn’t know what she meant.

“The different numbers.” She shrugged again.

“Numbers?”

“Twenty-five versus thirty.”

At last, he realized what she was talking about. “When we paced the inside and the outside of the vault?”

“There’s a door around the side. To a utility area.”

Hoping to distract her, Coltrane said, “Show me.”

9

FLANKED BY WELL-TENDED BUSHES, a door was situated in the middle of the narrow side of the house. To the left of the door, a window provided an inside view of the corridor next to the vault. Coltrane understood. Inside, when he had paced down to this window, he had thought that the vault occupied the entire length of the corridor, when in fact a small area with an outside entrance took up part of the space. He opened the door, seeing the shadowy outlines of a water heater and a furnace/air-conditioning unit. “You’re right. Mystery solved.” His voice was flat. “Come on back inside. It’s cold out here.”

10

AT 10:00 A.M., using a pay phone outside a convenience store in Studio City, Coltrane called the Threat Management Unit. Jennifer stood next to him in the phone booth, her head against his so she could overhear the other end of the conversation. Now that she had showered and forced herself to eat a little, her blue eyes had regained some of their brightness. But not much, Coltrane thought. Not enough.

“Lieutenant Bass or Sergeant Nolan, please,” Coltrane said.

He heard office noises in the background – phones ringing, people talking – then a click and silence as the call was transferred. Outside the phone booth, the rumble of traffic made him press the phone harder against his ear.

“This is Lieutenant Bass,” a sonorous no-nonsense voice said.

Recognizing it, Coltrane almost smiled, pleased to be in touch with someone he trusted. “Greg, it’s Mitch.”

Greg’s voice quickened, its bureaucratic flatness gone. “Thank God. I was hoping this would be you. Are you all right?”

“Shaky.”

“No shit. Listen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your friend.”

Coltrane paused, a renewed shock of grief jolting through him. “Ilkovic is going to be even sorrier.”

“That’s the way I want to hear you talk.”

“What about your family? Are they okay?”

“They weren’t hurt, but are they okay? Hell no. They’re scared to death. I’ve moved them out of the house. I sent them to-”

“Stop,” Coltrane said.

“What?”

“Not over the phone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t trust it. This guy’s too good with microphones.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting Ilkovic could figure out a way to get into the Threat Management office and-”

“There aren’t many people in your office on Sunday. He might have pretended to be a janitor. Are you willing to bet your family’s life that he didn’t?”

Greg didn’t answer.

“When he was in your home Saturday night, he had time to bug that phone, too,” Coltrane said. “Did you use it to make arrangements about where to send your wife and kids?”

For a moment, all Coltrane heard were the background noises in the office.

“Jesus,” Greg said. “Don’t hang up.”

Click. On hold, Coltrane listened to dead silence that stretched on and on and -

Abruptly Greg was back on the line. “I’ve got a team going out there to search for microphones.”

“Your family. If Ilkovic did bug that phone, you have to warn them,” Coltrane said.

“But not on this phone. The son of a… How can I get back to you? If he can hear us, you can’t tell me the number to call.”

“Greg, do you remember when we first met? I helped a woman identify a stalker.”

“Yes, you hid outside her house and photographed him pouring gasoline on her lawn in the middle of the night.”

“Do you remember where she lived?”

“I can look it up.”

“There’s a Pizza Hut two blocks east of her house,” Coltrane said. “Go to its pay phone.”

“Give me an hour.”

Coltrane hung up and left the phone booth.

Jennifer frowned at him.

“Something the matter?”

“Where did you learn about hidden microphones?” she asked.

“A couple of times, when I was on assignment, the CIA and I crossed paths.” Coltrane started with her down the exhaust-hazed street.

“The CIA?” The reference made Jennifer’s eyes widen.

“In Beirut, there was one operative in particular. He showed an awful lot of interest in the photographs I was taking. So I worked out a deal with him. I promised I’d make him a better photographer than the Agency had trained him to be, and in return, he had to teach me some of what he knew.”

“Hold it. This isn’t the way back to the car. Where are we going?”

“Into this sporting-goods store.”

“But what do you need in-”

“A twelve-gauge pump shotgun.”

11

COLTRANE CARRIED THE SHOTGUN, concealed by a leather sleeve, back to where they had parked the Saturn around the corner from the convenience store. In five days, after the federally mandated waiting period, he planned to come back and pick up a Beretta 9-mm semiautomatic pistol that he had also purchased. For now, the shotgun would have to do. He locked it and a box of buckshot in the trunk, then headed toward the next block.

“Now where are we going?” Jennifer asked.

“Down the street. That Pizza Hut.”

“Are you telling me that’s the same…”

“Yep. Greg’s going to show up there in about thirty-five minutes. I need to get the number of its pay phone.”

The phone turned out to be on the wall to the left, just inside the front door. A large window provided a view of the restaurant’s parking area, a crowded intersection, and a Burger King diagonally across the intersection.

“Perfect.”

Five minutes later, when they entered the Burger King, its air thick with the smell of charcoal-cooked meat, Coltrane discovered that the arrangement was even more perfect than he had imagined. Standing at the pay phone, which was near a window next to the front door, he could see across the intersection to the pay phone in the Pizza Hut.

“The next best thing to meeting in person,” Coltrane said. “Now comes the hard part – the waiting.”

“All those times you went away on assignment, you lived like this?”

“Not always. It depends on where I was sent.”

“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you.”

“When the time comes, watch the street. If Ilkovic follows Greg, there’s a chance we can spot him.”

“And?”

“Then maybe we can follow him.” Coltrane glanced toward the menu on the wall behind the counter. “We’re going to need food in front of us so we don’t appear to be loitering.”

They each ordered a burger, fries, and coffee. Carrying their tray of food, Coltrane avoided a booth by the window and instead chose a table one row in – less chance that they’d be seen from the street. He positioned Jennifer so that her back was to the window. That way, facing her, he could appear to be talking to her but would actually be looking past her, concentrating on the Pizza Hut. Eating slowly, which wasn’t difficult, given the state of their appetites, they tried to distract themselves with small talk. It didn’t work.

Twenty minutes dwindled to fifteen, then to ten. With five minutes to go, Coltrane inwardly flinched when a kid with a ring in his nose dumped a tray of crushed wrappers and an empty paper cup into a trash receptacle, then picked up the phone. No!

Five minutes became zero.

Coltrane placed himself next to the kid.

“Hey, do you mind. I’m having an important conversation,” the kid said.

“Here’s five bucks to have it somewhere else.”

“Later,” the kid said into the phone. He hung up, grabbed the money, shook his head as if he thought Coltrane was a fool, and walked out.

Immediately, Coltrane picked up the phone, shoved coins into it, and pressed the numbers that he had written on a notepad.

On the other end, the phone barely had a chance to ring. “Mitch?”

Partially concealed, Coltrane peered across the street toward Greg at the pay phone in the Pizza Hut. “While you’re there, why don’t you order a medium pepperoni and mushroom for me?”

“Yeah, it’s definitely you. That bastard did bug my home. And you were right: My office phone and my desk were bugged, too. If I get my hands on him-”

“You mean when, don’t you?”

Greg didn’t respond for a moment. “Interpol thinks he used a forged passport under the name of Haris Hasanovic to fly out of Bosnia. His route was from Tuzla to Hamburg to London. After that, MI-Six got into the act. They think he changed his name to Radko Hodzic, but there’s no record of anyone with that name applying for a Bosnian passport. The rest of the Slovak countries came up blank, as well. So did Germany. The FBI established that Radko Hodzic arrived in Los Angeles two days after you did. He would have needed IDs for Radko Hodzic to rent a car or a hotel room. The FBI’s checking that.”

“Or else he switched back to being Haris Haranovic.”

“We thought of that, too. We’re checking it.”

“Or he had a third set of documents, and he’s somebody else now.”

“Mitch, we’re trying our best.”

“But where’s he getting the electronic-surveillance equipment? Damn it, what kind of explosive did he put behind my furnace? Where would he have gotten-”

“I told you we’re working as fast as we can.”

A jarring crash made Coltrane whirl. When he saw that it had been caused by a tray of food that a nervous-looking woman with two pouting children had dropped, he still had trouble controlling his breathing. “Greg, tell me how to have a nice day.”

“We’ll keep trying to find out where he got the microphones and the explosives. We’re also trying to find out where he got those photographs of you developed. That many eight-by-ten enlargements aren’t common. We’re hoping somebody will remember the order.”

“I’m getting that cold, sinking feeling again,” Coltrane said.

“We’re also pursuing another angle. A profiler from the FBI says somebody as twisted as Ilkovic often feels compelled to go back to where he terrorized his victims. It’s a compulsion to reexperience the thrill of what he did to them. That would explain why he went back to the mass grave in Bosnia, where you took his picture.”

Coltrane stared harder at Greg across the smog-hazed, traffic-cluttered street. “So what does that mean? He’s going to go back to where he tortured Daniel? We don’t know where that happened.”

“But we know where Daniel’s going to be buried.”

The statement made Coltrane feel as if a fist had been driven into his stomach. He tasted coffee, french fries, and chunks of hamburger, and he fought the urge to throw up. Daniel’s funeral. He had been so fixated on what had been done to his friend that he hadn’t considered what would happen next.

“Daniel’s ex-wife went out of her mind when she found out he’d been murdered,” Greg said. “For being divorced, she sure seems close to him.”

“They were talking about getting back together.”

Greg didn’t say anything for a moment. “Well, she’s making all the funeral arrangements. The visiting hours are tomorrow evening. A closed casket.”

Coltrane wanted to weep.

“Then Wednesday afternoon at one, there’ll be the funeral, and the burial around two-thirty. The FBI profiler thinks Ilkovic won’t be able to resist coming around to relive his triumph. All those grieving people. It’ll give Ilkovic a thrill to see how much power his actions have.”

“There’s another reason Ilkovic won’t be able to resist going to Daniel’s funeral,” Coltrane said.

“I was wondering if you’d figure it out.”

“A sociopath like him will automatically assume I can’t control my emotions enough to stay away. He’ll want to be somewhere at the funeral because he’ll count on me to be there. It’s his best chance to follow me.” Coltrane mustered the strength to make a decision he absolutely did not want to make. “So let’s give him what he wants.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Nobody I’m close to is safe. Who will he go after next? My grandparents?” Coltrane suddenly realized that he had to warn them. “I’m sick of letting him control me. It’s time I controlled him. Where’s the funeral?”

“It’s too risky for you to-”

“Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll look it up in the newspaper.”

“St. John’s Church in Burbank. Daniel’s ex-wife lives over there. The burial’s at Everlasting Gardens.”

“God, I hate the names of cemeteries… Two days from now,” Coltrane said. “Does that give you and the FBI enough time to button down those areas without making it obvious to Ilkovic?”

“It’s a lot of space to cover. Especially going from the church to the cemetery.”

“Then let’s forget about the church. I’ll show up only at the cemetery. It’ll be more believable to Ilkovic. By avoiding the church, I’ll look as if I’m trying to be cautious.”

“And then what? We can’t cover every building that surrounds the cemetery. Suppose he decides to blow your head off at three hundred yards with a sniper’s rifle?”

“No,” Coltrane said. “That’s one thing I’m sure he won’t do. He loves to do his work up close and personal.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. Then what?”

“I let him follow me.”

12

COLTRANE HUNG UP, returned to Jennifer at the table, and helped her study the intersection.

“Nobody attracts my attention,” she said.

“I don’t see anybody, either.”

In the distance, Greg remained at the Pizza Hut window, the phone pressed to his ear.

“He’s making another call,” Jennifer said.

“Pretending to. I finally told Greg I was where I could see him. He did a good job of hiding his surprise and not staring in this direction. He suggested he pretend to stay on the line a little longer, to give us a longer chance of spotting Ilkovic if he’s around here.”

“Good idea.”

“But it doesn’t seem to be helping. If Ilkovic is in the area, he’s blending well,” Coltrane said.

“For all we know, he shaved his mustache, got his hair cut, dyed it light brown, bought a decent suit, and looks like a businessman.”

“Or he went in the opposite direction, made himself scruffy, and looks like he’s homeless,” Coltrane said. “In that case, for a lot of people, he would be invisible.”

“Greg’s hanging up.”

Ten seconds later, Greg came out of the Pizza Hut and headed around to the parking lot at the side of the restaurant.

“I still don’t see anybody who looks suspicious,” Jennifer said.

“Let’s see if anybody follows Greg when he drives away.”

“In this traffic? Everybody will seem to be following him,” Jennifer said. “Even if we do see a car go after him, we won’t be able to get to our car in time to do anything about it.”

“We can try to get the plate number.”

Coltrane watched Greg take out his key and unlock his car.

Which disintegrated.

13

THE FIREBALL SPEWED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT AT THE SAME time the shock wave shattered windows in every direction. The force of it threw Coltrane and Jennifer backward out of their chairs, slamming them onto the floor, glass spewing over them. For a dazed instant, his ears ringing but not enough to shut out the wail of children, Coltrane felt jolted back to when he had been photographing a violence-torn village in Northern Ireland and an IRA bomb had blown a school bus apart. Straining to clear his mind, he sensed Jennifer squirming next to him and reached for her.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“Don’t know.” Chunks of glass had cut Jennifer’s hands and forehead.

“Greg,” Coltrane moaned. He struggled to his feet, then helped Jennifer up. “Greg,” he said with greater force, turning toward the glassless windows. The intersection was in chaos. Cars had slammed into one another. Horns blared. Drivers peered around in a daze. Pedestrians lay motionless on the sidewalk. Beyond, in the restaurant’s parking lot, the explosion that had devastated Greg’s car had blown apart other cars, igniting their fuel tanks, sending numerous fireballs roaring into the sky. Black greasy smoke topped the area like a curse.

“Greg,” Coltrane said a third time, the word coming out as a sob. He struggled around a table, lurching, trying to go through a gaping window. Have to get to the parking lot. Have to help Greg.

Someone grabbed Coltrane’s shoulders, dragging him backward. “What are you doing?” Jennifer blurted. “You can’t show yourself!”

“My friend needs…”

Wavering, Coltrane saw the astounded expression in Jennifer’s eyes and realized that he must sound insane. Save Greg? How in God’s name was he going to do that when his friend was in a million pieces? “Oh Jesus.”

“Somebody help me!” a woman screamed.

Coltrane spun toward the far-left corner of the Burger King, seeing the panic of a gray-haired woman who knelt beside a young girl with a six-inch shard of glass embedded in her right arm. Blood spurted.

“Help me!”

He couldn’t count how many times, in how many languages, he had heard that wail. In northern Israel after a Shiite Muslim rocket barrage. In Chechnya, after a Russian artillery assault on a rebel village. How many times had he taken photographs of victims as doctors and nurses raced across blood-covered streets?

“HELP ME!”

And how many times had he hurried toward the victims, hoping that one of the doctors would understand his desperate English and tell him what to do?

If he couldn’t help Greg, he was going to help somebody, by God.

In a rush, he untied a kerchief from the woman’s neck and twisted it around the girl’s arm, above the embedded glass. The girl, who had been trying to stand, sank back onto the glass-covered floor.

“Hold the kerchief tightly, Jennifer.”

He knelt beside the girl, gripped the shard, and pulled it free. The girl turned instantly pale. Blood continued to gush.

“Twist the kerchief tighter.”

Approaching sirens wailed.

“She needs a pressure bandage.”

The girl had a sweater tied around her waist. Coltrane tugged it free, wrapped the sleeve around the wound, and used his belt to secure it tightly. The sweater, which was blue, turned pink. But it didn’t turn crimson. The belt’s pressure on it was partially sealing the wound.

“That’ll buy some time. You have to get her to a hospital,” Coltrane told the woman.

Outside, the sirens wailed to a stop.

“Take her to one of those ambulances. Hurry.” Even as Coltrane said that, it became obvious that the woman was in no condition to carry the girl outside. But no matter how determined he was to make sure the girl was safe, he didn’t dare risk carrying her out there himself. Ilkovic might spot him.

Alarmed by how pale the girl was, watching her tremble, he realized that the child was going into shock. “No, don’t move her. We have to lay her flat. Prop her feet on that overturned chair. Keep them above her head. Somebody cover her with something.”

A man in a windbreaker stared.

“You,” Coltrane said. “Take off your jacket. Cover her.”

In a daze, the man complied.

As other sirens wailed, Coltrane spun toward a young woman in a jogging suit. “Get to one of those ambulances. Bring help.”

The direction broke the woman’s paralysis. She scrambled toward the littered sidewalk.

The moment Coltrane saw the woman speak urgently to an ambulance attendant, he stepped away. “We have to get out of here,” he told Jennifer. “Through the back.”

Jennifer stared at him as if she had never seen him before.

14

“WHERE DID YOU GET PARAMEDIC TRAINING?”

Coltrane sped around a corner, saw a gas station, and steered toward a pay phone next to the rest rooms at the side.

Jennifer persisted. “This isn’t the first time you’ve had to-”

Before she could finish her sentence, Coltrane skidded the car to a stop and jumped out. After hurrying to the phone booth, he shoved in coins and pressed numbers.

“Threat Management Unit,” an authoritative voice said.

“Give me Sergeant Nolan. This is an emergency.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t – Wait a minute. He just walked in.”

Coltrane gripped the phone tighter.

“Sergeant Nolan here.”

“Greg’s dead.”

“What?”

“I’m telling you-”

“Who is this? Coltrane? Slow down. What are you-”

“I made an appointment to talk to him on a pay phone at a Pizza Hut in Century City.”

“He told me.”

“Ilkovic must have followed him. While Greg was in the restaurant, the bastard slipped a bomb under his car. It took out half a block. He’s dead.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“Go to Greg’s house.” Coltrane couldn’t stop feeling breathless.

The sudden change of topic startled Nolan. “What for? What are you talking about?”

“Greg sent a surveillance team over there to look for microphones. I need to talk to you. We can trust that phone.”

The instant Coltrane broke the connection, he pulled out a credit card and placed a long-distance call to New Haven, Connecticut – to his grandparents.

Although the sky threatened rain and the temperature was in the fifties, he sweated as he listened to the phone ring.

It rang again.

Pick it up, Coltrane thought.

It rang a third time.

A fourth.

Come on, come on, he thought urgently.

“Hello,” an elderly male voice said.

“Grandpa, it’s Mitch. I-”

“You have reached the number for Ida and Fred,” the frail voice said. “We’re away from the phone at the moment. Please leave a brief message, and we’ll call you back.”

Beep.

“Grandpa, it’s Mitch,” he said quickly. “As soon as you hear this, take Grandma and leave the house. Go to the police. Ask them to contact Sergeant Nolan at the Threat Management Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. He’ll explain what’s happening. I don’t want to scare you, Grandpa, but there’s a very dangerous man after me, and you’re going to need protection. Don’t trust anybody you don’t know except the police. Make sure they help you.”

Beep.

The machine had reached the end of the time limit for the message. Coltrane hung up and stood tensely motionless in the phone booth, debating whether to call back and leave a further message. But he didn’t know what he would accomplish other than to frighten his grandparents even more than he already had.

Maybe that’s a good thing, he thought. Being afraid of Ilkovic is a survival skill.

“Mitch?”

Jennifer’s voice surprised him. He turned.

“You’ve been staring at the phone for two minutes now. Are you waiting for someone to call back? Are you okay?”

“First Daniel. Now Greg. How many others are going to die because they’re close to me?”

15

AS THE GARAGE DOOR RUMBLED SHUT, Coltrane got out of the Saturn, unlocked the trunk, and took out the pump-action shotgun, along with the box of buckshot.

Jennifer stepped back from the weapon.

“You’re going to have to feel comfortable with this,” Coltrane said. “You’re going to have to learn how to use it.”

Jennifer continued to look uneasy.

It was midafternoon. Coltrane had driven around the valley, taking an erratic route that would have required Ilkovic to stay close and make his presence obvious. Amid the chaos of the explosion’s aftermath, with rescue workers arriving, victims being taken away, and onlookers milling, he didn’t think it likely that Ilkovic would have managed to see Jennifer and him leave the back of the Burger King and follow them to the car, but Coltrane couldn’t take anything for granted.

The first two times he had phoned Greg’s house, someone from the electronic-surveillance team had answered. On the third try, he had gotten Nolan, and as alternating surges of grief and anger swept through him, he had bitterly told Nolan the plan that he and Greg had worked out.

“Nothing’s changed. I’m still going through with it.”

“I can’t sanction this. It’s too dangerous. We’ve already lost Greg. Don’t add yourself to the body count.”

“Well, sanctioned or not, I’m going to show up at that cemetery Wednesday afternoon, so are you going to make sure I have backup or aren’t you?”

“… Yes.”

“That’s all I ask. Give me the cooperation Greg would have given.”

“I want to give you something else. Police protection until Wednesday.”

“Hey, if I had accepted police protection, if I’d been with Greg, both of us would have gotten blown up. Staying on my own is working out fine.”

“Phone me tomorrow at ten. Be careful.”

“After what happened to Greg” – it had hurt Coltrane to say Greg’s name – “you be careful.”

Taking care was exactly what Coltrane was doing now. After prying the lid off the box of buckshot, he pushed three shells into the slot on the side of the pump-action shotgun. Telling Jennifer to stay behind him, he checked every section of the house, including the vault, even though the intrusion detector gave no indication that anyone had entered. Finally, he returned with Jennifer to the living room and unloaded the shotgun so that he could show her how the weapon worked without any danger that it might go off.

He held up one of the thumb-sized red plastic shells. “This contains gunpowder and hundreds of lead pellets. Depending on what you want to shoot-”

“But I don’t want to shoot anything.”

“-the pellets come in different sizes. The ones in this shell are called buckshot. They’re large, about the size of BBs. When the shell goes off, the pellets spew out the barrel and spread into a thirty-inch pattern.”

“Mitch, you might as well save your breath. I’m not-”

“So as long as you’re aiming in Ilkovic’s general direction, you have a damned good chance of hitting him with one of these. At close range, the pellets would really chew him up. Now, to hold the shotgun-”

Jennifer shook her head forcefully. “I really don’t-”

“See that grip underneath the barrel. Put your left hand there. Then put your right hand here at the thin part of the stock, just behind the trigger guard. Raise the butt of the stock to your shoulder.”

“Mitch, you’re not listening to me.”

“Cradle the stock against the meaty part of your shoulder. Raise the gun and aim along-”

“Will you stop?”

Coltrane looked at her in surprise.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going near that thing.”

“You’re telling me that if Ilkovic broke in here, you wouldn’t defend yourself?”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“But what if-”

“Guns scare me to death.”

“I’m not exactly crazy about them, either,” Coltrane said.

“Then how come you know so god-awful much about them?”

Coltrane tried to calm himself. “When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, I met an arms dealer in West Pakistan who smuggled weapons to the Afghans. I crossed the border with him. But not before he insisted I learn about some of his weapons so I could help protect the convoy if there was trouble.”

Jennifer stared.

“Three days later, he was killed in a Soviet gunship attack. The rest of us buried him under rocks and moved on. The photograph of that rock pile and his sons staring at it was reprinted in the New York Times. It was the start of my career.”

“And did you ever have to use any of those weapons?”

Coltrane looked away.

“Did you?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It does.”

“Yes,” Coltrane said, “I had to use some of those weapons.”

Jennifer shuddered. “I feel like I’m in a blizzard. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”

Now it was Jennifer’s turn to look away.

“Remember, you had a choice to be on your own, but you insisted on hiding with me.”

“Great,” Jennifer said. “This is something else we can curse Ilkovic for. He’s got us arguing. About guns.”

16

ALTHOUGH THEIR SLEEPING BAGS LAY NEXT TO EACH OTHER, Coltrane felt a disquieting sense that he and Jennifer slept apart. Not that he was able to get much sleep. Preoccupied, he lay awake in the darkness, staring toward the ceiling. He kept thinking of the last thing Jennifer had said to him before emotional exhaustion forced them to lie down. “Hiding with you in this house, I could almost pretend that we’re in a secret, magical place where Ilkovic can’t get to us. But seeing that gun on the floor next to you reminds me that there isn’t any magical place.”

Thinking of all the pain and despair he had photographed, Coltrane quietly agreed. It was yet another reason to curse Ilkovic. After having worked so hard to turn his back on the direction in which his career had been taking him, Coltrane again found himself enmired in bleakness. Street smarts and survival skills that he had hoped never again to use were depressingly familiar. Ilkovic had dragged him back. And for that, and for Daniel and Greg and the tension between Jennifer and himself and his fears about his grandparents, Ilkovic was going to pay.

The silence smothered him. His cheeks felt warm. He had never associated grief with a fever, but now that he thought about it, grief was one of the worst illnesses anybody could suffer. Before he realized what he was doing, he stood, approached the murky stairway, and descended toward the bottom level.

Not bothering to look toward the entrance to the vault, he passed the corridor that separated the vault from the darkroom and reached the French doors that led outside to the pool. The illumination of stars and the moon made glints on the still water. He saw the vague outlines of the nearest shrubs and flowers.

His cheeks feeling warmer, he reached to open one of the doors, to let the night air cool him, and at once stopped himself, remembering that he had to disarm the security system before he went outside. Besides, what if Ilkovic had somehow tracked him here? It would be foolish to expose himself by leaving the house.

And what about Jennifer? What if she woke up and couldn’t find him? All too vividly, he remembered what that dismaying emotion had been like – this morning, when Jennifer had gotten up earlier than he did and he had frantically searched the house, at last discovering that she was outside in the back garden.

“I solved our little mystery. The different numbers. Twenty-five versus thirty,” she had said distractedly.

It had taken him a moment before he understood what she was talking about. “When we paced the inside and the outside of the vault?”

“There’s a door around the side. To a utility area.”

Yes, mystery solved. The missing five feet were easily accounted for, taken up by an area devoted to a water heater and a furnace/air conditioner. It’s amazing how we ignore the obvious, Coltrane thought, glancing behind him toward the corridor that paralleled the vault. It was also amazing how an emotion-ravaged mind sought distractions.

There was something about that utility area… A thought struggled to surface, then sank back into the roiling depths of his subconscious.

He shook his head, unable to clear it. Glancing at the luminous dial on his watch, he saw that the time was ten after two. You need to try to sleep. You’ve got only a day to figure out the details of what to do if Ilkovic follows you from the cemetery on Wednesday.

His hand cramping on the shotgun, Coltrane stepped back from the wall of windows and the glass-paneled door. About to turn to go upstairs to Jennifer, he paused as the thought that had struggled to surface made another attempt.

Something about the utility area.

Yes, it was deep enough to account for the five-foot difference between the inside and the outside of the vault. But what about…

How wide was…

The thought broke free. The utility area doesn’t stretch all the way along that section of the house, he realized. When I looked inside, it was only about eight feet from left to right.

But the vault’s fifteen feet wide. If the utility area takes up eight feet of that, what’s in the remaining seven feet of the strip along that side?

Coltrane’s cheeks became cold, blood draining from them. There wasn’t another door on the outside wall. That meant if there was a seven-by-five-foot area farther along, the only way to get into it would have to be…

Jesus.

It was the first time Coltrane had ever wanted to enter the vault.

17

PULLING THE KEY FROM HIS JEANS, Coltrane approached the vault’s entrance. As he opened the outside door, exposing the blackness of the metal door, he set the shotgun against the wall and inserted the key into the metal door’s lock. For something so heavy, the door swung open smoothly, requiring almost no effort for him to push it.

He reached in to the left, brushed his hand against the wall, found the light switch, and flicked it, squinting from the harshness of the overhead lights. Again, the chill of the place overwhelmed him. The rows of gray metal library shelves had never seemed bleaker. The concrete walls and floor seemed to shrink. Overcoming the sensation of being squeezed, he picked up the shotgun and entered the vault.

His gaze never wavered from the left section of the opposite wall. But he couldn’t get there directly. He had to walk straight ahead until he reached the last row of shelves, then turn left and proceed to the area that held his attention. The wall was lined with shelves. Facing them, positioning himself in the middle, he glanced to the right. Behind those shelves and that section of the wall was the utility area. But what was behind the shelves and the section of the wall on the left?

Again he set down the shotgun. He leaned close to the shelves on the left section of the wall. The metal frame that supported them was bolted to the concrete behind them. He tugged at the shelves but had no effect; they remained firmly in place.

He ran his hands along the back edges of the shelves. Crouching, then stretching, he checked above and below them, also along the sides, wherever they met the concrete. It won’t be something difficult, he told himself. Packard was in a wheelchair. The old man didn’t have the strength for anything complicated or awkward. It would have to be…

At wheelchair height, Coltrane touched a slight projection of metal at the back of the right side of the shelves.

Something easy, he thought.

He pulled down on the wedge of metal, but it didn’t budge.

Something simple and…

He pulled up on the wedge of metal. It immediately responded.

Clever.

He heard the click of metal, of a latch being released.

Yes.

This time when he pulled at the shelves, they did budge. Not a lot. Not enough to move forward. But enough to indicate that they were no longer secured to the wall. What else do I have to…

He shifted to the left side of the shelves, crouched at wheelchair height, reached to the back where the side met the concrete, and touched a corresponding wedge of metal. When he pulled it upward, another latch snicked free, and now the shelves moved smoothly forward, seeming to float.

No matter how rapidly Coltrane breathed, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He stepped to the right, out of the way, and continued to pull on the shelves, their outward movement so smooth that even an aged man in a wheelchair could have controlled them. Viewing that section of the wall from the side, he saw that what had appeared to be solid concrete was actually a concretelike stucco attached to a partition of oak. On the left, large foldout hinges at the top, bottom, and middle made the false wall capable of being moved in and out.

He stepped inside.

18

THE RADIANT WOMAN FACING HIM MADE HIS HEART STOP. Despite her alluring features, he almost recoiled in surprise at finding her, except that he couldn’t – his legs were powerless. Her hypnotic gaze paralyzed him. For a startling instant, he thought that she had been hiding behind the wall. But the face was too composed, showing no reaction at having been discovered.

Nerves quivering, he stepped into the chamber, so drawn that he overcame his fear of being enclosed. What he was looking at was an amazingly life-sized photograph of a woman’s face. It hung on the chamber’s back wall, exactly where the woman’s face would have been if she had actually been standing there. Indirect light from the vault dispelled many but not all of the shadows in the chamber, so that the area where the woman’s body would have been was partially obscured, creating the illusion that her body was in fact there. Although the photograph was in black and white, the absence of color seemed lifelike because of the woman’s extremely dark hair and dusky features.

Either she spent a lot of time in the sun, Coltrane thought, or there was an ethnic influence, possibly Hispanic. Certainly the white lace shawl she wore reminded Coltrane of similar garments he had seen in Mexico. Her dark eyes were riveted on where the camera would have been, on where Coltrane’s eyes now studied her, with the effect that he felt she was peering into him. Her lush hair hung thickly around her shoulders, with such a sheen that it gave off light regardless of how black it was. Her lips were full, their arousing curves parted in a smile, the glint from which seemed to shoot from the photograph. The combination of her features was typical of classic beauty – large eyes, high cheekbones, a smooth, broad forehead, an angular jawline, a narrow chin. She sparkled and smoldered.

But as captivated as he was by her image, he was equally captivated by the medium in which she was presented. He had seldom seen a black-and-white portrait that demonstrated such perfect control of its essential elements, of the juxtaposition of darkness and light. The technique required more than just a careful positioning of the subject and a precise calculation of light. Afterward, the real work was in the developing process, dodging and burning, underexposing some portions of the print while overexposing others, making the image rather than simply taking a picture. Coltrane knew of only one photographer who had absolute mastery of this technique. Even if he hadn’t found this photograph in this particular location, Coltrane would have known at once who had created it: Randolph Packard.

19

A NOISE MADE HIM SPIN. Startled, he grabbed the shotgun, about to raise it, then immediately checked himself when he saw Jennifer at the entrance to the vault.

“That’s one of the reasons I don’t like guns,” she said.

“You weren’t in danger. I would have looked before I aimed.”

“Glad to hear it.” Jennifer’s eyes were still puffy from sleep. “When I woke up and didn’t find you, I got worried. This is the last place I expected you to be.”

“Believe me, I’m surprised. But not as surprised as I am by this.” Coltrane pointed. “Our little mystery wasn’t as solved as we thought.”

As Jennifer approached, she ran a hand through her short, sleep-tousled hair.

“And maybe it’s not such a little mystery after all,” Coltrane said, then explained how he had found the chamber.

Fascinated, he watched her peer inside.

“My God,” she whispered. From the side, Coltrane could see that her eyelids came fully open. “She’s the most beautiful…”

“Yes.”

“Who? Why?”

“And a hundred other questions. The only thing I know for sure is, Packard took that photograph. The style is unmistakable.”

Jennifer appeared not to have heard. She raised a hand toward the photograph, held it an inch away from the woman’s face, then lowered it. “This is fabulous. I don’t understand why he hid it.”

“Not just it,” Coltrane said. “Look over here.” To the right, metal shelves rose to the ceiling. “Look at all the boxes.”

Each was about two inches deep. Grabbing one, Coltrane carried it from the shadows toward the lights in the vault. In a rush, he set the box on a shelf and opened the lid, inhaling audibly when he found the woman’s sultry face peering up at him in another pose.

“How many?” Coltrane flipped through the rest of the eight-by-ten-inch photographs in the box. “There must be at least a hundred. Every one of them shows her.”

Jennifer brought out another box. “This one holds sixteen-by-twenties.” She set it on a shelf next to him, tugged the lid open, and lifted a hand to her chest, overwhelmed. “Mitch, get over here. You’ve got to see this.”

Coltrane quickly joined her. The top image, twice as large as the ones he had flipped through in the first box, gave him his first full-body view of the woman. She was on a deserted beach, stepping out of the ocean, so that the water came just below her knees, one leg ahead of the other, her movement languid even though it was fixed in time. Her bathing suit was dazzlingly white against her tan skin, a one-piece costume that was modest by contemporary standards, its bottom line level with the top of her thighs, its upper line almost to her collarbone, inch-wide straps hitched over her shoulders. But for all its modesty, the suit had an arousing effect, clinging to her supple body, the smooth, wet material emphasizing the curves of her hips, waist, and breasts. Those curves seemed an extension of the undulation of the waves from which she emerged. Water glistened on her silken face, arms, and legs. She didn’t wear a bathing cap. Her midnight-colored hair, drenched by the ocean, was pulled back close to her scalp, the contrast with the lush appearance of her hair in the other photographs reinforcing the classical beauty of her high cheeks. But what most attracted Coltrane’s attention, what mesmerized him in this photograph, as in the others, was the woman’s soul-invading gaze.

Jennifer sorted through the other photographs in the box, showing Coltrane additional images of the woman on the beach. The scene changed; the woman was on the rim of a cliff with the ocean below her. Sunlight was full on her face, but the other details of the photograph suggested an oncoming storm. The waves in the background were tempestuous. Wind gusted at her hair, sweeping it back. It also gusted at the white cotton dress she wore, blowing it against her body, molding the soft, pliant fabric to her legs, stomach, and breasts. The scene changed yet again; the woman was in a luxuriant garden, oblivious to the flowers around her, gazing pensively toward something on the right while a fountain bubbled behind her.

In wonder, Coltrane glanced back into the chamber, toward the numerous boxes. “There must be-” his calculations filled him with an emotion that was almost like fear – “thousands of photographs.”

“And every one so far is a masterpiece,” Jennifer said. “Prints of this quality don’t just get churned out. They take meticulous care. Sometimes a day for each one.”

Coltrane knew that she wasn’t exaggerating. Packard had been legendary for insisting that photographers who didn’t develop their own prints were contemptible. He had been known to spend a day on one print alone, and if the result had even the slightest blemish, some faint imperfection that only he would have realized was there, he tore the print to shreds and started over.

“Everybody thought his output dwindled,” Coltrane said. “But if anything, it increased unimaginably.”

“All of the same amazingly beautiful woman.”

“Packard certainly didn’t lack ego,” Coltrane said. “He went out of his way to let everybody know how great he was. When he had a photograph that satisfied even his standards, he bragged about it. These are among the best images he ever produced. Instead of showering them upon the world, why the hell did he build a secret room and hide them?”

“Did Packard ever use this model in any of the photographs he made public?” Jennifer asked.

“No. I have no idea who on earth she is.”

“Was,” Jennifer corrected. “Take another look at that bathing suit. That style hasn’t been in fashion since… My guess is the forties. More probably the thirties. How old does she seem to you?”

“About twenty-five.”

“Let’s split the difference between decades and say the photograph was taken in 1940. Do the math. She’d be in her eighties now. Assuming she’s still alive, which the odds are against. Even if she is still alive, she won’t be the woman in that photograph. That woman exists only in these prints.”

“Immortality,” Coltrane said. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “I’m not sure I’ll be alive beyond Wednesday, and here I am wondering about a woman in photographs taken a lifetime ago.” He steadied his gaze on the woman’s. “Whoever you are, thank you. For a little while, I forgot about Ilkovic.”