Double Image by David Morrell Page A

the inside. “Here. ‘Dies irae.’
     
‘The day of wrath, the day of anger,

will dissolve the world in ashes. . . .

How horrid a trembling there will be

when the judge appears

and all things are scattered.’”
     
    Daniel lowered the album. “Well, I guess a little fear of the Lord is a good thing at a funeral. Keeps our priorities straight.”
    “But there’s no hidden message that I can figure out,” Coltrane said. “What about you, Jennifer?”
    “The only message I get out of it is that I’d better say my prayers more often. We were right the first time. It’s just a prankster with a weird sense of—”
    The phone rang.
    “Hello.”
    Verdi’s Requiem blared at him again.
     
8
     
    “YOU’RE NEVER HOME,” a thickly accented, gravelly voice said.
    Coltrane’s skin tingled. “What? Who
is
this?”
    “The judge.”
    “Mitch?” Jennifer was alarmed by the look on Coltrane’s face. “What’s the matter?”
    “Now listen to me, you sick bastard,” Coltrane said into the phone. “Quit calling me and—”
    “There’ll come a time when you’ll wish with all your heart that the only thing I had done was phone you.” The voice sounded like pebbles being rattled in a cardboard cup. “Jennifer is correct about saying her prayers more often.”
    Coltrane’s scalp prickled. “How did you know she said—”
    “The day of wrath will dissolve the world in ashes when
I
appear and all things are scattered.”
    Coltrane’s entire body felt as if an electrical current had surged through him. He spun to stare at the living room, his alarmed expression making Jennifer and Daniel more startled. “
You’ve got a microphone in here
?”
    The voice chuckled, its crustiness reminding Coltrane of a boot stomping dried mud. “Oh, I’ve got much more than that in your apartment. Go up to your bedroom. I’ve left you some souvenirs.”
    The connection was broken.
     
9
     
    COLTRANE FELT SUSPENDED BETWEEN HEARTBEATS. Abruptly he dropped the phone and raced toward the stairs in the kitchen.
    “Mitch, what’s the matter? Who
was
that?” Jennifer’s urgent questions overlapped with Daniel’s, their footsteps pounding on the stairs behind him.
    He reached the upper corridor and ran past the door to his darkroom, then the door to the bathroom, at once slowing, afraid of what he would find in his bedroom. When he looked cautiously in, what greeted him made him feel as if a hand was pressed against his chest and was shoving him backward.
    The bedroom was arranged in a parody of the display he had set up for Jennifer and Daniel downstairs in the living room. Photographs were everywhere, on the floor, the bureau, the bedside tables, the bed itself. Eight-by-tens, the same dimension as the photographs from Packard’s view camera. But even at a distance, Coltrane could tell that
these
photographs were too grainy to have been taken with a view camera. They were blowups from a 35-mm negative. What they depicted, though, made up for their lack of detail.
    Jennifer and Daniel crowded behind him.
    “What’s going on?” Daniel asked. “Who was that on the phone?”
    Coltrane didn’t answer. Muscles compacting, he entered, stepping between photographs, staring down, then all around.
    “This is insane,” Jennifer said.
    Image after image showed Coltrane setting up the view camera, taking photographs of the houses in Packard’s series or of the people and places he had encountered as he followed Packard’s route. There was even a photograph of him and Jennifer saying good-bye to Diane in the rhododendron-lined driveway of her parents’ estate. Another showed Coltrane at the trailer court in Glendale as he photographed the young black woman pushing the boy in the swing. Wherever he had gone in the last two weeks, someone had been following him, taking
his
picture.
    “When we said good-bye to Diane, I didn’t notice anybody on the street taking pictures of us,” Jennifer said.
    “With a telephoto lens,