Free Double Image by David Morrell

raise and lower the photograph, the effect hypnotic.
    “So many years ago. Someone stood exactly where I’m standing now and took that picture.”
    “He died on Sunday,” Coltrane said.
    Diane suddenly shivered.
    “Is something wrong?” Coltrane asked.
    “No. There’s just a chill in the air.”
    But Coltrane couldn’t help wondering if Diane had shivered for another reason. Her delicate features began to trouble him. Her skin was so translucent that he could see the hint of blue veins in her cheeks. Her eyes seemed sunken, possibly because she had lost a lot of weight. Her slacks and cardigan hung on her. Her kerchief covered her head so completely that he didn’t see any of her hair.
    “Well . . .” Coltrane felt awkward. “We’re taking up your time.”
    “No problem,” Diane said. “I’m enjoying this.”
    “Even so . . .” Coltrane studied the sky. “The light’s about as good as I can hope for. I’d better get started.”
     
5
     
    WHEN HE AND JENNIFER WENT BACK TO THE CAR TO GET THE camera, the tripod, and the bags of equipment, Diane insisted on helping, out of breath even though she carried only a small camera bag to the crest of the hill. Coltrane didn’t have time to think about the implications. He had only about two hours of effective light remaining and needed to hurry.
    It took almost fifteen minutes to get the heavy camera secured on the tripod. After that, he used a light meter, calculated the necessary shutter speed and aperture setting, chose a lens, poked his head beneath the black cloth at the rear of the camera, used the bellows to adjust the focus, and compared what he saw to Packard’s photograph. Getting everything lined up was more difficult than he had anticipated. After forty-five minutes of concentrating on an upside-down reversed image, he felt light-headed, as if
he
were upside down.
    He made twelve exposures, but he wasn’t satisfied. Framing the image to make its perspective identical to that in Packard’s photograph wasn’t going to produce a brilliant photograph, he realized. The result would merely be a visual trick. He had to build on what Packard had done, to find a metaphor equivalent to the bird of prey hovering over Falcon Lair.
    “Mitch?”
    Coltrane rubbed the back of his neck.
    “Mitch?”
    “Huh?” He turned toward Jennifer.
    “You haven’t moved in the last ten minutes. Are you all right?”
    “Just thinking.”
    “You’ve got only forty-five minutes of light,” Jennifer said.
    “
Forty-five
?” Startled, Coltrane checked his watch. He had lost more time then he realized.
    Yet again, he poked his head beneath the black cloth at the rear of the camera. Earlier, when he and Jennifer had driven toward the estate, Coltrane had wondered, not seriously, if Packard had been playing a practical joke on him by suggesting this project. Now that idea struck him as being
very
serious. With one foot in the grave, had Packard been determined to show Coltrane — typical of all would-be Packards — that Coltrane didn’t have a hope of competing with him? Was this project the old man’s way of proving one last time how superior he was?
    “Mitch?”
    Coltrane noticed slight movement on the focusing screen. He heard a far-off echoing
whump-whump-whump
and peered up from the camera to search the sky, seeing that the movement was a distant whirling speck: a helicopter. He inserted an eight-by-ten-inch negative and grabbed the shutter release. “Come on,” he whispered tensely. He held his breath as the chopper’s glinting blades crossed the horizon.
    “
Now
.” He squeezed the shutter release.
    The camera clicked.
    He breathed out. Packard’s bird of prey had symbolized Valentino’s bad ending and the impending invasion of the land. Now a helicopter and all
it
symbolized about the mechanization of the twentieth century had taken the falcon’s place.
    “If that picture turns out the way I hope . . .” Coltrane watched the helicopter recede