An old-fashioned wire-link gate was fastened across an asphalt driveway, but as I pulled up I could see it was unlocked. I got out and pushed it open and walked up the drive. The asphalt was old and cracked, stretching a hundred feet to the tail end of a small, Japanese car.

Drapes whited all the windows of the house. The front door was paneled oak, its varnish bubbling, a NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH sticker affixed just below the lion's head knocker. Below that was another one, bearing the name of an alarm company.

I rang the bell. Waited. Did it again. Waited some more. Used the lion. Nothing.

No one was around. I could hear the ocean.

I went around the side, past the little white car and a high-peaked garage with sagging swivel doors left half open. The backyard was twice the size of the front plot and denuded. The borders with its neighbors were obscured by thick plantings of dead citrus and dead avocado. On the ground were shapeless patches of lifeless shrubbery. Even the weeds were struggling.

But a couple of giant pines toward the back had survived nicely, their roots deep enough to tap into groundwater. Their trunks yearned for the ragged cliff that overlooked the beach. Through their boughs, the ocean was gray lacquer. The property was at least a hundred feet up, but the tide was a drum roll, loud enough to block out every other sound.

I looked at the rear of the house. Buttoned up and curtained. Near the cliff was an old redwood table and two chairs, guano specked and faded to ash. But half of the table was covered with a white tablecloth, and on the cloth were a cup and saucer and a plate.

I walked over. Coffee dregs in the cup, crumbs on the plate, and an orange smear that looked like ossified marmalade.

The ocean grumbled and seabirds shrieked in response. I walked to the edge of the cliff. To the spot where Katarina had photographed her father, slumped in his wheelchair.

Dry dirt. No fence, easy fall. I peered over and a splinter of vertigo pierced my chest. When it subsided, I looked over again. The hillside was gouged with erosion—giant fingermarks that traced a dead drop down to the rocky beach.

The gulls screamed again—a reprimand that reminded me I was trespassing.

The coffee and crumbs said Katarina was in town. Probably gone out for an errand.

I could wait here, but the more efficient thing would be to call Milo and catch him up on Becky Basille's notes, Harrison, and Bancroft.

As I started to leave, I passed the garage once again and saw the rear end of another car, parked in front of the little white sedan. Bigger and darker—black. The distinctive vertical slash taillights of a Buick Electra. Same car I'd seen at the front of the hospital, in seventy-nine.

Something near the rear tire.