Rock Point Lane branched off the coastal highway a hundred yards north of where he’d left his SUV. The one-car width of blacktop led through wild grass and weeds, flanked by eighty- and hundred-foot Monterey pines shaped by the wind into tortured configurations that were nonetheless poetry in wood and foliage.

The lane was a private street, serving only Corley’s five acres. Although the property wasn’t fenced or walled, a low steel-pipe gate between two stone columns barred entrance to what was in essence a long driveway. A sign on the gate made no reference to the Corley Foundation but promised that trespassers would be prosecuted. A call box with speaker invited visitors to announce themselves.

David walked around the gate and followed the blacktop toward the house on the headland.

The two-story residence and four-car garage featured walls of native stone under a slate roof. The lawn was mown, the building well maintained.

He went directly to the front door, an artful work of oak and bronze, and he rang the bell. He could hear chimes echo through the interior stillness. He waited. Rang again. No response.

Maddison was in Newport Beach. Patrick Corley—alive or dead, a twin or a miraculous resurrection—must be there as well.

David went around to the back of the house, which stood about seventy feet from the rocky bluff and fifty feet above the sea. Two clusters of Chinese fan palms added interest to the yard, rustling in the softly hissing wind.

The big back porch was furnished with only two rocking chairs and a table that stood between. The chairs and the wrought-iron glass-topped table were identical to those on David’s smaller porch in Corona del Mar.

For a long moment, he stood staring at the tableau. In the wind, the chairs moved back and forth in shallow arcs, as though occupied by people he could not see.

He turned one of the rockers upside down and found the key box fastened to the frame, where he’d known it would be. He clicked the lid of the box, which fell open, and the key dropped into the palm of his right hand.

The feeling that overcame him was eerier than déjà vu. He felt as if he were living through a novel that he had read years before and only half remembered, a work of fiction to which reality was in the process of conforming.

He knew that he should return the key to the box and latch the lid and walk away, that he was being manipulated, to what end he could not guess. Nothing good was likely to come of this.