Because Corley had been a general contractor, David expected a home workshop, but there wasn’t one. Backboards bolted to two walls suggested that cabinetry had once been hung there but had been torn out and carried away. No vehicles were present. The large space felt hollowed out and decades older than the well-kept house.

The stillness here was equal to that in the residence. Maybe the wind had blown itself into exhaustion.

Leaves crunched underfoot and a smell of mold issued from the carpet of litter. He avoided the avian skeletons; some of the larger ones, as big as owls, seemed to be tortured constructions like the skeletal architecture of a winged menace in a dream.

In addition to the roll-ups, there were three man-size doors: the one from the kitchen, another that led outside, and one set in an interior wall. He went to the third and found it locked.

From a pocket of his pants he retrieved the key he had taken from beneath the rocking chair on the back porch. It fit the keyway and turned the deadbolt.

When he opened the door, he saw stairs descending into darkness from which rose a faint but unpleasant chemical odor. He felt for a switch, found it, flipped it, but no lights came on below.

The basement was not steeped in silence like the garage. The lower realm secreted a faint electronic hum woven from several frequencies and a soft rhythmic throbbing felt as much as heard.

No such noises had issued from the cellar in the Jessup house, where homicidal Ronny had kept his stolen girls, both the living and the mummified. Nevertheless, David grew convinced that something in these depths would prove no less disturbing than what he’d seen at the Jessup place—which was only forty minutes from here.

He needed a flashlight. He went into the house to find one.

As he searched through kitchen drawers, he heard what might have been a door slam upstairs. He froze and listened. Perhaps someone had come into the house while he had been in the garage.

Silence returned, perfect but for his soft breathing.

Then another door slammed, as though a rightful resident was searching rooms for an intruder, angered by the need to do so.

David was not prepared for a confrontation. Besides, he was at risk of being charged with housebreaking.

He stepped onto the back porch and locked the door. He quickly replaced the key in the little box that was fixed to the underside of the rocking chair.

The wind, which had not relented, tossed his hair, flapped the panels of his sport coat, and brought to him the scent of the sea. The gray clouds spilling out of the north had flooded three-quarters of the sky, roiling like smoke from a vast, uncontainable fire.