Bonilla shrugged. “Whatever.”

Adrienne shook her head. “Don’t you get it? This guy, Duran, is supposed to be a shrink. Think about that. He uses his credentials to attract people who are—what? Sick. People who don’t have anywhere else to turn. And they tell him all their secrets and sins, all their hopes and fears—and what do they get out of it? If they’re lucky, nothing. And if they’re not? An obituary in the Metro section of the Post.”

They were quiet for a long while as they drove past the Washington Monument and the Tidal Basin, heading back to Georgetown. Finally, Adrienne asked, “So what’s this ‘bright idea’ you had?”

“Oh yeah. I was thinking, maybe you ought to call the guy, and ask him, will he take a polygraph?”

The idea surprised her, and she cocked her head, thinking about it.

“Friend of mine’s got a shop in Springfield,” Bonilla went on. “I don’t know what he charges, but—”

“That’s not the point,” Adrienne told him. “Duran wouldn’t take a polygraph!”

“That is the point. ‘Cuz he’s damned if he does (which he won’t), and he’s damned if he doesn’t. Whattaya think?”

She called Duran from her office, half an hour later, having decided that as a pretext for the call, she’d ask him if he’d gotten a lawyer to represent him in the action. The truth was, she half expected to get a recording, saying that the number was no longer in service. Instead, he answered on the first ring.

“H-hello?”

The tone in his voice surprised her. He sounded stuttery and lost. “It’s Adrienne Cope,” she told him. “I was calling to see if you’d gotten representation, yet. I have some papers… “ Silence. “Mr. Duran?” (She was on her best behavior.) “Are you still there?”

More silence, and then: “I went to the cemetery” he said, his voice trailing off.

Adrienne wasn’t sure what to say. “Yes… ?”

“And I saw the headstone.”

“Oh.” Where was he going with this?

“The only thing I can think is—it’s some kind of coincidence.”

She couldn’t help herself. “Right,” she said, “and your parents and his parents just happened to have the same names. And the registrar at Brown is mistaken, the registrar at Wisconsin is confused, and—is that about right? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not trying to tell you anything. Except… well, that I am who I am.”

“Then prove it,” she told him.

A rueful chuckle. “How?”

“Take a polygraph.” Adrienne held her breath for what seemed like a long time, waiting for him to reply.

Finally, Duran cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. How soon can you set it up?”

Maybe this whole thing is a mistake, Duran thought as he handed the driver a twenty dollar bill. Maybe he should tell the cabbie he’d forgotten something, and ask to be taken home. No skin off the driver’s nose—he’d double his fare.

But… no.

“Keep the change,” Duran told him, as he stepped from the taxi in front of a nondescript office building in the Springfield shopping center.

While Adrienne Cope did not have his best interests at heart, they had agreed on the questions he’d be asked (or the relevant ones, at least), and he knew that he could answer each of them truthfully and in the affirmative. He had nothing to hide. And he’d done nothing wrong.

Once she saw that he was telling the truth, she might not be so eager to proceed with the civil suit. As it was, he didn’t really blame her for suing him. Her sister was dead, and no matter how you looked at it, this business with the death certificate was disturbing. Even he wasn’t sure what it meant—though he did have a theory.

Either he was the victim of an astonishing set of coincidences, or…

His parents had stolen the identities of Frank and Rose Duran—then given him the child’s name. That would explain everything (or almost everything: the problem with his university records was in no way explained by his theory, but that, he felt sure, was some kind of database glitch).

Of the two possibilities, coincidence or conspiracy, the latter seemed a lot more likely. Of course, it raised an intriguing question: why would his parents hijack another family’s identity? There wasn’t any way for Duran to answer that—he wasn’t the FBI—but the time frame might be a clue.

When the Durans died, America had been fighting three wars: the Cold War, the war in Vietnam, and “the war at home” (against the war in Vietnam). Any one of those conflicts could have been the source of the predicament in which he now found himself. As crazy as it sounded, his parents might have been Soviet agents—It happens, Duran told himself—or, even more likely, antiwar activists on the run. That would explain their adoption of another family’s identity. Except…

Duran couldn’t recall either of his parents ever making a political statement of any kind. Or even hinting at one. Still, Sherlock Holmes’s dictum was unassailable: once the impossible has been eliminated, whatever explanation remains—no matter how improbable—must be the truth. Even so… he couldn’t imagine his mother firebombing the draft board, or his father slinking through Checkpoint Charlie with a false passport and—

Me, Duran thought, as he watched the cab pull away.

On the other hand, look at these women who’d recently surfaced after twenty years underground. To look at newspaper photos of the middle-aged Kathy Soliah, her plain face behind ordinary glasses, you couldn’t imagine her driving a getaway car. And yet, she did—she had.

Putting these thoughts from his mind, or as far from his mind as he could, Duran entered the lobby, and seeing the building directory, checked for Sutton & Castle, PLC. The polygraph firm was on the fourth floor.

Crossing to the elevator, he pressed the call button and began to wait—until, with a sinking feeling, he realized that he’d begun to hyperventilate. It was impossible to predict when it would happen—except that it never happened at home, in his apartment.

Nearby, a woman in a blue dress was looking at him oddly. She sensed that something was wrong with him and, whatever it was, she didn’t want any part of it. He saw her eyes richochet around the lobby, looking for help without calling for it—and finding none, in any case.

It was then that the elevator arrived with a ding! The doors pulled back, and the woman in blue quickly stepped inside. Duran took a step after her, but stopped in his tracks when she held out her hand, palm first, signaling him to stay where he was, as if he were a dog. Then the chrome doors drew closed, and she was gone.

By now, the adrenaline was surging through him, and standing still was impossible. Finding the emergency stairwell, he took the stairs two at a time, footsteps thundering on the cold cement. When he arrived at the fourth floor, he was hyperventilating and out of breath—which he knew was a perfect recipe for fainting dead away.

Sutton & Castle’s door was the old-fashioned kind, with a mesh of wire between the layers of glass, and the name stenciled in gold upon it. He knocked, breathless, and when Eddie Bonilla opened the door, he stepped inside, a little too quickly.

“Well,” Bonilla said, “look who’s here!” Adrienne Cope got to her feet from a nearby couch, and a third person came over to introduce himself.

“Paul Sutton,” he said, extending his hand.

Duran took the hand in his own, and shook it. Then he started to say something—because that’s what you did in these situations—but nothing came out.

“You okay?” Sutton asked.

Duran nodded. “Took the stairs,” he gasped. “I’m just… a little out of breath.” The speech took all of the air that was left in his lungs, and when it was gone, the world began to tremble—or perhaps it was his knees. He felt the need to say something—everyone was looking at him anxiously, but nothing came out. The urge to bolt rose within him, but he resisted it—somehow, and barely. Instead, he made his way to a chair next to the window, where he sat down and tried to slow his breathing.