I tried to think of something to inspire me to even greater heights of mental effort in my investigation, but all I came up with was a piece of a Rudyard Kipling poem: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs," or words to that effect. It didn't seem like it was enough. Perhaps Ariel Goldman and Jessica Ortega should have memorized Kipling. In any case, my search had taken me no place helpful.

Fine. What else could someone call the Passenger? "Sardonic commentator," "warning system," "inside cheerleader." I checked them all. Some of the results for inside cheerleader were really quite startling, but had nothing to do with my search.

I tried "watcher," "interior watcher," "dark watcher," "hidden watcher." One last long shot, possibly having to do with the fact that my thoughts were once again turning toward food, but quite justified nevertheless: "hungry watcher." Again, the results were mostly New Age blather. But one blog caught my eye, and I clicked on it. I read the opening paragraph and, although I did not actually say "Bingo," that was certainly the gist of what I thought.

"Once again into the night with the Hungry Watcher," it began. "Stalking the dark streets that teem with prey, riding slowly through the waiting feast and feeling the pull of the tide of blood that will soon rise to cover us with joy…"

Well. The prose was somewhat purple, perhaps. And the part about the blood was a little bit icky. But that aside, it was a pretty good description of how I felt when I went off on one of my adventures. It seemed likely that I had found a kindred spirit.

I read on. It was all consistent with the experience as I knew of it, cruising through the night with hungry anticipation as a sibilant inner voice whispered guidance. But then, when the narrative came to the point where I would have pounced and slashed, this narrator instead made a reference to "the others," followed by three figures from some alphabet I didn't recognize.

Or did I? Feverishly, I scrabbled across my desk for the folder holding the file for the two headless girls. I yanked out the stack of photographs, flipped through them-and there it was.

Chalked on the driveway at Dr. Goldman's house, the same three letters, looking like a misshapen MLK. I glanced up at my computer screen: it was a match, no question about it.

This was way too much to be a coincidence. It clearly meant something very important; perhaps it was even the key to understanding the entire mess. Yes, highly significant, with just one small footnote: Significant of what? What did it mean?