I PURPOSELY, and probably wisely, skipped the first day, then the second and the third day, of the courtroom circus. I didn’t want to face the world press, or the public, any more than I had to. I felt like I was on trial, too.

A cold-blooded murderer was on trial, but the investigation continued more feverishly than ever for me. I still had the Jane Does to solve, and the disappearance of Christine, if I could open up any new leads. I wanted to make certain that Shafer would not walk away a free man, and most important, I desperately wanted finally to know the truth about Christine’s disappearance. I had to know. My greatest frustration was that because of the diplomatic shenanigans, I had never gotten to question Shafer. I would have given anything for a few hours with him.

I turned the southern end of our attic into a war room. There was an excess of unused space up there, anyway. I moved an old mahogany dining table out from the shadows. I rewired an ancient window fan, which made the attic space almost bearable most days — especially early in the morning and late in the evening, when I did my best work up there — in my hermitage.

I set up my laptop on the table, and I pinned different-colored index cards to the walls, to keep what I considered the most important pieces of the case before me at all times. Inside several bulky and misshapen cardboard boxes, I had all the rest of it: every scrap of evidence on Christine’s abduction, and everything I could find on the Jane Does.

The murder cases formed a maddening puzzle created over several years, one that was not given to easy solutions. I was trying to play a complex game against a skillful opponent, but I didn’t know the rules of his game, or how it was played. That was Shafer’s unfair advantage.

I had found some useful notes in Patsy Hampton’s detective logs, and they led me to interview the teenage boy, Michael Ormson, who’d chatted on-line with Shafer about the Four Horsemen. I continued to work closely with Chuck Hufstedler of the FBI. Chuck felt guilty about giving Patsy Hampton the original lead, especially since I’d come to him first. I used his guilt.

Both the Bureau and Interpol were doing an active search of the game on the Internet. I’d visited countless chatrooms myself, but had encountered no one, other than young Ormson, who was aware of the mysterious game. It was only because Shafer had taken a chance and gone into the chatroom that he’d been discovered. I wondered what other chances he’d taken.