There was no response to the question. Patsy thought maybe she’d pushed too hard, too fast. Damn! She should have known better. Damn, damn! Come back, Lancelot. Earth to Lancelot.

I REALLY WOULD LIKE TO PLAY THE FOUR HORSEMEN. BUT I’M COOL ABOUT IT. NO BIGGIE. LANCELOT?

Patsy Hampton waited, and then Lancelot left the chatroom. Lancelot was gone. And so was her connection to somebody playing a so-called fantasy game about committing gruesome murders in Washington — murders that had really happened.

Chapter 50

I RETURNED TO WASHINGTON during the first week of September, and I had never felt stranger in my own skin. I’d gone to Bermuda with my family and Christine, and now I was coming home without her. Whoever had taken Christine had contacted me only once. I missed her nearly every moment of every day, and it pained me to think about where she might still be.

It was an unusually cool and windy day when I got back to the city. It almost seemed as if summer had suddenly changed to the middle of fall, as if I had been away much longer than I had. I had been in a fog of unreality in Bermuda, and it was nearly the same once I was back in D.C. It had never been this bad before. I was so lost, so unhinged, so battered.

I wondered if Christine and I were part of a madman’s elaborate delusion, what profilers call an escalating fantasy. If so, who was this madman, and where was he now? Was it the Weasel? Did I know him from some time in my past? The heartless, spineless bastard had communicated, “We have her.” And that was it. No further word. Now only silence, which was deafening.

I took a cab from the airport and remembered what had happened to Frank Odenkirk, who had innocently taken a cab one night in August and wound up murdered on Alabama Avenue near Dupont Park. I hadn’t thought about the Odenkirk case during the past three weeks. I had rarely even had a thought about the Jane Doe murders while in Bermuda, but I was guiltily reminded of them now. Others had suffered painful losses because of the killer.

I wondered if any progress had been made, and who in the department was running the case, at least the Odenkirk part of it. On the other hand, I didn’t feel that I could work on any of the other unsolved murders right now. I felt my place was still in Bermuda, and I nearly headed back as soon as I landed.

Then I could see our house up ahead on Fifth Street. Something strange was happening — there was a huge gathering.

Chapter 51

LOTS OF PEOPLE were standing on the porch and others were clustered in front of the house when the cab arrived. Cars were parked and double-parked all along the street.