You never think it's going to happen to you. In your mind, when you try figure out who is following those asinine news stories about missing pretty white girls, you conjure up some flabby-minded, sweat-pants-and-flipflops wearing person whose favorite color is pink-with-sparkles and whose favorite dish is tater-tot casserole.

And then one of these stories comes along and it pulls you right in.

You try to differentiate this story from all the others you have so archly dismissed, but you have to admit the woman is young, she is pretty, she is white, she is missing and her name is Stacy Peterson, which rhymes—lord help me!—with Lacy Peterson.

You justify signing up for a Google News Alert by saying to yourself: Well, she's from Bolingbrook, a town whose mayor I just profiled. Maybe this mystery is a hook on which to hang a book about Bolingbrook. (Now you realize you're using your ambition to conceal something worse!)

You say this story is richer than all the others because of the impossible combination of details: On the one hand, this was the dingy cop's fourth marriage—his last one ended in the accidental drowning of his wife in a bathtub. But if you assume this was a murder, there's Stacy's mother's habit of periodically disappearing from her family—and her permanent disapperance a few years ago. I mean, how could you not follow this one ....

Of course, everyone said that about beautiful Lacy and the unborn baby .....

Sweet Lord, friends: Tell me you're into this story too, and my interest is not the sign of a softening brain.

Or alternatively, fly here to Chicago to throw cold water on my face. I'll reimburse you for your airfare and thank you for the service ....