“So how did you come to the conclusion in L.A. that my guy over here is an innocent man?”

I gave him my best scoundrel’s smile.

“Well, I don’t know that for sure, but I had to get in to see you. But this is what I’ve got. I’ve got a kid over there, sitting in jail for a murder I am thinking he didn’t commit, and it seems to me that the details are a lot like the details in your Oglevy case—what details I know. Only, my case happened two weeks ago.”

“So if they are the same, my client has an obvious alibi and there might be a third party here at work.”

“Exactly.”

“All right, well, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Well, I was hoping I could see what you’ve got too.”

“Fair enough. My client is in prison and I don’t think he’s too worried about attorney-client privilege at this point, not if my trading information might help his cause. Besides, most of what I tell you is available in court records.”

Schifino pulled his files and we began a show-me-yours-show-you-mine session. I told him what I knew about Winslow and maintained a reserved excitement as we went through the crime reports. But when we moved into side-by-side comparisons of the crime scene photos, the adrenaline kicked in and it became difficult to contain myself. Not only did the Oglevy photos completely match those from the Babbit case, but the victims looked stunningly alike.

“This is amazing!” I said. “It’s almost like the same woman.”

Both were tall brunettes with large brown eyes, bobbed noses and long-legged dancer’s bodies. Immediately I was hit with the profound sense that these women had not been selected randomly by their killer. They had been chosen. They fit some kind of mold that had made them targets.

Schifino was riding the same wave. He pointed from photo to photo, accenting the similarities in the crime scenes. Both women were suffocated with a plastic bag that was tied around the neck with a thin white cord. Each was placed naked and facing inward in the trunk of the car, and their clothes were simply dropped on top of them.

“My God… look at this,” he said. “These crimes are absolutely the same and it doesn’t take an expert to see that. I have to tell you something, Jack. When you came in here, I thought you were going to be this morning’s entertainment. A diversion. Some wild-ass reporter who shows up chasing a pipe dream. But this…”

He gestured to the side-by-side sets of photos we had laid out across the desk.

“This is my client’s freedom right here. He’s getting out!”

He was standing behind his desk, too excited to sit down.

“How did this happen?” I asked. “How did this slip through?”

“Because they were solved quickly,” Schifino said. “In each case the police were led to an obvious suspect and looked no further. They didn’t look for similars because they didn’t need to. They had their suspects and were off to the races.”