“Then I guess you better come on back to the office,” he said.

I followed him to his office and he sat down behind a large desk while signaling me to the seat on the other side.

“You work for the Times?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good paper but in a lot of trouble these days. Financially.”

“Yeah, they all are.”

“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.”

“But how did the killer know to put Sharon Oglevy’s body in her ex-husband’s trunk? How would he even know where to find the car?”

“I don’t know, but that is off point. The point here is that these two killings are of such a strikingly similar pattern that there is just no way that either Brian Oglevy or Alonzo Winslow could be responsible. The other details will fall into place when the real investigation is begun. But for now, there is no doubt in my mind that you’re exposing something huge here. I mean, how do you know that these are the only two? There could be others.”

I nodded. I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Angela Cook’s online search had only come up with the Oglevy case. But two cases make a pattern. There still could be more.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

Schifino finally sat down. He rotated back and forth in his chair while considering the question.

“I’m going to draw up and file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. This is new information that is exculpatory and we’re going to put it into open court.”

“But I’m not supposed to have those files. You can’t cite them.”

“Sure I can. What I don’t have to do is say where I got them.”

I frowned. I would be the obvious source once my story was published.

“How long will it take for you to get this into court?”

“I have to do some research but I’ll file it by the end of the week.”

“That’s going to blow this up. I don’t know if I can be ready to publish my story by then.”

Schifino held his hands out wide and shook his head.

“My client’s been up at Ely for more than a year. Do you know that the conditions are so bad at that prison that on frequent occasion death row inmates drop their appeals and volunteer to be executed, just to get out of there? Every day he is up there is a day too long.”

“I know, I know. It’s just that…”

I stopped to think about things and there was no way I could justify keeping Brian Oglevy in prison even a day longer just so I could have time to plan and write the story. Schifino was right.

“Okay, then I want to know the minute you file it,” I said. “And I want to talk to your client.”

“No problem. You get the exclusive as soon as he walks.”

“No, not then. Now. I am going to write the story that springs him and Alonzo Winslow. I want to talk to him today. How do I do it?”

“He’s in maximum security and unless you’re on the list, you won’t get in to see him.”

“You can get me in, can’t you?”

Schifino was sitting behind the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He brought a hand up to his chin, thought about the question and then nodded.

“I can get you in. I need to fax a letter up to the prison that says you are an investigator working for me and that you are entitled access to Brian. I then give you a to-whom-it-may-concern letter that you carry with you, and that identifies you as working for me. If you work for an attorney, you don’t need a state license. You carry the letter with you and show it at the gate. It will get you in.”

“Technically, I don’t work for you. My paper has rules about reporters misrepresenting themselves.”

Schifino reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash. He handed a dollar across the desk to me. I reached across the murder scene photos to take it.

“There,” he said. “I just paid you a dollar. You work for me.”

That didn’t really cut it but I wasn’t too worried about it, considering my employment situation.

“I guess that will work,” I said. “How far is Ely?”

“Depending on your driving, it’s three to four hours north of here. It’s in the middle of nowhere and they call the road going up there the loneliest road in America. I don’t know if it’s because it leads to the prison or if it’s the landscape you cross, but it’s not called that without good reason. They have an airport. You could take a sand jumper up there.”

I assumed that a sand jumper was the same as a puddle jumper, a small prop plane. I shook my head. I had written too many stories about little planes going down. I didn’t fly in them unless I absolutely had to.

“I’ll drive. Write the letters. And I’m going to need copies of everything in your files.”

“I’ll work on the letters and get Agnes to start making copies. I’ll need copies of what you have for the habeas petition. We can say that’s what my dollar bought.”

I nodded and thought, Yeah, put officious Agnes to work for me. I would like that.

“Let me ask you something,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“Before I came in here and showed you all of this, did you think Brian Oglevy was guilty?”