“Hey, Loot. It’s Parks. I’m down here on River Road boat ramp. We have a floater. ID on him says his name is Heath Stover, late of the great Crescent City.”

“Bully for you. Call Wade, he’s on. I’m working Go-Go.”

Parks said, “I know you are. I’ve already got Wade here. But this is something you might want to see. Our New Orleans dude? He’s been stabbed. Right in the same place as Go-Go.”

Heath Stover’s overweight torso bore a familiar mark, just under his sternum, a slash in the flesh that allowed the yellow subcutaneous fat to squish out around the edges of the wound. The water had washed the blood away. Fox got on the autopsy immediately once the body arrived at Forensic Medical, and Taylor stood to the side, watching, arms crossed, tapping the toe of her boot on the floor while Fox measured and murmured and inserted a caliper into the slit to determine its depth. He finally stood and nodded.

“Same kind of blade. Double edged, sharp as hell. See how there’s no hesitation, nor wiggle room? Went straight in, under the sternum and into the heart.” Fox stood up and looked at Taylor, his brown eyes troubled. “I have to tell you, Lieutenant, whoever did this knew what he was doing.”

“Is it the same person who killed Go-Go?”

“I can’t tell you that. But he — or she — knew exactly where to place the blade for maximum effectiveness. This isn’t your every day stabbing. It’s clean, precise, and done with amazing skill. And Go-Go’s had an identical presentation.”

“I think we’re safe saying he, I believe we have Go-Go’s murder on tape. If she hadn’t gone down I’d have thought he just bumped into her. It was quick. Here, help me run this through.”

They played out the scenario she’d seen on the tape a few times, and Fox confirmed that based on Go-Go’s wound, the stabbing could definitely work that way.

“But Stover here, he got stabbed, then went in the river somewhere. Wasn’t in too long and there is water in his lungs, just a bit, so he was on his last legs when he went in. Could be your blitz attacker hit him and he went in the water, or he killed him by the bank and pushed him. Radiographs show he does have a few broken bones, so he either got in a fight, or fell—”

“Off one of the bridges. We can do a current analysis from last night and see where he might have gone in.”

“That makes sense to me. Huh. Two in one day. Dude’s got a serious problem.”

“No kidding. Thanks, Fox. Now I have to go put Stover and Go-Go together, find out what they have in common. Then I can figure out who did this to them both.”

The words floated to her head again, this time slightly altered.

One of these things is too much like the other.

Taylor spent the drive back to the office in deep thought. Two kills, exactly alike, with two people who on the surface had absolutely nothing in common. A quick investigation on Stover found that he was in town on business, had checked into the Hermitage Hotel in the late afternoon, asked directions to Rippy’s BBQ on Broadway, and set off at a walk around six the previous evening. Marcus Wade was down there now nosing around. Hopefully there’d be a lead.

In the meantime, Taylor set to work getting back with the Fairfax County Police in Virginia. A few annoying false starts later, she was finally connected to a detective named Drake Hagerman. Taylor laid out the story and asked for his help tracking down Gustafson. He promised to get back to her within the day. Satisfied, Taylor hung up and called Marcus to see what was shaking on his end.

What was shaking, apparently, was pay dirt. Marcus answered in a huff.

“I was just about to call you. Can you send me a picture of the guy whose wallet Go-Go had, the one we didn’t find last night?”

“I’ll bring it down myself. Why? You got something?”

“Stover was in here last night, dining with another guy. Description sounds an awful lot like that photo on the license. If it’s him…”

Taylor felt that flash of excitement she got when a case was about to break wide open. Less than twenty-four hours. Impressive. Her people were damn good at their jobs.

“I’ll be there in five.”

She called Chief DeMike and let him know what was happening, then set off down to Rippy’s.

The bar was packed full, the lunch crowd rolling in food and drink and overly loud country music. Taylor would love to know how much they pulled down in a year; Rippy’s was always packed to the gills.

She found Marcus at the back bar, chatting with a ponytailed, jean-clad waitress. He looked quite pleased with himself. Marcus was adorable, and his good looks sometimes helped loosen tongues. Taylor gave him a look, and he cleared his throat and became completely professional.

“Lieutenant, Brandy served Mr. Stover last night. She said he was with another gentleman.”

Taylor had hastliy cobbled together a six pack of photos. She pulled the card from her jacket pocket and handed it to the waitress. “Do any of these men look familiar to you?”

Gustafson was on the top row, third photo.

Brandy didn’t hesitate.

“That’s the guy,” she said, pointing to Gustafson.

“You’re one-hundred percent certain?”

“Absolutely. Gave me the creeps. He smiled too much. And didn’t tip. They were going honky-tonking, the fat one asked me the best place to go. I sent them to Tootsies, of course, and suggested the Cadillac Ranch too.”

Taylor met Marcus’s eye. “Thank you, ma’am. Please keep this to yourself. You may be called on again to provide information. Are you willing to do that?”

“I am. If he’s a creep, I don’t want him back in here. Hey, I gotta go. My manager’s giving me the evil eye.” She glanced coquettishly at Marcus. “Shout at me sometime.”

Marcus blushed red, and Taylor gave him a smile.

“You’re such the charmer.”

“You know it. So this is our guy, huh?”

“Looks that way. You keep on this trail, see if you can track exactly what might have happened. I’m rather amazed, actually. Either this guy dropped his wallet while he was stabbing Go-Go, or she managed to slide it out of his pocket. Pretty incredible presence of mind for a girl who’s stoned and dying.”

“But she was an accomplished pickpocket. Maybe she targeted him just as he targeted her. And they both got screwed.”

Taylor nodded. “That makes sense. Well done, Go-Go. She practically handed us her killer on a platter. I’m heading back to the office and hitting the ‘net.”

“All right. See you later.”

Taylor watched Marcus stride away, thankful to have his keen investigative mind at her disposal, then walked back to her vehicle. She had a date with a computer.

The email notification on her iPhone chimed just as she turned the engine over. It was Hagerman, from Fairfax County. According to him, there was no one named James Gustafson in the Virginia DMV system, and the address on the license was a vacant lot. Her killer was a ghost.

ViCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, could be a homicide detective’s best friend, if they knew exactly how to use it. It wasn’t as easy as inputting your crime and the system spitting out a match to similar crimes. You had to know what to ask for. Taylor had unfortunately availed herself of its services many times in the past, and had the level of expertise needed to run the appropriate request chain into the queue. Hopefully the results would come back quickly, but the service wasn’t fully automated. A real person had to do some of the legwork, and the FBI was backed up three ways to Sunday on requests. So she inputted the parameters, taking great care with the specifics of both Go-Go and Heath Stover’s crime similarities, crossed her fingers, and went on to the next component of her investigation – figuring out who this man really was.

The ViCAP results came back several hours later, much quicker than she expected. She read the email she’d been sent with trepidation, then sat back in her chair, let the realization wash over her. There were matches in the system from several places around the country, the most recent a homeless woman in New Orleans. Gustafson, whoever the son of a bitch really was, had been a busy, busy boy.