“Do you work with William Schifino?” I said with a smile.
“Yes, I’m his receptionist. What can I do for you?”
“I need to speak to Mr. Schifino. I came from Los Angeles. I-”
“Do you have an appointment? Mr. Schifino sees potential clients by appointment only.”
“I don’t have an appointment but I’m not a potential client. I’m a reporter. I want to talk to Mr. Schifino about Brian Oglevy. He was convicted last year of-”
“I know who Brian Oglevy is. That case is on appeal.”
“Right, I know, I know. I have new information. I think Mr. Schifino will want to speak to me.”
She paused with her key a few inches from the lock and turned her eyes as if to size me up for the first time.
“I know he will,” I said.
“You can come in and wait. I don’t know when he’ll be in. He doesn’t have court until this afternoon.”
“Maybe you could call him.”
“Maybe.”
We entered the office and she directed me to a couch in a small waiting area. The furnishings were comfortable and seemed relatively new. I got the feeling that Schifino was an accomplished lawyer. The receptionist went behind her desk, turned on her computer and began her routine of preparing for the day.
“Are you going to call him?” I asked.
“When I get a moment. Just make yourself comfortable.”
I tried to but I didn’t like waiting around. I pulled my laptop out of my bag and turned it on.
“Do you have WiFi here?” I asked.
“We do.”
“Could I borrow it to check my e-mail? I’ll only be on a few minutes.”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
I studied her for a moment.
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. It’s a secured system and you will have to ask Mr. Schifino about that.”
“Well, could you ask him for me when you call him to tell him I am waiting here?”
“As soon as possible.”
She gave me an efficient smile and went back to her busywork. The phone buzzed and she opened an appointment book and started scheduling a meeting for a client and telling him about the credit cards they accepted for legal services rendered. It reminded me of my own current credit-card situation and I grabbed one of the magazines off the coffee table to try to avoid thinking about it.
It was called the
“Hold, please,” the receptionist said.
She pointed to me.
“Mr. Schifino, this man has no appointment. He says he’s a reporter from Los Angeles. He-”
“Brian Oglevy is innocent,” I said, cutting her off. “And I think I can prove it.”
Schifino studied me for a long moment. He had dark hair and a handsome face with an uneven tan from wearing a baseball cap. He was either a golfer or a coach. Or maybe both. His eyes were sharp and he quickly came to a decision about me.
“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
“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
