I then ran down a whole lot of information on the color blue. One thing that mildly interested me was the Blue Man Group performance artists who had started a show called Tubes in New York City, then branched out to Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas. The show contained elements of music, theater, performance art, even vaudeville. The performers always worked in blue, from head to toe. Maybe it was something, maybe nothing too early to tell.

I met Sampson for breakfast at the Holiday Inn where we were staying the Holiday Inn Bordeaux, to be more precise. We ate quickly, then drove over to the off-base military housing community where the three murders had taken place. The houses were ordinary ranches, each with a small strip of lawn out front. Quite a few of the yards had plastic wading pools. Tricycles and 'cozy coupes' were parked up and down the street.

We spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon canvassing the close-knit community where Tanya Jackson had lived. It was a working-class, military neighborhood, and at more than half the stops nobody was home.

I was on the front porch of a brick-and-clapboard house, talking to a woman in her late thirties or early forties, when I saw Sampson come jogging our way. Something was up.

“Alex, come with me!” he called out. “C'mon. I need you right now.”

Chapter Thirteen

I caught up with Sampson. “What's up? What did you find out?”

“Something weird. Maybe a break,” he said. I followed him to another small ranch house. He knocked on the door and a woman appeared almost immediately. She was only a little over five feet, but easily weighed two hundred pounds, maybe two-fifty.