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at this point it was going to be three years—almost to the day—before a suspect worth considering was brought in. Or that it would turn into a case that would take investigators through nearly a dozen states, halfway across the country, and involve one of the most intense and puzzling murder investigations the HPD had ever probed. And when all was said and done, wouldn’t you know it, the murderer had been right under everyone’s nose the entire time, there, within reach. The least likely suspect imaginable.

CHAPTER 4
    T HE EXISTENTIAL QUESTION every police officer inevitably faces at the beginning of a murder investigation comes down to this: Is one piece of evidence any more significant than the other? Sure, DNA uncovered at the scene might be a bit more exciting than a witness who thinks she saw something, or, rather, might have seen something.
    That’s not what we’re talking about here.
    What a murder victim has done throughout his or her life, which is pertinent to any investigation of the magnitude HPD encountered on Millbridge Drive, became the focal point immediately. The fact that HPD found out the kids were into drugs turned out to be extremely relevant. Yet, a crime victim’s life is not something that should blemish an investigator’s sense of where to go with a case. You don’t solve murders with blinders on, in other words. You don’t track down killers by denying the obvious or looking the other way, either. You simply check your judgment at the door and follow the trail.
    No matter where it leads.
    It was no secret that the four murder victims found in Clear Lake City had been dabbling in an active and highly energized Houston drug culture—some more than others. Tiffany and Rachael had just started working at Club Exotica, a topless strip joint on the Gulf Freeway. And on the surface, if that’s all you looked at, you’d be inclined to draw some conclusions about these girls. Strippers and blow (cocaine) went together like bulimia and runway modeling. Indeed, you could probably scrape up a few residue lines of coke on the back counter of any stripper’s dressing room. But digging deeper into Tiffany and Rachael’s lives, you’d see that neither danced, although they had been asked to do so more than once. They waitressed and bartended; two gorgeous teenagers who fought the guys off with clubs, and could have made a bundle exposing what they had been born with. However, they chose to keep their clothes on . That said something about Rachael and Tiffany; it spoke to the kind of people they were at heart. And let’s face it: the difference in the tips waitressing at a strip joint as compared to the local Chili’s or T.G.I. Friday’s is tenfold.
    â€œPeople might get the wrong impression of my daughter,” George Koloroutis later said. “But she was involved in church activities and taught vacation Bible school. She was a good kid. There are parts of her life that bear no relevance to her murder.”
    Still, what if some whacko strip club patron developed an obsession with one of the girls and decided to take out Marcus and Adelbert after following the girls home from the club and knocking on the door?
    Collateral damage: Marcus and Adelbert.
    Investigators had to consider this.
    Or what if Rachael and Tiffany had been mistaken for someone else? Maybe one of the two boys at the house had been a target?
    Those scenarios had to be looked into.
    In fact, there were so many different avenues the investigation could take in its initial stage, HPD realized, to start developing theories now would be absurd and purely inconsiderate to the memories of these kids. It would stifle progress. Slow the natural evolution of the investigation and what the evidence was about to bear out.
    The job of juggling all of these questions was given to Detective Tom Ladd, a seasoned cop nearing the end of nearly three decades of work in HPD’s