one of her own nylon stockings tied so tightly around her beautiful neck that her face had already begun to discolor.

She was still warm when her husband found her.

Hanson looked down at her in the pre-dawn. Then he packed his bags, dyed his hair, and headed south to Mexico with another man's passport.

Hanson ran because he was innocent and knew that no one would believe him. Because he was wholly and violently in love with his secretary, a lissome, dark girl who ran with him - and who already had involved him once in murder.

Somewhere in the city a killer nodded with pleasure. Two deaths, and one to go - but the state would burn Hanson for him...