"Overland's a big company and not everybody is involved in illegal activity." Pruett is quick to be objective. "That's what makes this so tough. The company and most people in it are legit. So you could pull their trucks all day and never find anything hot inside a single one of them. Then on another day, a shipload of paper products, televisions, whatever, heads out and stashed inside boxes are assault rifles and drugs."
"You think someone put the dime on Mitch?" Marino asks Pruett. "And the bad guys decided to whack him?"
"If so, then why is Matos dead, too?" It is Jay who speaks. "And it appears Matos died first, right?" He looks at me. "He's found dead in these really weird circumstances, in a motel right down the road. Then the next day, Mitch's body is dumped in Richmond. Plus, Matos is an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I don't see what his interest would be here_even if someone out there dimed Mitch, you don't send in a hit man like Matos. He's pretty much reserved for big prey in powerful crime organizations, guys hard to get to because they are surrounded by their own heavily armed thugs."
"Who does Matos work for?" Marino asks. "Do we know that?"
"Whoever will pay," Pruett replies.
"He's all over the map," Jay adds. "South America, Europe, this country. He's not associated with any one network or cartel, but is a lone operator. You want someone taken out, you hire Matos."
"Then someone hired him to come here," I conclude.
"We have to assume that," Jay replies. "I don't think he was in the area to check out Jamestown or the Christmas decorations in Williamsburg."
"We also know he didn't kill Mitch Barbosa," Marino adds. "Matos was already dead and on the Doc's table before Mitch went out jogging."
There are nods around the room. Stanfield is picking at a fingernail. He looks lost in space, extremely uncomfortable. He keeps wiping sweat off his brow and drying his fingers on his pants. Marino asks Jilison Mclntyre to tell us exactly what
happened.
"Mitch likes to run midday, before lunch," she begins. "He went out close to noon and didn't come back. This was yesterday. I went out in the car looking for him around two o'clock and when there was still no sign, I called the police, and of course, our guys. ATF and FBI. Agents came in from the field and started looking, too. Nothing. We know he was spotted in the area of the law school."
"Marshall-Wythe?" I inquire, taking notes.
"Right, at William and Mary. Mitch usually ran the same route, from here along Route Five, then over on Francis Street and to South Henry, then back. Usually an hour or so."
"Do you remember what he was wearing and what he might have had with him?" I ask her.
"Red warm-up suit and a vest. He had on a down vest over his warm-up. Uh, gray, North Face. And his butt pack. He never went anywhere without his butt pack."
"He had a gun in it?" Marino assumes.
She nods, swallowing, face stoical. "Gun, money, portable phone. House keys."
"He wasn't wearing the down jacket when his body was found," Marino informs her. "No butt pack. Describe the key."
"Keys," she corrects him. "He has the key for here, for the townhouse, and his car key on a steel ring."
"What does the key for your townhouse look like?" I ask, and I feel Jay staring at me.
"Just a brass key. A normal-looking key."
"He had a stainless steel key in the pocket of his running shorts," I say. "It has two-three-three written on it in permanent Magic Marker."
Agent Mclntyre frowns. She knows nothing about it. "Well now, that's really strange. I have no idea what that key might be to," she replies.
"So we gotta figure he was taken somewhere," Marino says. "He was tied up, gagged, tortured, then driven to Richmond and dumped in the street in one of our lovely projects, Mosby Court."
"Hot drug-trafficking area?" Pruett asks him.
"Oh yeah. The projects are big into economic development. Guns and drugs. You bet." Marino knows his turf. "But the other nice thing about places like Mosby Court is people don't see nothing. You want to dump a body, don't matter if fifty people were standing right there. They get temporary blindness, amnesia."
"Someone familiar with Richmond, then," Stanfield finally offers an opinion.
Mclntyre's eyes are wide. She has a stricken expression on her face. "I didn't know about torture," she says to me. Her professional resolve shivers like a tree about to fall.
I describe Barbosa's burns and go into detail about the burns Matos had, as well. I talk about the evidence of ligatures and gags, and then Marino talks about the eyebolts in the motel room ceiling. All present get the picture. Everyone can envision what was done to these two men. We have to suspect the same person or persons are involved in their deaths. But this doesn't begin to tell us who or why. We don't know where Barbosa was taken, but I have an idea.
"When you go back there with Vander," I say to Marino, "maybe you ought to check out the other rooms, see if another one has eyebolts in the ceiling."
"Will do. Got to go back there anyway." He glances at his watch.
"Today?" Jay asks him.
"Yup."
"You got any reason to think Mitch was drugged like the first guy?" Pruett asks me.
"I didn't find any needle marks," I reply. "But we'll see what comes up on his tox results."
"Jesus," Mclntyre mutters.
"And both of them wet their pants?" Stanfield says. "Doesn't that happen when people die? They lose control of their bladders and wet their pants? Just a natural thing, in other words?"
"I can't say losing urine is rare. But the first man, Matos, took his clothes off. He was nude. It appears he wet his pants and then disrobed."
"So that was before he got burned," Stanfield says.
"I would assume so. He wasn't burned through his clothing," I reply. "It's very possible both victims lost control of their bladders due to fear, panic. You get scared badly enough, you wet your pants."
"Jesus," Mclntyre mutters again.
"And you see some asshole screwing eyebolts in the ceiling and plugging in a heat gun, that's enough to scare the piss right out of you," Marino abundantly illustrates. "You know damn well what's about to happen to you."
"Jesus!" Mclntyre blurts out. "What the fuck is this about?" Her eyes blaze.
Silence.
"Why the fuck would someone do something like that to Mitch? And it's not like he wasn't careful, not like he would just get in someone's car or even get close to some stranger trying to stop him on the road."
Stanfield says, "Makes me think of Vietnam, the way they did things to prisoners of war, tortured them to make them talk."
Making someone talk can certainly be one reason for torture, I respond to what Stanfield has just said. "But it's also a power rush. Some people are into torture because they get off on it."
"You think that's the case here?" Pruett says to me.
"I have no way of knowing." Then I ask Mclntyre, "I noticed a fishing pole when I was coming up the walk."
Her reaction is a flicker of confusion. Then she realizes what I am talking about. "Oh, right. Mitch likes to fish."
"Around here?"
"A creek over near College Landing Park."
I look at Marino. That particular creek is at the edge of the wooded camping area at The Fort James Motel.
"Mitch ever mention to you the motel over there by that creek?" Marino asks her.
"I just know he liked to fish over there."
"He know the lady who runs the joint? Bev Kiffin? And her