IS INTERPOL INVOLVED?" I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY Jay Talley is here. Barely two weeks ago, he was working in France.

"Well, you should know," Jay says with a trace of sarcasm, or maybe I imagine it. "The unidentified case you just contacted Interpol about, the guy who died in the motel down the road? We have an idea who he might be. So yes, Interpol's involved. Now we are. You bet."

"I wasn't aware we'd gotten a response from Interpol." Marino barely tries to be civil to Jay. "So you're telling me the guy from the motel's some sort of international fugitive, maybe?"

"Yes," Jay replies. "Rosso Matos, twenty-eight-year-old native of Colombia, as in South America. Last seen in Los Angeles. Also known as the Cat because he's such a quiet guy when he goes in and out of places, killing. That's his specialty. Taking people out, a hit man. Matos has a reputation for liking very expensive clothes, cars_and young men. I guess I need to talk about him in the past tense." Jay pauses. No one responds beyond looking at him. "What none of us understands is what he was doing here in Virginia," Jay adds.

"What exactly is the operation here?" Marino asks Jilison Mclntyre.

"Started four months ago with a guy speeding along Route Five just a couple miles from here. A James City cop pulls him." She glances at Stanfield. "Runs his tag and finds out he's a convicted felon. Plus the officer happens to notice the handle of a long gun protruding from under a blanket in the back seat, turns out to be a MAK-90 with the serial number ground off. Our labs in Rockville managed to restore the SN and traced the weapon to a shipment from China_a regular shipment to Richmond. As you know, a MAK-90's a popular knock-off of the AK-47 assault rifle, going rate of a thousand, two thousand bucks on the street. Gang members love the MAK, made in China, regularly shipped to local ports in Richmond, Norfolk, legitly in crates accurately marked. Other MAKs are being smuggled in from Asia along with heroin, in all kinds of crates marked everything from electronics to Oriental rugs."

In an all-business voice that only occasionally reveals the strain she feels, Mclntyre describes a smuggling ring that, in addition to area ports, involves the James City County trucking company where Barbosa was undercover as a driver and she was undercover as his girlfriend. He got her a job in the company's office, where bills of lading and invoices were falsified to disguise a very lucrative operation that also involves cigarettes en route from Virginia to New York and other destinations in the Northeast. Some weapons are being sold through a dirty gun dealer in this area, but a lot of them end up in backroom sales at gun shows, and we all know how many gun shows Virginia has, Mclntyre says.

"What's the name of the trucking company?" Marino asks.

"Overland."

Marino's eyes dart to me. He runs his fingers through his thinning hair. "Christ," he says to everyone. "That's who Bev Kiffin's husband works for. Jesus Christ."

"The lady who owns and runs The Fort James Motel," Stanfield explains to the others.

"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.