“I’m to the point of believing just about anything,” I grimly reply as I almost fall into the big leather chair behind my piled-up desk. I sigh. I expect Marino has come to tell me that Jaime Berger is the special prosecutor. “If it’s about Berger, I already know,” I say. “An AP reporter told me she’s been appointed to get me indicted. I haven’t decided if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Hell, I can’t decide if I even care.”
Marino has a puzzled expression on his face. “No kidding? She is? How’s she gonna do that? She pass the bar in Virginia?”
“Doesn’t have to,” I reply. “She can appear pro hoc vice” The phrase means for this one particular occasion, and I go on to explain that at a special jury’s request, the court can grant an out-of-state lawyer special permission to participate in a case even if that person is not licensed to practice law in Virginia.
“So what about Righter?” Marino asks. “What will he be doing during all this?”
“Someone from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office will have to work with her. My guess is he’ll be second chair and leave the questioning to her.”
“We’ve had a weird break in The Fort James Motel case.” He gives me his news. “Vander’s been working like hell on the prints he got inside the room, and you aren’t gonna fucking believe it,” he says again. “Guess whose popped up? Diane Bray’s. I’m not shitting you. A perfect latent by the light switch when you first come in the roomher latent, Bray’s damn fingerprint. Of course, we got the dead guy’s prints, but no hit on any others except Bev Kiffin, as you’d expect. Her prints are on the Gideon Bible, for example, but not his, not Matos’s. And that’s kind of interesting, too. It’s looking like Kiffin might have been the one who opened the Bible to whatever it was.”
“Ecclesiastes,” I remind him.
“Yeah. A latent on the open pages, Kiffin’s fingerprint. And remember, she said she didn’t open the Bible, so I asked her about it over the phone and she still says she didn’t open it. So I’m getting mighty suspicious about what her involvement is, especially now that we know Bray was in that very room before the guy was killed in there. What was Bray doing at that motel? You want to tell me that?”
“Maybe her drug-dealing brought her there,” I reply. “I can’t think of another reason. Certainly, the motel isn’t the sort of place you would expect her to stay.”
“Bingo.” Marino fires his finger at me like a gun. “And Kiffin’s husband supposedly works for the same trucking company that Barbosa did, right? Although we still ain’t found no record of someone named Kiffin who drives a truck or whatevercan’t even track him down at all, which I have to admit is strange. And we know Overland’s into smuggling drugs and guns, right? Maybe it’s making more sense if it turns out that Chandonne’s the one who left those hairs at the campsite. Maybe we’re talking his family cartel, huh? Maybe that’s what fucking brought him to Richmond to begin with the family business. And while he was in the area, he just couldn’t control his habit of whacking women.”
“Might also help explain what Matos was doing there,” I add.
“No kidding. Maybe he and John the Baptist were pals. Or maybe someone in the family sent Matos to Virginia to snuff Johnny-boy, take him out of commission so he don’t sing to anyone about the family business.”
There are endless possibilities. “What none of this explains is why Matos was murdered and who did it. Or why Barbosa was killed,” I point out.
“No, but I feel like we’re getting warmer,” Marino replies. “And I got an itch and I think if we scratch it, we might find Talley. Maybe he’s the missing link in all this.”
“Well, he apparently knew Bray in Washington,” I say. “And he’s been living in the same city where the Chandonne family is headquartered.”
“And he always manages to be on the scene when John the Baptist is, too,” Marino adds. “And I think I saw the asshole the other day. Was pulled up at a red light and there’s this big black Honda motorcycle in the lane next to me. Didn’t recognize him at first because he had a helmet on with this tinted shield covering his face, but he was staring at my truck. I’m pretty sure it was Talley and he looked away real quick. Asshole.”