Authors: Sandra Brown
J
oe ushered Jordie Bennett to his and Hick's car and helped her into the backseat. He asked again if she was all right, if she needed anything, but she responded to those inquiries with head movements.
They covered the half mile to the main road in silence. Joe saluted the state trooper he'd spoken to earlier as they drove past, and now Hick aimed them toward New Orleans. He wasn't as intent on his driving as before, because the sun had come up and, although the day was gray, the deluge had slowed to a manageable drizzle.
Speaking for the first time, Jordie asked, “Will he be all right?”
Before turning to address her question, Joe caught the meaningful look Hick cast him out of the corner of his eye. “Are you referring to Shaw Kinnard, Ms. Bennett?”
She nodded.
Joe had conferred with one of the paramedics before they'd sped away with Kinnard secured in the ambulance. Deputy Morrow had gone with them. “I was told that he's stable, which is about all they could tell of his condition till a surgeon gets in there and takes a look. A trauma team is standing by.”
“In New Orleans?”
“Houma.” Seeing her doubtful expression, he added, “Nearest one.”
She turned her head aside and looked out the rain-streaked backseat window.
“Did Kinnard mistreat you, Ms. Bennett?”
Her head shake indicated that he hadn't.
“I noticed the marks on your wrists.”
She rubbed the left one with her right hand. “He kept them bound in those plastic things.”
“Flexcuffs?”
“He kept them on me that whole first night, except to let me go to the bathroom. He gave me more freedom after we got to the garage.”
“When was that?”
“Yesterday. Sometime in the morning. We'd driven all night.”
“You didn't cover very much ground.”
“I guessed as much. Once he took the blindfold off, and Iâ”
“He blindfolded you?”
“For a while.”
“Why'd he go to that particular place?”
“He didn't say.” After a beat, she turned her head away from the window and toward Joe. “Maybe he should be taken by CareFlight to a major hospital in New Orleans.”
“He's a survivor. Been in a lot of scrapes.”
“Yes. That scar on his chin⦔
Hick cut Joe another look, which he pretended not to notice. “Right. That scar helped identify him. He has a history of violence. You're lucky to be alive, and, frankly, your concern for his welfare is misplaced. If you don't mind me saying so.”
“Well, I do mind you saying so,” she snapped. “I could have killed him.”
“Wasn't that what you had in mind when you stabbed him?”
“Yes. No. Iâ¦I don't know.” The starch going out of her, she rubbed her eye sockets then turned back to the window. “I reacted out of fear for my life. But when I attacked him, I didn't wish him to die, and still don't.”
Joe stalled by coughing behind his fist. Finally he said, “You're more forgiving than I'd be in your situation. I'm relieved and grateful he didn't kill you outright. I was afraid we'd find your remains, not you.”
“I feared that, too. At first. But then he kept putting off killing me, and I began thinking that he couldn't do it.”
“Even though he'd killed Mickey Bolden directly in front of you.”
“I grant you, that was horrendous.”
“Most of the blood on your clothes must be Kinnard's because it's fresh. But some of those stains aren't that recent. Bolden's?”
She glanced down at her front, closed her eyes briefly, and murmured, “He washed it off my face.”
“Come again?”
“I don't remember it. I was still unconscious.”
“He knocked you unconscious?”
“I don't remember that, either. He told me later. A tap, he said. When he stopped to switch license plates, he washed the blood spatters off my face.”
Joe and Hick exchanged another look, then Joe settled more comfortably into his front seat. “We've got a long drive ahead of us, Ms. Bennett. Why don't we pass the time by you talking Agent Hickam and me through the past thirty-six hours, minute by minute. You don't mind if I take notes, do you?” He held up Hick's iPad, and she shook her head.
“Okay then⦔ Joe opened up a word processing app. “What were you doing in the bar? Why'd you go there Friday night?”
Her immediate response was a soft, but humorless laugh. It wasn't the reaction Joe had expected. He peered at her over the seat and was aware of Hick suspiciously eyeing her in the rearview mirror.
Sensing their interest, she said, “You're not the first to ask me that,” then after a pause, said, “I got a phone call, directing me to that place.”
“Call from who?”
“I don't know.”
“Your brother Josh?”
“If it was Josh, I didn't recognize his voice.”
“Could it have been Panella?”
“I suppose, but Mr. Kinnard didn't think so. He said Panella was behind the hit, not my going to the bar. It was a surprise to him and Bolden when I showed up there.”
They went round and round about that unexplained call for five minutes or so, but she insisted she couldn't identify the individual who'd summoned her to the bar.
“Mr. Kinnard didn't believe me, either,” she said with obvious weariness.
Eventually Joe decided to let it go for now and asked her to move along to when she arrived at the bar.
In a drone virtually devoid of emotion or inflection, she related her story. Her description of the sequence of events coincided with the testimonies of witnesses, in particular Royce Sherman's account.
Joe said, “You didn't know him?”
“No.”
“He admitted to slipping something into your pocket. He said it was his phone number. That true?”
“I guess it was his number. I wasn't aware that he'd given me anything until Shâ Mr. Kinnard took it out.”
“Took it out of your seat pocket?” Joe asked.
She divided a look between him and Hick, then bobbed her head once.
Following an awkward silence Joe asked for details about Bolden's murder. Her recollection matched the evidence they'd retrieved and what they'd surmised. Then he asked about her overnight drive with Shaw Kinnard.
“After I regained consciousness, he stopped and let me relieve myself. One other time he stopped to put on the blindfold.” Shortly after that, they arrived at Kinnard's destination. “He said, âToday it's a hideout.' It wasn't until we got there that he put the battery in the phone so Panella could call.”
“Call Bolden's phone?”
“Yes. If you hit the Redial, Panella will answer. He's waiting to hear that Mr. Kinnard went through with it.”
He and Hick had discussed whether or not to try to connect with Panella, but decided in favor of postponing that redial until they had the phone hooked to every conceivable monitoring device. There was another solid reason for Joe's delaying contact with Panella: He wanted to hear everything Jordie Bennett had to say first.
He asked her now about the tone of the conversations between Kinnard and Panella. “Did you get a sense that they'd ever met face-to-face?”
“No. The contract went through Mickey Bolden.”
“Did you overhear what they said?”
“Yes. Most of the time the phone was on speaker.”
“Did Panella ever give a hint of where he is?”
“No. None.” She reflected a moment. “It seemed surreal to be listening to two men bargaining over my life. Panella's creepy voice.”
“Creepy voice?”
She described it to them and said, “It made him seem all the more monstrous when he agreed to pay Mr. Kinnard the two million.”
“Excuse me?” Joe said.
“Two million?” Hick exclaimed.
“That's what Mr. Kinnard demanded and Panella agreed to it.”
Joe tried to wrap his mind around the staggering amount. Kinnard had gall to ask for that much. It had to be way above his normal rate. But then he would know that Panella was good for that amount and more. He said, “I'm more amazed than ever that Kinnard didn't cash in.”
“You mean kill me,” she said, and when he nodded, she continued. “Last night, just after dusk, I became certain he was about to.”
“What made you think so?”
She glanced down at her lap, up at Hick's gaze in the rearview mirror, finally coming back to Joe. “Just an intuition.”
“An intuition?” he repeated, ending on an inquisitive note to which she didn't respond.
Her gaze, her demeanor remained evasive. Joe wondered what she wasn't sharing. Hick was squirming with curiosity, too, but he didn't press her. For right now, they wanted the overall picture. They'd hammer her for details later. He did, however, ask her what had led up to her stabbing Kinnard and how she'd managed it.
“He'dâ¦he'd found an arrow. He thought he'd outsmarted me, that he'd found my secret weapon.”
“He didn't know about the broken propeller.”
“No. I went back to it, and managed to pry it free from the crack between the boards, andâ¦andâ¦jabbed it into him as hard as I could.”
She stopped and lowered her head to stare at her clasped hands. Deputy Morrow had given her a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean them with, but bloodstains were still evident.
She described how Kinnard had pulled out the blade and she'd packed the wound as well as she could, how his condition continued to worsen throughout the night, how his fever spiked.
“Then that deputy sheriff arrived,” she said. “I begged Mr. Kinnard to surrender. I told him that I didn't want to be responsible for another death. For anyone's death, including his. That's when he asked me for the name of the most senior FBI agent who'd interviewed me about Josh. He said he wouldn't surrender to anyone else. I gave him your name. You know the rest.”
Joe was aware that she'd left a dozen or more gaps wider than the Grand Canyon, but she looked done in, and by now they were on the outskirts of the city.
He said, “Thank you, Ms. Bennett. I know you're exhausted and that having to talk about the experience couldn't have been pleasant.” He looked over at Hick. “You have anything specific to ask?”
“I do.” He addressed her in the mirror. “That unknown caller on Friday night. You said that before Kinnard hid your phone, he tried to reach the person.”
She nodded. “Like every other time, no one answered. He thought it was probably Josh who'd called me, trying to set up a rendezvous with either him or a messenger who would give me information about where he was going, something like that.”
“You told him it wasn't Josh.”
“I told him I couldn't be certain, but that I didn't think so.”
“He pressured you to tell him who it was.”
“That's right. He wanted me to admit that it was Josh.”
“Why? Why was Kinnard so hip to connect with your brother?”
“He thought Josh might pay more to keep me alive than Panella was paying to have me killed.”
“More than two million?” Joe asked.
“Mr. Kinnard is convinced that Josh has the stolen money, not Panella. I tried to disabuse him of that.”
“But his intention was to bargain with Josh for your life?”
“Yes. But he never got the opportunity.”
“Josh didn't answer Kinnard's calls.”
“No one did. And for the hundredth time, I don't know that it was Josh.”
Joe looked over at Hick before coming back to her. “Why don't you simply tell us where he is, Ms. Bennett?”
“Where Josh is? I don't know!”
“Not Josh. Tell us where to find Billy Panella.”
“Panella? I have no earthly idea.”
It wasn't until that moment that she became aware that they had pulled under the porte cochere of a downtown hotel. She looked at the two of them with bewilderment.
“What's this? Why are we here?”
“We took the liberty of booking you a room.”
“Why?”
“So you can get cleaned up, rest, sleep, have a couple good meals, take it easy. We'll need to interview you again tomorrow.”
She looked at Joe, then over at Hick, then back at him, now less puzzled than wary. “I have a small apartment attached to my office at Extravaganza for when I stay over. I thought that's where you were taking me.”
“Extravaganza has media camped around it in a quarter-mile radius. So does your house in Tobias. Staying here will be hassle free. You'll have room service. It's closer to our office where we'll reconvene first thing. A female marshal is bringing you some clothes from your Tobias house. In factâ” Joe checked his wristwatch “âshe should be waiting for you in your room.”
“I'll go check.” Hick got out, showed his badge to the doorman and asked him to leave the car where it was for the time being.
Joe reached for his door handle, but Jordie Bennett stayed him. “Wait a minute. What's this really about?”
“I told youâ”
“You told me a great lot of nothing. Are you placing me under house arrest?”
“What? No,” he said, and realized how phony he sounded. “This is strictly a precaution, meant for your protection.”
“From what?”
“The media.”
She looked at him with disgust and a shade of disappointment. “I know how to handle the media. Try again.”
“You and my wife,” he mumbled. “She sees through me, too.”
His folksiness didn't impress or faze her. She kept glaring at him, demanding a no-bullshit answer.
He surrendered with a sigh. “I heard from your brother.”
“What?” She exhaled so hard that her chest went a little concave. “When?”
“Last night. He called me directly on my cell phone while I was beating the bushesâliterallyâlooking for him.” He explained the circumstances. “This was before Morrow summoned me to deal with Kinnard and your rescue.”