Sting

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. I…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.”