Sting

“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 Sh— 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, ‘Today 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 a

nd how she’d managed it.

“He’d…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, and…and…jabbed it into him as hard as I could.”