Sting

by Sandra Brown

  Joe looked wider afield, searching for heel skid marks that would indicate that a scuffle had taken place or that someone—Jordie Bennett—had been dragged away. But there was nothing like that. “No signs of a struggle?”

  “What you see is what we’ve got. We’re searching,” Holstrom added. He pointed out a team member who was several yards away, crouched down studying the loose surface of the parking lot. “But the manager, who also tends bar, estimated that when this went down there were fifteen to twenty vehicles in the lot.”

  Hick, who noted that only five remained, said, “Must’ve been quite an exodus.”

  Holstrom nodded. “We’ve got dozens of crisscrossed tire tracks, only a few shoe imprints.” He raised his hands at his sides.

  “No one saw a car leaving?” Hick asked.

  Holstrom shook his head. “No one’s come forward yet. Someone still might, though.”

  Joe said, “Yeah, and it might snow anytime now.” He pinched the fabric of his damp shirt and pulled it away from his sweating torso. Addressing Holstrom again, he asked, “Security cameras?”

  The younger agent smiled without humor. “The plumbing system is as sophisticated as this place gets. And that ‘system’ is a toilet around back that doesn’t have a lid, but does have a hand-lettered sign warning that it flushes only on occasion.”

  “So that’s a no to security cameras,” Joe deadpanned.

  “No to security, period. Unless you count the two sawed-off shotguns kept loaded behind the bar.”

  “Probably the most effective system,” Hick remarked.

  Joe pointed to a nasty-looking puddle a few feet away from the front grille of the car. “Is that vomit?”

  “To be specific, a semidigested cheeseburger, chili fries, and lots of whiskey,” the ME reported.

  “Who was the precious owner?” Hick asked.

  “According to one of the first responders, the young man who found the body puked his guts up,” Holstrom said. “Here, then three times inside. Fortunately they keep a bucket handy for just that purpose.”

  “Where’s he now?” Joe asked.

  “Still in there. Being made to cool his heels till you arrived.”

  “Am I done here?” the ME asked.

  Joe thanked him and then, mostly out of spite, reminded him that the autopsy report was an important factor to their investigation. Huffing complaints, the pathologist stamped away.

  Joe turned to Holstrom. “Nice guy.” Then, “Under the heading of ‘What the fuck happened?’ do you have anything useful to tell us?”

  Holstrom absently scratched a spot on his cheek that looked like a fresh mosquito bite. “Not much, I’m afraid. The car is registered to Jordan Bennett. It was found unlocked, but all the doors were closed when first responders arrived. A deputy is going to dust it for prints, but, honestly, I don’t think she ever got in it after exiting the bar.”

  Joe said, “So she left with whoever popped Mickey?” Since neither of the other two agents replied or offered a differing hypothesis, he said, “Okay then, did she leave with this unsub voluntarily or under duress?”

  Agent Holstrom looked over at Hick, who shrugged.

  “That makes it unanimous,” Joe said, “because I don’t know, either.” He started walking toward the bar’s entrance, saying over his shoulder to Holstrom, “Notify me immediately if you find anything.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “What’s the name of the detective you talked to?” Joe asked Hick as he pulled open the door into the bar.

  “Cliff Morrow.”

  Morrow was in his midthirties, with nothing distinguishing about him except for his attire. He had on a baseball cap, team t-shirt, coaching shorts, and dusty sneakers. Joe and Hick removed their latex gloves and shook hands with him. As they did, he explained his appearance. “I coach my daughter’s softball team. We were celebrating our win tonight at a pizza place when the call came in. I didn’t take time to change.”

  He seemed competent and more than willing, perhaps even relieved, to share the investigation with them. “People around here harbor a lot of ill will against Josh Bennett,” he said. “Homegrown boy.”

  “Gone bad,” Hick said.

  “They’d forgive that,” the detective said. “But the way a lot of folks see it, he’s a turncoat.”

  “Much worse than a crook,” Joe said.

  Morrow gave a sheepish grin. “To some minds it is.”

  “What about to your mind?” Hick asked him.

  “I’m a peace officer. Josh Bennett broke the law.”

  It was a matter-of-fact answer that Joe was glad to hear. “So, despite Bennett’s local ties, we have your full cooperation?”

  “Absolutely, sir. You have the support of the entire Terrebonne Parish SO. The sheriff said to tell you so. He’s already chewed that deputy’s ass for letting Ms. Bennett elude him. He’s green. Been a deputy three whole weeks. He didn’t even know why she was being surveilled. In fact, no one’s been told why you requested surveillance on her.”

  Joe pretended not to hear the implied question mark. Maybe he should have shared the reason for the surveillance with the sheriff and impressed on him its seriousness. Perhaps if he had, a more seasoned officer would have been assigned that responsibility. But it was too late now, the damage was done, and he didn’t have time to waste on second-guessing himself.

  He said, “Bring me up to speed, Detective Morrow.”

  “As soon as I and my partner got here, we separated them for questioning.” He referred to a handful of disreputable-looking men and women scattered around the bar.

  Assessing their sullen expressions individually and collectively, Joe said, “Let me guess. Nobody knows diddly-squat.”

  Morrow grinned. “Basically. But so far there’ve been no red flags to make me think otherwise. My partner is interviewing the bartender in the back room, but initial questioning indicates that he was an innocent bystander like the rest. More observant, maybe. And he’s the only one who interacted with Bolden and his companion.”

  “No one has IDed the companion yet?”

  “None of the locals claim to have seen him before tonight.”

  “Of course not,” Joe said. “We’d never be lucky enough to get the name and address of the prime suspect. Where’s Bolden’s pistol?”

  Morrow motioned them over to the bar. The pistol had been bagged and labeled. “The tool of his trade,” Joe remarked as he studied the pistol with the sound suppressor still attached.

  “He didn’t fire it tonight,” Morrow said. “Full cartridge except for the bullet in the chamber.”

  Joe picked up the evidence bag containing a small red purse. There was nothing special about it except that it looked expensive. He hoped Marsha never got a hankering to have one like it.

  Also on the bar, separately bagged, were the key fob to Jordie Bennett’s car, a tube of lip gloss called Gossamer Wings, a credit card, a twenty-dollar bill, and a Louisiana driver’s license.

  “The lady was traveling light,” Morrow said, as Joe and Hick studied the items individually.

  Conspicuously absent was a cell phone, and Hick remarked on it.

  “I picked up on that, too,” Morrow said. “The clasp of her purse was open when it was found. I’m guessing he took her phone from it.”

  “But left the twenty and her credit card,” Hick said.

  “This wasn’t about stealing,” Joe said around a sigh. “It’s about who she is, who she knows, and what she knows.” He turned to Morrow. “Did you grow up here in Tobias?”

  “Since I was eight.”

  “How well do you know the Bennetts?”

  “To speak to and ask after each other’s health. Like that. Josh was in my class, but we didn’t hang out together. Jordie was a couple grades ahead of us.”

  “Any sibling rivalry between them?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing cutthroat. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. Both were smart and made good grades. She ran with the popu
lar crowd.”

  “Josh didn’t?”

  “He was several levels down from popular and didn’t really run with anybody. He was a geek, and I don’t mean that unkindly. Into video games and such.”

  “She was social, he was brainy. Fair to say?”

  Morrow considered Hick’s question and nodded. “Fair to say. But, as brothers and sisters go, they were close.”

  Joe perked up. “Oh?”

  “You know what happened to Josh when he was little?”

  Both Joe and Hickam nodded.

  “Well, I guess because of that, Jordie was always protective of him.” When he paused, Joe motioned for him to continue. “Her senior year, she was with this guy, a superjock. A meathead, but, you know, coveted. One day after classes, Jordie was sitting with this guy in his car out on the school parking lot.

  “Rumor had it that they were quarreling. In any case, Josh rode up on his scooter. Not a Harley, nothing with that kind of muscle. He and the meathead exchanged words through the driver’s window, and Josh, whether accidentally or on purpose—accounts varied—bumped the fender of the meathead’s car with his front tire.

  “Didn’t even make a dent, but the guy was pissed. He got out of his car and threatened to tear Josh’s head off. He was yelling, trying to shove Josh off his scooter, calling him every name in the book. Josh didn’t—or couldn’t—counterattack.

  “But Jordie did. She flew out of the car and got right in this jock’s face. Now he probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds or more, but she had him backing down in no time flat. Then she climbed onto the back of Josh’s scooter and off they went. That was the end of her romance with the meathead. She dumped him and to my knowledge never spoke to him again.”

  Joe mulled over the story, then gave Morrow a long look, gauging his trustworthiness. “You wondered why surveillance on Jordie Bennett was requested earlier this week? Well, here’s why.”

  The detective’s intelligent eyes registered the significance of what Joe told him. He whistled softly. “You—the FBI, I mean—have kept a lid on it.”

  “We have,” Joe said. “And it does not—and I mean does not—go public until the Bureau is ready for it to.”

  “Because of what Billy Panella might do if he gets wind of it.”

  Hick nodded. “Exactly. What has us worried is that the news has already reached Panella, wherever in the world he’s holed up. Or else why was Mickey Bolden here tonight? He was Panella’s hired gun.”

  “It doesn’t sadden me in the slightest that Mickey is no longer a worry,” Joe said. “But there’s this other guy, who apparently isn’t the least bit gun-shy. He remains unknown and at large.”

  “And Jordie Bennett went missing at the same time.” Grasping the gravity of the situation, Morrow removed his baseball cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “We didn’t obtain her cell phone number until about ten minutes ago. This is Friday night. Everybody’s out. But we finally reached her office manager. She gave us Ms. Bennett’s number and we’ve been calling it.”

  “Let me guess,” Hick said. “Nothing.”

  “Not even voice mail.”

  “Our unsub would be smart enough to take the battery out so it couldn’t be tracked,” Joe said. “Did you find a phone on Mickey?”

  “Negative,” Morrow said.

  “No doubt he lifted that, too.” Joe put his hands on his hips and swore softly. “This unidentified companion of Mickey’s is beginning to worry me.”

  Chapter 4

  The otherwise innocuous sound had the impact of a gunshot. Jordie froze.

  When the first click was followed immediately by another, she realized what they signified.

  From the driver’s seat, he had flipped a switch that released the child safety lock on the backseat door, then flipped it again to relock it, and, by doing so, mocked her futile attempt to get the door open.

  About an hour earlier, she had been roused from unconsciousness by a dull ache on the side of her head. A self-preservation instinct had cautioned her not to let on that she’d come awake. Up till now, she’d thought she’d played possum well enough to fool him into believing that she was still out. Apparently she hadn’t been as convincing as she’d thought.

  She was the fool, not he.

  After waking up and assessing her situation as best she could without opening her eyes, she’d determined that she was lying on the backseat of a traveling vehicle with her hands and feet bound.

  Moving incrementally and as silently as possible, she’d discovered that if she extended her legs just so, she could reach the backseat door with her bare feet. With increasing frustration and muscle strain, she had been covertly trying to lift the lever with her toes, all the while thinking that her abductor was oblivious.

  Knowing now that he was on to her, and more than likely had been all along, despair, fear, and anger coalesced into a moan.

  After coming to, and as soon as some of the residual muzziness had cleared from her head, she’d realized that this wasn’t her car. Her cheek was resting on cloth upholstery. The familiar texture and smell of her car’s leather seats would have provided her with a small measure of security, but, as it was, this car was as unknown to her as the driver, their whereabouts, and their destination.

  No longer needing to pretend to be unconscious, she opened her eyes and blinked them into focus. She had only the dashboard’s glow for illumination. No city lights shone through the backseat window. There were no lighted signposts or overpasses indicating that they were on a major highway, no headlight beams coming from the opposite direction. She could see nothing beyond the window glass except black sky and a sprinkling of stars.

  Which was as good a view as any to let her try and block the mental images of the overweight man aiming a pistol at her forehead, then of his facial features disintegrating, his hard fall to the ground, his blood spreading toward her feet as rapidly and darkly as spilled ink.

  She remembered staring into a pistol at point-blank range and hearing the second man say, My half just doubled.

  Upon waking, her first thought had been amazement that she was still alive.

  Rather than shoot her, the tall one must have knocked her unconscious, perhaps with the sound suppressor on his pistol, and abducted her from the scene of the brutal murder that she had witnessed him commit. Leaving her now to wonder why he hadn’t also killed her. Wouldn’t that have been more practical and expedient than kidnapping? So why had he kept her alive?

  Speculation on his motives brought on a surge of panic and, because stealth was no longer necessary, she began struggling to free her hands. They were restrained at the small of her back by something thin but incredibly strong that bit into her flesh. Her efforts to get loose grew more frantic.

  “Cut it out.”

  The unexpected command from the driver’s seat startled her, and for a moment she lay perfectly still. Then she said, “Go to the devil,” and renewed her tug-of-war to work her hands free.

  But after five minutes, she was bathed in sweat, which the car’s AC rapidly turned to ice water. She conceded that no matter how strenuously she worked at it, the struggle was futile and would result only in exhaustion and raw, bleeding wrists. She forced herself to lie back on the seat, took several deep breaths through her mouth, and willfully tamped down her panic.

  Thinking more calmly, she tried to isolate a single advantage that she could exploit, and soon realized that whatever was binding her feet was softer and more giving than the hand restraint.

  Lifting her head, she looked down the length of her body and was forced to swallow rising gorge when she saw the dark spatters on her white top.

  Dried blood. The dead man’s blood.

  She shuddered but didn’t allow herself to think about how he’d died. If she did, fear of meeting the same fate would paralyze her mentally and physically.

  Steeling herself to look beyond the grotesque stains on her clothing, she saw that a camouflage print bandana
had been knotted around her ankles. She began grinding her feet together, trying to stretch the cotton cloth and create enough give in it so that she could possibly free her feet, and then—

  Then what?

  The backseat door would still be locked and inescapable.

  She could kick her abductor in the back of his head. A well-placed, surprise kick might stun him for a precious few seconds.

  And cause him to crash the car.

  Or provoke him into killing her sooner rather than later.

  Perhaps she could distract him somehow. If she made a noise, maybe pretended to choke, or did something that would force him to stop the car, and then if he opened the backseat door to check on her, she might stand a chance of getting out and running if—

  There were a dismal number of ifs, and none of the options held much promise of success. But, dammit, she wouldn’t just lie here to be dealt with when he felt like it. She wouldn’t make it as easy for him as his previous victim had. She wouldn’t be dispatched without giving him a fight.

  However, she also knew on an instinctual level that this man wouldn’t be easily tricked or overtaken physically.

  When she’d left the bar, the parking lot had been dark and, she’d thought, deserted. Rushing footsteps over gravel had alerted her to the approach of her two attackers. In the nanosecond between her spinning around and the pistol being fired, she’d recognized both from having seen them in the bar just a few minutes before: the heavyset man who hadn’t made any kind of memorable impression on her; and him, who had.

  As he’d walked past where she sat at the bar, they’d made brief eye contact. She remembered his above-average height, an unhurried but somehow predatory stride, a severe face, and eyes sharp enough to cut diamonds. She’d had a visceral reaction to that incisive gaze and had quickly looked away from it.

  She should have heeded that intuitive warning of danger, but at the time, she had mistaken it for another type of reaction, another kind of danger.

  Any sudden movement of her head caused the throbbing to sharpen, so now she gingerly angled it in order to get a clearer view of him. Above the driver’s-seat headrest, she could see a swirl of hair on the crown of his head. She remembered it being long and untidy. It looked darker in the blue ambient light of the dashboard than it had beneath the amber, smoke-fogged fixtures inside the bar.