“When was she here?” Jesse said.
“Beginning of the summer,” Sister said.
“She’s not here now?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if she were?” Jesse said.
“It would depend on who you were and why you wanted to know.”
“You know who I am,” Jesse said. “We think Billie was murdered.”
Sister’s face softened for a moment.
“Think?”
“Know, but can’t prove. Condition of the body makes it hard.”
Sister nodded.
A young black woman with a ring through one nostril came into the room and saw Jesse and, without changing her pace, turned and left.
“Am I that obvious?” Jesse said.
“A cop is a cop is a cop,” Sister said. “My girls have learned to be alert.”
“Do you know where Billie went when she left here?”
“I have a phone number. We’d agreed I would only give it to her older sister or somebody named Hooker.”
“Did you give it to either?”
“Neither of them asked.”
“May I have the phone number?” Jesse said.
Sister looked at him for a time.
“She’s dead,” Jesse said. “I’m trying to find who killed her.”
Sister nodded. She reached under the desk and pulled a yellow plastic milk crate toward her. It was full of file folders. She riffled through them, pulled one out, and took from it a single sheet of paper. She looked at the sheet and copied the number onto a little pad of stickum notes.
“Ever call the number?” Jesse said.
“No.”
“When the girls are at the shelter they don’t stay here, do they?”
“No. We are what the name implies, a shelter. They come, they go. They know they have a place to sleep if they need it. They know we will feed them.”
“How long was Billie here?”
Sister looked at her sheet of paper.
“Two weeks,” she said.
“Did she tell you why she was leaving?”
“She said she had a job.”
“She say where?”
“No.”
“How about the rest of the staff?” Jesse said.
Sister smiled. Jesse liked her smile.
“It’s pretty much a one-nun show,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-four
Jenn was doing a stand-up outside a junior high school. It was part of a station promotion campaign designed to prove once again that Channel 3 was an integral part of the community. Jesse parked on the street and walked to the shoot. He stood outside the shot while Jenn did a cute weather quiz and wrapped the segment. She saw him while she was wrapping, and as soon as it was over, she came to Jesse and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Did you know the answers to my weather quiz?” she said.
“Do you?”
“I will when the time comes,” she said.
“Does anyone care what the answers are?” Jesse said.
“Not that I know of,” Jenn answered.
She turned to the crew.
“This is my starter husband,” she said.
