brought it back and put it on the front of his desk where Jesse could look through it. There were pictures of a clearly recognizable Norman Shaw and different very young women, in sexually explicit action in a motel room. Shaw looked better than he did now. His belly seemed flat and he had more hair.
“Through the window?” Jesse said.
“Yeah. There’s a little hill behind the room. I’d go around there with a telephoto. He never shut the lights off.”
“Or pulled the curtains.”
“Maybe he liked people to watch,” Pettler said.
“Maybe you been doing this too long,” Jesse said.
“Maybe I’m right,” Pettler said.
“You never saw him pick up these kids?”
“Nope. Never saw him pick up anybody,” Pettler said. “Just showed up at the motel. Stayed a couple of hours and went home. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”
“You never saw anybody deliver them?”
“Nope. Shaw was my job. I was behind him. The broads were already there when he arrived.”
“And you don’t know anything about his habits after the divorce?”
“Nope. But I’ll bet he hasn’t changed,” Pettler said. “I don’t know shit about psychology. But I’d say this is a guy doing something he needs to do, you know? Has to do.”
“I’d like to copy these pictures,” Jesse said. “I’ll see that you get them back.”
“Keep ‘em,” Pettler said. “I still got the negatives.”
Jesse stood and put out his hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
Pettler shook hands without getting up.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you want to know all this?” he said.
“That’s right,” Jesse said. “I’m not.”
“Not my job, anyway,” Pettler said.
Chapter Fifty-six
“We still can’t connect Shaw with Billie Bishop,” Jesse said.
He and Kelly were in Kelly’s car parked along Day Boulevard near Carson Beach. They had coffee in paper cups. A bag of donuts was on the seat between them.
“Everything but,” Kelly said.
“But we still can’t connect him specifically to Billie Bishop.”
“Or Billie Bishop with Alan Garner,” Kelly said.
“Or Shaw with Garner,” Jesse said.
“Shaw’s the one,” Kelly said.
“You think?”
“Yeah. The sonovabitch jumps out at you.”
“Nice if we could prove it.”
“At least we know where to look,” Kelly said.
“What we can prove,” Jesse said, “is that Shaw likes young hookers.”
“And that he took them to a motel on the North Shore, and Billie Bishop checked into that same hotel.”
“Can we prove that he took Billie Bishop there?” Jesse said.
“You tell me,” Kelly said.
“No.”
“And if we could prove he took her there, can we prove that he killed her?”
“No.”
They were silent. Kelly took a cinnamon donut out of the bag and shook it to get rid of the loose cinnamon.
“The only connection we’ve got is Garner to Shaw through Gino Fish,” Jesse said.
Kelly took a bite of the donut, leaning far forward over the steering wheel so as not to get cinnamon on himself.
“Because Billie Bishop called Gino’s phone number,” he said.
“Yeah. But it might be that she called Garner at Gino’s office.”
