Jesse could hear the panic in his voice. The girl lay still on the bed. Her eyes big. Her breasts had barely begun to show.
“How old are you?” Jesse said to the girl.
The girl shook her head and didn’t say anything.
“I know you,” Shaw said.
“You should get under the covers,” Jesse said to the girl.
She kept staring at him, without any response.
“Get off the bed,” Jesse said to Shaw.
Shaw got up quickly and stood naked, with his pale belly sagging.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
Jesse pulled the spread loose on Shaw’s side and folded it over the girl. He looked at Shaw.
“You don’t have the right to just break in here like this,” Shaw said.
There was no force in his voice. He sounded plaintive.
“How old would you say she was?” Jesse said.
“Twenty-one,” Shaw said.
“She’s jailbait,” Jesse said.
“She is not,” Shaw said. “She told me she was twenty-one.”
“Put on your pants,” Jesse said.
He looked at the girl, still motionless under the spread. He looked around the room. There was some black underwear and a short floral sundress on one of the chairs. Jesse picked the clothes up and put them on the bed beside the girl.
“You need to get dressed, too,” he said.
The girl didn’t move.
“You’re not in trouble,” Jesse said to her. “But we need you to go with us.”
Still she didn’t move.
“If you don’t get dressed,” Jesse said, “we’ll have to dress you.”
Wordlessly, she put the covers aside and got up and began to dress. Simpson looked carefully away.
“Where are we going?” Shaw said.
He was speaking slowly and very clearly, like a drunk pretending to be sober.
“We are going to jail,” Jesse said.
Chapter Sixty-three
Shaw came to her front door in a pale blue sundress.
“Well, hello,” she said.
“May I come in?” Jesse said.
“Of course.”
Carrying a manila envelope, Jesse walked through the gleaming air-conditioned house and sat again in the atrium.
“Thank you for calling last night,” she said.
Jesse nodded.
“Is Norman still in jail?”
“He’ll be out this morning,” Jesse said. “I wanted to talk with you first.”
“I’m not clear what he was arrested for. Drunk driving?”
“We found him in a motel room with an underage prostitute,” Jesse said.
He could hear Joni Shaw breathe in sharply.
“Oh, God!” she said.
“It’s not the first time,” Jesse said.
She didn’t say anything for a time. She studied Jesse’s face as if she were looking for something.
“Are you sure?” she said finally.
Jesse opened the manila envelope and slowly spread out Dick Pettler’s pictures of Shaw. Joni Shaw looked at them for a moment then pushed them away.
“Those are little girls,” she said.
