“Yes. And give them money to register. No credit card, you know? Cash in advance.”
“This isn’t what it sounds like,” Shaw said. “I’m thinking of doing a book on prostitution.”
“You own a gun?” Jesse said.
“A gun?” Shaw’s voice was almost a squeak.
“A gun.”
“No, I don’t.”
Jesse opened the drawer of his desk and took out the gun Shaw’s wife had given him and put it on the desk so Shaw could see it. Shaw looked at it without speaking. Jesse waited. Leaning against the wall, Kelly smiled like a happy wolf. He waited. Alan Garner sat absolutely still, trying to attract no attention.
“That’s not my gun,” Shaw said finally, his high voice shaking.
“How could it be?” Jesse said. “If you don’t own one.”
“That’s right,” Shaw said.
Jesse was quiet again, looking at Shaw. Shaw tried to hold his gaze and couldn’t and looked around the office in a dreadful parody of unconcern.
“Do you have any coffee?” Shaw said.
Jesse said, “No.”
Everyone was silent again. Shaw couldn’t keep from looking at the gun on Jesse’s desk. After a time Jesse spoke. His voice sounded too loud to him.
“I found the gun in your desk,” Jesse said.
“You were looking in my desk?”
“Your wife and I,” Jesse said.
“She showed you?”
“Yes.”
“She knows?”
“Yes.”
“About the girls?”
“Yes.”
Shaw looked as if he wanted to say something, but nothing was there to be said.
“You dumb fuck,” Jesse said. “You didn’t clean it. There was a round missing. You didn’t even reload.”
Again Shaw started to speak and failed. Finally he said, “I need a drink.”
There was a tape recorder on Jesse’s desk. Jesse turned it on.
“Why’d you kill her, Norman?”
Shaw sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumped, his hands clasped between his thighs.
“She said she was going to tell on me,” he said.
His voice wasn’t high anymore, but it remained petulant.
“A high school dropout,” he said. “She said she didn’t like some of the things we did.”
“You were paying for those things,” Jesse said encouragingly.
“That’s right, and this little dropout whore… I’m a best-selling author. I had too much to lose.”
Shaw stopped.
“You shoot her?” Jesse said.
Shaw didn’t answer. “God,” he said. “I need a drink.”
“You shoot her?”
Shaw’s voice sounded hoarse. “Yes,” he said.
Chapter Sixty-five
They were in Swampscott, walking on Fisherman’s Beach, near where they had first eaten lunch together. Jesse was chewing gum.
“How did Billie’s parents react?” Lilly said.
“The old man got up without saying anything and walked out of the house. The mother didn’t flinch. Told me she’d lost her daughter a long time ago.”
“God,” Lilly said. “What about the other one? The one who brought him the girls?”
“Alan Garner.”
“Yes.”
