Chapter Twenty-three

It took Molly a day on the phone to find the shelters in Boston run by nuns. There were three. Jesse found the right nun on his first try. Her name was Sister Mary John and she ran a shelter in the basement of a church in Jamaica Plain. When Jesse came in, Sister was sitting on the corner of a plywood banquet table with folding metal legs that obviously served as her desk. She was red-haired, wearing a black sweat suit with a white stripe on the sleeves. The only sign of her calling was a small gold cross on a thin gold chain that hung around her neck.

"Are you sure you're a nun?" Jesse said.

"Pretty sure," Sister said.

Jesse smiled.

"You talked with Molly Crane on the phone about a missing girl."

"Yes."

Jesse took out a blowup of Billie, processed from the family picture, and held it out for Sister Mary John to look at. Sister nodded her head slowly.

"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.

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