They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.