“The nature of the crime,” Rae said. “Jazmin wasn’t sexually assaulted, but she was badly beaten around the head and face. That’s not typically a stranger-to-stranger crime. Somebody had some kind of anger issues with her. And remember, she was strangled. We figure the assailant was a man because there aren’t a lot of women who have the strength, or the stomach, to do something that violent.”

Drue thought that over. “I read Zee’s reports. I thought it was interesting that so many of the employees who worked directly with Jazmin left the hotel not long after she was killed.”

“Lot of turnover there,” Rae agreed. “Head of housekeeping, engineering, the security guard who was first on scene and called the cops. When I asked the hotel manager about it, he said that’s the nature of the hospitality industry.”

“And the manager was never a suspect?” Drue asked.

“Gene Wardlaw? No. He wasn’t even in town. Ironically enough, it turns out he was interviewing for another job at a hotel in Daytona Beach. Which he subsequently took.”

Drue let out a long sigh.

“Yeah. It’s frustrating as hell, not being able to find the guy who did this. Yvonne calls me every Sunday night, like clockwork, asking for updates. I tell you, it haunts me sometimes.”

“It’s haunting me, and I haven’t been working it for the past two years,” Drue admitted. She glanced at the detective, trying to gauge just how sympathetic she might be to her cause.

“I even went over to the hotel and checked out the laundry room where she was killed,” she added.

Rae Hernandez raised a dubious eyebrow. “How’d you get in? Nothing like closing the barn door after the cow got out, but I know they really ramped up security after the murder.”

“A friend went with me and we told the security guard at the gate that we were considering the hotel as our wedding venue.”

“Ballsy move, but I wouldn’t recommend trying that again,” Hernandez said. “Technically, they could probably have you arrested for criminal trespass.”

“One thing I noticed in that laundry room,” Drue continued. “There were mounting brackets on the wall, over the doorway. So, at one time there was a video camera there? Did you guys look into that?”

“We did. Brian Shelnutt, the head of security, said the camera had been broken for ‘a while.’ He couldn’t tell us how long that was. He said it had been removed and another one ordered.”

“Convenient,” Drue said. “Did you believe him?”

Hernandez removed her sunglasses and polished them on the hem of her shirt before donning them. “I rarely believe anybody. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“Something I’ve been wondering about,” Drue said, finally getting to the matter she’d wanted to raise since the beginning of this meeting.

“What’s that?”

“Wondering if you’d let me see the video from the hotel.”