Again, she saw the shadowy figure of the housekeeper slowly roll the laundry cart toward a door at the end of a long, narrow hallway. Jazmin’s face was obscured by the bill of her baseball cap as she hesitated in front of the door, but when she raised her head to slide her key lanyard from her neck, Drue spotted the girl’s distinctive pointed chin. She watched as Jazmin passed the key card over the door lock, then pushed the door open.

At 1:32 A.M. the door to the room opened. The laundry cart emerged from the room, followed by Jazmin, whose head was bowed as she walked rapidly away from the room.

Drue watched as the girl’s figure moved out of camera range. She paused the video, reversed and watched it again. Something was different, she thought. The most obvious thing was the housekeeper’s energy level. When the girl approached the room she was trudging, clearly exhausted at the end of a long night. But when she emerged, two and a half hours later, she moved at a near-run.

Drue paused the video again, staring down at the back of the housekeeper’s head. Something else was different too. She didn’t know what it meant, but she was sure it had to mean something. She reached for her phone and called Rae Hernandez. When the call went straight to voice mail, she left a message: “Rae, call me, please. I think I figured something out.”

She went back to work, glancing at her phone every fifteen minutes, until finally it rang, and she saw UNKNOWN CALLER flash across the caller ID screen.

46

She snatched the phone up. “Hey.”

“You’re starting to get on my nerves with all these phone calls,” Rae Hernandez said.

Drue said eagerly, “Look, I’ve got lots to tell you, which is why I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“So you said. What’s up?”

The words came tumbling out, and even to Drue it sounded like she was babbling.

“I went over to the Silver Sands motel the other night and talked to Jazmin’s boyfriend. He told me that when he worked at the Gulf Vista, Shelnutt, the head of security, and some of his cronies there used to get together in a vacant room to watch footage from the security cameras—of half-dressed or nearly naked women at the beach or pool, couples having sex in the elevators. Porn parties, Jorge called them. I also then managed to track down Neesa Vincent, the housekeeper who was Jazmin’s best friend. And she admitted to me—”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hernandez demanded. “Who told you to go around interviewing my witnesses?”

“I wasn’t really interviewing them, I was just talking, and I think they told me stuff they might not tell a cop…”