“There are now, though,” Drue said dryly. “That’s how Shelnutt’s security guard saw me climbing up.”

“After Jazmin was killed, Gulf Vista’s owners took a look at the hotel’s security lapses and beefed up everything,” Brice said, looking at his daughter. “If I’d known you were going over there tonight I could have saved you from getting arrested.”

“No, you would have stopped me from going altogether,” Drue said. “But that’s not the point, Dad.”

“So Byars decides to deal with Jazmin that night, after she gets off shift,” Hernandez said slowly. “But not in his office, because that’s too public. He uses a room he’s probably used before for that kind of thing.”

“He was head of housekeeping, so he had plenty of access to stepladders or whatever else he needed,” Drue agreed. “And if anybody stopped to ask what he was doing, he could say he was changing a lightbulb or something like that.”

Hernandez took a sip of coffee, made a face and pushed it away. “I don’t think he planned on killing Jazmin. It was an impulse. Maybe he just intended to have sex with her. She resisted, which either pissed him off or turned him on, or both.”

“If I remember correctly,” Brice said quietly, “the medical examiner said Jazmin had been beaten and strangled.”

“I think she tried to fight him off, and maybe he bashed her with something in the room. Like a lamp or something,” Hernandez said. “The medical examiner said she was choked with a ligature. Maybe an electrical cord.”

An image of the young mother flashed in Drue’s mind, of Jazmin, alone and fighting for her life in that shabby hotel room. She felt queasy.

Drue sipped from her water glass, trying to choke back the nausea.

“I think you’re right about it being an impulse killing,” she told Hernandez. “Byars was a perv and a predator, until things got out of hand. After he realized what he’d done, he had to act fast.”

“Which is when he called his girlfriend, Neesa,” Hernandez said.

“I think Byars ordered her to come to that room and climb up onto the balcony. Once she was inside, he had her clean up the room. They loaded the body into the laundry cart, Neesa shoved all those dreads up under Jazmin’s cap, and off she went.”

“With best friends like that, who needs enemies?” Drue said bleakly.

“He probably planned to move the body off the hotel property, but he didn’t get the chance, because there was some kind of screwup, and Lutrisha found it. In the meantime, by the time our officers responded to the Gulf Vista, the murder scene had been cleaned up,” Hernandez said.

Brice put out his hand and gently closed the cover of the laptop. He looked at Drue. “You say you’ve got a copy of this video?”