Sunset Beach(75)

“How can I help?” he asked, approaching Drue.

She held up the flash drive. “I’d like to use a computer to watch this video.”

He nodded. “Do you have a library card?”

“No.”

“Well, if you have your driver’s license, I can get you fixed up with a card and then you’ll be free to use materials at any library on the beach.”

Drue handed over her license with her old Fort Lauderdale address.

“Oh.” He frowned and handed it back. “Actually, you need to be a Pinellas County resident.”

“I am,” she explained. “But I just moved here a month ago.”

He smiled. “When you come back, bring in a piece of mail that shows your current address and we’ll get you fixed up.”

“I can’t get fixed up today?”

“I wish. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. What I can do is give you a temporary three-month library card. It’ll cost twenty-five dollars.”

She sighed, but dug her billfold from her backpack and slid the money across the counter.



* * *



With her new library card stashed away, Drue sat down at a computer terminal, logged in with her library card number and plugged the flash drive into the monitor.

She leaned forward, staring intently at the somewhat blurry black-and-white images on the screen.

The first sequence on the video, time-stamped 11:05 P.M., showed a wide angle of the hotel hallway. A petite, slender woman appeared, pushing a cart just like the one Drue had seen in the Gulf Vista laundry room. The housekeeper wore a short-sleeved button-front uniform smock, jeans and tennis shoes, and a baseball cap whose bill partially obscured her face.

The housekeeper paused in front of a doorway and used a key card hanging from a lanyard around her neck to unlock the door.

The door opened and the housekeeper pushed through with the laundry cart. Nearly two and a half hours later, according to the time stamp, the same hotel room door opened and the same housekeeper emerged, pushing the cart.

Drue watched while the woman waited in front of a service elevator. A video camera mounted in the elevator then showed the housekeeper in the elevator, staring down at the cart. The elevator doors opened, and the video went fuzzy. In the next clip, the woman was shown pushing the cart down a walkway that Drue recognized as the service entrance to the Gulf Vista’s laundry room. The lighting was much dimmer, but she recognized the laundry room, with its door ajar. The housekeeper pushed the cart through, then closed the door. The computer screen went black.

Drue watched the video clip half a dozen more times, trying to gain some kind of insight into the night of Jazmin’s murder.

She pulled her cell phone from her backpack, but another, crew-cut librarian looked over at her from the front desk and pointed to a large ceiling-mounted sign: CELL PHONE USAGE PROHIBITED IN LIBRARY.

Drue nodded, palmed the flash drive and walked outside the library. She got into the Bronco and called Rae Hernandez.

The detective answered after two rings.

“What? I thought I told you my son has a baseball tournament today. I’m busy.”

“I know, and I’m sorry to bother you. Please tell your husband I said thanks for dropping off the flash drive.”

“What flash drive?”

“Oh. Right. I forgot. An anonymous tipster left an envelope on the front seat of my car this morning. There was a flash drive. It had video clips from the security cameras at the Gulf Vista the night Jazmin was killed.”

“Okay, we’ve established that. Now, what’s your point?”

“Is that all you have for the video? I mean, nothing from that hotel room Jazmin entered?”

“Hotels don’t have video cameras in people’s private rooms. At least, not the legit ones. That’s illegal.”

“Right. Forget I asked that. Isn’t there any other video from that day, something else that shows her?”

“Sure. There’s like eight hours of video of her doing her job. There’s a video of her clocking in. And buying a Dr Pepper from a vending machine by the pool.”

“The hotel has a parking lot reserved for employees, right?”

“Yeah. On the lowest level of the hotel, same level as the loading dock.”

“Was there a security camera down there?”

Silence.

“Rae? Detective Hernandez?”

“I’m trying to remember. It’s been two years, you know. Lots of cases since then.”

“But no other cases where a young single mom is beaten and strangled and tossed in with a load of dirty sheets and towels,” Drue said.

“Okay, yeah. There was a security camera in the parking garage. We looked at all the footage. As far as I can remember, there was nothing remarkable, except for some busboys smoking what we assumed was reefer, and a male desk clerk and female housekeeper engaged in what could be called a mutually rewarding act of intimacy.”

“They were having sex? Right there in the parking garage?”

“Going at it like it was their job, in the backseat of a Subaru,” Hernandez confirmed. “So lots of comings and goings. Literally.”

“Ha-ha,” Drue said.

“Is that it now?” Hernandez asked. “The Red Wings are at bat. I gotta go.”