Page 116 of Sunset Beach
The detective restarted the video. Jazmin donned her baseball cap and left the room, pushing a housekeeping cart. Neesa, however, lingered. She pulled out her own phone, pausing to light a cigarette, before tucking the lighter in her pocket. The video showed the housekeeper walking toward the locker room door, opening it and waving the smoke outside.
“Wonder who she was calling?” Drue said.
Hernandez cued up the video and Drue watched for another hour as Gulf Vista’s security cameras captured the young housekeeper trundling her cart down narrow hotel hallways, pushing it in and out of rooms, and eventually, at the 7:30P.M.mark, entering a drab room with vending machines and five or six tables and chairs.
“The break room,” Hernandez said. The video showed Jazmin entering, inserting coins into a soft drink machine and retrieving a drink. Then she sat at a table, alone. She removed her cap, talked on her cell phone, then appeared to be typing something into the phone.
“Did you find Jazmin’s cell phone after she was killed?” Drue asked.
“No.” Hernandez shrugged. “Unfortunately, Jazmin was in the habit of buying cheap burner phones at Walmart, because she couldn’t afford a contract. Probably the killer took that phone and destroyed it. We got Yvonne Howington to try calling it, off and on for the next three days, but there was never an answer.”
“Do you know who she texted that night?”
“It was a teacher at her daughter’s school. Nothing of interest.”
“No sign of Neesa,” Drue pointed out. “Which means she lied when she told me she and Jazmin got together during their break that night.”
The two women continued watching as Jazmin and her cart worked a route through the hotel hallways, each time stopping outside a room and consulting a printed list. Occasionally, Jazmin picked up a small handheld radio and spoke into it.
“Who’s she talking to?” Drue asked.
“The front desk. The clerks call housekeepers to determine whether a room has been cleaned and is ready for check-in, or they’ll call up to have more towels or soaps delivered to a room if a guest requests it,” Hernandez said.
“She cleaned a total of twelve rooms that night,” Hernandez said. “Trust me, there’s nothing more worth watching, so I’m gonna speed it up to show you the last room Jazmin cleaned that night, room 133, because I’m tired and I want to go home and see my family and take a bath.”
Drue thought better of protesting.
“Here we go,” Hernandez said, pausing the video at the 11:05 point.
The video showed a housekeeper in a Gulf Vista smock and baseball cap stopped outside a room. The woman passed her key card over the door’s lock and entered. At 1:32, she emerged from the room and set off down the hallway with the cart, getting into the elevator, then walking down the walkway to the laundry room.
“And that’s it,” Hernandez said. “The last time we have her on camera.”
“Can you back that up so I can see it again?” Drue asked.
Hernandez sighed dramatically but did as her guest asked.
Drue leaned in closer, staring at the computer screen. The angle of thesecurity camera showed the housekeeper from above, but her face was obscured by the bill of the baseball cap.
“That last room she cleaned, did you guys find anything there?” Drue asked.
“Nothing. Turns out Jazmin was a really thorough worker,” Hernandez said. “We questioned the last guest who’d stayed in the room, but he didn’t know anything. He checked out late that afternoon because he had a family emergency. In fact, we checkedallthe rooms in that wing the next morning, and found zip.”
“Meaning, you never discovered where she was killed,” Drue said.
“It’s a big property. Two hundred rooms, guests checking in and out, and hotel staff busy cleaning up what could have been evidence.”
Hernandez stood up, stretched and yawned. “Okay, party’s over. I’m out, and so are you.”
Drue hesitated. “I’d really like to watch that video again. All of it.”
“No way,” Hernandez retorted. “I’m not hanging around here for another minute. And you’re done poking your nose in police business.”
“You could just transfer it to a flash drive,” Drue suggested. “I’ll take it with me and watch it again. Who knows? Maybe a fresh set of eyes will catch something you missed.”
Hernandez shook her head again and muttered something under her breath. But ten minutes later Drue was back in the white Bronco, the flash drive tucked securely in her purse.
47
