Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

looked like a different woman entirely, her face flushed with alcohol and laughter. The photo was worn around the edges from repeated handling; it was something that he probably always carried with him, to be brought out and gazed at in lonely moments. For Daniel Brophy, there must be many such moments, torn between duty and longing, between God and Maura.
    “Does she look familiar?” Queenan asked Michelle.
    The young woman frowned. “This is the same woman? She looks so different in this picture.”
    Happier. In love
.
    Michelle looked up. “You know, I think I do remember her. Was she here with her husband?”
    “She’s not married,” said Jane.
    “Oh. Well, maybe I’m thinking of the wrong woman, then.”
    “Tell us about the woman you do remember.”
    “She was with this guy. A really cute guy with blond hair.”
    Jane avoided looking at Brophy; she didn’t want to see his reaction. “What else do you remember about them?”
    “They were going out to dinner together. I remember they stopped at the desk, and he asked for directions to the restaurant. I just assumed they were married.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he was laughing and said something like, ‘You see? I
have
learned to ask for directions.’ I mean, that’s something a guy would say to his wife, right?”
    “When did you see this couple?”
    “It would have been Thursday night. Because I was off duty on Friday.”
    “And Saturday, the day she checked out? Were you working that morning?”
    “Yes, but a lot of us were on duty. That’s when the conference ended and we had all those guests checking out. I don’t remember seeing her then.”
    “Someone at the desk must have helped her check out.”
    “Actually, no,” the manager said. He held up a computer printout. “You said you wanted her room bill, so I ran off a copy. Looks like she used the in-room checkout feature on her TV. She didn’t have to stop at the desk at all when she left.”
    Queenan took the printout. Flipping through the pages, he read aloud all the charges. “Room tax. Restaurant. Internet. Restaurant. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here.”
    “If it was an in-room checkout,” Jane said, “how do we know she actually did it herself?”
    Queenan didn’t even bother to suppress a snort. “Are you suggesting that someone broke into her room? Packed up her stuff and checked out
for
her?”
    “I’m just pointing out that we don’t have proof she was actually here on Saturday morning, the day she supposedly left.”
    “What kind of proof do you need?”
    Jane turned to the manager. “You have a security camera mounted over the reception desk. How long do you keep the recordings?”
    “We’d still have the video from last week. But you’re talking about hours and hours of recordings. Hundreds of people walking through the lobby. You’d be here all week watching those.”
    “What time did she check out, according to the bill?”
    Queenan looked at the printout. “It was seven fifty-four AM.”
    “Then let’s start there. If she walked out of this hotel on her own two feet, we should be able to spot her.”
    T HERE WAS NOTHING in life so mind numbing as reviewing a surveillance video. After only thirty minutes, Jane’s neck and shoulders were sore from craning forward, trying to catch every passing figure on the monitor. It did not help matters that Queenan kept sighing and fidgeting in his chair, making it clear to everyone else in the room that he thought this was a fool’s errand. And maybe it is, thought Jane as she watched figures twitch across the screen, groups gathering and dispersing. As the time stamp moved toward eight AM, and dozens of hotel guests converged on the reception desk for checkout, her attention was pulled in too many directions at once.
    It was Daniel who spotted her. “There!” he said.
    Gabriel froze the recording. Jane counted at least two dozen people captured in that freeze-frame of the lobby, most of them standing near the desk. Others were caught in the background, clustered near the lobby chairs. Two men stood talking on their cell phones, and both were simultaneously looking at their watches. Welcome to the era of the compulsive multitasker.
    Queenan said: “I don’t see her.”
    “Go back,” said Daniel. “I’m sure it was her.”
    Gabriel reversed the sequence, frame by frame. They watched as people walked backward, as groups broke apart and new clusters formed. One of the cell phone talkers