After a silence, Brophy said quietly: “I have one.” From the inside pocket of his jacket, he produced the photo. It was a casual snapshot of Maura seated at her kitchen table, a glass of red wine in front of her. Compared with the somber photo from the ME’s office, this 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.”
THERE 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 twitched this way and that, as though dancing to some erratic beat coming through his receiver.
“That’s her,” Daniel said softly.
The dark-haired woman was at the very edge of the screen, her face caught in profile. No wonder Jane had missed seeing it the first time: Maura was weaving through the lobby with half a dozen people standing between her and the camera. Only at that instant, as she walked past a gap in the crowd, did the lens capture her image.
“Not a very clear shot,” said Queenan.
“I know it’s her,” said Daniel, staring at Maura with undisguised yearning. “It’s her face, her haircut. And I recognize the parka.”
“Let’s see if we can get any other views,” said Gabriel. He moved the recording forward, frame by frame. Maura’s dark hair reappeared, bobbing in and out of view as she moved past. Only at the very edge of the screen did she emerge again from the crowd. She was wearing dark pants and a white ski parka with a furred hood. Gabriel advanced one more image, and Maura’s head moved beyond the frame, but half her torso was still visible.
“Well, look at that,” said Queenan, pointing. “She’s wheeling a suitcase.” He looked at Jane. “I think that settles the issue, doesn’t it? She packed her own bag and checked out. She wasn’t dragged from the building. As of Saturday, eight oh five, she was alive and well and leaving the hotel on her own steam.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “Call me if you see anything else worth noting.”
“You’re not staying?”
“Ma’am, we’ve sent her photo to every newspaper and TV station in the state of Wyoming. We’re fielding every call that comes in. The problem is, she-or someone who looks like her-has been sighted just about everywhere.”
“Where, exactly?” asked Jane.
“You name it, she’s been seen there. The Dinosaur Museum in Thermopolis. Grubb’s General Store in Sublette County. Eating dinner at the Irma Hotel in Cody. A dozen different places, all around the state. At the moment, I’m not sure what more I can do. Now, I don’t know your missing friend here. I don’t know what kind of woman she is. But I’m thinking that she met some guy, maybe one of those other doctors here. She packs her suitcase, checks out a day early, and they decide to drive off somewhere together. Don’t you agree that’s the most likely explanation? That she’s holed up in some hotel room with this guy, and they’re having such hot sex that she’s lost track of the calendar?”
Painfully aware that Daniel was standing beside her, Jane said: “She wouldn’t do that.”
“I can’t count the number of times people have said that to me, or some variation on those words. He’s a good husband. He’d never do that. Or: She’d never leave her kids. The point is, people surprise you. They do something crazy, and suddenly you realize you never really knew them. You must’ve dealt with that situation yourself, Detective.”
Jane could not deny it; were their roles reversed, she would probably be giving the same little speech. How people are not who you think they are, not even people you’ve loved all your life. She thought of her own parents, whose thirty-five-year marriage had disintegrated after her father’s affair with another woman. She thought of her mother’s startling transformation from dowdy housewife into a lusty divorcée in low-cut dresses. No, people are too often not who you think they are. Sometimes they do foolish and inexplicable things.