Carl Hiaasen - Skin Tight

Dreeson made a face and shut the door, hard.

Stranahan opened the jacket, and the first thing to fall out was a photograph of Victoria Barletta. Class picture, clipped from the 1985 University of Miami student yearbook. Long dark hair, brushed to a shine; big dark eyes; a long sharp nose, probably her old man’s; gorgeous Italian smile, warm and laughing and honest.

Stranahan set the picture aside. He had never met the girl, never would.

He skimmed the statements taken so long ago by himself and Timmy Gavigan: the parents, the boyfriend, the sorority sisters. The details of the case came back to him quickly in a cold flood.

On March 12, 1986, Victoria Barletta had gotten up early, jogged three miles around the campus, showered, attended a 9 a.m. class in advanced public relations, met her boyfriend at a breakfast shop near Mark Light Field, then bicycled to an 11 a.m. seminar on the history of television news. Afterwards, Vicky went back to the Alpha Chi Omega house, changed into jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt, and asked a sorority sister to give her a lift to a doctor’s appointment in South Miami, only three miles from the university.

The appointment was scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at a medical building called the Durkos Center. As Vicky got out of the car, she instructed her friend to come back at about 5 p.m.and pick her up. Then she went inside and got a nose job and was never seen again.

According to a doctor and a nurse at the clinic, Vicky Barletta left the office at about 4:50 p.m. to wait on the bus bench out front for her ride back to campus. Her face was splotched, her eyes swollen to slits, and her nose heavily bandaged-not exactly a tempting sight for your average trolling rapist, Timmy Gavigan had pointed out.

Still, they both knew better than to rule it out. One minute the girl was on the bench, the next she was gone.

Three county buses had stopped there between 4:50 and 5:14 p.m., when Vicky’s friend finally arrived at the clinic. None of the bus drivers remembered seeing a woman with a busted-up face get on board.

So the cops were left to assume that somebody snatched Victoria Barletta off the bus bench moments after she emerged from the Durkos Center.

The case was treated like a kidnapping, though Gavigan and Stranahan suspected otherwise. The Barlettas had no money and no access to any; Vicky’s father was half-owner of a car wash in Evanston, Illinois. Aside from a couple of cranks, there were no ransom calls made to the family, or to the police. The girl was just plain gone, and undoubtedly dead.

Rereading the file four years later, Mick Stranahan began to feel frustrated all over again. It was the damnedest thing: Vicky had told no one-not her parents, her boyfriend, nobody-about the cosmetic surgery; apparently it was meant to be a surprise. Stranahan and Timmy Gavigan had spent a total of fifteen hours interviewing Vicky’s boyfriend and wound up believing him. The kid had cried pathetically; he used to tease Vicky about her shnoz. “My little anteater,” he used to call her. The boyfriend had been shattered by what happened, and blamed himself: His birthday was March twentieth. Obviously, he sobbed, the new nose was Vicky’s present to him.

From a homicide investigator’s point of view, the secrecy with which Victoria Barletta planned her doctor’s visit meant something else: It limited the suspects to somebody who just happened to be passing by, a random psychopath.

A killer who was never caught.

A victim who was never found.

That was how Mick Stranahan remembered it. He scribbled a few names and numbers on a pad, stuffed everything into the file, then carried it back to a pock-faced clerk.

“Tell me something,” Stranahan said, “how’d you happen to have this one downtown?”

The clerk said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this place didn’t used to be so efficient. Used to take two weeks to dig out an old case like this.”

“You just got lucky,” the clerk said. “We pulled the file from the warehouse a week ago.”

“This file here?” Stranahan tapped the green folder. “Same one?”

“Mr. Eckert wanted to see it.”

Gerry Eckert was the State Attorney. He hadn’t personally gone to court in at least sixteen years, so Stranahan doubted if he even remembered how to read a file.

“So how’s old Gerry doing?”

“Just dandy,” said the clerk, as if Eckert were his closest, dearest pal in the world. “He’s doing real good.”

“Don’t tell me he’s finally gonna pop somebody in this case.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Stranahan. He just wanted to refresh his memory before he went on TV. The Reynaldo Flemm show.”

Stranahan whistled. Reynaldo Flemm was a television journalist who specialized in sensational crime cases. He was nationally famous for getting beaten up on camera, usually by the very hoodlums he was trying to interview. No matter what kind of elaborate disguise Reynaldo Flemm would devise, he was always too vain to cover his face. Naturally the crooks would recognize him instantly and bash the living shit out of him. For pure action footage, it was hard to beat; Reynaldo Flemm’s specials were among the highest-rated programs on television.

“So Gerry’s hit the big time,” Stranahan said.

“Yep,” the clerk said.

“What did he say about this case?”

“Mr. Eckert?”

“Yeah, what he did he tell this TV guy?”

The clerk said, “Well, I wasn’t there for the taping. But from what I heard, Mr. Eckert said the whole thing is still a mystery.”

“Well, that’s true enough.”

“And Mr. Eckert told Mr. Flemm that he wouldn’t be one bit surprised if someday it turns out that Victoria Barletta ran away. Just took one look at her face and ran away. Otherwise, why haven’t they found a body?”

Stranahan thought: Eckert hasn’t changed a bit, still dumb as a bull gator.

“I can’t wait to see the show,” Stranahan remarked.

“It’s scheduled to be on March twelfth at nine p.m.” The clerk held up a piece of paper. “We got a memo from Mr. Eckert today.”

The man from New Jersey did not call Dr. Rudy Graveline again for four days. Then, on the afternoon of January eighth, Rudy got a message on his beeper. The beeper went off at a bad moment, when Rudy happened to be screwing the young wife of a Miami Dolphins wide receiver. The woman had come to Whispering Palms for a simple consult-a tiny pink scar along her jawline, could it be fixed?-and the next thing she knew, the doctor had her talking about all kinds of personal things, including how lonely it got at home during the football season when Jake’s mind was on the game and nothing else. Well, the next thing she knew, the doctor was taking her to lunch in his black Jaguar sedan with the great Dolby sound system, and the football player’s wife found herself thinking how the rich smell of leather upholstery made her hot, really hot, and then-as if he could read her mind-the doctor suddenly pulled off the Julia Tuttle Causeway, parked the Jag in some pepper trees, and started to gnaw her panties off. He even made cute little squirrel noises as he nuzzled between her legs.

Before long the doctor was merrily pounding away while the football player’s wife gazed up at him through the spokes of the walnut steering wheel, under which her head had become uncomfortably wedged.

When the beeper went off on Dr. Graveline’s belt, he scarcely missed a beat. He glanced down at the phone number (glowing in bright green numerals) and snatched the car phone from its cradle in the glove box. With one hand he managed to dial the long-distance number even as he finished with the football player’s wife, who by this time was silently counting down, hoping he’d hurry it up. She’d had about all she could take of the smell of new leather.