SKIN TIGHT by Carl Hiaasen

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.”

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