Free Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen Page A

“May I take this?”
    “Be my guest,” Chaz said automatically. Then, after a moment’s thought: “Can I ask what for?”
    “Just in case.”
    “Yeah?”
    “In case something turns up later,” Rolvaag said, “a body part or whatever. I don’t mean to be graphic, Mr. Perrone, but it occasionally happens.”
    “Oh, I see. You want a sample of Joey’s DNA.”
    “That’s right. The hair on this brush should be enough to establish a match, if necessary,” the detective said. “Do you mind?”
    “Course not.” Without missing a beat, Chaz snatched a couple of purses off the bed and dropped them into the box.
    Rolvaag slipped Joey’s brush into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. He said, “There’ve been incidents here in Florida where a fisherman hauls in some huge shark and it’s flopping around the deck of the boat and all of a sudden it regurgitates part of a human body. And this can be, like, weeks after the person has gone missing. Meantime, the shark might’ve swum two or three hundred miles—”
    Chaz interrupted with a queasy grimace: “I get the picture.”
    “Sorry, Mr. Perrone. You probably studied cases like that at Rosenstiel.”
    Chaz’s gaze flickered briefly from the box to the detective’s face. “Yes, we did.” He heard an edginess in his own voice. Rolvaag had been checking up on him.
    “Take whatever you need,” Chaz offered, motioning toward the pile of Joey’s things. “I’m willing to do anything if there’s a chance to bring closure.”
    The detective gave a smile that Chaz chose to read as sympathetic. “Closure would be good,” Rolvaag said. “Painful sometimes, but still a step forward. I’m sorry to have intruded on your privacy.”
    Chaz walked him to the door and said, “The Coast Guard called. They quit searching at noon.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    With simulated chagrin, Chaz added, “Three thousand square miles and they couldn’t find a damn thing.”
    “Oh, they found something,” Rolvaag said, freezing Chaz with one hand on the knob. “Four bales of marijuana. That’s it.”
    Chaz waited for the rush of nausea to subside. “Whoop-de-doo,” he said. “I’m sure they’re scared shitless down in Colombia.”
    “Actually, the stuff was Jamaican. But you’re right, they’ll never figure out who dumped it, or even where. The Gulf Stream probably dragged it all the way up the islands.”
    Chaz snorted. “From Bermuda, maybe. Not Jamaica.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The Gulf Stream? It flows from north to south.”
    Rolvaag’s blond eyebrows crinkled. “Not the last time I was out there,” he said. “I’m pretty certain it goes the other way, Mr. Perrone. To the north.”
    Chaz lapsed into an unplanned coughing jag. What if the lame-ass detective isn’t wrong? he wondered despondently. That meant the ocean currents had carried Joey’s body from the remote perimeter of the search-and-rescue zone into the bull’s-eye.
    “Heck, you might be right.” Chaz cleared his throat. “My brain’s so scrambled today, I couldn’t tell the sun from the moon.”
    “I understand completely. You get some rest,” Rolvaag said, and headed out to his car.
    Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren’t sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. He had a fleeting urge to phone one of his former professors and settle the question, but that would have invited scorn that Chaz was in no mood to suffer. It was one of the rare times that he regretted having been such a slacker in school.
    Quickly he returned to the chore of removing his late wife’s belongings, consoling himself with the knowledge that sharks off the coast of Miami Beach were as indiscriminate in their feeding habits as the ones in the Keys. Joey undoubtedly had been gobbled by one, the strongest evidence being the absence of a corpse.
    When Ricca phoned, though, Chaz