Darwin's Blade

9 “I is for Witness”

Syd came knocking early on Saturday morning, but Dar was already up, showered, shaved, and with coffee and breakfast ready. Syd ate bacon and eggs happily and refilled her coffee cup twice.

Before starting work, Dar took her on a long walking tour of the property: the ravine to the east with its abandoned gold mine, the stream that fed into the canyon, the small waterfall up the hill bridged by a fallen tree that looked too slick and mossy to cross, the rock slabs and boulders along the high ridge to the north, the stands of birch trees and acres of thick pine on the hillside just above the cabin, and the endless fields of grass in the valley below. All during the walk, Dar felt the same pleasure that had shocked him so much the night before—the strange awareness of Syd’s physical self, the warmth of her smile, the glow that her tone of voice and laughter gave him.

Cut it out, Darwin, he warned himself.

“I know this is a forbidden question between men and women anymore,” said Syd, stopping and looking straight at him, “but what are you thinking about, Dar? I can hear the gears meshing from two feet away.”

She was only two feet away. When Dar stopped, he almost surrendered to the urge to put his arms around her, draw her closer, set his face against the curve of her neck just beneath her ear, just where her hair curled onto her neck, just to breathe in her fragrance.

“Billy Jim Langley,” he said at last, taking half a step back.

Syd cocked her head.

Dar pointed to the south. “An accident I worked a year or so ago way back in the national forest there. Want to hear it? Want to solve it?”

“Sure.”

Dar cleared his throat. “OK—I was called out to the scene of a suspected homicide about five miles back in the woods there—”

“This isn’t the murder you promised me last night, is it?”

Dar shook his head. “Anyway, a Mr. Billy James Langley, one of Larry and Trudy’s CalState insureds, was reported missing a day after he should have returned from a fishing trip. The sheriff drove back toward Billy Jim’s favorite fishing hole and found his pickup—a seventy-eight Ford 250—upside down in a creek. Billy Jim was inside. Drowned. It looked as if he had run off a little bridge in the darkness the night before and not been able to get out of the cab of the pickup in time. The coroner confirmed the time.”

“Where’s the suspected homicide?” she asked

“Well, when the coroner removed Billy Jim’s body,” said Dar, “he pronounced the cause of death as drowning. But it seems as if Billy Jim had also been shot with a 22-caliber bullet…”

“Where?” said Syd.

“While driving his truck,” said Dar.

“No, I mean where on his body?”

Dar hesitated. “Once. In the…ah…groin area.”

“Testicles?” said Syd.

“One of them.”

“Left or right testicle?” said Syd.

“Do you think it matters?” said Dar.

“Doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Left or right?” said Syd.

“Right,” said Dar. “Can I get on with the story?”

They walked down the hill together.

“OK,” said Syd, “we have a Mr. Billy James Langley coming back from a fishing trip in the dark. Suddenly he gets shot in the right ball and—not surprisingly—is startled enough to drive his pickup into the creek and then drowns. Let me guess: no. 22 rifle or pistol in the pickup?”

“Right,” said Dar.

“Entrance or exit holes in the truck?” said Syd. “It’d have to be a pretty flimsy pickup to let a .22 pass through, and Ford 250s aren’t flimsy.”

“No entrance or exit holes,” said Dar. “Except in Billy Jim.”

“Windows rolled up?”

“Yeah. It was raining hard the night Billy Jim was driving out from his favorite fishing hole.”

“After dark, right?” said Syd.

“Right. About eleven P.M.”

“I’ve got it,” said Syd.

Dar stopped walking. “Really?” It had taken him two hours at the scene to figure it out.

“Really,” said Syd. “Billy Jim didn’t have a .22 rifle or pistol along, but I bet he had a box of cartridges in the cab, right?”

“In the glove box,” said Dar.

“And I bet Billy Jim’s headlights went off on the way out.”

Dar sighed. “Yeah—my guess was about a mile and a half short of the bridge.”

Syd nodded. “About how long it would take for the. 22 cartridge to heat up and discharge,” said Syd. “I know those Ford pickups. The fuse box for the lights is right under the panel in front of the steering wheel. Your Billy Jim is driving along, the headlights go out, he can’t keep driving in the rain but he wants to get home, so he pokes around, figures the fuse has blown…hunts around for something in the cab the right size to replace the fuse…A .22 cartridge fits perfectly…He drives on, not thinking about the cartridge heating up. And then it fires…”

“Well, I guess it wasn’t much of a mystery after all,” said Dar.

Syd shrugged. “Hey, I’m starved. Can we have lunch before we tackle your real mystery?”

They made roast beef sandwiches for lunch, grabbed beers, and took them out onto the porch. The day was getting hot and they had long since doffed their denim jackets. Syd wore an oversized T-shirt with the tail out, to cover the holster on her hip. Dar wore a faded old black T-shirt with equally faded blue jeans and running shoes. The cabin itself was shaded by tall ponderosa pine and small birch, but the valley opening before them was bright with summer grass and willows, all seeming to ripple in the wind and heat haze. They sat on the edge of the high porch and dangled their legs.

Syd asked, “Doesn’t all the death, pain, suffering you witness…investigate…weigh you down after a while?”

If she had asked Dar that question twenty-four hours earlier, he probably would have answered I imagine it’s a little like being a doctor. After a bit you become…not calloused, that’s not the word…but you have a perspective for it all. It’s your job, right? And he would have believed it. But now he was not so sure. Perhaps something had changed him over the past decade or more. All that he knew at this instant was that—contrary to all intentions and expectations—he would like to kiss Chief Investigator Sydney Olson on her full lips, press her back against the redwood deck, feel the softness of her breasts against him…

“I don’t know,” he managed to say, chewing on his sandwich. He had forgotten her question.

The file was in a regular manila folder, was stamped Closed, and was at least three inches thick with documents. Dar set two wheeled chairs at his desk near the large CAD computers. Syd sat to his right as he laid out the documents in front of her.

“You see the date of the accident,” he said.

“Seven weeks ago.” Syd glanced down at the LAPD Traffic Collision Report. “East L.A…. a little far afield, weren’t you?”

“Not really,” said Dar. “Some of these cases take me as far north as your neck of the woods…Sacramento and San Francisco…and even out of state.”

“Did the LAPD Traffic Investigation Unit call you in freelance on this one? I know both Sergeant Rote of the TIU and Detective Bob Ventura, whose name is on the investigation report here.”

Dar shook his head. “Lawrence was in Arizona working a case, so Trudy asked me to follow up on this. The client was the van rental company.”

Syd looked at the initial collision report. “A GMC Vandura…red. Small moving van?”

“Yeah. Read the reporting officer’s statement.”

Syd read it aloud:

“COLLISION LOCATION, 1200 MARLBORO AVE. (N. FRONTAGE ROAD).

“ORIGIN: AT ABOUT 0245 HRS., MAY 19, I WAS TRANS PORTING A PRISONER TO THE EAST LOS ANGELES WOMEN’S DETENTION FACILITY WHEN I HEARD A REPORT OF A FATAL ACCIDENT IN THE AREA OF MARLBOROAVE. AND FOUNTAIN BLVD. I ASKED THE DISPATCHER IF SHE COULD FIND A UNIT THAT COULD MEET ME AT E. 109TH ST. AND I–5 SO AS TO TRANSPORT MY PRISONER THE REST OF THE WAY TO THE DETENTION FACILITY, SO I COULD IN TURN RESPOND TO THE ACCIDENT. OFFICER JONES #2485 RESPONDED IMMEDIATELY AND TOOK OVER THE TRANSPORT. I ARRIVED AT THE SCENE AT ABOUT 0300 HOURS. WHEN I ARRIVED THE SCENE HAD BEEN SECURED BY PATROL UNITS. SGT. MCKAY, #2662 (TRAFFIC SUPERVISOR), OFFICER BERRY #3501 AND OFFICER CLANCEY #4423 WERE ALREADY ON SCENE. THE 1200 BLOCK OF MARLBORO WAS BLOCKED OFF TO ALL THROUGH TRAFFIC FROM FOUNTAIN BLVD. TO GRAMERCY ST.

“STREET DESCRIPTION: 1200 MARLBORO AVE. (N. FRONTAGE ROAD) IS A WEST BOUND ONE-WAY STREET. FOUNTAIN BLVD. TO THE EAST IS A NORTH AND SOUTH BOUND STREET. GRAMERCY ST., TO THE WEST, IS ALSO A NORTH AND SOUTH BOUND STREET. 1200 MARLBORO AVE. (N. FRONTAGE ROAD) HAS A.098 W/E GRADE, UPHILL. THE CLOSEST LIGHTING ON THE STREET WAS PROVIDED BY OFF STREET LIGHTS AND INTERSECTION LIGHTS. THE UN-POSTED SPEED LIMIT IS 25 MPH FOR THAT STRETCH OF ROADWAY.

“WEATHER CONDITIONS: AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT IT WAS CLOUDY AND OVERCAST. IT WAS RAINING AND THE TEMPERATURE WAS COOL AND SLIGHTLY WINDY. IT WAS NIGHT TIME AND THE MOON WAS NOT SHINING THROUGH THE CLOUD COVER.

“VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION: THE GMC VANDURA (V-2) DISPLAYED LARGE U-RENTAL TRUCK DECALS ON ALL 4 SIDES. A CHECK OF THE VEHICLE’S LICENSE PLATE REVEALED THERE WAS NO RECORD TO BE FOUND.

“DRIVER IDENTIFICATION: MISS GENNIE SMILEY WAS IDENTIFIED AS THE DRIVER OF THE VEHICLE PER HER CALIFORNIA DRIVER’S LICENSE, HER OWN STATEMENT, AND DONALD M. BORDEN’S STATEMENT.

“VEHICLE DAMAGE: THERE WAS SLIGHT DAMAGE TO THE FRONT GRILL OF THE GMC VANDURA. THE GRILL WAS BENT INWARD APPROXIMATELY THREE INCHES AT ITS FURTHEST INCURSION AND THERE WERE FIBERS FROM THE VICTIM’S SWEATER EMBEDDED IN THE GRILL.

“INJURIES: RICHARD KODIAK SUFFERED FATAL MASSIVE HEAD TRAUMA. PETERSON #333 AND ROYLES #979 (SAMSON’S PARAMEDIC UNIT #272) RESPONDED TO THE SCENE. KODIAK WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD AT THE SCENE BY DR. CAVENAUGH OF EASTERN MERCY HOSPITAL VIA THE RADIO…”

Syd quit reading and flipped through the next few pages. “All right,” she said at last. “We have this thirty-one-year-old male, Richard Kodiak, dead of head injuries. He and his roommate, Donald Borden, were in the process of moving from East L.A. to San Francisco when a female friend, Gennie Smiley, seems to have hit Mr. Kodiak straight on with the van and then, somehow, managed also to run over him with the van’s right front wheel.” She flipped a dozen more pages. “Mr. Borden and Ms. Smiley sued the truck rental agency, stating that the brakes were inadequate and the headlights deficient—”

“Hence my involvement,” said Dar.

“—and they also sued the owners of the apartment building for not providing adequate lighting.” She flipped back twenty or thirty pages. “Ah…here it is in her statement…Ms. Smiley said that bad exterior lighting and poor rental truck headlights prevented her from seeing Kodiak when he stepped out in front of the van. They wanted six hundred thousand dollars from the van rental company.”

“And another four hundred thousand from the apartment building owner,” said Dar.

“An even million,” mused Syd. “At least they knew what their friend was worth.”

Dar rubbed his chin. “Mr. Borden and Mr. Kodiak had lived at that same address for two years and were universally known as Dickie and Donnie to their neighbors, shop owners, local restaurateurs…”

“Gay?” said Syd.

Dar nodded.

“Then who was Gennie?”

“It seems that Mr. Borden…Donnie…swings both ways. Gennie Smiley was his secret girlfriend. Dickie discovered them together…there was a row that lasted three days, according to the neighbors…and then Dickie and Donnie patched things up by agreeing to move to San Francisco.”

“Sans Gennie,” said Syd.

“Sans Gennie indeed,” said Dar. “But as a gesture of goodwill, she helped them pack up the van in preparation for moving.”

“At two forty-five A.M. on a rainy morning?” said Syd.

Dar shrugged. “Dickie and Donnie were two months in arrears on their rent. It seems they were skipping.” He turned on one of the twenty-one-inch CAD monitors and tapped out a code. “OK, here are some of the accident-scene photos as recorded by Sergeant McKay of the Traffic Investigations Unit.” An electronic version of the black-and-white photo appeared on the large screen. And another. And another.

“Uh-oh,” said Syd.

“Uh-oh,” agreed Dar.

One photo showed Mr. Kodiak’s body lying in the middle of the street about thirty feet west of the main doors of the apartment building. The body was lying facedown to the east—head toward the van—and there were visible patches of blood and brain matter spilled in both directions. Another photo showed broken glass, a single shoe, shoe scuff marks, and body scuff marks directly in front of the apartment building’s main doorway. Another photograph showed continuous, nonstriated skid marks running back almost to the turn from Fountain Boulevard some 165 feet east of the impact site. In all of the photos, the van was backed east of the point of impact, its own skid marks running at least thirty feet in front of it.

“Gennie backed up when she heard a noise and thought she may have hit something,” said Dar.

“Uh-huh,” said Syd.

“Donnie was the only witness to Dickie’s death,” said Dar, pointing to the thick sheaf of statements. “He said that the two of them had been arguing. When Gennie arrived, they asked her to drive around the block and come back…”

“Why?” said Syd.

“Donnie said that they didn’t want to argue in front of her,” said Dar. “So she came around the block, traveling about thirty miles per hour, according to her estimate. She didn’t see Dickie, who had stepped off the curb, until it was too late to stop.” Dar ran the photos across the computer screen again and then froze on the widest shot. He turned on the second monitor and tapped up a program. A three-dimensional view of the same scene appeared, but this one was computer-animated.

“You do three-D accident reconstruction videos,” said Syd. “I didn’t see the CAD monitors in your loft.”

“They’re there,” said Dar. “Tucked away in a corner behind some bookcases. Preparing these provides a big share of my income.”

Syd nodded.

“So, Chief Investigator,” said Dar, “do you see some irregularities in this accident?”

Syd looked at the dossier, at the photograph on the screen, and then at the 3-D image that showed essentially the same picture as the photograph. “Something’s wrong here.”

“Correct,” said Dar. “First I investigated the lighting under similar conditions with a specialized light meter.”

“At two-forty-five A.M. on a cloudy, rainy night,” said Syd.

Dar raised his eyebrows. “Of course.” He tapped some keys.

Suddenly numbers appeared on the 3-D image of the street scene. Dar moved the mouse and rotated their viewpoint until they were looking straight down at the street, east to west, with the van near the bottom of the screen, the body centered, and the rest of the block visible. Areas on both sides had small rectangles of data listed as FC.

“Foot-candles of light,” said Syd.

Dar nodded. “Despite Donnie and Gennie’s claims, it was fairly well lighted for such a poor neighborhood. You can see that at both intersections, there are large pools of light covering most of the street at three foot-candles. The lighting at the front steps of the building puts out about one and a half foot-candles, and even in the middle of the street beyond where Dickie was hit, the lowest reading was one foot-candle.”

“She should have seen the victim even if the van’s lights weren’t working,” said Syd.

Dar touched the screen with a stylus and a red line appeared, running most of the way back to the intersection with Fountain Boulevard from whence the van had come. “Gennie came around through rather bright lighting—three foot-candles—and moved through this long area of two foot-candles of light until just before the impact. The van headlights were both intact and working. In fact, she had the brights on.”

Dar tapped keys and the visual on the screen disappeared, to be replaced by a real-time animation. Two men, three-dimensional but featureless, emerged from the front door of the apartment building. Suddenly the viewpoint switched to an aerial shot. The van accelerated around the corner from Fountain Boulevard and continued to accelerate. One of the figures stepped out into the street and faced the oncoming van. The van slammed on its brakes and slid most of the distance from the intersection to the impact site—finally hitting the man head-on and continuing to skid for another thirty feet or so. The featureless victim—Dickie—flew through the air and landed on his back in the roadway, head away from the van.

Dar tapped keys and the earlier aerial animated view was superimposed over this one. “This is the actual position of the van and body at the scene.” Suddenly the van was at least forty feet back up the street to the east and the body had also moved east—at least twenty feet from its actual point of rest, its head now pivoted around toward the van.

“Quite a discrepancy,” said Syd.

“It gets better,” said Dar. He pulled a six-page typed statement out of the dossier and let Syd glance over it. “Officer Berry, number 3501, took this statement from the first witness to drive down the street…a Mr. James William Riback.”

Syd’s eyes flicked back and forth down the pages. “Riback says that he saw a van pull away from the scene, almost cut him off, and then he saw Dickie—Mr. Kodiak—lying on his back in the street. Riback stopped his Taurus, got out, and asked Richard Kodiak if he was alive. He reports that Kodiak said, ‘Yes, go call an ambulance.’ Ribeck left his car in the street and ran to a friend’s apartment around the corner—3535 Gramercy Street—awoke his friend, told her to call 911, grabbed a blanket, and rushed back to the scene…where he found Mr. Kodiak lying in what Ribeck thought was a different location, certainly turned in a different direction, in much worse shape and unconscious. The paramedics arrived seven minutes later and Kodiak was pronounced dead. The van was parked where it is in the police photos.” Syd looked up at Dar. “The bitch drove around the block and ran over Dickie Kodiak again, didn’t she? But how do you prove it?”

“The details are pretty boring,” said Dar.

“Details don’t bore me, Dr. Minor,” said the chief investigator coolly. “They’re the core of my job, too, remember.”

Dar nodded. “OK, first I’ll run through the data and equations and then show you the forensic animation that results from them,” he said. “I prefer metric units in this sort of work, though I usually translate to English units of measurement for demonstrations.”

Dar typed and the street scene appeared again without a van, with only the two men emerging from the apartment building and one of them stepping into the street. The viewpoint swooped down again as if the viewer were looking from a van turning west onto Marlboro Avenue from Fountain Boulevard. The figure far down the street was clearly visible.

“Nighttime visibility studies show that even on a dark country road, even with the van’s dim lights on, the pedestrian—in dark clothing—would be visible for about one hundred seventy-five feet, even if the driver had poor to mediocre eyesight. It’s one hundred and sixty-nine feet from the Fountain Boulevard intersection to the point of impact with Mr. Kodiak.”

“She saw him as soon as she came around the corner,” mused Syd.

“Had to,” said Dar. “Whether he was still on the curb or had stepped out. Her high beams would have picked him out at more than three hundred forty-three feet away. Hell, if she’d had no headlights on at all, she could have seen him from one hundred fifty feet away because of the streetlights and spill light from the apartment building main lobby.”

“But she accelerated,” said Syd.

“She sure did,” said Dar. “The front tires of the van left skid marks for a total distance of one hundred thirty-two feet. That is, she kept skidding for twenty-nine feet beyond the point of impact where Mr. Kodiak left his right shoe and scuff marks from his left shoe.”

“She says she ran over him at that point,” said Syd.

“Impossible,” said Dar. “Once we have the skid marks, everything becomes a matter of simple ballistics. Velocities and distances traveled—for the van, the man, and the body—can be figured easily. Shall we skip the equations?”

“No,” said Syd. “I meant it when I said that I liked details.”

Dar sighed. “All right. Both the LAPD Accident Investigations Unit and I conducted separate skid tests on this street with vehicles equipped with bumper guns—”

“Pavement spotters,” said Syd.

“Right. The test vehicles’ speeds were determined by radar. The test skids yielded a consistent value for a drag factor, f, to be 0.79. From that we can find the initial velocity of the pedestrian at the contact point…Remember, all testimony says that Mr. Kodiak was struck while standing still and facing the van. His velocity can never be greater than the van’s. So we use this equation—

The values are simple. The van skidded to a full stop, so its velocity can be given as ve = 0. The value for acceleration, a, is given by a = fg. As I explained, we determined the drag factor, f = 0.79. The figure for g, the pull of gravity, = 32.2 feet per second in U.S. measurement.”

“Or 9.81 meters per second per second,” Syd said quietly.

Dar blinked at her. “You think in metric equivalents,” he said. “Shall I skip the rest of these equations and go to the animation? You’re probably ahead of me.”

Syd shook her head. “Details. Show me.”

“OK,” said Dar. “Because the van was decelerating, a has to be a negative number. Gennie’s van skidded a total of one hundred thirty-two feet. Therefore, we just substitute back into the equation for initial velocity—

The van’s velocity when there are twenty-nine feet left to skid can be done in the same way. The only value that changes is the value for distance, d. So that equation would read—

That was the van’s speed at impact. And that would become Mr. Kodiak’s speed as he became airborne at impact. This equation works with tall-fronted vans, by the way, but won’t work with most smaller cars.”

Syd nodded. “The vertical grille of a truck or tall van produces a flat-on impact, near the pedestrian’s center of mass,” she said. “A regular sedan or a smaller car would hit below that center of mass and throw the victim onto the hood or over the roof of the car.”

“Yep,” said Dar. “Or cut him in half.” He looked back at the equations on the screen. “So because Ms. Gennie was driving this rental van and got Dickie front on with the grille, the math is simple. We just have to know the typical values for pedestrian drag factors over various surfaces.”

He tapped a key. The screen read—

SURFACE RANGE

Grass .45–.70

Asphalt .45–.60

Concrete .40–.65

“And Marlboro Avenue?” said Syd.

“Asphalt.” Dar typed in the pedestrian drag factor, f, as 0.45.

“The value for this particular pedestrian’s center of mass height, h, was—2.2 feet,” said Dar. “And the measured distance between the initial contact point of impact—confirmed by the shoe he left behind and the scuff marks from the other shoe—to his final position as determined by blood and body scuff marks was seventy-two feet. So we substitute those values into the above equation—

“So the velocity at the beginning of Mr. Kodiak’s fall—that is, his separation from the braking van—calculates out as—

Which is consistent with the earlier skid analysis,” said Dar.

“So she actually hit him doing about twenty-seven miles per hour, braking from a top speed of almost fifty-six miles per hour,” said Syd.

“Fifty-five point seven,” agreed Dar.

“And he flew backwards seventy-two feet from the point of impact, coming to rest on his back with his head farthest from the van,” continued the chief investigator.

“As ninety-nine-plus percent of pedestrians hit straight on by such a van would,” said Dar. “That’s why Larry and I knew that foul play was involved as soon as we saw the officer’s photographs.” He tapped at keys until the equations disappeared from the screen and the original animated street scene returned. Another tap got rid of all the numerical values of lighting, curb height, skid length, and so forth.

Two male figures stepped out of the building. The van screeched around the corner from Fountain Boulevard and began accelerating madly down Marlboro Avenue. One of the men pushed the other man, who stumbled into the street, almost fell, and then righted himself just as the skidding van slammed into him. The body flew a long distance, landed on its back, and skidded farther, finally coming to a stop. The van pulled away and accelerated around the corner of the next intersection, cutting off a Ford Taurus that stopped. A man got out, knelt by the victim, and then ran west, disappearing around the corner to go to his friend’s apartment to call 911.

“We found blood, hair, and brain matter on the right wheel, the hub of the right wheel, the front transaxle, the shocks, and on part of the catalytic converter of the van,” said Dar tonelessly.

In the animation, the van comes around the corner from Fountain Boulevard again, slows as it approaches the supine figure in the highway, then drives over it and backs up, dragging the body almost half the distance it had been thrown from the initial impact. Finally the body scrapes free, head pointed to the east, toward the van, as the rented vehicle continues to back up onto its own skid marks and finally comes to a stop.

“She had to finish the job,” said Syd.

Dar nodded.

“What did the jury have to say when they saw this animation?” asked the chief investigator.

Dar smiled. “No jury. No trial. I showed this to Detective Ventura as well as to the Accident Investigations people, but no one was interested. By this time, Donald and Gennie had dropped their lawsuit against the owner of the apartment building—I think it was because I confronted them with the light-meter readings—and settled with the van rental people for fifteen thousand dollars.”

Syd shifted in her chair and stared at Dar. “You have absolute proof that these two killed Richard Kodiak and the LAPD dropped it.”

“They said it was just another fag killing, ‘another garden-variety homocide,’ to quote the venerable Detective Ventura,” said Dar.

“I always thought that Ventura was an ass,” said Syd. “Now I know.”

Dar nodded, chewed his lip, and looked at the animation repeating itself on the screen. The human figure was hit, hurled, the van drove away, returned, drove over it again—dragging it back toward the front vestibule of the building, crushing the skull. The animation began again with two male figures, featureless, emerging from the well-lighted lobby…

“Lawrence’s clients…the rental people…were happy to settle for the fifteen grand,” he began.

“Wait a minute,” said Syd. “Wait a minute.” She went over to her big leather tote bag and pulled a top-of-the-line Apple PowerBook from it.

As she set the computer up on the table next to Dar’s PC equipment, he looked at her dubiously, the way a Lutheran would have regarded a Catholic in the seventeenth century. Apple people and PC people rarely mix well.

Syd brought her computer to life. “Gennie Smiley,” she repeated. “Donald Borden. Richard Kodiak. These names ring a bell…”

Columns of data flowed down her portable screen. She hurriedly typed in a search command. “Ahh,” she said, typed again, watched data whirl by and stop again. “Ahah!” she said.

“I like ‘Ahah!’” said Dar. “What?”

“Did you and Lawrence check into the backgrounds of these three…lovers?” asked Syd.

“Sure we did,” said Dar. “As much as we could without treading on Detective Ventura’s toes. It was his case. We found that the victim—Mr. Richard Kodiak—had three addresses in addition to the Rancho la Bonita residence given on his driver’s license: all in California—one in East L.A., one in Encinitas, and one in Poway. Tracing his social security number, we found his listed employment as CALSURMED with no address. In old telephone listings, Trudy found a California Sure-Med listed in Poway, but the business is no longer in existence and all information regarding it has been purged from city records. Then we checked with the Poway post office and found that the Poway address was the same as that listed for the CALSURMED business—box number 616840. We suggested to the Accident Investigation team and Detective Ventura that they check with the Los Angeles and San Diego counties’ Fictitious Business Filings under both the subject’s name and the CALSURMED and California Sure-Med listings. They never followed up.”

Syd was grinning at her computer screen. “You know those red pins on my map?”

“The fatal swoop-and-squats?” said Dar. “Yeah?”

“California Sure-Med was the health provider for six of the victims. A certain Dr. Richard Karnak was instrumental in testifying in the liability cases.”

“You think Richard Karnak equals Dickie Kodiak?”

“I don’t have to guess,” said Syd. “Do you have a photo of the victim? When he was alive, I mean?”

Dar fumbled through the file and came up with a small passport photo labeled KODIAK, RICHARD R. Syd had tapped keys, and a high-resolution black-and-white photo filled a third of her PowerBook’s screen. It was the same photograph.

“And Donald Borden?” said Dar.

“Alias Daryl Borges, alias Don Blake,” said Syd, calling up a photograph and data column on the other man. “Eight priors—five for fraud, three for assault and battery.” She looked at Dar and her eyes were bright. “Mr. Borges was a member of an East L.A. gang until he was twenty-eight, but now he works for an attorney…a certain Jorgé Murphy Esposito.”

“Shit,” Dar said delightedly. “And Gennie Smiley. That has to be fake.”

“Nope,” said Syd, looking at another column of data. “But it wasn’t her current legal name, either. She was married seven years ago.”

“Gennie Borges?” guessed Dar.

“Sí,” said Syd, and her grin grew broader. “But Smiley was an earlier married name…married briefly to a Mr. Ken Smiley who died in a car accident seven years ago. Can you guess her maiden name?”

Dar looked at Syd for a quiet minute.

“Gennie Esposito,” said Syd at last. “Sister to the ubiquitous attorney.”

Dar looked back at his screen where the van continued hitting the pedestrian, accelerating away out of sight into the night, and then returning to run over the poor man again…and again.

“They know I know this,” muttered Dar. “But for some reason they felt threatened by me.”

“It is murder,” said Syd.

Dar shook his head. “The LAPD had already passed on the whole matter…the rental people settled…Donnie and Gennie moved to San Francisco. No one was interested. It has to be something else.”

“Whatever else it is,” said Syd, “it points directly at our Attorney Esposito. But there’s something even more interesting here.” She tapped at her computer keys.

Dar caught a glimpse of the PowerBook’s screen as the FBI symbol appeared, an asterisk password was typed, and directories, data, and photographs began flashing by.

“You can access the FBI data banks?” said Dar, surprised. Even ex–special agents did not reserve that privilege.

“I’m officially working with the National Insurance Crime Bureau,” said Syd. “You know, Jeanette from Dickweed’s meeting—her group. It merged with the Insurance Crime Prevention Institute in 1992, and to show its support, the FBI gives the NICB full access to its computer files.”

“That must come in handy,” said Dar.

“Right now it does,” said Syd, pointing to the photograph and fingerprint ID of the late Dickie Kodiak, a.k.a. Dr. Richard Karnak, original legal name—Richard Trace.

“Richard Trace?” said Dar.

“Son of Dallas Trace,” said Syd, tapping more keys and looking at more data.

Dar blinked twice. “Dallas Trace? The big-time, good-old-boy lawyer? The guy in the buckskin vest and bolo tie and long hair who has that stupid legal show on CNN?”

“The same,” said Syd. “Next to Johnny Cochran, America’s best-known and most-loved defense attorney.”

“Bullshit,” said Dar. “Dallas Trace is an arrogant twit. He wins trials with the same tricks that Cochran used in the O. J. trial. And he has a book out—How to Convince Anyone of Almost Anything—but he couldn’t convince me to read it in a thousand years.”

“Nonetheless,” said Syd, “it was his son Richard who was run over and killed—murdered—in your Kodiak-Borden-Smiley van accident.”

“We need to get started on this,” said Dar.

“We just did get started,” said Syd. “The murder attempt on you and my investigation into the fraud-business gang wars are now on the same track. Monday we’ll move ahead on it.”

“Monday?” said Dar, shocked. “But it’s only Saturday afternoon.”

“And I haven’t had a goddamned weekend off in seven months,” snapped Syd, her eyes fierce. “I want one more day off and one more night to sleep in the sheep wagon before this goes any further.”

Dar held both palms up. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had even a Sunday off.”

“Agreed then?” she said.

“Agreed,” Dar said, and held out his hand to shake hers.

She reached up, pulled his face closer to hers, and kissed him firmly, slowly, surely, on the lips. Then she went to the door.

“I’m going to take a nap, but when I come back this evening, I expect steaks to be grilling.”

Dar watched her leave, considered following her, considered kicking himself in the ass, and then drove into town to buy the steaks and some more beer.