Darwin's Blade

14 “N is for Los Niños”

Wednesday was a lost day. Dar slept only a few hours—sleeping during the daylight made him feel creepy. When he got up, he found someone in the yellow pages who could install window blinds in a hurry and waited for them to come, puttering around the apartment. He was not afraid to go outside—he did not think he was afraid—but he also wasn’t ready to unless he had a reason.

Lawrence came over about noon with a hot lunch for them to share and made sure that Dar was hiding no horrific bullet holes. Lawrence said that he was working “in town,” which meant San Diego proper and usually meant testifying at the Justice Center. He said he’d be in town until late, and asked if he could crash on Dar’s sofa. Dar was suspicious—he suspected that his insurance adjuster friend was looking out for him—but Dar could hardly say no.

When Lawrence left and the venetian blind installers were finished, Dar finished his old case files, e-mailed his chess moves to all of his opponents except Dmitry in Moscow, and found himself in the bedroom, going to one knee and pulling the Remington 870 and the box of shells out from under the bed. He fed five of the clunky shotgun shells into the bottom of the receiver and then balanced the weapon on his knees. The embossed lettering on the left side of the chamber above and in front of the trigger guard read Remington 870 EXPRESS MAGNUM, designating a shotgun made after 1955, when Remington modified the 870 to accept modern 3-inch magnum shotshells as well as the older, 2¾-inch twelve-gauge shells. Dar touched the release catch for the sliding pump—a tiny latch on the left forward portion of the trigger guard—pumped the action once, chambering a shell, and then pressed the cross-bolt safety button at the rear of the trigger guard. The blue-steel touch of the weapon and the smell of gun oil coming from it reminded Dar of his childhood—of hunting ducks and pheasants with his father and his uncles in southern Illinois—of crisp autumn mornings, brittle cornstalks, and well-behaved bird dogs trotting behind them.

Dar put the weapon back under the bed and closed his eyes. Flashes of images were haunting him—not recent images, not of the mirror shattering, but images of shoes scattered across grass, shoes of every sort, men’s polished wing tips, children’s Keds, a woman’s sandals. After every air crash, the first thing the investigators noticed—even before the stink of aviation fuel, the torn and burned metal, or the bits of bodies—was the hundreds of shoes seemingly tossed at random around the site. It always said something to Dar about the terrible kinetic energies being unleashed in a crash that shoes—even those laced tightly—almost never stayed with the body. It seemed a final indignity somehow. Dar remembered the shoes in the Richard Kodiak a.k.a Richard Trace investigation. The young man had been completely knocked out of his right loafer, but the shoe was in the wrong place—Gennie Smiley had backed the van up too far the second time she ran over him. The boy’s a little light in his loafers. Dar could hear Dallas Trace saying that to some of his country-club friends.

As night fell, Dar wandered to the bookcases and pulled down a well-thumbed copy of the Stoics. He started with Epictetus but skipped ahead to Marcus Aurelius—Book XII of the Meditations. Dar had read and reread the passages so often in the last decade that some of the lines had taken on the singsong familiarity of a mantra:

The things are three of which thou art composed, a little body, a little breath (life), intelligence. Of these the first two are thine, so far as it is thy duty to take care of them: but the third alone is properly thine. Therefore if thou shalt separate from thyself, that is, from thy understanding, whatever others do or say, and whatever thou hast done or said thyself, and whatever future things trouble thee because they may happen, and whatever in the body which envelops thee or in the breath (life), which is by nature associated with the body, is attached to thee independent of thy will, and whatever the external circumfluent vortex whirls round, so that the intellectual power exempt for the things of fate can live pure and free by itself, doing what is just and accepting what happens and saying the truth: if thou wilt, separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things which are attached to it by the impressions of the sense, and the things of time to come and of time that is past, and wilt make thyself like Empedocles’ sphere

All round, and in its joyous rest reposing: and if thou shalt strive to live only what is really thy life, that is the present—then thou wilt be able to pass that portion of life which remains for thee up to the time of thy death, free from perturbations, nobly, and obedient to thy own daemon (to the god that is within thee).

Dar closed the book. Those lines—so many lines like those—had comforted him after Barbara and little David had died in the Colorado crash, after his own brief descent into madness and suicide attempt. He remembered the sound of the firing pin striking hollowly on that .410 shell that did not fire, did not fire. It had been the only time his father’s .410 had ever misfired; the hollow sound of that misfire woke him often but was counterbalanced by the sensible reply of the Stoics.

Not this night.

Dar made sure the blinds were closed and the police bar was in place, but tired as he was, he could not sleep. He did not believe in sleeping pills—he had seen too many accidents not that dissimilar from poor Mr. Hatton who answered his own .38 when the phone rang—but he knew the soporific potential of reading Immanuel Kant, and this he did until he was on the verge of sleep.

There was a knock at the door. Dar considered pulling the shotgun out from under the bed, but the knock had been the familiar shave-and-a-haircut. It was Lawrence, wrinkled, rumpled, and sweaty after a long day testifying. Dar went back to his Kant while Larry showered and came out in the extra, oversized bathrobe Dar kept for just these visits.

While Lawrence was straightening his stuff and fluffing his pillow on the couch, Dar was eyeing the shoulder holster and .32 Colt revolver that his friend had nonchalantly draped over a chair.

“You and Trudy going into L.A. for dinner tomorrow?” asked Dar.

“What do you mean?” said Lawrence from the couch. He was comfortable in his bathrobe, a Hudson’s Bay blanket over him, reading a Car & Driver magazine.

“You usually only pack heat when you guys are going into the city.” Dar knew that his friend had a permit to carry a concealed weapon because of all the threats the adjuster had received from car thieves and fraud artists, who were behind bars thanks to Lawrence’s testimony.

Lawrence grunted. “Coming to see you is enough reason to carry,” he said. “It’s like hanging around Charles de Gaulle in The Day of the Jackal.”

“Only in the original,” said Dar. “In the remake it’s the head of the FBI who’s being stalked. And not by Edward Fox but by Bruce Willis.”

“They always screw up remakes,” said Lawrence, putting down his magazine and snapping off the light at the head of the couch.

“Don’t they,” agreed Dar. He went to check that the door was locked and the police bar in place. He glanced at the ugly but closed blinds on all of his tall windows.

“Good night, Larry.”

Dar waited for the correction in the name, but Lawrence was already snoring softly. Dar went into his bedroom and was asleep within minutes.

Dar awoke on Thursday morning to the sound of the phone ringing. He grabbed the phone. Nothing. His bedside phone only gave him a dial tone. He jumped up and grabbed his cell phone from the dresser. It wasn’t even powered up. Dragging on a robe, he walked to his fax machine. Nothing there.

The phone rang again.

It was Lawrence’s cell phone. Dar had forgotten that his friend was sleeping on the couch, but now he sat on one of the high stools at the counter while Lawrence answered his Flip Phone and exchanged some fast but groggy sentences—obviously with Trudy, unless the totally faithful Lawrence had suddenly found someone else to call “Honey Bunch.”

Dar put the coffee on as Lawrence sat up on the couch, moaned, growled, tried to clear his throat, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his cheeks and jowls, growled again, and went through a series of throat-clearing exercises that sounded like a 240-pound cat being strangled.

How the hell does Trudy put up with that every morning? thought Dar, not for the first time. He said, “Coffee’ll be ready in a minute. Do you want any toast or bacon? Or just cereal?”

Lawrence put on his glasses, and grinned across the wide space at Dar. “Shut the coffee off. We’ll grab some coffee and a Toad McMuffin on the way. We’ve got a case already and you’re going to love it.”

Dar glanced at his watch. It was already eight-thirty, but strangely dark in the condo with all of the blinds closed. “I’ve got a lot of work to catch up—” he began.

Lawrence was shaking his head. “Nope. This is just a few miles out…halfway to my place…and you’d hate yourself if you missed it.”

“Mmmm,” said Dar.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” said Lawrence.

“Pardon me?” Dar shut off the coffee maker.

“Attempted nunicide by a chicken cannon,” repeated Lawrence as he flip-flopped into Dar’s bathroom to use the facilities and take a shower before Dar did.

Dar sighed. He found the rod that opened the venetian blinds and then the cord that tugged them up. It was a beautiful, sunny San Diego summer day. Every detail on the aircraft carrier permanently berthed across the bay stood out in the crisp light. The sound of traffic was a reassuring hum. A plane roared in to Lindbergh Field, some of the passengers staring up at the overtowering buildings in pure terror while the old hands kept reading their morning papers. Dar could almost read the headlines through the starboard windows as the DC-9 passed by.

“Nunicide by chicken cannon,” he muttered. “Christ.”

They argued in the condo warehouse parking garage about who would drive. Lawrence hated ever being a passenger. Dar was tired of being one. Lawrence admitted that he had to come back into the city for more testimony. Dar pointed out the logic of leaving his Trooper in the parking area and taking the Cruiser. Lawrence sulked, finally saying that they should both drive. Dar headed for the elevator.

“Where are you going?” shouted Lawrence.

“Back to bed,” said Dar. “I don’t need this nonsense before breakfast.”

Dar drove. The unmarked San Diego police car that had been parked across the street followed them to the city line and then turned back.

It was a short distance, halfway to Escondido. Lawrence gave the address of a Saturn dealership just off the freeway. Dar knew the place.

Lawrence and Dar had shared their contempt for Saturns in the past. Both knew that they were decent value automobiles, but the image that Saturn created in their advertising of a typical Saturn owner made car lovers like Lawrence and Darwin want to throw up. “It’s Jennifer’s first car,” says the sales manager. All of the other salespeople applaud while Jennifer stands and blushes, car keys in her hand.

“Saturns were invented for people who are afraid to buy cars,” Trudy had once said. Lawrence and Trudy bought or traded for a new car about once every five months. They loved the process. “Just like Volvos are for people who hate automobiles and need to tell the world,” Lawrence had added. “College professors, professional tree huggers, liberal Democrats…they have to drive, but they’re letting us know that in their hearts they’d prefer walking or biking.”

“Maybe they buy Volvos for safety,” Dar had said, knowing it would provoke the two adjusters.

“Hah!” Trudy had cried. “A car has to be able to go fast before safety becomes much of an issue. Volvo drivers would own Sherman tanks if the government allowed them on the highway.”

“And remember that touching Saturn commercial a few years ago where all the Tennessee Saturn workers got up at three A.M. to watch the first Saturns being unloaded in Japan?” said Lawrence derisively. “All those happy Anglo, black, and Hispanic faces watching the live TV feed…such pride in America. What they didn’t show is ninety-nine percent of those cars being reloaded on vehicle containers a year later when the Japanese spurned the Saturns.”

“The Japanese like Jeeps,” said Trudy.

Dar nodded. That was true enough. “And huge old Cadillacs,” he said.

“Just the Yakuza,” Lawrence had amended.

Halfway to the Saturn dealership, Lawrence said, “So do you know what a chicken cannon is?”

“Of course,” said Dar, driving with one hand and sipping his McDonald’s coffee with the other. A typeset warning on the coffee cup said essentially that the beverage was hot and could cause injury if dumped on one’s genitals. Dar had always been of the opinion that anyone too stupid to realize that wouldn’t know how to read or drink from a cup anyway. “Of course I know what a chicken cannon is.”

Lawrence looked crestfallen. “You do? Really?”

“Sure,” said Dar. “I used to be with the National Transportation Safety Board, remember? The chicken cannon is the nickname for a gadget the FAA invented to test cockpit windshields against birdstrikes. Actually the cannon is just so much medium-bore oil pipe rigged up to a fancy air compressor. They fire birds into the cockpit composite-glass at speeds of up to six hundred miles per hour—but usually slower than that. They use dead chickens because a chicken represents a large to midsize bird in mass, a little heavier than a seagull but smaller than a flamingo or hawk.”

“Oh,” said Lawrence. “Right. Damn.”

“So how do Saturns and chicken cannon coincide?” said Dar as they took the exit to the dealership.

Lawrence sighed, obviously disappointed that Dar knew the punch line. “Well, Saturn is promoting this new so-called shatterproof windshield glass—actually it just has about thirty percent more plastic composite than the usual safety glass—and the owner of this dealership decided to borrow a chicken cannon from the Los Angeles FAA headquarters to demonstrate.”

“I didn’t know the FAA was in the business of loaning its chicken cannons out,” said Dar.

“It’s not, usually,” said Lawrence. “But the L.A. FAA guy is the Saturn dealer’s brother-in-law.”

“Oh,” said Dar. “Well, I hope they didn’t fire a dead chicken into even that new Saturn window at six hundred miles per hour.”

Lawrence shook his head and sipped his own coffee. “Naw. Just a little over two hundred miles per hour. But it was still supposed to be hot stuff. They were shooting one of Up Front Sam the Saturn Man’s commercials this morning and they used the chicken cannon and Sister Martha.”

“Oh, shit,” said Dar. Sister Martha had been a nun before leaving the convent to peddle Saturns full-time. She starred in most of Up Front Sam’s Saturn commercials. Sister Martha was about five feet tall, sixty-one years old, and looked like an apple doll with rosy cheeks and vaguely blue hair. Her favorite sales practice had been jumping up and down on a removed plastic door of a Saturn sedan, to show how they wouldn’t bend or ding. That was before Saturn went back to steel doors because in accidents, the plastic tended to burn like the smelly petroleum product it was. Now Sister Martha just kicked tires and looked lovable while advertising non-negotiably priced sedans and coupes to the haggle-challenged. Trudy had once commented while watching a Sister Martha from Up Front Sam’s commercial, “Butter wouldn’t melt in that old broad’s mouth.”

The salespeople were running around in agitated circles. The commercial video crew members were equally nonplussed, arguing with each other over portable radios even though they were standing only twenty feet apart. The commercial director appeared to be about nineteen years old and wore a ball cap, a ponytail, an attempt at a goatee, and a pale, shocked expression.

The chicken cannon was relatively imposing: a thirty-foot barrel mounted on a tractor-trailer platform that could be raised on a hydraulic scissors hoist—Dar immediately thought of poor Counselor Esposito—with a jury-rigged breech mechanism that looked like an air lock for a chicken-sized space shuttle. The compressor was still humming away, the cannon aimed at a brand-new Saturn coupe sitting about fifteen meters from the muzzle.

Dar walked through the milling, babbling crowds and took a look at the coupe. The chicken had passed through the windshield like a bullet, taken off the head restraint on the top of the driver’s seat, punched a chicken-sized hole in the rear window of the coupe, and embedded itself in the cement-block wall of the dealership about fifty feet away.

The dealer, Up Front Sam, a skinny liberal-arts major gone bad but still given to wearing nubbly Harris tweed jackets—even on this broiling summer day—had no clue as to who Lawrence and Dar were, but he was babbling away at them as if confessing to his parish priest. “We had no idea…I had no idea…My brother-in-law’s FAA experts…. experts…said that the windshield would befine in impacts up to two hundred and fifty miles per hour…The dial was set at two hundred…I’m sure of that…Sister Martha was in the driver’s seat…we were ready to roll tape…then the director suggested one test run…I didn’t want to waste the time and money, they charge by the second, you know…but Sister Martha insisted, so she got out of the car…We figured it would just take a few minutes to clean up the mess on the windshield and then we could shoot for real…”

“Where’s Sister Martha?” interrupted Lawrence.

“In her sales cubicle,” said the dealer, close to tears. “The paramedics are giving her oxygen.”

Lawrence led the way into the showroom, sniffing appreciatively at the new-car-temple incense of new-car smell. Dar thought they’d be lucky to be on their way before Larry bought a new car just for the hell of it.

Sister Martha, in full nun uniform, had finished her intake of oxygen but was sobbing uncontrollably. Two female paramedics, Martha’s family, and a herd of curious bystanders stood around trying to comfort her.

“It w-w-w-w-w-was the ha-ha-ha-bit,” she said. “I’ve never w-w-w-worn it on any of these com-com-commercials b-b-b-before, never. It’s the L-L-L-Lord’s way of telling me that I c-c-crossed the line this time.”

“She’s all right,” said Lawrence. He and Dar went back outside to inspect the tail end of the chicken still visible in the impact crater in the wall. They headed for Dar’s Land Cruiser.

“Whose insurance brought you out here?” asked Dar as they passed the video crew.

“None. No involvement at all,” Lawrence said. “Trudy just heard it on the police scanner and I thought it might brighten your day.”

Suddenly Up Front Sam was beside them again. Evidently someone had told him that they were accident investigators. “I talked to my brother-in-law,” he said. “The engineers insist that if the specifications for the windshield were accurate, the chicken should have just bounced off.” He looked back at the hole in the windshield. “Mother of God, what did we do wrong? Did Saturn lie to us?”

“No,” said Lawrence. “That windshield could probably take an ostrich strike at two hundred miles per hour.”

“Then what…how did we…why…how in God’s name…” said the dealer.

Dar decided to be succinct.

“Next time,” he said, “defrost the chicken.”

They were two thirds of the way back to San Diego when Dar saw the huge traffic tie-up ahead of them. Emergency lights were flashing. All but one lane was closed heading into the city. Cars were backing up to the last exit ramp or illegally crossing the median to head back north to avoid the tie-up. Dar drove the Land Cruiser onto the breakdown lane and then far out onto the grassy shoulder to get as close to the mess as possible.

A CHP officer angrily flagged them down fifty yards from the actual scene. Dar saw at least three ambulances, a fire truck, and half a dozen CHP vehicles around the jackknifed trailer truck and the heap of automobiles in the right lane. He and Lawrence showed their credentials—Larry had legitimate press-photographer credentials as well as his insurance investigator’s ID and an honorary membership in the CHP.

Even with all of the vehicles blocking the scene, Dar could see what had happened. The truck was a car-carrier hauling new Mercedeses—E 500s from the look of those still on the bottom layer of the carrier and those in the heap on the highway. There were striated skid marks across all three lanes of traffic. The hood and windshield of an old Pontiac Firebird were just visible, squashed under a heap of tumbled silver Mercedeses. When the trailer had jackknifed and finally struck the Pontiac, the impact had torn loose all of the new cars on the top level. Not all of them had fallen on the old Pontiac—Dar could see one new Mercedes upside down on the breakdown lane and another battered but on its wheels two hundred feet down the highway—but at least four of the heavy vehicles had dropped on the Firebird. Tow trucks and a small crane were carefully lifting the Mercedeses off the Pontiac. Firefighters and rescue crews were using the Jaws of Life to cut through the A-pillars of the smashed Firebird, and at least one medic was on all fours, shouting encouragement to someone still in the wreck. The occupants of the Firebird obviously had not yet been extricated.

Dar and Lawrence walked back to the cab of the trailer where the driver—a big man with a beard and beer belly who was shaking and weeping much harder than Sister Martha had been—was trying to talk to the CHP. The state patrolmen started to push Dar and Lawrence away, but CHP Sergeant Paul Cameron saw them and waved them forward. The trooper’s face was set in grim lines as he leaned forward, gently patting the trucker’s shoulder and waiting for more description. Dar looked beyond the accident scene and saw young Patrolman Elroy on his knees amidst the flares and all the broken glass, vomiting into the grass.

“…and I swear to Christ, I did everything I could to avoid the Pontiac,” the trucker was saying, oblivious of his own shaking or the tears pouring down his sunburned cheeks. “I was just trying to get around the poor bastard, but there were cars on either side of me. Boxing me in. They didn’t stop. Every time I changed lanes, the driver of the Firebird changed lanes…When I braked, he braked harder…We must have crossed five lanes like that. Then I hit him and jackknifed. Couldn’t hold it…all the load…Jesus.”

“How did you get out?” asked Sergeant Cameron, gripping the trucker’s heaving shoulder tightly with his huge hand.

“The impact popped the windshield of the cab right out,” said the trucker, pointing. “I crawled out onto the top of the wreckage and managed to get down…That’s when I heard all the screaming…the screaming…”

Cameron gripped harder. “You’re sure it was the adult male who was driving, son?”

“Yeah,” the trucker said, and lowered his eyes, his huge frame shaking.

Dar and Lawrence walked back to the wreckage, being careful to stay out of the way of the rescue workers. They had managed to pull all but one of the heaped Mercedeses off the flattened Firebird and now they were busy cutting away the A-pillars and peeling back the roof to get to the victims in the front seat.

The driver was still alive, but covered with blood as the paramedics gingerly lifted him out, immediately getting him strapped onto a litter and bracing his neck. He was an overweight Hispanic man, groaning and saying over and over, “Los niños…los niños.”

His wife was dead in the front seat. It looked as if she had not been belted in but had curled up in a fetal position on the passenger seat. To Dar’s eye, it looked as if impact concussion had killed her, not the crushing of the roof, which only came down to the level of the headrest in the front of the car.

The workers redoubled their efforts to get the last Mercedes lifted and pulled off as they continued peeling back the roof and cutting the B-pillars away. Actually, there were no real B-pillars left. As the last Mercedes was lifted off by chain and unceremoniously dumped into the grass, it was obvious that the rear of the Firebird had been crushed down to the level of the seat cushions by the terrible weight of the heaped cars. All of the Pontiac’s tires had been blown and flattened. One paramedic was still on his knees, still calling encouragement to the victims in the back, even as the firefighters tore at the collapsed roof with their gloved hands, attempting to peel back the metal like the lid of a sardine can.

“There was a lot of screaming and crying for the first twenty minutes or so,” Cameron said softly to Dar. “Nothing for the last few minutes.”

“The wife maybe?” said Lawrence.

Cameron shook his head. He took his trooper hat off and wiped the sweatband. “Dead on impact. The driver…the father…he could just moan. The screaming was all coming from the…” He broke off as the power tools managed to tear the last of the roof of the Pontiac free, ripping the trunk lid off as it did so.

The two children were on the floor of the Firebird, beneath the level of the crushed roof. Both were dead. Both the girl and her little brother were cut and bruised, but none of the cuts or bruises looked serious. As the paramedics gently wiped away the blood, Dar saw how bloated their faces both were. The little girl’s eyes were still open, very wide. Dar knew at once that they had survived the crash only to be asphyxiated by the weight of the vehicles pressing down on them. The dead little boy was still desperately clutching his older sister’s right hand. Her left hand and arm were in a fresh cast. Both children’s faces were blue and swollen.

“Fuck,” said Sergeant Cameron softly. It was a prayer, of sorts.

The ambulance roared away with the father in the back. The rescue workers began the slow process of extricating the bodies.

“There’s a baby,” Dar said dully.

Lawrence and the CHP men around them turned their attention his way.

“I saw this family just a couple of days ago in the Los Angeles Medical Center,” said Dar. “They had a baby with them. Somewhere there’s a baby.”

Cameron nodded to one of the CHP men, who began talking on his portable radio.

Lawrence, Dar, and Paul Cameron walked around to the back of the flattened Pontiac.

“Oh, goddammit,” said the sergeant. “Goddamn them. Goddamn him. Goddamn them.”

In the flattened trunk of the Firebird, Dar could see three sandbags and two fully inflated spare tires, still on their rims. A buffer for absorbing the shock of a rear-ending. Standard swoop-and-squat protection. A capper’s guarantee to his recruited squat-car drivers that there would be no real injuries on their shortcut to big insurance payouts and riches in los Estados Unidos.

Dar turned abruptly and walked farther into the grass of the roadside.

“Dar?” called Lawrence.

Dar kept his back to the accident scene. He took a card out of his wallet and his Flip Phone out of his shirt pocket.

She answered on the second ring. “Olson here.”

“Count me in,” said Dar. He cut the connection and closed the phone.