Darwin's Blade (33 page)

Dar snorted. “Great. He tried to kill me and you think he looks sexy, in a dangerous, sinister sort of way.”

Syd looked at Dar. “Well, I think
you
look sexy in a dangerous, sinister sort of way.”

Dar did not know what to say to that. After a minute he said, “So how's the investigation going?”

“Wonderfully,” said Syd. “I guess you've heard about Paulie Satchel.”

“I saw Paulie Satchel,” said Dar. “How does he…that…translate to wonderful?”

“Now we have four obvious murders,” said Syd, as happy as Martha Stewart with a new blend of paint. “The police and FBI are finally completely on board.”

“Four?” said Dar. “Esposito, Satchel…”

“And Donald Borden and Gennie Smiley,” said Syd. “Oakland PD got word last night that a scavenger working in a landfill near the Bay found two big garbage bags that had been uncovered by a dozer. They were leaking…”

“Both Richard and Gennie?” said Dar.

“We've only got the dental records confirmed on Borden, but the other corpse was a female.”

“Cause of death?” said Dar.

“Double tap to the head for each of them,” said Syd. Her phone rang. Before picking it up, she said, “22R…probably from a Ruger Mark II Target. Short range. Very professional.” Then, “Good morning, Olson here.”

Dar looked at the photographs of Yaponchik and Zuker, studying them as if he had not already been memorizing them for twenty-four hours. Syd said, “Hmmm-mmm, really? Where was it mailed from? Uh-huh? Did you have your lab dust it for prints? Uh-huh? You have a match on all of them already? Uh-huh. Well, I guess sometimes we just get lucky. In fact, Dar and I got lucky with one of these old CIA files. Yeah, I'll bring them over and show you in an hour or two. Yeah. 'Bye.”

She hung up and looked at Dar with a heavy gaze that many suspects had felt in this very same interrogation room over the decades. “You'll never guess what Special Agent Warren received in the mail.”

Dar closed the CIA dossier and waited, showing mild interest.

“An envelope—no return address, no prints—mailed from Oceanside yesterday…”

“Yes?” said Dar.

“Photographs,” said Syd. “Glossy eight-by-tens. Pretty good resolution. Seven men. At least four of them are seen talking to Dallas Trace in the photos. Five of the men have been identified already.”

Dar showed his interest.

“Two Russian mafia whom we didn't know were in the country,” said Syd. “One of them a known ex-KGB strongman who worked with Yaponchik in the good old Soviet days…”

“The others?” said Dar.

“Three of the other four are known mercenary bodyguards and hit men,” said Syd. “They all have rap sheets. One of them was a made guy until he killed one of his boss's friends.”

Dar whistled. “That brings the organized crime task force and RICO into this, doesn't it?”

Syd ignored the question. “Quite a lucky break. First finding these lost CIA photos. Then this…”

Dar nodded agreement.

Syd leaned back in her chair, and said, “OK, where were we?”

“How the investigation is going,” said Dar.

Syd nodded toward a tall stack of reports, videocassettes, audiotapes, and files. “Tom and the three FBI people have made contact with the Helpers of the Helpless through coyotes and various emergency rooms. They came into the net by different ways, but are in the same group of recruits now. The Helpers run a sort of swoop-and-squat training school. We already have a dozen names and it's only been a few days.”

“Great,” said Dar.

“And you know about the special AIU?”

“AIU?” said Dar dubiously.

“The task force's special Accident Investigation Unit,” said Syd in her no-nonsense voice. “You're on it. In fact, you're the head of it.”

“Oh,” said Dar.

“It's headquartered at Lawrence and Trudy's place,” said Syd. “I'll meet you guys out there later this afternoon when I get a break from working on these new photos.”

“I should know what the IUD is investigating,” said Dar.

Syd sighed. “Just a string of little accidents that seem to be murders,” she said. “Esposito. Paulie Satchel. Abraham Willis.”

“Willis?” said Dar. “Oh, the capper attorney who died up near Carmel.”

“The Gomezes,” continued Syd. “Mr. Phong. Dickie Kodiak aka Dickie Trace.”

“I guess I'd better get up to Escondido,” said Dar. “It sounds like I'm pretty busy.”

“I'll see you later this afternoon,” said Syd.

Lawrence and Trudy were devoting afternoons to task force business. Their dining room had been turned into an extension of Syd's task force headquarters, with cork boards all around the long table, a white board, projectors, a VCR with a small monitor, and a Gateway laptop with a dedicated modem line just for constant updates on the data and graphics related to the accidents under investigation.

Dar, Lawrence, and Trudy quickly divvied up investigations according to who had done the most work on the original. Lawrence took the Phong, Satchel, and Gomez cases because his clients had involvement in two of them. Dar planned to reopen the Richard Kodiak file and continue investigating Esposito's scissors-lift death. He told Lawrence and Trudy about the various photographs that had come to light.

“Interesting,” said Lawrence. “Do you have copies of these photos by any chance?”

“I just happen to,” said Dar.

“Doesn't Dallas Trace live up on Coy Drive near Mulholland and Beverly Glen?” said Lawrence.

“I wouldn't really know,” said Dar.

“Well, I do. I looked it up the other night after dropping you off on your field trip,” said Lawrence. “All right, let's see these bad guys.”

They all studied the photos for a while. Dar knew that neither Lawrence nor Trudy ever forgot a face after studying it for a case.

Eventually they decided to start work on the Abraham Willis case because none of them had been involved with it. The CHP and Carmel police had e-mailed and faxed their full files to Syd, and Syd had added her task force investigation materials to the four-inch-thick file before giving it to Lawrence and Trudy.

For a while the three read in silence, looking at photos and accident-scene sketches, passing materials around. The accident seemed straightforward enough.

Counselor Abraham Willis—a San Diego–based lawyer who lent his name to injury-mill cases and capper referrals—had left his office early on a Friday afternoon to drive up to Carmel for the weekend. Witnesses interviewed in Santa Barbara said that he had dinner and several drinks there, and the owner of an inn near Big Sur was able to identify Willis as someone who had stopped in late that evening and had another drink before driving on to Carmel. Willis had been alone in both the Santa Barbara restaurant and the Big Sur tavern.

A little before 10:00
P.M.
on that same Friday night, Willis had evidently pulled his 1998 Camry off the road into a turnout at a scenic view on a cliff between Point Lobo and Carmel. There was no one else at the turnout at that time.

“We know that turnout,” said Lawrence. “It has a gorgeous view north toward Carmel.”

“Couldn't have been much of a view at ten
P.M.
,” said Trudy.

“Maybe he had to take a leak,” said Lawrence.

“Or just wanted to get some ocean air…to shake off the effect of the drinks,” said Dar.

“Didn't work,” said Lawrence.

According to the CHP reconstruction, Willis had then climbed back in his Camry, put it in drive rather than reverse, crashed through a small wooden fence at the apex of the turnout—and plummeted, car and all, sixty feet to the boulders below.

“Why no guardrail?” asked Dar.

Trudy sketched the scenic turnout on a napkin. “See, there's guardrail on both sides of the turnout, then the parking spaces between with low concrete wedges, then thirty feet or so of grass with a gravel path, then this low wood fence with a row of reflectors…It's just to warn pedestrians not to walk beyond there to the cliff's edge.”

“How far from the fence to the cliff's edge?” asked Dar.

“About another thirty feet to the actual cliff overhang, then a sheer drop. But there are a couple of boulders there. Notice that Willis's Camry struck one of them—the driver's-side door was found up there, on the clifftop, not on the boulders below.”

“I noticed that,” said Dar. “It doesn't make any sense.”

“The NICB investigator agreed with the CHP investigator that Willis couldn't stop the car and was trying to jump when the car door hit the boulder,” said Lawrence. “The impact knocked him back into the passenger seat and then the car went over the edge.”

“Why couldn't Willis stop the car?” said Dar. “Even if he hit the accelerator rather than the brake initially, he had almost sixty feet in which to stop.”

“Drunk,” said Trudy.

“Spontaneous acceleration followed by brake failure,” said Lawrence.

Trudy and Dar gave him sarcastic looks. Spontaneous acceleration only occurred on TV magazine “exposés,” and total brake failure was almost as rare as fatal meteor strikes.

The CHP photographs of the body were suitably grisly. Willis had been thrown from the car upon the initial impact with the sea rocks, and the car had rolled over him before finally coming to rest. The Camry was also in pretty bad shape. Someone had reported the smashed fence at about midnight and the CHP found the wreck and body a little after 1:00
A.M.
The crabs had gotten to Counselor Willis, but not so badly that his secretary could not identify the body. Willis had been married but divorced years before, in New York State, and no family had claimed the body.

“OK,” said Trudy, “let's look at occupant loading on the restraint system.”

They went through the CHP report. They went through the Carmel police officer's report and the sheriff's report. They looked at the NICB investigator's report. They studied the photographs.

Syd showed up then. The chief investigator looked exhausted but happy. She noticed the intense concentration of the group and said nothing after the initial greetings.

Finally Trudy held up a black-and-white photo of the interior of the '98 Camry. The car had struck the boulders hood-first, so the incursion into the passenger area was total—the crumpled steering wheel and dashboard actually ramming the passenger seats, the windshield completely gone and the roof crumpled down on the driver's side almost to seat height.

“What's wrong with this photo?” said Trudy.

“Only one air bag deployed,” said Lawrence.

“On the passenger side,” Dar said, and grinned.
Got them.

Syd was frowning. “I don't get it.”

Lawrence was on the phone immediately, calling the Carmel sheriff. Willis's Camry was still being held as evidence, unceremoniously stacked out behind an autobody shop in town. “Carmel doesn't have anything as mundane as a junkyard,” said Trudy, as Lawrence began talking quickly with the sheriff.

“Well then, can you send a deputy or someone over to look at it?” Lawrence was saying. “We need this information now.”

Lawrence listened and nodded. “Have him take a cell phone so that we can talk to him directly. What? OK, then…I'll hold.” Lawrence covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said, “The deputy doesn't have a cell phone, but they'll patch through his radio call. I guess the body shop is about two hundred meters from the sheriff's office.”

“I don't get it,” Syd said again. “What are we looking for?”

“Occupant loading on the restraint system,” said Trudy.

Syd shook her head. “There wasn't any,” she said. “I read all of the reports. They're sure that Willis wasn't buckled in when he went over. He was actually catapulted out through where the windshield would have been if it hadn't popped out at the same time.”

“But look at the photo,” said Dar, sliding it over to the chief investigator. “One air bag deployed.”

Syd looked at it. “On the passenger side,” she said. “But I'm not sure what that proves…probably an air-bag sensor malfunction, don't you think?”

Trudy shook her head. “Sensor malfunctions are so statistically rare that we can almost rule it out,” she said. She paused while Lawrence spoke with the deputy via their radio patch-through.

“OK…yes, hi, Deputy Soames…Lawrence Stewart here, Stewart Investigations. Are you standing by the Willis Camry? OK, good. Yeah, I bet it is. Uh-huh. That's a good one, Deputy.” Lawrence rolled his eyes. “Deputy, would you look at the driver's-side seat for me and—”

Lawrence listened a moment. “Yes, Deputy, I know it's all smashed to hell and squashed and bloody on that side, I'm not asking you to get
in
the driver's seat. The driver's-side door should be missing…It is? Well, good, we're talking about the same car then.”

Dar slid more photos in front of Syd. She looked at the one of the Camry's left front door lying by the boulder on the clifftop and bit her lip.

“Now please look down at the base of the seat, Deputy. Yes, right where the seat belt is attached to the frame there. There's a small enclosure there…see it? Good. Is there a red tag sticking up?”

Lawrence listened a few seconds. “A red tag,” he repeated. “It should be quite visible. It would read ‘Replace seat belt.' ” He listened. “You're sure? Thank you, Deputy.”

Lawrence returned to the table. “No tag.”

“If Mr. Willis had been belted in, the restraint system would have undergone a one-point-seven-g load,” said Trudy. “We could see the effects on the harness and the inertial reel, of course, but Toyota also has that little tag that pops up to remind the repair people to replace the belt restraint system after an accident.”