by Dan Simmons
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.”
Syd still looked puzzled. “But both the CHP investigator and our people knew that Willis wasn’t belted in,” she said.
Dar lifted a transcript. “His secretary said in an interview that Willis always belted up. He told her more than once that he’d seen too many cripples and highway KIAs.”
“But he was drunk that night,” said Syd.
“Legally, but certainly not falling-down stupid drunk,” said Trudy. “Not drunk enough to mistake reverse gear for drive, or his accelerator for a brake pedal. Plus, even when you’re drunk, you do things out of habit. He would have buckled up even if it took him two or three fumbles.”
Syd rubbed her chin. “But I still don’t see the significance of the passenger-seat airbag deploying.”
“There had to be weight on the passenger seat for the airbag sensor to deploy that airbag,” said Lawrence, looking at the photo of the crushed interior and the single deflated airbag.
“During the fall he must have fallen over against that seat,” Syd said, saw the fault in the state
ment, and immediately added, “No…”
“Right,” said Dar. “During the fall from the cliff, Mr. Willis was in free-fall with the rest of the Camry. He wasn’t buckled in, so he was essentially levitating…floating above the seat like a shuttle astronaut in orbit…”
“No weight on the seat, so the sensor doesn’t deploy the airbag,” said Lawrence. “Not even during the terrible impact on the boulders.”
“But the airbag did deploy,” mused Syd.
“On the passenger side,” said Trudy with a grim smile. “But not during the impact with the sea rocks…”
“The wooden fence,” said Syd, getting the entire picture now. “But if Mr. Willis was in the passenger seat when the Camry hit the flimsy fence doing just thirty-five miles an hour as the CHP analyzed…”
“Why didn’t the driver’s-side airbag deploy?” Dar finished for her. “Someone had to be driving. Unless…”
“Unless the driver bailed out before the impact with the fence,” said Syd, speaking to herself. “Someone rapped Willis on the head, knowing that the injuries would not be sorted out from the traumas of the fall, propped him on the passenger side, drove the Camry at the little wooden barrier, then jumped out on the grass just before the car hit the fence, knowing that the Camry would keep going to the cliff’s edge.”
“So the driver’s airbag didn’t deploy during the initial impact with the wooden barrier because the sensors knew that there was no one on the driver’s seat,” said Lawrence. “The same reason the driver’s-side bag didn’t deploy during the impact with the rocks below. It’s not just because Willis was in free-fall as the other investigators reasoned; he was floating around on the passenger side.”
“But he was ejected through the driver’s side of the missing windshield,” said Syd.
Dar nodded. “I’ll have to do a computerized graphic reenactment, but the ballistics math looks consistent with the initial impact of the left front of the Camry on the boulder. Because of the principal-direction-of-force vector, the occupant—not belted in, airbag already deflated—would have been launched tangentially across and out, passing over the hood on the driver’s side. Whereas if the passenger-side airbag had deployed on impact with the rocks…”
“He probably would have been pinned in the wreckage,” said Syd, seeing the whole thing now.
“Which explains why the Camry’s driver-side door hit the rock up above before going over the cliff edge,” said Trudy. “It wasn’t Willis trying to get out. The door was just still swinging open after the murderer jumped out on the grassy berm before the impact with the wooden railing.”
Syd was looking at the grisly photos. “Those arrogant bastards. They’re so arrogant they’re just stupid.”
Syd’s cell phone rang. She got up from the table as she answered, listened, then came back to the table. She was sheet white. Even her lips were bloodless. She grasped the table edge and literally dropped into her chair. Her hands were trembling. Dar and Lawrence leaned closer. Trudy hurried out to get a glass of water for the investigator.
“What?” said Dar.
“Tom Santana and the three FBI agents who went undercover with him,” said Syd, forcing out each word. “That was Special Agent Warren. The CHP found…all four bodies…crammed into the trunk of an abandoned Pontiac just half an hour ago.” She took the glass of water from Trudy and sipped it with shaking hands.
“How…” began Dar.
“All four shot twice by a rifle,” said Syd, her voice steadier but her face still pale. “One head shot or one heart shot each—probably medium range.”
“Good Christ,” said Lawrence. “Who in his right mind shoots three FBI agents and a State Fraud Division investigator?”
“No one in his right mind,” said Dar.
“Those miserable, arrogant fucks,” said Syd, her hand shaking again, the water in the glass spilling. Dar knew that now the shaking was from pure fury. “But now we know who tipped Trace and his shooters,” she said.
“Who?” said Trudy.
There were tears in Sydney Olson’s eyes, but she actually attempted a smile. “Come to my task force meeting tomorrow morning at eight,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You’ll find out then.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“T IS FOR SYMPATHY”
SYD’S THURSDAY MORNING task force gathering was one of the more efficient meetings that Dar could ever remember attending.
She’d insisted on leaving immediately after the call the previous afternoon. Dar had agreed to stay for dinner, but before he ate, he walked the perimeter to make sure they were safe from snipers. He thought that they were. The Stewarts’ sprawling home was on a steep hillside above the road, with open pasture and then a dense woods below them to the south. It was more than 800 yards to the tree line, and even from there, the angle was very bad for a shooter. The only way people in the house would be visible to the south would be if they walked far out on the overhanging patio, and the three of them had already discussed the inadvisability of doing that. The house was set lower than the street to the north, but there the houses were tightly packed and heavily landscaped, the traffic brisk on the street outside—and Larry and Trudy had adequate security on their doors and shutters on their north-facing windows—so that offered no opportunity for a sniper.
Still, after dinner, Dar had driven around the neighborhood at twilight, making sure that everything looked and felt right, before heading home.
Nothing looked or felt right during the 8:00 A.M. task force meeting. Syd herself looked exhausted, and the others all seemed sad or distracted or irritated for being gathered so early.
It was pretty much the same group as in the previous Friday’s meeting—Syd, Poulsen, Special Agent Warren and another FBI man, and Bob Gauss, who had once been Santana’s boss. Next to Warren sat Lieutenant Barr from LAPD Internal Affairs. Larry and Trudy sat to the right of Dar across the table from this group, Lieutenant Frank Hernandez and the CHP’s Captain Sutton sat on Dar’s left, and at the far end of the table was a new face—District Attorney William Restanzo. Restanzo looked every inch the blow-dried, white-haired, firm-jawed once and future politician he was.
Syd opened the meeting without preamble.
“You all know that four people working for this task force were murdered yesterday,” she said. “Investigator Tom Santana, Special Agent Don Garcia, Special Agent Bill Sanchez, and Special Agent in Charge Rita Foxworth. All four were lured to a remote place in the county—under pretext of training for swoop-and-squat accident fraud—and shot from concealment by a high-powered rifle.”
Syd paused and took a breath. “The details of the murders are not pertinent to this task force meeting and the investigation is ongoing under the supervision of Special Agent in Charge Warren.”
Detective Hernandez looked around the group. “If the details aren’t pertinent, why were we summoned here, Investigator Olson?”
Syd met the officer’s stare. “To arrest the person responsible for those murders,” she said.
No one spoke. Dar saw Lawrence shift slightly, and knew he was making his holster more accessible—perhaps unconsciously.
“We knew there was a leak from high up months ago,” continued Syd, “but it was Tom’s idea to announce his going undercover to this group. We tapped the phones of most of you…”
Syd waited for protest, but there was just a general clenching of fists, squinting of eyes, and thinning of lips. No one spoke.
“And what did the wiretaps reveal?” Captain Sutton asked, his smoker’s voice a rasp this morning.
“Nothing, directly,” said Syd. “The person who had been paid off must have suspected that he or she was under suspicion. There was no illegal activity heard or recorded under the wiretap surveillance authorized.”
“Then how…” began Hernandez.
“The person under surveillance avoided even local pay phones,” continued Syd, “which was wise, because pay phones near this suspect’s apartment had been tapped.
What the suspect did use was a special cell phone purchased by agents of the fraud Alliance and registered under a fictitious name. We believe there were several of these phones given to the suspect, to be used for emergency contacts.”
Syd unbuttoned her blazer and Dar could see the 9mm Sig-Sauer holstered on her belt. Then she turned toward the NICB attorney, Poulsen. “What you didn’t think of, Jeanette, is that we wanted this person bad enough to follow all of the major suspects with cell-phone scanners.” Syd stabbed a button down on a tape recorder.
Poulsen’s voice could be heard, static-lashed and tinny but quite recognizable: “Santana from Fraud Division and three FBI agents have gone undercover to make contact with your Helpers of the Helpless.”
A man’s deep voice said something unintelligible.
“No, I don’t know the agents’ names,” came Poulsen’s voice, “but it’s two men and a woman and they should be coming into the country via the same coyote and contacting the Helpers at the same time Santana does. That’s all I can tell you now.”
The man’s voice rattled again, but this time the words “money” and “transfer” and “usual amount” could be heard.
Attorney Poulsen shot up out of her chair as if propelled by a huge spring. Her face was deep red and the cords stood out on her pretty neck. “I don’t have to listen to this shit. This is nonsense. You can’t get any real information to your fucking grand jury after six months, so now you’re framing me with this…” She started striding past Syd toward the door. “You’ll have to reach me through my attorney.”
Syd grabbed the taller woman by the arm, spun her around, and slammed Poulsen’s upper body down onto the conference table while she pinned both arms behind her. Syd swept a pair of cuffs off her belt and had the woman handcuffed before Poulsen could lift her head from the table.
