Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Thank you, Dickweed,” said Du Bois with a wide smile.

Weid blinked as if he had not heard correctly, and smiled back. “Ah…next to W.D.D…. most of you law enforcement people know these two…are Trudy and Larry Stewart of Stewart Investigations out of Escondido.”

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence.

“And beyond Larry there,” continued the Deputy DA, “is someone else whom a lot of us have met in the line of business, Mr. Darwin Minor, one of the best accident reconstruction specialists in the country and the driver of the black NSX we saw on the videotape. And at the end of the table—”

“Just a minute please, Dick,” said Riverside County’s Sheriff Fields. He was an older man with gunslinger eyes, and when he turned his gaze on Dar, the effect was obviously meant to be both freezing and wilting. “That was the most reprehensible and cold-blooded example of vehicular homicide that I have ever seen.”

“Thanks,” said Dar, returning the sheriff’s electric stare amp for amp. “Only they tried to kill me in cold blood. My blood was very, very warm when I drove them off the road—”

“Just a minute!” commanded Deputy DA Weid. “Let me finish. And at the end of the table, I’d like to introduce Ms. Sydney Olson, chief investigator for the state’s attorney’s office and currently the leader of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Task Force’s Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep. Syd…you have the floor.”

“Thank you, Richard,” the chief investigator said, and smiled again.

Stockard Channing, thought Dar.

“As most of you know,” said the chief investigator, “for the last three months, the state has been carrying out a major investigation—Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep—in an attempt to crack down on the startling rise in insurance fraud claims in this part of the state. We estimate that insurance fraud this year alone is costing Californians about seven point eight billion dollars—”

Several of the sheriffs whistled respectfully.

“—and is driving up insurance rates at least by twenty-five percent.”

“More like forty percent,” interjected Lester Greenspan from the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

Sydney Olson nodded. “I agree. I think the state’s estimates are far too conservative. Especially after the last six months or so.”

Special Agent James Warren cleared his throat. “It should be noted that Operation SouthCal Clean Sweep is modeled after the Bureau’s very successful 1995 Operation Clean Sweep in which we made more than one thousand arrests.”

And probably four convictions, thought Dar.

“Thank you, Jim,” said Chief Investigator Olson. “You’re right, of course. We’re also basing our operation on Florida’s probe, Crash for Cash, where state officials arrested one hundred and seventy-four suspects, many of whom were found working in a single ring linked to fake accidents.”

“Mostly slip-and-falls?” asked Trudy Stewart. “Or heavier stuff?”

“A lot of the suspects were repeat offenders on slip-and-falls,” said Sydney. “But the big catch was a Miami attorney and his son who headed up an organized ring. They staged more than one hundred and fifty auto crashes, paying low-income individuals to collide with each other on the Florida highways and then filing spurious claims against the insurers through collaborating chiropractors or their own law firms.”

“Nothin’ new about that in Southern California,” said Riverside County’s Sheriff Fields in his gunslinger drawl. “Deal with that almost every damned day. ’Bout one out of every eight or ten of the accidents on I-15 through our county is staged. Not a damned thing new.”

Chief Investigator Sydney Olson nodded in agreement. “Except for the fact that in the last few months there’s been some sort of turf battle for control of organized insurance fraud.”

“Groups?” said Sheriff Fields, squinting suspiciously.

Deputy DA Weid spoke. “In Dade County, Florida, they discovered that it was largely the Colombians—the former drug runners—who were organizing the insurance fraud. We’re running into the same thing with some of the organized Mexican or Mexican-American gangs in East L.A. and elsewhere.”

“Figures,” grumbled Sheriff Fields.

Captain Sutton of the CHP shook his head. “The majority of staged crashes isn’t being headed up by our Latino gangs,” he said quietly. “They tried to get into the action and got their butts kicked. Quite a few top hommes in body bags.”

Sheriff Schultz from Orange County cleared her throat. “We’ve seen the same thing with organized Vietnamese crime. They want to dominate, but someone is muscling them out.”

Special Agent Warren said, “And whoever it is that’s been most successful in this turf war is bringing in Russian and Chechnyan mafia enforcers…all along the West Coast, but especially down here.”

All eyes turned back toward Dar and those seated near him.

Lawrence made a coughing noise that usually preceded a longer statement from him. “Our company’s hired Dar…Mr. Minor…Dr. Minor…to reconstruct several accidents that were obviously staged. He’s been an expert witness in half a dozen cases and so have I.”

Trudy was shaking her head. “But we haven’t seen any sign of a highly organized ring in these fraudulent claims,” she said. “It’s just the usual assortment of losers and second-or third-generation insurance-claim parasites. They depend on it the way welfare addicts used to depend on their checks.”

Deputy DA Weid looked at Dar. “There’s no doubt that these two men in the Mercedes were not only Russian mafia imported as part of this turf battle, but that they were tasked to kill you, Mr. Minor.”

Dar winced slightly at the use of the noun task as a verb. Aloud he said, “Why would they want to kill me?”

Sydney Olson turned sideways in her chair and looked Dar in the eye. “That’s what we hoped you’d tell us. What happened yesterday represents the best lead we’ve had in several months of investigation.”

Dar could only shake his head. “I don’t even know how they could have found me. The whole day was crazy…” He quickly and concisely told of his 4:00 A.M. JATO-unit wakeup call, the meeting with Larry, and the interview with Henry at the Shady Rest Senior Mobile Home Park. “I mean… none of that day was planned. No one could have known that I’d be coming south on I-15 at that time of day.”

Captain Sutton of the CHP said, “We found a cell-phone frequency scanner in the wreck of their Mercedes. They must have monitored your calls.”

Dar shook his head again. “I didn’t make or receive any cell phone calls after my meeting with Larry.”

Trudy said, “Lawrence called in after he’d gotten the photographs of the stolen-car ring to say that you were covering the mobile home park interview.”

Dar shook his head again. “Are you suggesting that the stupid JATO thing or the seventy-eight-year-old man falling from his Pard is part of a massive insurance-fraud conspiracy? And that someone would import Russians to kill me over it?”

Again Captain Sutton of the CHP spoke. For such a big man—he was at least six five—his voice was very soft. “The JATO thing, we cleared. The human remains in the wreckage—teeth—were ID’d as nineteen-year-old Purvis Nelson from Borrego Springs, who lives with his uncle Leroy. Leroy buys metal in job lots from the Air Force. Evidently someone at the Air Force base didn’t notice that those two JATO units hadn’t been used. Purvis did, though. He left his uncle a note…”

“A suicide note?” someone asked.

The Highway Patrol captain shook his head. “Just a note dated eleven P.M. that night saying that he was going to break the land speed record and that he’d see his uncle at breakfast.”