Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Which the complainers would have to have sought out with night-vision goggles in order to see,” said Syd.

“Yeah. But the promoter thought it would still be safer to separate the audience area from the woods and the rock cliffs. That’s why Larry and Trudy’s client called them.”

“They’re on retainer for the promoter?”

“No.”

“For the insurance company that covers the concert liability?”

“No.”

“For Metallica ?”

“No.”

“I give up,” said Syd. “Whose ass are we rushing out to cover?”

“The fence company’s,” said Dar.

Most of the concert patrons were leaving as Dar drove the Land Cruiser up the dusty ditch against the traffic flow to get to the concert area. Metallica had long since bussed itself to wherever Metallica dwells when not on stage, but a few score dazed, sleepy, and doped fans still milled around in front of what had been the bandstand. Dar saw the emergency lights at the far rear of the arroyo and headed that way. A California Highway Patrol officer stopped them at a gate in the low fence that separated the grassy seating area from the fornication woods, looked over their credentials in the beam of his six-battery flashlight, and then waved them through.

The emergency vehicles—several CHP cars with their flashers going, two ambulances, a sheriff’s car, two tow trucks, and a full fire truck—were gathered at the narrow end of the V of the arroyo. Douglas firs rose thirty and forty feet here, hiding the stars and the top of the cliffs. In the cone of the cruiser spotlights and emergency lights, Dar could see the smashed remnants of an upside-down pickup truck, an older Ford 250 from the looks of it. He parked the Cruiser, pulled a powerful flashlight from the backseat, and he and Syd walked toward the lights, identifying themselves twice more to get past groups of officious cops and bands of yellow accident-scene tape.

Lawrence walked over to them.

“Damn,” said Dar. “How’d you beat me here?”

Lawrence smirked under his mustache. “Not so hot now without your NSX, are you?”

“Syd, you remember Larry Stewart from this morning’s meeting?” said Dar.

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence. “Good evening, Ms. Olson.”

“Hi, Lawrence,” said Syd. “What do we have here?”

Lawrence blinked in happy surprise for a moment and then said, “Belaboring the obvious, one hellaciously smashed Ford F 250. Driver dead. Was ejected through the windshield and thrown approximately eighty-three feet. I paced it off, so the number’s not exact.” He pointed his own flashlight toward a mob of people standing and crouching around the corpse of a man at the base of a tree.

“He drove into the cliff face in the dark?” said Syd.

Lawrence shook his head. Suddenly a CHP officer joined them.

“Sergeant Cameron,” said Dar, surprised. “You’re far from home tonight.”

“Well, if it isn’t the Mercedes-killer,” said Cameron to Dar. He touched his cap in Syd’s direction. “Howdy, Ms. Olson. Haven’t seen you since the L.A. task force meeting last month.” Cameron hooked his thumbs in his belt until the leather creaked. “Yeah, well, I was moonlighting here—working crowd security—and just as the concert was ending, someone found this mess.”

“Anyone hear it happen?” asked Dar.

Cameron shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean much. During a Metallica concert, with those speakers and amplifiers cranked up, you could set off a Hiroshima-sized tactical nuke back here and nobody would’ve heard it.”

“Alcohol?” said Lawrence.

“We can see about ten empty beer cans in the smashed passenger compartment of the pickup,” said Cameron. “There are another eight or nine thrown free…like the driver.”

“Could he have driven into the cliff wall?” asked Syd.

Lawrence and Sergeant Cameron both shook their heads at the same time. “See how the truck is mashed down?” said Lawrence. “The thing fell from up there.”

“It drove over the cliff?” said Syd. “From above?”

“It would have to have backed over to end up in this position,” said Dar. “That’s why the driver was thrown west… toward the concert. The truck landed tail first—you can see how it crumpled—and ejected the driver like a cork out of a champagne bottle before the cab crushed.”

Sydney Olson walked closer to the crushed pickup truck and watched as an emergency crew finished attaching two cables from the two tow trucks to the undercarriage. “Stand back,” called one of the CHP officers, “we’re gonna lift it.”

“You have pictures?” Dar asked Lawrence.

Lawrence nodded and patted his Nikon. “This is going to be the interesting part,” he said very softly.

“What is going to be…” Syd began, and then said. “Oh, my God.”

Beneath the wreckage of the pickup truck was the body of a second man. His head and right arm and right shoulder had been smashed almost flat. His left arm was broken in a compound fracture that looked as if it had happened before the flattening. He was wearing a T-shirt but was naked from the waist down—or rather, his pants were bunched around his ankles at the top of his work boots. A dozen searchlights and flashlights were trained on the corpse and Sydney Olson said, “Oh, my God” again.

The man’s legs and exposed torso were scratched in a hundred places. There was a folding knife open and protruding from his thigh. The wound had bled heavily. The man had the end of a length of clothesline tied clumsily around his waist and there must have been a hundred more feet of the clothesline lying on and around the body. Worst of all, three feet of a thick branch—a holly branch—protruded from the corpse’s rectum.

“Yes,” said Dar. “Interesting.”

Photographs and measurements were taken. The police officers and rescue workers milled and discussed, discussed and milled. The medical examiner and a county coroner both pronounced the man dead. This was a relief to some of the onlookers. Debates raged as to how exactly this accident had played itself out.

“No one has a fucking clue,” whispered Sergeant Cameron.

“This is crazy,” said Syd. “Like some satanic cult thing.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Dar. He went over to talk to the fire fighters. Five minutes later they had moved the long fire-truck ladder and extended it to the top of the cliff, invisible through the branches to the onlookers below. Darwin, Lawrence, and two of the CHP officers clambered up the ladder with powerful flashlights. Five minutes after that, they scrambled down the ladder—all except for Dar, who stayed twenty-five feet up and waved at the fireman at the controls. The ladder swiveled into the thick tree branches, taking Dar with it, and he ducked the heavier boughs and shined his flashlight back and forth.

“Here,” he called at last.

Syd squinted up, but could not make out what Dar was touching and then photographing. Lawrence was looking through small binoculars he had pulled from a flap pocket of his safari shirt.

“What is it?” asked Syd.

“It’s the guy’s underpants caught on a branch,” said Lawrence. “Sorry,” he added, offering her the binoculars. “Want to look?”

“No, thanks.”

Fifteen minutes later, the discussions were over, the bodies were being put in body bags and carried by stretcher to separate ambulances, and everyone seemed satisfied. Lawrence walked back to the Land Cruiser with Dar and Syd. His Isuzu Trooper was parked just beyond Dar’s truck.

“All right,” said Sydney Olson, sounding slightly irritated. “I don’t get it. I couldn’t hear you talking to the officers. What the hell happened here?”