Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“I understand that one well enough,” rumbled Lawrence.

Trudy quit giggling and gave him a look.

Syd suddenly laughed aloud. “Here’s a possible case of overkill,” she said, flipping to a statement transcript. “‘In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.’”

“We’re getting silly, people,” said Dar, glancing at his watch.

“We started silly,” said Trudy. She looked at the stack of fraudulent claims. “Do we have anything that looks at all likely?”

“Two, I think,” said Dar, pulling dossiers from the teetering pile. “Remember the rebar case on the I-5 in May?”

“What’s that?” said Syd.

“Rebar is steel rods used to reinforce concrete,” intoned Lawrence.

“I know what rebar is,” said the investigator. “What’s the case?”

“May twenty-third,” said Dar, skimming through the file. “I-5 twenty-nine miles north of San Diego.”

“Oh, God,” said Lawrence. “You did the reconstruction video graphics for that, but I was one of the first on the scene. Jesus.”

Syd waited.

“Asian guy, Vietnamese, just arrived in the States with his family—eight kids—three months earlier, working as a delivery driver for a florist, has one of those cab-forward Isuzu delivery vans with the engine under the seat, nothing in front of him except Plexiglas and a thin sheet of tin,” said Lawrence, grimacing as he remembered. “He was tailgating an open truck owned by a little construction firm out of La Jolla—Burnette Construction, strictly a family business—Bill Burnette, the owner, driving a load of rebar.”

“Sticking out behind the trailer bed?” asked Syd.

“By eight feet,” said Lawrence. “It was red-flagged, but…” The insurance investigator took a breath. “The poor Vietnamese guy was tailgating, doing about fifty-five, when someone swerved in front of Burnette’s truck and Burnette hit the brakes…hard.”

“And the Vietnamese guy didn’t,” said Syd.

Dar shook his head. “No, he did, but the brakes didn’t work. No fluid.”

Syd exchanged glances with the others; this type of accident was rare.

“Bound bundles of rebar came through the windshield and front of the van and speared the delivery guy in four or five places,” said Lawrence. “Dragged him right out through the shattered windshield. Burnette’s truck hadn’t stopped—was still doing thirty or so when the collision happened—and he told me he could see this poor son of a bitch hanging back there from the rebar…impaled in the face, throat, chest, left arm…”

“But still alive,” said Dar.

Lawrence nodded. “For the time being. Burnette didn’t know what to do, but he had the presence of mind not to hit the brakes again. That would have impaled the poor guy, Mr. Phong, even worse. So he pulled to the side of the road and gently slowed down with this poor devil dangling back there.”

“That couldn’t possibly be a swoop-and-squat,” said Syd. “Not with the squatter behind the rebar truck. Plus there’s no place for the squatter to squat and hide…”

“That’s what we thought,” said Trudy. “But when Dar did the reconstruction, it sure looked like a deliberate swoop. Very light traffic. A white pickup crossed two lanes, swooped in front of the Burnette vehicle, slammed on his brakes, and then accelerated away down an off ramp.”

“Was he trying to get to the off ramp?” said Syd.

Trudy shook her head. “Ramp was on the right. The accident happened in the far left lane of five lanes. And the traffic was so light that there seemed to be no reason for the victim, Mr. Phong, to be tailgating the way he was. Several lanes were open. It looks like a swoop-and-squat set-up…”

“But the idea isn’t to kill or permanently maim the ‘victim’ in a swoop-and-squat,” Syd said. “They’re supposed to be rear-ended in some sort of reinforced car and then claim whiplash or something, not be impaled from the front by rebar. Did Mr. Phong die?”

“Yeah,” said Lawrence. “Three days later, without regaining consciousness.”

“What was the settlement?” asked the chief investigator.

“Two point six million,” said Trudy.

Lawrence sighed. “Burnette was running his construction company on a shoestring and took the lightest coverage he could afford. The settlement drove him into bankruptcy.”

Syd looked at the other file.

“This is also one of your red pins,” said Dar. “The one on the I-5 that I mentioned. This is definitely a swoop-and-squat—the rear-car driver, Mr. Hernandez, had three disability and eight personal injury claims pending.”

“But also a fatality,” said Syd.

“Yeah,” said Dar. “Everything went according to script up to the impact. Again, a pickup swooped in front of the squat car—a big old Buick—and hit its brakes. The target car, a new Cadillac, slammed into the rear of Hernandez’s Buick just as planned. But then Hernandez’s Buick exploded…”

“I thought that only happened in the movies,” said Syd.

“Just about,” said Dar. “But my investigation found remnants of a crude battery-driven spark igniter in the gas tank of Mr. Hernandez’s Buick. It was rigged to ignite after any sharp contact with the rear bumper.”

“Murder,” said Syd.

Dar nodded. “But in each case, the lawyer—who was the same lawyer, by the way—had lawsuits against both the other driver and the car maker, so the evidence of brake tampering and sabotage of the Hernandez car was dismissed in exchange for dropping the lawsuits against the manufacturers.”

“I’ve been curious,” said Syd, “about how they pick the target vehicle for these swoop-and-squats.”

Trudy spoke. “Several factors. Expensive car, of course…”

“Especially one with a State Farm or other big insurance sticker on the bumper,” said Lawrence.

“Usually older drivers,” said Trudy. “Someone who doesn’t react too quickly and will brake when they shouldn’t.”

“They don’t want to hurt the people in the target vehicle, of course,” said Dar. “The idea is for the accomplice in the squat vehicle to claim the disability—usually invisible injuries such as whiplash or lower back, although insurance companies are getting tougher about that.”

“But the classic swoop-and-squat here—Hernandez—ended in the death of the driver,” said Syd. “And the Phong accident doesn’t fit the swoop-and-squat profile…”

“It’s true,” said Dar, shaking his head. “It seems inconceivable that he would volunteer to collide with a load of overhanging rebar.”

“Unless it was his first time,” said Syd. “Unless he was set up. And Mr. Hernandez…”

“Found in the typical squat position,” said Trudy. “Hunkered down under the wheel. The trunk of the old Buick was filled with sandbags and tires, typical reinforcement for a squat car to buffer the impact. But it all burned—including Mr. Hernandez—when the gas tank exploded.”

“Settlement?”

“Six hundred thousand,” said Lawrence.

“So now we come to the lawyer for both cases, Mr. Jorgé Murphy Esposito,” said Syd. “We’ve known for a long time that he’s a pure ambulance chaser…”

Trudy laughed. “Esposito could dispatch ambulances,” she said. “He knows where the accidents are going to happen before they happen.”

Syd nodded. “Dar, do you think Esposito’s the one siccing the Russians on you?”

Dar sighed. “My gut instinct says no. Esposito’s small time. He works with the usual underclass of fraud claimants. I just don’t see him branching out and playing the game on the level high enough to justify using Russian mafia hitmen.”

“But this is a lead,” said Sydney. “Who are the other lawyers and doctors high on your list?”