Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Hence my involvement,” said Dar.

“—and they also sued the owners of the apartment building for not providing adequate lighting.” She flipped back twenty or thirty pages. “Ah…here it is in her statement…Ms. Smiley said that bad exterior lighting and poor rental truck headlights prevented her from seeing Kodiak when he stepped out in front of the van. They wanted six hundred thousand dollars from the van rental company.”

“And another four hundred thousand from the apartment building owner,” said Dar.

“An even million,” mused Syd. “At least they knew what their friend was worth.”

Dar rubbed his chin. “Mr. Borden and Mr. Kodiak had lived at that same address for two years and were universally known as Dickie and Donnie to their neighbors, shop owners, local restaurateurs…”

“Gay?” said Syd.

Dar nodded.

“Then who was Gennie?”

“It seems that Mr. Borden…Donnie…swings both ways. Gennie Smiley was his secret girlfriend. Dickie discovered them together…there was a row that lasted three days, according to the neighbors…and then Dickie and Donnie patched things up by agreeing to move to San Francisco.”

“ Sans Gennie,” said Syd.

“ Sans Gennie indeed,” said Dar. “But as a gesture of goodwill, she helped them pack up the van in preparation for moving.”

“At two forty-five A.M. on a rainy morning?” said Syd.

Dar shrugged. “Dickie and Donnie were two months in arrears on their rent. It seems they were skipping.” He turned on one of the twenty-one-inch CAD monitors and tapped out a code. “OK, here are some of the accident-scene photos as recorded by Sergeant McKay of the Traffic Investigations Unit.” An electronic version of the black-and-white photo appeared on the large screen. And another. And another.

“Uh-oh,” said Syd.

“Uh-oh,” agreed Dar.

One photo showed Mr. Kodiak’s body lying in the middle of the street about thirty feet west of the main doors of the apartment building. The body was lying facedown to the east—head toward the van—and there were visible patches of blood and brain matter spilled in both directions. Another photo showed broken glass, a single shoe, shoe scuff marks, and body scuff marks directly in front of the apartment building’s main doorway. Another photograph showed continuous, nonstriated skid marks running back almost to the turn from Fountain Boulevard some 165 feet east of the impact site. In all of the photos, the van was backed east of the point of impact, its own skid marks running at least thirty feet in front of it.

“Gennie backed up when she heard a noise and thought she may have hit something,” said Dar.

“Uh-huh,” said Syd.

“Donnie was the only witness to Dickie’s death,” said Dar, pointing to the thick sheaf of statements. “He said that the two of them had been arguing. When Gennie arrived, they asked her to drive around the block and come back…”

“Why?” said Syd.

“Donnie said that they didn’t want to argue in front of her,” said Dar. “So she came around the block, traveling about thirty miles per hour, according to her estimate. She didn’t see Dickie, who had stepped off the curb, until it was too late to stop.” Dar ran the photos across the computer screen again and then froze on the widest shot. He turned on the second monitor and tapped up a program. A three-dimensional view of the same scene appeared, but this one was computer-animated.

“You do three-D accident reconstruction videos,” said Syd. “I didn’t see the CAD monitors in your loft.”

“They’re there,” said Dar. “Tucked away in a corner behind some bookcases. Preparing these provides a big share of my income.”

Syd nodded.

“So, Chief Investigator,” said Dar, “do you see some irregularities in this accident?”

Syd looked at the dossier, at the photograph on the screen, and then at the 3-D image that showed essentially the same picture as the photograph. “Something’s wrong here.”

“Correct,” said Dar. “First I investigated the lighting under similar conditions with a specialized light meter.”

“At two-forty-five A.M. on a cloudy, rainy night,” said Syd.

Dar raised his eyebrows. “Of course.” He tapped some keys.

Suddenly numbers appeared on the 3-D image of the street scene. Dar moved the mouse and rotated their viewpoint until they were looking straight down at the street, east to west, with the van near the bottom of the screen, the body centered, and the rest of the block visible. Areas on both sides had small rectangles of data listed as FC.

“Foot-candles of light,” said Syd.

Dar nodded. “Despite Donnie and Gennie’s claims, it was fairly well lighted for such a poor neighborhood. You can see that at both intersections, there are large pools of light covering most of the street at three foot-candles. The lighting at the front steps of the building puts out about one and a half foot-candles, and even in the middle of the street beyond where Dickie was hit, the lowest reading was one foot-candle.”

“She should have seen the victim even if the van’s lights weren’t working,” said Syd.

Dar touched the screen with a stylus and a red line appeared, running most of the way back to the intersection with Fountain Boulevard from whence the van had come. “Gennie came around through rather bright lighting—three foot-candles—and moved through this long area of two foot-candles of light until just before the impact. The van headlights were both intact and working. In fact, she had the brights on.”

Dar tapped keys and the visual on the screen disappeared, to be replaced by a real-time animation. Two men, three-dimensional but featureless, emerged from the front door of the apartment building. Suddenly the viewpoint switched to an aerial shot. The van accelerated around the corner from Fountain Boulevard and continued to accelerate. One of the figures stepped out into the street and faced the oncoming van. The van slammed on its brakes and slid most of the distance from the intersection to the impact site—finally hitting the man head-on and continuing to skid for another thirty feet or so. The featureless victim—Dickie—flew through the air and landed on his back in the roadway, head away from the van.

Dar tapped keys and the earlier aerial animated view was superimposed over this one. “This is the actual position of the van and body at the scene.” Suddenly the van was at least forty feet back up the street to the east and the body had also moved east—at least twenty feet from its actual point of rest, its head now pivoted around toward the van.

“Quite a discrepancy,” said Syd.

“It gets better,” said Dar. He pulled a six-page typed statement out of the dossier and let Syd glance over it. “Officer Berry, number 3501, took this statement from the first witness to drive down the street…a Mr. James William Riback.”

Syd’s eyes flicked back and forth down the pages. “Riback says that he saw a van pull away from the scene, almost cut him off, and then he saw Dickie—Mr. Kodiak—lying on his back in the street. Riback stopped his Taurus, got out, and asked Richard Kodiak if he was alive. He reports that Kodiak said, ‘Yes, go call an ambulance.’ Ribeck left his car in the street and ran to a friend’s apartment around the corner—3535 Gramercy Street—awoke his friend, told her to call 911, grabbed a blanket, and rushed back to the scene…where he found Mr. Kodiak lying in what Ribeck thought was a different location, certainly turned in a different direction, in much worse shape and unconscious. The paramedics arrived seven minutes later and Kodiak was pronounced dead. The van was parked where it is in the police photos.” Syd looked up at Dar. “The bitch drove around the block and ran over Dickie Kodiak again, didn’t she? But how do you prove it?”