Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar popped the canopy and was out of his parachute harness and shoulder straps in a few seconds. Syd was already jogging toward him.

“Dickweed called,” she said before Dar could speak. “Jorgé Murphy Esposito is dead. If we hurry, we can get to the scene before everyone mucks it up.”

It was raining hard when they arrived at the construction site in south San Diego. They had decided to get their luggage, documents, and videotapes, so it had taken extra time to go back to the cabin, load up, lock up, and then get back to the city. By the time they arrived, Esposito’s body had been taken away, and there was yellow police tape around the accident site, but the place was still milling with uniformed police and others.

Captain Frank Hernandez, who had been at Wednesday’s meeting in Dickweed’s office, was the ranking plainclothes officer on the scene. Hernandez was short but solid—a light heavyweight without the altitude but with all the attitude, his face all angles and planes—and he wasted neither his words nor his time on fools. Dar had heard from Lawrence and others that Hernandez was an honest cop and an excellent detective.

“What are you two doing here?” asked the captain as Dar followed Syd through the pouring rain to the collapsed scissors lift which was wrapped about with yellow tape.

“The DA’s office called,” said Syd. “Esposito was a potential witness in our investigation.”

Hernandez grunted and smiled slightly at the word witness. “I could see why you would have an interest in Mr. Esposito, Chief Investigator,” he said. “He was definitely one of the area’s top cappers.”

Syd nodded and looked at the scissors lift. If the heavy platform had fallen from its highest point, it would have been about a thirty-five-foot drop. Now the platform itself was held up by jacks on each side. While the ground around the area was a sea of mud, it was dry under the scissors lift platform except for sprays of blood, brains, and a darker liquid. Flecks and spatters of brain matter were also visible on the cinder-block wall at the far side of the scissors lift.

“Are you here because it’s being considered a homicide?” Syd asked Hernandez.

The detective shrugged. “We have an eyewitness who says otherwise.” He nodded toward where a construction foreman holding a clipboard was talking to a uniformed officer. “There were only a few workers on the site today,” continued Hernandez. “Vargas—that’s the foreman there—he didn’t see Attorney Esposito show up, but noticed him talking to someone by the scissors lift.”

“Did he recognize the other man?” asked Syd.

Hernandez nodded again. “Paulie Satchel. Used to work this site but has been laid up due to a fall. Paulie’s suing the company…”

“Let me take a wild guess,” said Syd. “Esposito was his attorney.”

Hernandez’s dark eyes showed no amusement as he smiled.

“So is this Satchel a suspect?” asked Syd.

“No.” Hernandez sounded certain. “We’re looking for him to interview him, but only as a witness. The foreman…Vargas…saw Satchel leaving just as it started raining. Esposito stepped under the scissors lift to get out of the rain. The lift was up at the third-floor level there. Esposito was all by himself the last time Vargas saw him there. Then the lift suddenly gave way, it looks like Esposito jumped the wrong way—toward the wall—and his head was caught in the scissors.”

Syd looked at the spray of gray matter on the dry cinder-block wall and said, “Did Vargas actually see the accident?”

“No,” said Hernandez, “but he turned his head as soon as he heard the sound it made. He didn’t see anyone else around.”

“How does a scissors lift just collapse?” asked Dar. He was snapping images with his digital camera.

Hernandez looked the insurance investigator up and down a long moment, as if sizing him up, and said, “Vargas thinks that Esposito was fucking around with that oversized bolt and screw there on the closest column. That’s where they fill and drain the hydraulic reservoirs. When the screw came out, the hydraulics lost pressure almost at once and the lift came down just as fast.”

“Why would Esposito do that?” said Syd.

Hernandez mopped his wet, black hair off his forehead. “Esposito was a fuckup,” he said simply.

Dar came close to the lift, did not step under it, but crouched to look at the dry area underneath. “There are more footsteps here than Mr. Esposito’s.”

“Yeah,” said Hernandez. “The paramedics who extricated him. And the ME who declared him deceased. Only Esposito’s footprints were under there when the uniforms and I arrived.”

“How could you tell?” said Dar.

Hernandez sighed. “You see any of the construction guys wearing Florsheims with a reinforced heel?”

Syd crouched next to Dar and reached into the taped-off zone, dipping two fingers into some of the dark fluid on the ground and raising the fingers to her face. “So this longer, narrow spray is hydraulic fluid…”

“Yeah,” said Captain Hernandez. “And the rest is Esposito.”

“But you’re keeping the case open,” said Syd. “Considering foul play.”

“We’re going to talk to Paulie Satchel,” said Hernandez. “Do formal interviews with some of the other guys who were on site at the time. Somebody like Jorgé Esposito makes a lot of enemies and has a lot of rivals. But right now it looks like it’ll be logged as an accident.”

“What about Vargas?” said Dar.

Hernandez frowned. “The foreman? He’s been with the company for eighteen years. Doesn’t even have a parking ticket on his record.”

“Mr. Esposito was suing the company,” Syd said quietly.

The detective shook his head. “Vargas was on the phone in the main shack over there when the lift came down. He was talking to one of the architects. We can check the phone records and interview the architect. But Vargas is clean. I feel it.”

“Instinct?” asked Dar, curious, as always, about how cops deduced things. He almost believed in their sixth sense.

Hernandez squinted at Dar as if he’d read sarcasm in the remark. He said nothing.

Syd broke the silence. “Where did the ME send the body?”

“City morgue,” said Hernandez, still looking at Dar with cold, dark eyes. Finally he moved his gaze to Syd. “You thinking of going there?”

“I might.”

Hernandez shrugged. “Esposito wasn’t a pretty sight when we got here…I doubt if he’s any prettier in the morgue. But hey…it’s your Sunday.”

Dar had noticed in recent years that in the movies, morgues were always filled with naked, beautiful young female bodies and the medical examiners tended to be written and played as fat, insensitive pigs. But the ME of San Diego County, Dr. Abraham Epstein, was a small, meticulously dressed and tailored man in his early sixties, who spoke so softly and seriously that one was reminded of a funeral director, but with more sincerity. Nor did Dar and Syd have to walk past bodies to see Esposito’s corpse. The procedure now was to sit in a small, comfortable room while a video of the deceased was shown on a high-resolution thirty-two-inch TV monitor.

As soon as Esposito’s face appeared, Dar cringed. He could feel Syd recoiling next to him.

“In medical terminology,” Dr. Epstein said quietly, “this is called the Face of Frozen Horror. An antiquated term, but still quite appropriate.”

“Dear God,” said Syd. “I’ve seen many dead bodies, many resulting from violent death, but never…”

“An expression such as this,” finished the medical examiner. “Yes, very rare. Usually the phenomenon of death, even violent death, eliminates most or all expression from the face—at least until rigor mortis sets in. But this occurs in rare cases involving massive and almost instantaneous trauma to the brain—such as one might find on a battlefield—”