Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Syd nodded again. “What is your reaction to this video, Mr. Trace?”

“I would have been outraged by it,” Trace said easily, “except for the fact, of course, that I’ve seen it before. Several times.”

Dar had to blink at this news.

“You have?” said Syd. “May I ask where?”

“Detective Ventura showed it to me during the course of the investigation of the accident,” said Trace.

“Lieutenant Robert Ventura,” said Syd, “of the Los Angeles Police Department’s homicide unit.”

“That’s correct,” said Trace. “But both Lieutenant Ventura and Captain Fairchild assured me… assured me, Ms. Olson…that this…video ‘reenactment’ was based on faulty data and completely unreliable.”

Dar cleared his throat. “Mr. Trace, you seem confident that the video is not showing you the murder of your son. May I ask why you’re so confident?”

Dallas Trace fixed Dar with his cold stare. “Of course, Dr. Minor. First of all, I respect the professionalism of the detectives in question—”

“Ventura and Fairchild of LAPD homicide,” interrupted Syd.

Trace’s gaze never left Dar. “Yes, Detectives Ventura and Fairchild. They spent hundreds of hours on the case and ruled out foul play.”

“Did you speak to anyone in the LAPD Traffic Investigation Unit?” asked Dar. “Sergeant Rote, perhaps? Or Captain Kapshaw?”

The attorney shrugged. “I spoke to many people involved, Dr. Minor. I probably spoke to those men. Certainly I spoke with Officer Lentile—who wrote the accident report—as well as with Officer Clancey, Officer Berry, Sergeant McKay, and the others who were there that night.” The strong muscles around Trace’s thin lips quirked upward again, but the resulting smile did not reach his eyes. “I am not without my own slight abilities of interrogation and cross-examination.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Syd, drawing the attorney’s gaze back to her, “but did you speak to the claimants—the other two people directly involved in the accident—Mr. Borden and Ms. Smiley?”

Trace shook his head. “I read their depositions. I had no interest in speaking with them.”

“They were reported to have moved to San Francisco,” said Syd, “but the San Francisco police cannot locate them at the present time.”

Trace said nothing. Without actually glancing at his watch, he made it obvious that they were wasting his expensive time. Dar could only look at Syd. When had she tracked down this information?

“Did you know that your son had an alias, Mr. Trace? That he had identity papers under the name of Dr. Richard Karnak and worked at a medical clinic called California Sure-Med?”

“Yes,” said Trace, “I became aware of that.”

“Was your son a doctor, Mr. Trace?”

“No,” said the attorney. His voice seemed to hold no tension or defensive tone. “My son was a perpetual student…He was in his thirties and still attending graduate classes, never finishing any. He spent one year in medical school.”

“How did you become aware of your son’s alias and involvement with the Sure-Med clinic, Mr. Trace?” said Syd. “Through Detectives Ventura or Fairchild?”

Trace shook his head slowly. “Nope. I hired my own private investigator.”

“And you’re aware that the California Sure-Med clinic was an injury mill—a source for fraudulent insurance claims—and that your son had violated state and federal laws by posing as a doctor and sending in false injury reports,” Syd said.

“I am aware of that now, Investigator Olson,” Trace said, voice flat. “Do you intend to indict my son?”

Syd did not break away from the lawyer’s eagle gaze.

Trace sighed and dropped his feet to the floor. He ran his hands over his combed-back gray hair and adjusted the leather thong holding his ponytail in place. “Investigator, I’m afraid I’m ahead of you here. What the police didn’t turn up, my private investigator did. I discovered and acknowledge now, on the record, that my son was part of—what did you call it?—an injury mill. A fraudulent-claims network run by what the fraud business calls a ‘capper’?”

“Yes.”

“A capper named Jorgé Murphy Esposito.” Dallas Trace said the last three words as if they tasted of pure bile.

“Who died this weekend,” said Syd.

“Yes,” said Dallas Trace. He smiled. “Would you like to hear my alibi for the time of the accident, Investigator?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Trace,” said Syd. “I know that you were at a charity auction in Beverly Hills on Sunday afternoon. You bought a Picasso drawing for sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty dollars.”

Trace’s smile eroded. “Jesus Christ, woman,” he said, “you actually do suspect me in all this petty shit?”

Syd shook her head. “I really am trying to gather information about one of the most profitable injury mills in Southern California,” she said. “Your son, who was involved in it, died under mysterious circumstances—”

“I disagree,” Trace said sharply. “My son died in an accident while skipping out on his rent with his friends, two petty thieves, one of whom could not drive a van worth shit. A senseless ending to a largely useless life.”

“Dr. Minor’s video reconstruction of the event—” began Syd.

The lawyer turned his gaze back to Dar, without a hint of a smile. “Dr. Minor, a few years ago I went to see this popular movie about a great big ship that sank almost ninety years ago…”

“Titanic,” Dar said.

“Yes, sir,” continued the lawyer, his West Texas accent becoming more pronounced. “And in that movie, I saw with my own two eyes that big ship sinking—standin’ on end, breakin’ in two—people fallin’ like frogs out of a bucket. But you know somethin’, Dr. Minor?”

Dar waited.

“None of it was true. It was special effects . It was digital .” Dallas Trace spat the words out.

Dar said nothing.

“If I had you on the witness stand, Doctor Minor, you on the stand and your precious video in the machine playin’ right in front of the jury, it would take me thirty seconds…shit, no, twenty seconds…to show them how in this digital-computer-special-effects age we live in, we can trust nothing on tape anymore.”

“Esposito is dead,” interrupted Syd. “Donald Borden and Gennie Smiley—actually the former Gennie Esposito, as I’m sure your PI informed you—are missing. And you still don’t find that suspicious?”

He swiveled his raptor gaze toward her. “I find everything suspicious about it, Ms. Olson. I was suspicious of everything Richard did…every friend he had…every mess he wanted me to bail him out of. Well, finally he got into a mess that no one could bail him out of. I’m convinced it was an accident, Ms. Olson…but I’m also convinced it just doesn’t matter a good goddamn. If he hadn’t died that night on Marlboro Avenue, he’d probably be in jail now. My son was a poor, confused, weak, and manipulative little shit bird, Ms. Olson, and it doesn’t surprise me one steer turd of an iota that he ended up with bottom-dweller losers like Jorgé Esposito and Donald Borden and Gennie former-Mrs. Esposito Smiley.”

“And their disappearance?” said Syd.

Dallas Trace laughed, and for the first time it sounded sincere. “These people perfect turning their whole lives into a disappearing act, Ms. Olson. You know that. It’s what they do. It’s what my son did. And now he’s gone for good and nothing I can do, or you can find out, will bring him back.”

Dallas Trace jumped to his feet—he moved very fast for a man in his sixties, Dar noticed again—pulled the tape from the machine, gave it to Syd, and opened the office door.