Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Would you all please quit referring to Dr. Minor in the third person?” said Dar irritably. “I’m right here.” He was sitting in his Eames chair, wearing a green bathrobe that didn’t cover all the dressings the paramedics had put on his chest and neck for glass cuts.

“You wouldn’t be there,” said Syd, “if the shooter hadn’t sighted in on your mirror reflection rather than you.”

“Lucky me,” said Dar.

“Damned right, lucky you,” agreed Syd, sounding angry. “If it hadn’t been for that very light drizzle, the slight fog that came in from the ocean this evening, a slight mist, this scope would have told the shooter he was looking at your reflection in the mirror rather than a flesh-and-blood target. Even from almost half a mile away, this guy put a bullet right through your heart.”

“In the mirror,” said Dar. “Seven years bad luck.” He sipped hot tea and paused to look at his hand as he held the cup. It was shaking very slightly. Interesting. “And why were you staked out there anyway, Investigator Olson?”

Syd’s eyes narrowed. “Just because you weren’t going to help us catch these bastards didn’t mean that I was leaving you unprotected.”

“Not much protection involved, was there?” said Dar. “The fellow got two shots off…By the way, are you sure it was a man?”

“Ran like a man,” said Syd. “Dressed in a windbreaker and ball cap. Average height. Average to slim build. Never saw his face and it was too dark to tell his race or nationality.”

Captain Hernandez was straddling a kitchen chair pulled into the circle around the coffee table. He put his chin on his forearm and said, “Is it standard procedure, Investigator Olson, for law enforcement officers from the state’s attorney’s office to go after shooters single-handedly…not wait for backup?”

Syd smiled at him. “No, Captain, it certainly isn’t. But Tom was my backup and he and I were going to take turns on shifts for a few nights. I’m sure that my superiors in Sacramento will remind me of proper procedure.”

“Good,” said Hernandez. “So where does that leave the investigation?”

Jim Warren of the FBI crouched next to the coffee table. “Well, we don’t have prints, we don’t have a description of the shooter or tag numbers on his car, but we’ve got his weapon. The Weaver scope isn’t that unusual, but there can’t be many of these Tikka 595s sold. And even though an initial dusting didn’t turn up any prints on the three cartridges still in the magazine, perhaps the FBI lab will find something. They usually do. And we’ll backtrack on the hand-loaded Winchester .748 MatchKing 8THPs…It’s not your usual deer-hunting ammo.”

There was more talk. Dar finished his tea and found himself half dozing, feeling the pain from the cuts and an ache from the tetanus shot but mostly feeling sleepy. Lawrence and Trudy called about 2:00 A.M.—they were plugged into a serious network—and it was everything Dar could do to keep them both from coming over, too.

It was dawn by the time the last of the uniforms and CHP people left. There were two San Diego PD unmarked cars on sentry duty now, a CHP cruiser on regular patrol, and Dar could just barely make out the uniformed officer with a rifle on the roof of the shooter’s building—an old warehouse two blocks north. Dar didn’t think the assassin was coming back today.

Finally only Tom Santana and Syd Olson were left; both looked very tired.

“Dar,” said Syd, setting her hand on his knee.

Dar snapped awake. He suddenly was very aware of the pressure of Sydney Olson’s hand, the presence of the other man, and the fact that he had only had time to pull on his bathrobe by the time the mob arrived. “What?”

“Does this change anything?”

“Getting shot at always changes things,” said Dar. “If it keeps up, I may become religious.”

“Goddammit, stop playing games. Will you consider helping us directly now? It will be the only way we can insure your safety and put these arrogant bastards away.”

“All of them?” said Dar. “You think you can catch all of them? Tom, how many cappers and bulls and cows and clinic workers and attorneys were there in that Vietnamese operation you broke up some years ago?”

“About forty-eight people,” said Tom Santana.

“And how many did you get indictments on?”

“Seven.”

“And how many did you send away?”

“Five…but that includes both attorneys, the only legitimate doctor in the bunch, and the head capper.”

“And they were out in…what? Two years? Three?”

“Yeah,” said Tom, “but the attorneys aren’t practicing anywhere, the doctor moved to Mexico, and the capper is still on parole. They’re not staging accidents any longer.”

“No,” said Dar. “Now it’s the Alliance and the Organizatsiya . The game never changes…just the faces.”

Santana shrugged and walked to the door.

“Don’t forget to put the police bar in place,” Syd said, and turned to follow Tom Santana to the elevator.

Dar took her by the wrist. “Syd…thank you.”

“For what?” she said, looking deep into his eyes. “For what?” She left without waiting for an answer.

It was strangely dark in the condo, even after sunrise, because of the canvas over the tall windows. Dar made a mental note to have some blinds installed as soon as he could. He went back to the bedroom, shrugged off his bathrobe, and crawled under the comforter. He thought he would be asleep in seconds, but he lay there for some time, watching the filtered sunlight move across the high ceiling.

Eventually Dar slept. He did not dream.

Wednesday was a lost day. Dar slept only a few hours—sleeping during the daylight made him feel creepy. When he got up, he found someone in the yellow pages who could install window blinds in a hurry and waited for them to come, puttering around the apartment. He was not afraid to go outside—he did not think he was afraid—but he also wasn’t ready to unless he had a reason.

Lawrence came over about noon with a hot lunch for them to share and made sure that Dar was hiding no horrific bullet holes. Lawrence said that he was working “in town,” which meant San Diego proper and usually meant testifying at the Justice Center. He said he’d be in town until late, and asked if he could crash on Dar’s sofa. Dar was suspicious—he suspected that his insurance adjuster friend was looking out for him—but Dar could hardly say no.

When Lawrence left and the venetian blind installers were finished, Dar finished his old case files, e-mailed his chess moves to all of his opponents except Dmitry in Moscow, and found himself in the bedroom, going to one knee and pulling the Remington 870 and the box of shells out from under the bed. He fed five of the clunky shotgun shells into the bottom of the receiver and then balanced the weapon on his knees. The embossed lettering on the left side of the chamber above and in front of the trigger guard read Remington 870 EXPRESS MAGNUM, designating a shotgun made after 1955, when Remington modified the 870 to accept modern 3-inch magnum shotshells as well as the older, 2¾-inch twelve-gauge shells. Dar touched the release catch for the sliding pump—a tiny latch on the left forward portion of the trigger guard—pumped the action once, chambering a shell, and then pressed the cross-bolt safety button at the rear of the trigger guard. The blue-steel touch of the weapon and the smell of gun oil coming from it reminded Dar of his childhood—of hunting ducks and pheasants with his father and his uncles in southern Illinois—of crisp autumn mornings, brittle cornstalks, and well-behaved bird dogs trotting behind them.