Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Why no guardrail?” asked Dar.

Trudy sketched the scenic turnout on a napkin. “See, there’s guardrail on both sides of the turnout, then the parking spaces between with low concrete wedges, then thirty feet or so of grass with a gravel path, then this low wood fence with a row of reflectors…It’s just to warn pedestrians not to walk beyond there to the cliff’s edge.”

“How far from the fence to the cliff’s edge?” asked Dar.

“About another thirty feet to the actual cliff overhang, then a sheer drop. But there are a couple of boulders there. Notice that Willis’s Camry struck one of them—the driver’s-side door was found up there, on the clifftop, not on the boulders below.”

“I noticed that,” said Dar. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“The NICB investigator agreed with the CHP investigator that Willis couldn’t stop the car and was trying to jump when the car door hit the boulder,” said Lawrence. “The impact knocked him back into the passenger seat and then the car went over the edge.”

“Why couldn’t Willis stop the car?” said Dar. “Even if he hit the accelerator rather than the brake initially, he had almost sixty feet in which to stop.”

“Drunk,” said Trudy.

“Spontaneous acceleration followed by brake failure,” said Lawrence.

Trudy and Dar gave him sarcastic looks. Spontaneous acceleration only occurred on TV magazine “exposés,” and total brake failure was almost as rare as fatal meteor strikes.

The CHP photographs of the body were suitably grisly. Willis had been thrown from the car upon the initial impact with the sea rocks, and the car had rolled over him before finally coming to rest. The Camry was also in pretty bad shape. Someone had reported the smashed fence at about midnight and the CHP found the wreck and body a little after 1:00 A.M. The crabs had gotten to Counselor Willis, but not so badly that his secretary could not identify the body. Willis had been married but divorced years before, in New York State, and no family had claimed the body.

“OK,” said Trudy, “let’s look at occupant loading on the restraint system.”

They went through the CHP report. They went through the Carmel police officer’s report and the sheriff’s report. They looked at the NICB investigator’s report. They studied the photographs.

Syd showed up then. The chief investigator looked exhausted but happy. She noticed the intense concentration of the group and said nothing after the initial greetings.

Finally Trudy held up a black-and-white photo of the interior of the ’98 Camry. The car had struck the boulders hood-first, so the incursion into the passenger area was total—the crumpled steering wheel and dashboard actually ramming the passenger seats, the windshield completely gone and the roof crumpled down on the driver’s side almost to seat height.

“What’s wrong with this photo?” said Trudy.

“Only one air bag deployed,” said Lawrence.

“On the passenger side,” Dar said, and grinned. Got them .

Syd was frowning. “I don’t get it.”

Lawrence was on the phone immediately, calling the Carmel sheriff. Willis’s Camry was still being held as evidence, unceremoniously stacked out behind an autobody shop in town. “Carmel doesn’t have anything as mundane as a junkyard,” said Trudy, as Lawrence began talking quickly with the sheriff.

“Well then, can you send a deputy or someone over to look at it?” Lawrence was saying. “We need this information now.”

Lawrence listened and nodded. “Have him take a cell phone so that we can talk to him directly. What? OK, then…I’ll hold.” Lawrence covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said, “The deputy doesn’t have a cell phone, but they’ll patch through his radio call. I guess the body shop is about two hundred meters from the sheriff’s office.”

“I don’t get it,” Syd said again. “What are we looking for?”

“Occupant loading on the restraint system,” said Trudy.

Syd shook her head. “There wasn’t any,” she said. “I read all of the reports. They’re sure that Willis wasn’t buckled in when he went over. He was actually catapulted out through where the windshield would have been if it hadn’t popped out at the same time.”

“But look at the photo,” said Dar, sliding it over to the chief investigator. “One air bag deployed.”

Syd looked at it. “On the passenger side,” she said. “But I’m not sure what that proves…probably an air-bag sensor malfunction, don’t you think?”

Trudy shook her head. “Sensor malfunctions are so statistically rare that we can almost rule it out,” she said. She paused while Lawrence spoke with the deputy via their radio patch-through.

“OK…yes, hi, Deputy Soames…Lawrence Stewart here, Stewart Investigations. Are you standing by the Willis Camry? OK, good. Yeah, I bet it is. Uh-huh. That’s a good one, Deputy.” Lawrence rolled his eyes. “Deputy, would you look at the driver’s-side seat for me and—”

Lawrence listened a moment. “Yes, Deputy, I know it’s all smashed to hell and squashed and bloody on that side, I’m not asking you to get in the driver’s seat. The driver’s-side door should be missing…It is? Well, good, we’re talking about the same car then.”

Dar slid more photos in front of Syd. She looked at the one of the Camry’s left front door lying by the boulder on the clifftop and bit her lip.

“Now please look down at the base of the seat, Deputy. Yes, right where the seat belt is attached to the frame there. There’s a small enclosure there…see it? Good. Is there a red tag sticking up?”

Lawrence listened a few seconds. “A red tag,” he repeated. “It should be quite visible. It would read ‘Replace seat belt.’” He listened. “You’re sure? Thank you, Deputy.”

Lawrence returned to the table. “No tag.”

“If Mr. Willis had been belted in, the restraint system would have undergone a one-point-seven-g load,” said Trudy. “We could see the effects on the harness and the inertial reel, of course, but Toyota also has that little tag that pops up to remind the repair people to replace the belt restraint system after an accident.”

Syd still looked puzzled. “But both the CHP investigator and our people knew that Willis wasn’t belted in,” she said.

Dar lifted a transcript. “His secretary said in an interview that Willis always belted up. He told her more than once that he’d seen too many cripples and highway KIAs.”

“But he was drunk that night,” said Syd.

“Legally, but certainly not falling-down stupid drunk,” said Trudy. “Not drunk enough to mistake reverse gear for drive, or his accelerator for a brake pedal. Plus, even when you’re drunk, you do things out of habit. He would have buckled up even if it took him two or three fumbles.”

Syd rubbed her chin. “But I still don’t see the significance of the passenger-seat airbag deploying.”

“There had to be weight on the passenger seat for the airbag sensor to deploy that airbag,” said Lawrence, looking at the photo of the crushed interior and the single deflated airbag.

“During the fall he must have fallen over against that seat,” Syd said, saw the fault in the statement, and immediately added, “No…”

“Right,” said Dar. “During the fall from the cliff, Mr. Willis was in free-fall with the rest of the Camry. He wasn’t buckled in, so he was essentially levitating…floating above the seat like a shuttle astronaut in orbit…”

“No weight on the seat, so the sensor doesn’t deploy the airbag,” said Lawrence. “Not even during the terrible impact on the boulders.”

“But the airbag did deploy,” mused Syd.