“Sure,” said Dar, studying her card. It was an expensive one but did not give a home phone number. “But remember, you asked for it.” He looked up. She had already walked away and disappeared out of sight around the bend in the corridor, heading for the freight elevator. Her soft-soled shoes had made almost no noise on the concrete floor.

“You asked for it,” Dar said again and went back into his loft.

“Olson here,” answered her sleepy, almost drugged-sounding voice after the fifth ring.

“Rise and shine, Chief Investigator,” said Dar.

“Who is this?” Sydney’s sleepy voice ran the last two syllables together.

“How soon we forget,” said Dar. “It’s one forty-nine A.M. You said you wanted to come the next time I was called out on a case. I’m dressed and ready to go. I’ll give you five whole minutes before I pick you up in front of the Hyatt.”

There was a pause. Dar could hear her breathing softly. “Dar…you remember that I said an interesting insurance case. If this is some jackknifed eighteen-wheeler out on I-5—”

“Well, you know, Chief Investigator Olson,” said Dar, “you never really know if something’s interesting until you go look and see. But Larry’s going, too, and he rarely asks me to meet him at a site.”

“Okay, okay,” mumbled Syd. “I’ll be outside in five minutes.”

“Four minutes now,” Dar said, and hung up.

The highways were relatively empty as Dar took surface streets over to the 5 and then north past La Jolla.

“Have you heard of La Jolla Joya?” said Dar as the washes of light from the sodium vapor highway lights moved across his windshield and both their faces.

“Sounds like a stripper’s stage name,” said Syd, still rubbing her cheeks to wake up.

“Yes,” said Dar, “but actually it’s the San Diego area’s newest rock concert venue. It’s in the hills west of the highway up here…actually it’s closer to Del Mar, but I guess the Del Mar Joya didn’t have quite the same ring.”

“It doesn’t have much of a ring as it is,” said Syd. Her voice carried the fatigue of someone who had been working eighteen-hour days.

“True. But that’s where we’re headed. Concert’s probably over by now, but there’s at least one dead body there.”

“Stabbing?” said Syd. “Some Hell’s Angels thing like Altamont? Or just someone crushed when the herd stampeded?”

Dar grinned despite himself. “We wouldn’t get called for either of those. See, the city ordinances kept cracking down on rock concerts at their usual stadiums and venues—especially the heavy-metal ones—and—”

“Who’s headlining tonight?” she interrupted.

“Metallica,” said Dar.

“Oh, goody,” said Syd with precisely the same enthusiasm as someone who’s just been told he has to take a barium enema.

“Anyway,” continued Dar, “a would-be superpromoter bought these hundred and sixty-two acres of scrub gully and fenced it all in. It’s sort of an arroyo, plenty of room for parking out front, stage on the flat area, and a gentle hill running up until it’s just trees and cliffs. He put in lights, stage, sound towers, and three thousand seats, and there’s a nice grassy hillside for umpty-thousand others who want to sit on blankets or whatever. They added a lower fence to keep people off the back twenty acres or so, the woods, after their first concert. Some older patrons complained of fornication going on back in the darkness.”

“Which the complainers would have to have sought out with night-vision goggles in order to see,” said Syd.

“Yeah. But the promoter thought it would still be safer to separate the audience area from the woods and the rock cliffs. That’s why Larry and Trudy’s client called them.”

“They’re on retainer for the promoter?”

“No.”

“For the insurance company that covers the concert liability?”

“No.”

“For Metallica?”

“No.”

“I give up,” said Syd. “Whose ass are we rushing out to cover?”

“The fence company’s,” said Dar.

Most of the concert patrons were leaving as Dar drove the Land Cruiser up the dusty ditch against the traffic flow to get to the concert area. Metallica had long since bussed itself to wherever Metallica dwells when not on stage, but a few score dazed, sleepy, and doped fans still milled around in front of what had been the bandstand. Dar saw the emergency lights at the far rear of the arroyo and headed that way. A California Highway Patrol officer stopped them at a gate in the low fence that separated the grassy seating area from the fornication woods, looked over their credentials in the beam of his six-battery flashlight, and then waved them through.

The emergency vehicles—several CHP cars with their flashers going, two ambulances, a sheriff’s car, two tow trucks, and a full fire truck—were gathered at the narrow end of the V of the arroyo. Douglas firs rose thirty and forty feet here, hiding the stars and the top of the cliffs. In the cone of the cruiser spotlights and emergency lights, Dar could see the smashed remnants of an upside-down pickup truck, an older Ford 250 from the looks of it. He parked the Cruiser, pulled a powerful flashlight from the backseat, and he and Syd walked toward the lights, identifying themselves twice more to get past groups of officious cops and bands of yellow accident-scene tape.

Lawrence walked over to them.

“Damn,” said Dar. “How’d you beat me here?”

Lawrence smirked under his mustache. “Not so hot now without your NSX, are you?”

“Syd, you remember Larry Stewart from this morning’s meeting?” said Dar.

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence. “Good evening, Ms. Olson.”

“Hi, Lawrence,” said Syd. “What do we have here?”

Lawrence blinked in happy surprise for a moment and then said, “Belaboring the obvious, one hellaciously smashed Ford F 250. Driver dead. Was ejected through the windshield and thrown approximately eighty-three feet. I paced it off, so the number’s not exact.” He pointed his own flashlight toward a mob of people standing and crouching around the corpse of a man at the base of a tree.

“He drove into the cliff face in the dark?” said Syd.

Lawrence shook his head. Suddenly a CHP officer joined them.

“Sergeant Cameron,” said Dar, surprised. “You’re far from home tonight.”

“Well, if it isn’t the Mercedes-killer,” said Cameron to Dar. He touched his cap in Syd’s direction. “Howdy, Ms. Olson. Haven’t seen you since the L.A. task force meeting last month.” Cameron hooked his thumbs in his belt until the leather creaked. “Yeah, well, I was moonlighting here—working crowd security—and just as the concert was ending, someone found this mess.”

“Anyone hear it happen?” asked Dar.

Cameron shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean much. During a Metallica concert, with those speakers and amplifiers cranked up, you could set off a Hiroshima-sized tactical nuke back here and nobody would’ve heard it.”

“Alcohol?” said Lawrence.

“We can see about ten empty beer cans in the smashed passenger compartment of the pickup,” said Cameron. “There are another eight or nine thrown free…like the driver.”

“Could he have driven into the cliff wall?” asked Syd.

Lawrence and Sergeant Cameron both shook their heads at the same time. “See how the truck is mashed down?” said Lawrence. “The thing fell from up there.”

“It drove over the cliff?” said Syd. “From above?”

“It would have to have backed over to end up in this position,” said Dar. “That’s why the driver was thrown west…toward the concert. The truck landed tail first—you can see how it crumpled—and ejected the driver like a cork out of a champagne bottle before the cab crushed.”

Sydney Olson walked closer to the crushed pickup truck and watched as an emergency crew finished attaching two cables from the two tow trucks to the undercarriage. “Stand back,” called one of the CHP officers, “we’re gonna lift it.”