Syd watched the traffic.

“No matter what happened,” said Dar, “the infantrymen would learn to say, ‘Fuck it. It don’t matter. Move on.’”

The traffic stopped. The Taurus stopped. Syd looked at him and there was something more than anger in her eyes.

“You can’t base your philosophy on that. You can’t live like that.”

Dar returned her stare, and only when she looked away did he realize how angry his gaze must have been. “Wrong,” he said. “It’s the only philosophy that lets you live.”

They drove into San Diego in absolute silence. When they were near Syd’s hotel, she said, “I’ll take you up the hill to your condo.”

Dar shook his head. “I’ll walk to the Justice Center from here. They’re releasing my NSX from impoundment this afternoon and I’m meeting the body-shop guy there.”

Syd stopped the car and nodded. She watched him as he got out and stood on the curb. “You’re not going to help me any further with this investigation, are you?” she said at last.

“No,” said Dar.

Syd nodded.

“Thanks for…” began Dar. “Thanks for everything.”

He walked away and did not look back.

Tuesday was a big day for guns, culminating in a high-velocity rifle bullet aimed directly at Darwin Minor’s heart.

The day started dismally with more heat, more rain clouds threatening—unusual for Southern California for this time of year, of course, but almost all of Southern California’s weather was unusual at almost any time of year. Dar started his own day in a foul mood. His anger from the previous day bothered him. The fact that he would not see Sydney Olson again bothered him. The fact that this bothered him, bothered him the most.

The repairs to the NSX were going to cost a fortune. When Harry Meadows, his body-shop friend—and one of the few people in the state who could do decent bodywork on the Acura’s aluminum skin—met him at the Justice Center on Monday evening, all he could do was shake his head. The final estimate on repairs had made Dar take a full step backward.

“Jesus,” Dar had said, “I could buy a new Subaru for that.”

Harry had nodded slowly and mournfully. “True, true,” he said. “But then you’d have a fucking Subaru rather than an NSX.”

Dar could not argue with the logic of that. Harry had taken the bullet-scarred NSX away on a trailer, swearing that he would take as good care of the car as he would of his own mother. Dar happened to know that Harry’s aged mother lived in poverty in an un-air-conditioned trailer sixty-five miles out in the desert where he visited her precisely twice a year.

On Tuesday morning Lawrence called. There were several new cases that needed photographing. Lawrence did not know which ones would require reconstruction work—it depended upon which went to litigation and jury trials—but he thought that he and Dar should visit each site.

“Sure,” said Dar. “Why the hell not? I’m only about a month behind in my paperwork as it is.”

As Lawrence drove, he must have sensed something was wrong with Dar. There is a certain bond between men that goes deeper than verbal communication. Men who have known each other for years and worked together—occasionally on dangerous projects—begin to gain a sixth sense about their friends’ thoughts and emotions. This allows them to communicate on a level deeper than women could ever understand. Lawrence and Dar had just picked up coffee and donuts at a Dunkin’ Donuts in north San Diego when Lawrence said, “Something wrong, Dar?”

“No,” said Dar.

Nothing more was said.

The first accident site was halfway to San Jose. Lawrence parked the Trooper in the crowded parking lot of a low-rent condo complex and they walked over to the inevitable yellow-taped-crime-scene rectangle around a 1994 red Honda Prelude. The accident had occurred in the middle of the night, but there were still two uniformed officers there as well as a few gawkers—mostly gang-banger-aged kids in droopy shorts and three-hundred-dollar athletic shoes. Lawrence identified both himself and Dar to the nearest police officer, politely asked permission for Dar to take pictures, and then got a statement from the officer.

As Dar shot images, the young patrolman tried to explain, pointing happily to the various pieces of evidence—the broken windows on the car, the cracked windshield, dents in the hood of the Prelude, slimy gray matter on and around the front of the car, as well as blood on the shattered windshield, the hood, the fenders, the front bumper, and pooled in a wide, dark stain on the asphalt. Obviously it had not rained very hard here during the night or morning.

“Well, this guy, Barry, he’s mad at his girlfriend—Sheila something—she lives upstairs in 2306, she’s down at the station now making out a statement,” said the cop. “Anyway, Barry’s a biker, big fucker with a beard, and Sheila gets tired of him and starts seeing other guys. Well, at least one other guy. Barry, he doesn’t like that. So he comes by here, we figure about two-thirty A.M., the reports of a disturbance come in about two forty-eight, and the first report of shots fired came in to 911 at three-oh-two A.M. At first Barry is just, you know, screaming up at Sheila’s window, shouting obscenities at her, her shouting obscenities back, you know. The main entrance, it’s got an automatic lock so you gotta buzz to get in and go up, only Sheila doesn’t buzz him in.

“This really pisses Barry off. So he goes back to his truck—that’s it, the Ford van parked over there—and comes back with a loaded shotgun, double barrel. He starts using the butt of the shotgun to bash in the side windows of Sheila’s Prelude there. Sheila starts shitting bricks and screaming louder. The neighbors call the police, but before a black-and-white can answer, Barry gets it in his mind to get up on the hood—he must’ve weighed about two sixty, you see how he dented the shit out of it just standing on it—and he begins bashing in the windshield with the butt of the shotgun. We figure, to get a better grip or something, he somehow got a finger inside the trigger guard…”

“And shot himself in the belly?” said Lawrence.

“Both barrels. Blew his guts all over the hood, headlights, front bumper—”

“He was still alive in intensive care when I got the call this morning,” interrupted Lawrence. “Do you have an update?”

The cop shrugged. “When the detectives came to take the girl downtown, word was that the medics had pulled the plug on Barry. Sheila’s comment was ‘Good riddance.’”

“Love,” said Lawrence.

“It’s a many-splendored thing,” agreed the uniformed officer.

They stopped for three obvious slip-and-fall scams—two at supermarkets and one at a Holiday Inn where the claimant was famous for slip-and-falls near ice machines that leaked—and a slow-motion parking-lot swoop-and-squat where five family members were all claiming whiplash. The last accident scene was in San Jose itself. On the way, Lawrence and Dar stopped for lunch. Actually, they just went through a Burger Biggy drive-through and ate their Biggies and slurped their Biggy milk shakes while Lawrence drove.

“So how did Barry’s shotgun sepaku relate to any of your insurance carriers?” Dar asked between sips.

“First thing Sheila did this morning was file a claim on the Prelude,” said the big insurance adjuster. “She says that it’s totaled—that State Farm owes her a brand-new car.”

“I didn’t see that much damage,” said Dar. “Some broken glass. The dents in the hood. Nothing else that a car wash won’t take care of.”

Lawrence shook his head. “She claims that she would be too traumatized to ever drive the Prelude again. She wants full payment…enough to buy a brand-new SUV. She’s had her eye on a Navigator.”

“She told the insurance people all this this morning before going to the cops to give her statement?”