“Curious,” said Dar.

Patrolman Elroy was still eyeing him suspiciously, as if Dar were a joke the sergeant was pulling on him. “And are you really the guy they named the Darwin Award after?”

“No,” said Dar. He walked around the crater, making sure not to get too close to the edge of the cliff. He did not like heights. Some of the Accident Investigation men nodded and said hello. Dar took his camera out of the bag and began imaging from different angles. The rising sun glinted on the many thousands of pieces of scattered, scorched metal.

“What’s that?” said Elroy. “I’ve never seen a camera like that before.”

“Digital,” said Dar. He quit shooting pictures and video and looked back down the highway. The entrance to the canyon was visible from up here, directly in line with the highway stretching out east toward Borrego Springs. He looked at the tiny viewfinder monitor on the camera and shot some stills and video of the highway and desert lined up with the crater.

“Well, if the Darwin Award isn’t named for you,” persisted the young patrolman, “who is it named for?”

“Charles Darwin,” said Dar. “You know, survival of the fittest?”

The boy looked blank. Dar sighed. “The society of insurance investigators gives the award to the person who does the human race the biggest favor each year by removing his or her DNA from the gene pool.”

The boy nodded slowly, but obviously did not understand.

Cameron chuckled. “Whoever kills himself in the dumbest way,” he translated, and looked at Dar. “Last year it was that guy in Sacramento who shook the Pepsi machine until it fell on him and squashed him, wasn’t it?”

“That was two years ago,” said Dar. “Last year it was the farmer up in Oregon who got nervous shingling the roof of his barn and tossed the rope over the peak of the roof and had his grown son tie it to something solid. Turned out the something solid was the rear bumper of their pickup truck.”