Chapter 88: One Hundred And Fifty-Eight
“Driver's seat belt switch,” Sirko said. “Buckled. Pretensioner fired at eleven milliseconds. Driver airbag deployed at fourteen milliseconds, second stage suppressed.”
“Suppressed,” I said.
“Hold that. I'll come back to it.”
She moved her finger down two lines.
“Right front passenger seat belt switch. Unbuckled.”
The office was quiet except for a compressor cycling somewhere in the building.
“Right front passenger occupant classification sensor. Occupied. Weight category above the child threshold.”
I heard it and filed it, and it did nothing to me at all, because I had known for six years that Dean was not alone in that car. I had assumed a friend. I never asked who.
“There were two people,” Theo said.
“There were two occupants at the moment of impact,” Sirko said. “The belt in the right front was not buckled.”
She turned the page.
“Now the seat.”
She put the brown envelope on the table and did not open it yet.
“Driver seat track position switch,” she said. “The module records one of two states. Forward, or not forward.”
She looked at me.
“Forward.”
I said, “That's a binary. That's not a measurement.”
“Correct,” she said. “That's why I asked you to send me the photograph.”
She opened the brown envelope and took out an eleven-by-seventeen enlargement of image 37, and a second sheet behind it.
“Your tape is in frame and in focus. I scaled off the seat rail, which I have the factory dimension for, and checked it against the door aperture.”
She put the enlargement down facing me.
“The seat was three point one inches rearward of the full-forward stop. That is detent four of eighteen.”
I looked at the photograph.
“Second sheet,” she said. “Manufacturer's occupant packaging data for that platform. It gives the seat position range for drivers by stature, from pedal reach and eye height.”
She put it down beside the enlargement and turned it so the column headings faced me.
“Detent four is the design position for a driver of approximately five feet two inches,” she said. “One hundred and fifty-eight centimeters. Plus or minus three.”
Here is what happened next, exactly.
My left hand was flat on the table. My right hand was holding the edge of the enlargement, thumb on top, two fingers under, the way you hold a photograph you are not finished with.
I did not let go of it.
I turned my head and looked at the whiteboard behind Sirko, and I counted the numbers on it.
There were fourteen numbers. Then a horizontal line. Then two more.
I counted them again and got sixteen.
I counted the ceiling tiles between the light fitting and the wall. Six.
I counted the chairs. Four, and we were using three.
Sirko said something. Theo said something. I did not hear either of them, and I have never asked what they said, and I never will.
Dean Mercer is six feet two inches. One hundred and eighty-eight centimeters. He put that seat all the way back and complained about that car for four years, because even all the way back it was tight for him.
I am five feet seven. One hundred and seventy centimeters. I drove that car at detent nine. I know it was nine because I set it back to nine every time he used it, four hundred times.
Detent four.
Three point one inches from the stop.
One hundred and fifty-eight centimeters.
I know exactly one person who is one hundred and fifty-eight centimeters tall.
She was twenty-one that year. She had no licence, because she had failed the road test twice. It was a family joke. Renata used to say it at the table and everyone laughed, including me.
She wears my mother's gold bangle on her right wrist. She has worn it every day since the fourteenth of March.
She lives in my house. She drives my car, with my university parking sticker still peeling off the back window.
She is married to my husband.
My hand was still holding the edge of the photograph. My fingers were white at the second knuckle and the paper had bent about a quarter inch where my thumb was.
I put the photograph down and smoothed the bend out with the side of my hand, twice, left to right, the way you smooth a bedsheet.
Then I said, “Say it again.”
Sirko said, “One hundred and fifty-eight centimeters. Plus or minus three.”
“And the airbag.”
“Second stage suppressed,” she said. “The module saw a driver sitting close and fired at reduced force. It does that to keep small people alive.”
I stood up.
I did not push the chair back. I lifted it, about two inches, and set it down clear of the table, because I did not want the sound.
I walked out through the bay and stood in the rain in the yard.
There were nine vehicles in that yard.
I counted them four times and got nine every time.