“That’s only part of it,” said Rook. “I’ve looked into this in my research. When there are settlements like these, the parties sign nondisclosure agreements. Let’s call them what they are, gag orders. So the companies, by paying cash settlements, are essentially buying silence. It hides the defect under a lid.”
“That’s it, totally,” agreed the whistle-blower. “What happens with this rollover protection system is this: The vehicle’s onboard computer is programmed with software that senses when it is about to tip over going around a curve and basically knocks the car back down to prevent the roll. But when these stability-control systems don’t work—for instance, when the antiroll sensors spontaneously engage a vehicle’s suspension and steering at highway speeds when it’s not in a curve, bad things happen. People have died. Lots of people.
“So my group of consulting experts studied other accidents nationwide for a year and presented our test data to our bosses, Forenetics management. We showed them incident by incident how there was a massive public safety hazard due to a defect in the software of the stability systems.”
“In which cars?” asked Heat.
“Only about three-quarters of newer cars, trucks, and high-profile SUVs, that’s all.”
The scope and gravity of that sunk in. “And Forenetics didn’t respond?” Heat asked.
“Oh, they responded,” he said. “They told us it wasn’t their responsibility. There was no commission for the study, no client. Therefore, it wasn’t sanctioned.”
Rook asked, “Is that policy, or do you think they were paid off?”
“There’s plenty of money, no doubt about that. So we said to each other, let’s be bold, and we had an off-the-record meeting with the NHTSA. They’re no longer seen as Detroit’s lackeys, yet we got nowhere. They’re concrete thinkers. They wanted more evidence. But all those lawsuit records were sealed because of the settlement gag orders. Am I a quitter? No. I took it to the next level. Right to the company responsible for the defect. Their engineering and software developers watched our presentation, asked questions, accepted copies of our findings, and told us they’d get back to us.” He paused for effect, then continued. “The next day my entire team was called into the Forenetics boardroom. The president of our company told us the developer of the defective software was threatening a major lawsuit. My boss called us an ‘unauthorized splinter group’ and warned that if we didn’t drop this, we’d be fired. So we let it go. For almost a day.
“I rented a cabin up in Rhinebeck for a weekend and called my team up there for what I dubbed the Splinter Summit. It was one rough weekend, man. I pushed them. I said this was all about lives being lost because of a failure to act. I said that if we were real about what we do and who we are, we needed to man up and walk the walk. I said, ‘Maybe the cars are rolling over, but we can’t.’ By Sunday night—thank the Lord for vodka—we voted unanimously to join together and blow the whistle.” He settled back on the bench, self-satisfied. He turned to Rook. “You shoulda been taking notes, dude.”
But Nikki had been. She glanced up from her pad and said, “I have to ask you a question. Why haven’t you blown the whistle then?”
“OK, fair enough,” he said. “First off, I am so carefully writing this report so that it is iron-fucking-clad. And I have it in the hands of my attorney. If I’m putting my nuts on the block, I don’t want to give anyone an axe. And second, I now have a problem. Since word got out about Fred today, everyone else in the Splinter Group is spooked. They’re all balking. They’re scared. It’s one thing to lose your job…you know?” He scanned 5th Avenue again and added, “And what do you suppose they’ll do when they hear that they also came after me again?”
“Explain ‘again.’ This wasn’t the first attempt on you?”
“No. One night I’m coming out of the bar at The NoMad, and the fucking CEO of that software company I investigated tries to run me down with his SL. There’s a police report. Do your homework much?”