Backwater Pass

by Steven Becker

  It might have been the doldrums of July, but the campus was still busy. Remembering the enrollment numbers from the school’s website, I guessed the summer sessions were just as busy as those of the fall and spring. I turned into the campus and followed the signs to the engineering school. There were several open parking spaces in the adjacent lot and I wondered if my park service truck would allow me to park without a visitor’s pass. That decision was a no-win for me, and I walked over to the kiosk and bought a daily parking pass. Pocketing the receipt I went back to the truck and placed the ticket on the dashboard. Martinez was going to get this one, and he would probably tell me I could have parked for free, but it wasn’t worth incurring his wrath if instead he had to add a parking ticket to his budget.

  I had another choice to make: go to the administration offices and ask for a sit-down with the dean, or wander around and see if I could get a feel for the place on my own. I chose the latter.

  Allie made my cover easier when she called back. I sat down on a bench near the entrance where several other people were talking or texting, and answered. I tried to read her from the tone of the conversation and knew immediately she was upset by the breakneck speed she was using to relay her last few days’ activities. It was Allie’s thing to talk faster when she was nervous and I let her go until she ran out of steam.

  “How are you feeling about the bridge collapse?”

  “I keep thinking about it. I know we weren’t even close enough to see it, but another minute and we would have been underneath it.”

  There was an easy answer, which I avoided. I didn’t want to preach—her mother did enough of that. Not being particularly religious, I wasn’t going to tell her it was God’s wish. That might seem an easy way out, until you had to explain the converse and find a reason why others had been killed instead.

  “We were just lucky, I guess.” It was a non-answer, but all I had. Epictetus, one of the stoics, believed that you should imagine your death every day. One of their tenets was that death is inevitable; it’s just the details that we don’t know. But try explaining that to a fifteen-year-old.

  “Are you worried about something like that when you start driving?”

  “What if that happens?” she asked.

  I thought that I had found the problem. “You know there’s stuff you can control and other stuff you can’t.”

  “Sure, but stuff seems to happen around you.” She paused. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  My heart sank at being called a shit magnet by my kid. It had to be Jane talking. “No worries.” I could confirm that tendency, and tried to justify it with a Hunter S. Thompson quote that if it made your blood boil it was probably worth doing.

  “I get that, but please be careful,” Allie said.

  “You know it.” We talked for a few more minutes about our next visit. I hoped the conversation had helped and disconnected. Jane had been generally cooperative in our new joint-custody relationship, but apparently she was still grinding her axe. I would have to think of a way to tell her the blade was sharp enough that when she used it, it cut deeper than she intended.

  I sat for a few more minutes watching the students and faculty pass by. It was hard to believe that Allie would be at school in just a few years. We had even started to talk about a road trip to Gainesville. The students looked so much older and I guessed there were going to be a lot more conversations like the one we’d just had before she graduated.

  People-watching was interesting, but not helping my case any. I needed to find someone to talk to and so I entered the building behind a group of nerdy-looking coeds. “You guys know where the Accelerated Bridge Construction program is?”

  They stopped and looked at my uniform. “The artificial reef is being handled by the marine biology department.”

  “I was interested in talking to someone about the program in general. You know, maybe get some background on how this all works so I can fill in the tour groups.” It was a small lie.

  “Sure, man. Follow us. We’re headed there now. You ought to check out the Wall of Wind, too.”

  I had heard about the hurricane simulator. “Maybe next time,” I said, following them through a pair of large double doors. I barely made it through the door when a security guard stepped in my path.

  “Something I can help you with?” he asked, revealing a gold tooth as he smiled.

  I don’t often feel small at six feet, but he stood a good half-foot above me and was so wide that I could no longer see the group I had come in with. The bleach-tipped dreadlocks and the stubble on his face, in what looked like an attempt to grow a beard, pegged him as a football player. Before I could answer, a smaller man scurried toward us. He was the opposite body size and type, and from my experience probably considerably more dangerous.

  I couldn’t help but notice the smaller man’s belt. Besides his sidearm, where his hand fell, he had a taser, a mag light, and a radio. There was no badge per se, but there was an embroidered shield on his uniform shirt and he wore a name tag. I’d seen his type before, and knew the weight of all the stuff he carried on his belt still weighed less than the chip on his shoulder.

  I pulled out my credentials and handed them to him, knowing he wouldn’t just accept a quick glance. He studied them for a minute and turned away. I heard my name mentioned as he spoke into the microphone clipped on his lapel. I looked over at the football player, who appeared bored and ready for a snack.

  “Agent Hunter, do you have an appointment?” He handed the wallet back to me.

  “No, just looking for some information on the specifications for the concrete used in the bridge.” There was no reason to call out which bridge. The beefed-up security was enough to tell me they were on high alert. I had hoped by being specific I might be able to talk to someone.

  “Sorry, can’t help you without clearance. I hope you can appreciate the sensitivity of this matter.”

  I couldn’t, but he was not the one to voice my opinion to. “If you have a library, maybe I could do a little research without bothering anyone.” He seemed to think for a minute and asked the other guard to escort me to room 112. Without another word, he turned away and walked down a hall and around a corner.

  “Come on. I’ll take you over there.”

  It was awkward following the larger man. The corridor was too narrow to walk side by side and with him in front I couldn’t see where I was going. After making several turns he opened the door to a room. It was larger than I’d expected, with bookcases lining the walls and long tables in the center like an old-fashioned library. Assuming I had been given the run of the place, I went to the far wall, where there were racks holding blueprints.

  Each set of plans was held by a metal bar with the project name on it, making it easy to scan through them. Organized by date from left to right, they started in the early 2000s with several projects and increased through the years. I walked to the last rack on the right to find the most current plans. An empty spot in the rack showed me where I guessed the FIU bridge plans had been stored.

  I grabbed the set next to the open spot, a plan for a bridge in Boston, and took it to one of the long tables. Laying the set out flat, I started leafing through the pages. The first dozen sheets were the civil engineering and site plans. Toward the middle of the set were the foundation and structural plans. I stared at the pages, full of small type and drawings, feeling as if I was looking at a foreign language. House plans were the extent of my blueprint reading experience; I would need help to find the concrete specs I was looking for.

  “You look confused,” the guard said.

  “A little over my pay grade.” I was about to close the plan when he stepped next to me.

  “Something specific you’re looking for?”

  “Concrete specs, I think.”

  He motioned to the plans and I slid over to make room. The two-by-three-foot pages looked like a paperback in his hands as he thumbed through them.

  “Here’s the mix
, curing times, and testing requirements.” He pointed one large finger toward some small text.

  I leaned closer, but my almost-forty eyes were no match for the fine print. “Does anyone actually read these?” I was familiar with boilerplate specifications from house plans. They were typically the same for every set an architect produced, or at least similar enough to get you in trouble for not reading them.

  “You know us engineers. Life is in the details. Now, you came all the way out here to find something; maybe I can help.”

  I had nothing to lose. “I did a visual inspection of the debris they are planning on dumping tomorrow and found it was kind of brittle. One of the concrete plants confirmed that it was due to the specifications calling for a large amount of fly ash to be substituted for Portland cement.”

  He looked around the empty room. “Environmental Studies people have been after us to make all things greener.”

  “From my experience there are a lot of unintended consequences from doing that.”

  “Designing with new materials scares the crap out of me.” He looked at the door.

  I saw someone in the hallway start to pass by the door, then linger for several seconds. It was the other guard. “You want to get a bite to eat?” I asked, thinking that was an offer that wasn’t going to get turned down. Between food and privacy I thought I might be able to get some good information.

  He nodded and grabbed the radio clipped to his belt. I noticed he had none of the other stuff that the other guard had, making me think this was a temporary assignment for him. After being granted a lunch break, he confirmed that he was escorting me out of the building and showed his gold tooth when he smiled and led me to the door. In one move, he had gotten his boss off his back by getting me off the premises and a free lunch.

  We left the building and I started to the truck.

  “We can walk. Burger place just around the block.”

  “That’ll work. What’s your name?”

  “Willis and yes, I play offensive tackle for the football team. Also, Deans List for engineering.”

  I had my man.

  11

  My one thought as I watched Willis eat was that Martinez was going to cover this bill. With the receipt firmly ensconced in my wallet, I took one bite to his three. This was in proportion with our order: one burger for me and three for him, plus fries of course. I had started to ask questions as we ate, but he didn’t seem to want to be bothered by conversation. I let him go, hoping the wait would be worth it. It wasn’t that long before he pushed aside the tray, which by then contained nothing but a few grains of salt and paper wrappers. I took my last bite and organized my thoughts. I suspected I had an ally, especially after feeding him, but I also knew he was still a student and employee of the school and had to respect that. I took out my pad and pen, then glanced over at him to make sure it was okay. He nodded and took a long pull on his soda.

  “How’s the football team looking?” I asked, not really caring for their status, but more to find out if he was on scholarship. I had seen the seedier side of college football on another case involving recruits and boosters. Willis didn’t seem like the kids involved in that case, though. They’d clearly not been engineering students, only looking to go to college to party and as a stepping-stone to the NFL. Players who actually took the school part of college football seriously had my deepest respect. It was a grueling workload of practices, travel, games, and class. I was not going to endanger Willis’s scholarship by coercing him into talking—unless of course, he wanted to.

  “Fair to good, I’d say. We’ve got a lot better over the last few seasons. Coach Davis got us to a bowl this year.”

  He sounded proud. “That the same Butch Davis who coached Miami?” I had heard the high-profile coach had returned to South Florida after several mediocre seasons at other schools.

  “Yeah, we had a winning record last year. Hoping to get off to a good start again.”

  “You a senior then?”

  “Graduate student. This is technically my fifth year. When I started as a freshman here, they didn’t redshirt anyone. Then I blew my knee out sophomore year. The NCAA gave me another year of eligibility.”

  I was glad the rules had worked for someone. “You on scholarship?”

  “FIU’s been good to me. They could have put me out after my knee and all, but they let me stay on.”

  “Any shot at the pros?”

  “Nah. Believe it or not, they say I’m undersized. A little too slow, too. I’m good with it. I got the education that I came here for.”

  It made me feel good that some colleges cared about their student athletes and that the system had worked for someone. “Engineering your major?”

  “Mechanical is my specialty.”

  I was kind of glad he wasn’t in the Accelerated Bridge program. “I don’t want you to get in trouble here, but do you have any thoughts on the bridge failure?”

  “My minor is in environmental studies, so I kind of have a unique perspective on things.”

  “The added fly ash in the concrete; I heard that came from the environmental people.”

  “Here’s the thing. The environmental studies people come in two varieties. Most are the Save-the-Earth crowd and will probably end up working for the government in the hope of shutting down the second group, who will work for the companies trying to develop sensitive projects. This ‘fly ash thing’ was hotly debated.” He raised both hands palms up, like he didn’t understand.

  “And as an engineer you have a problem with this.”

  “You got that right. It’s all good trying new techniques and new materials, but mixing them together is foolish.”

  “How so?”

  “You don’t know what really failed, like with this bridge. They’ve been using the technique for a while, but it’s still not perfect. By introducing the fly ash into the mix it’s impossible to tell if it was the technique that failed or the material.”

  I could tell from the way he talked that he would be a good engineer. He had a rare perspective, especially for someone so young. “It sounds like you have some field experience.”

  “I worked for a testing company the last two summers. They’re boosters, so they let me work around my practice schedule.”

  “You ever test concrete?”

  “Mostly did geotechnical tests like compaction and that sort of thing. You don’t need as much experience to run the thumpers and those suckers are heavy. Kind of in my wheelhouse.”

  “Don’t you need to be a certified engineer to do the testing?”

  “The licensed guys are supposed to oversee and have to approve the findings, but they seldom come out for the actual tests unless it’s an observation.”

  That sounded like it could be sketchy having student employees doing the testing. “Anyone ever make mistakes?”

  “Kind of why I’m specializing in mechanical. Earthwork and concrete are fuzzy math. Too many variables.”

  He was the second person today to say almost the same thing. “What kind of variables?”

  “I’m assuming you’re asking about concrete specifically?”

  I nodded and opened my pad. Before he could answer, a blast of hot humid air blew in from the door. Willis was facing the entrance and I could see from his face that he was in trouble. I turned to look and saw the security guard leading Roslyn into the restaurant. From the look on their faces they weren’t here on a date.

  “Even though we lost, getting to a bowl game was the highlight of my career. ” Willis said loud enough that they could overhear.

  I quickly put my pen and pad away and tried to relax.

  “Thought you were going to lunch.” The security guard stood with his hands on his hips by the table.

  Willis spread his hands out over the empty tray.

  “If you told him anything…” Roslyn started.

  “We were just talking football. I like to support real student athletes,” I said.

  “Big FIU fan, a
re you?” the security guard asked.

  He wasn’t expecting an answer and I wasn’t giving one. “You want some dessert or anything?” I asked Willis.

  “Willis is done giving interviews,” the guard said bitterly.

  I was done as well and stood. Willis took my lead and moved away as if blocking for me. His bulk moved the pair away from the table.

  “Can we have a word?” Roslyn asked, fighting past him like a linebacker.

  I figured she had forgotten my name and I wasn’t going to make it easier for her. “Say hey to Coach Davis.” I said it like we were long lost buddies.

  “Will do. Thanks for the lunch. Let me know what game you can make and I’ll have some tickets at will call for you.”

  I was glad we had talked a little about the team before getting into the engineering. We almost sounded sincere. I pulled a card out, wrote my cell number on the back, and handed it to him. My reflexes kicked in and before I thought about it, I almost blurted out to call me if he had any more information, but held my tongue. “If you need anything give me a shout.”

  He walked out of the restaurant leaving a void as large as his body. Roslyn took his chair and pulled it close to the table. I sat back down. The security guard, not sure what to do, looked outside. Once Willis was far enough away that he wouldn’t have to interact with him he said good-bye to Roslyn, gave me a nasty look, and took off. Sitting across from the engineer I wondered what she wanted.

  “Those students don’t always understand all the parameters of a project.”

  I guessed she hadn’t bought my ruse that we were having a football lunch. There was no need for a response; I felt the rant coming.

  “So, can you tell me why the National Park Service is so interested in this tragedy?”

  There are some times when you are best served by telling the unvarnished truth. Martinez had been so busy preparing his speech and preening for the ceremony that he had failed to either call me off the case or authorize me to work it. I had nothing to lose and if I was going to get any answers, I needed her to show me a little respect at the minimum and a dose of fear wouldn’t hurt either.