Backwater Pass

by Steven Becker

  “Maybe he’s not too bright. He is a contractor. ”

  I could feel the blood rush to my face and tried to control it. JT was not going to be won over. I turned to Grace. “I’ve met the guy several times. We saw him yesterday, when we caught him out on the barge searching the debris for something.”

  “Or burying it,” JT said.

  “It’s going to get buried at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Why interfere if that’s his goal?”

  “Okay, kids,” Justine interrupted. “The forensics tech says that someone tried to sabotage the bridge. It resulted in the death of six innocent people. How about we play nicely together and try and solve this?”

  “You’re sure the evidence is conclusive?” Grace asked her.

  “You can possibly explain the bore hole, but not the residue from the explosion.”

  “Okay, Hunter,” she finally agreed. “I’ll kick it upstairs and see what they want to do.” Grace motioned to her partner and they walked away. I could hear him yammering until they were out the door.

  It was the best that I could hope for. After the last few cases, my picture was probably on the wall in every breakroom in Dade County. At this point, anything that had my name attached to it would have to be approved. I could only hope it was Grace doing the explaining and not JT.

  I turned to Justine. “I’m going to pick up Allie. Want to get a bite to eat when we get back?”

  “That’d be cool. I’ll see if I can get a chemical breakdown on this by then.”

  I glanced around the now empty lab and, seeing only a few lights, I leaned in and pecked her on the cheek. She punched my arm in return, letting me know we were all good.

  I checked my watch before I left and saw I was already five minutes late. After texting Jane, I left the lab and headed to the truck. In a hurry, I hit the bar on the entry door and pushed it open, only to find I had slammed it into James Burkett. He fell to his knees. It was like déjà vu from the other night.

  “Agent Hunter, any luck?” His speech was noticeably slurred.

  I flinched when I grabbed him under the arms to help him up. The smell of alcohol was strong, and looking into his bloodshot eyes I knew I couldn’t leave him here. “Come on. I have to run an errand. We can talk on the way.”

  I was hoping for a couple of outcomes. First that with the alcohol in his system his guard would be down enough that when I told him about what we had found that I could get a genuine reaction out of him. The second was that he didn’t drive himself anywhere. There was a third thing that should have been at the front of my mind, and that was that Jane didn’t see him.

  After helping him into the back seat of the truck, I went around and got in the driver’s side. He started mumbling something that I ignored until we were on the highway.

  “Any idea why there are holes bored in the concrete and residue of an explosive around them?” I looked ahead with one eye and adjusted the rearview mirror to see his face with the other. He was slouched in the seat with his head down, making it hard to read his expression, but something told me he didn’t know anything about it.

  “Why?” he asked. “She knows this will ruin me.”

  He cradled his head in his hands and I turned all my attention to the road ahead. “I don’t know. You think this was aimed at you personally?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I know people died. But…“

  Whatever he was about to say was lost when I saw we’d almost passed the exit. As I slammed on the brakes, I was grateful Allie wasn’t with me. With my tires screeching and my full concentration on the road ahead, I turned toward the exit lane and pulled off the highway. Careful to stay inside the shoulder, I backed up and pulled onto the exit ramp. Jane’s house was just a few blocks away so our discussion would have to wait…which was probably for the better. His inebriated state had shown me the truth: he was not involved. Now, I needed to prep him and hope that he comprehended.

  “I’m picking up my daughter. Can you just stay down when we get there until I tell you it’s okay to sit back up?” I asked, hoping that he could control his actions.

  “Ex-wife, I’m guessing. Been there; done that—three times. I get it, Hunter.”

  His speech was slurred, but I thought he understood. I could only hope so as I pulled to the curb in front of the 1960s ranch house. In another area, the small lots and older houses would have been a warning sign that this was not a neighborhood where I would want my daughter to grow up. But here, the houses and yards were well-maintained, and several of the older houses had been torn down to make room for new construction. Less than a mile from The Intercoastal Waterway, the old neighborhood was a desirable location.

  I pulled up at the curb and saw the exterior lights come on. Being proactive in the hope that Jane wouldn’t see Burkett, I got out and went to the door.

  “Hey, Dad,” Allie burst past me and headed to the truck.

  “You going to say good-bye?” I called after her, not wanting her to see Burkett before I could lay some groundwork. She turned back and with her head down, dragging her feet like it hurt to walk, she said a dramatic good-bye and hugged Jane. I got a smile from my ex for my efforts and said good night, hoping there was still a chance to get out of here before Burkett showed himself.

  We were almost to the truck when I saw the interior light come on and then heard a loud hacking cough. I cleared my throat, trying to make it sound like it had come from me, but the timing just wasn’t there.

  “Kurt, someone you want to introduce us to?”

  I grasped for the right words. “Just doing a friend a favor.”

  “Is this friend someone that Allie needs to know?”

  Allie saw her opportunity to attend the ceremony being torn from her by her dad’s bad decisions. She was not to be deterred and went to the truck.

  “It’s just Ray, Mom. You know, the guy that lives out on the island with Dad.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to admit to myself that if she could lie this easily, what might I be missing? Jane must have bought it because she turned away. I wasted no time and picked up Allie’s bag. I started to toss it into the back seat, but judging from the way Burkett had folded himself into the seat. I decided it would be better in the bed.

  Allie allowed me a few minutes to get out of sight of the house before the interrogation began. I answered the “who is he and what is he doing here” part. She found it amusing that he was drunk and wanted to know what he had drunk and how much. After hearing her lie so easily and now witnessing her fascination with my drunken new friend, I realized that she was growing up faster than I wanted to admit.

  14

  Burkett passed out as soon as we hit the highway, giving me a chance to explain to Allie why he was here. I stopped short of thanking her for lying. As much as I appreciated her bailing me out, I couldn’t support bad behavior. It’s hard enough to figure out what reaches your kids; what they need to be taught and what they already know. I could only hope she realized she had crossed a line.

  We reached the crime lab and Allie’s curiosity moved from drunks and alcohol to Justine. I hadn’t planned on going inside, but she insisted. Since Burkett was still sound asleep in the back seat I decided to leave him where he was. There were still several reporters hanging around and the last thing he needed was to be interviewed and photographed in his present state.

  Justine met us at the security door to the lab and after she and Allie embraced they headed off together for a quick tour. My stomach was grumbling, but watching the two of them together took the edge off. I sat down with my phone to see what I had missed in the past hour, especially whether Grace had had any luck with the Ivory Tower.

  The message screen was blank and there was nothing important in my emails. I decided to be proactive and started composing a note to Martinez to let him know that Justine and Allie would be with me tomorrow. I figured if I sent it late enough he wouldn’t read it until after the ceremony anyway; the email was kind of like asking for forgiven
ess instead of permission.

  By the time Justine and Allie returned I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. We left the lab and went back to the truck. Burkett was still sleeping in the back seat. Now I had to decide what to do with him. Tossing him to the curb was not an option, nor was letting him drive. I opened the door and shook him. I figured if I could wake him, I might get an address that I could send him to in an Uber, but he only mumbled gibberish at me.

  “What’s he doing back there?” Justine asked.

  I explained about finding him, leaving out the part about his performance at Jane’s house, or Allie’s lie. “I’ll ride back there; you can drive.” I handed the keys to Justine.

  “I can drive,” Allie said.

  I looked over at him and wondered about the ethics of using Burkett for an excuse. I decided to go with it. “I can’t with him in back.”

  Allie seemed to buy it and got into the passenger seat. Justine drove us to one of our favorites, a Thai restaurant that had pretty good food and excellent hours; they would still be open. Burkett was still out when we reached the parking lot, and I left him in the back seat.

  Though I had no logical reason for it, I still felt a twinge of apprehension whenever Justine and Allie were together. I knew I had nothing to worry about, but the chance that one might say the wrong thing and put me in a bind lurked below the surface. Thankfully, the feeling usually wore off quickly.

  Tonight was different, though; probably because I was having a hard time staying present in the conversation. My phone lay face up on the table in front of me and between staring at it with the hope that Grace would call, and my obsession with the case, I heard little of what was being said. I caught a few glances from Justine, but she must have understood, and the two gladly chatted through dinner as if I wasn’t there.

  “What are you going to do with the boy wonder? You can’t take him back to your house,” Justine said when we were leaving.

  “I know. I’ll try and wake him up and put him in an Uber.” I went to the truck and shook him. Slowly his eyes opened, then I had to settle him down when he realized he didn’t know where he was. It took a few minutes for him to join the living, but he seemed surprisingly sober. It had been two hours since I had found him and the effects of the alcohol had mostly worn off. I thought about taking him back to his car and letting him go, but Justine put a stop to that.

  “You let him drive and he gets pulled over, it’s on you. There’s probably still enough alcohol in his system for a DUI.”

  I looked over at Allie, who was watching with morbid fascination, and I knew that whatever I decided to do now would influence her future decisions. Justine was right. After getting an address from him, I ordered an Uber.

  “You need to get his keys. He could talk the driver into taking him back to his car instead of driving him home,” Justine said.

  She was right again, and I looked back at Burkett. His head had fallen back and he started to snore. My patience with babysitting him was gone and I reached into his pocket for his keys. My hand found a key ring with several keys, along with something else that I couldn’t identify.

  “Let me see that,” Justine said.

  Just as she and Allie leaned in to see what I had found, the Uber arrived. I put the small cylinder in my pocket and loaded Burkett into the backseat of a fairly clean Corolla. Figuring a little damage control wouldn’t hurt, I removed the truck key from his keychain and handed the driver the remaining keys with a twenty as a tip in case Burkett lost his lunch in the man’s car.

  None of this fazed the driver and he pocketed the cash with a quick thank you. After checking on Burkett again, I pulled the cylinder out of my pocket and handed it to Justine. I thought I knew what it was and she confirmed it.

  “A blasting cap. How cool,” Allie said. “Can I see it?”

  “It’s evidence,” I said, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a bag. Even though I had grabbed it from his pocket, I used the tips of my fingers now as I placed it in the bag and sealed it.

  “Did that have something to do with the bridge?” Allie asked.

  I wasn’t sure what to tell her and decided on the truth. She seemed equally as fascinated with the crime lab as she had been with Burkett’s binge. I looked at Justine for help.

  “We can take it back to the lab and examine it,” she said.

  “Really? Can I help?” Allie asked.

  Justine had already drifted into work mode and didn’t answer. “We’ll see,” I said, giving her a standard dad response.

  When we reached the lab the lot was empty. I guessed the reporters had called it a day after the deadline for the 11:00 news and the morning papers had expired. We entered the lab and Justine went to her workstation, where she placed the evidence bag on the table.

  “Have to get the concrete samples,” she said, and went to the vault, her name for the evidence room. Unlike the old locker, the new one had thick smoked glass doors and LED lights that gave it an eerie look. Justine entered her code in the keypad and the doors opened with a swoosh. The effect of the negative pressure in the room gave the impression that a seal had been broken. She emerged a minute later with a box and brought it back to the table.

  “Here we go,” she said as she opened the lid and removed the samples we had taken from the barge.

  With the concrete sample secured in a vise, she held the cylinder with a pair of tweezers. With Allie and I leaning in to watch she slowly lay the metal piece onto the groove. It sat perfectly. There was no question that the hole had been bored for the cylinder.

  “Now that we know what went in the hole, let’s see if we can’t figure out what it is.”

  “It’s a blasting cap.” I had seen many like it in the Plumas forest. Despite a hundred and fifty years of mining, the streams there still held gold. Over the years regulations had limited mining in California, reducing it from large-scale operations involving acres of land and heavy equipment, to small dredging operations. Many of the miners worked on legal claims, but I had run across many illegal operations. It was hard, slow work, and many miners cut corners by blasting the larger boulders to access the alluvial deposits possibly hidden underneath them.

  “Right, Special Agent, but if you want to find out who did it, we need to find out what kind of detonator was used. There are electrical, chemical, mechanical, and all kinds of hand-made ones out there. Check it out on YouTube.”

  Allie immediately pulled out her phone. I glanced over at her and she put it back in her pocket, but I guessed she would be searching later. “Okay, but it looks like Burkett has blood on his hands.”

  We followed her to another area of the lab. First Justine removed whatever fingerprints and residue were on the cylinder, then she started to dissect it. I saw the wires and knew immediately that it had been remotely detonated. Justine quickly confirmed my guess and we stood around the table staring at the parts lying there.

  “The detonator probably disintegrated in the blast,” I said.

  “Parts of it may still be on the barge. If they dump it, the evidence will be lost.”

  I had no expectations that something the size of a deck of cards sitting next to the explosion would be recoverable. But there was always a chance; what I did know was that the material was going to be sitting under sixty feet of water in less than twelve hours.

  “We need to go out there tonight,” I said.

  “Really?” Allie asked.

  There was no leaving her out of this, and another set of eyes could only help. I did a ten-second risk analysis in my head and determined that this fell into the Adventure Category with Minimal Risk. I would of course swear her to secrecy, but the wind had died down from this morning and I didn’t think safety was going to be a concern.

  “Okay.” I looked at Justine.

  “Onward, Kimo sabe,” she said, and started packing up the evidence.

  Once she had placed it back in the vault, we left the lab and headed to the truck. I could tel
l by the way that Allie was rambling on about anything and everything that she was excited. Justine had that look in her eye as well. I didn’t share their optimism, and as I drove south on the Turnpike another thought started nagging at me.

  If the bridge failure had not been the result of overtightened tension bolts as the engineer claimed, or of faulty concrete as Burkett was so adamant about, then the collapse had been a premeditated act. There would be a motive, and I also wondered how the timing of the blast had been determined.

  If the purpose of the failure had been to demonstrate that fly ash couldn’t replace Portland cement, or that a bolt was too tight, then why not blow the thing up in the middle of the night when no one was around?

  Instead, the failure had occurred during a moderately busy time of day. Whoever had detonated the explosion had to have known there would be collateral damage. I continued down this train of thought until I realized the detonation might have been timed to kill someone in particular.

  15

  Now came the question of how much I wanted to involve Allie. She was in, so far as we were already headed to the reef site to look for physical evidence before it was dropped to the sea floor. I wanted to follow up on my new theory, but decided against including her, at least until I could confirm it. Searching through a pile of concrete and steel was not the same thing as speculating on whether one of the victims of the catastrophe actually had been a target.

  For our purposes tonight, it didn’t really matter.

  Spray flew off the low bow of the boat, giving us a misting that brought me back to the present. The wind had dropped, but the seas were still running about two feet, only slightly less than this morning. The bay waters at night were something that needed to be respected. Depending on the season, outside of the park boundaries lobster and crab buoys could be a minefield to nighttime boaters. Inside the boundaries it was generally safe, unless you hit a piece of debris. There were many hazards in the shallow bay waters, most well-marked with lights. Even without a chart plotter, as long as you remembered the three R’s—right, red, return—and kept the red markers or lights to starboard when inbound, you would be safe.