Backwater Pass

by Steven Becker

  “He’s clean. Seemed like just an ordinary guy. Graduated from FIU a few years ago and had worked for the engineering company since. No arrests or negative credit.”

  I thanked her and took the coffee to the interview room. Grace’s partner stopped me at the door.

  “He’s just drawing pictures,” he said.

  I thought the confession was too good to be true and entered the room without responding. Burkett took the coffee and slid the pad across the table to me. Instead of the expected details of his wrongdoing, there was a sketch of the bridge. Several arrows pointed to what I guessed were critical sections.

  “For the size cap that you found to collapse the bridge, there would have had to be several, and the charges would have to be placed at these points.” He reached his finger across to emphasize the arrows he had drawn. “There aren’t a whole lot of people that would know how to do this—they would have to be involved in the project.”

  I noticed that his demeanor had changed. The sketch was professionally drawn, especially for the speed with which he had done it. He was now talking like a contractor and not a suspect or victim. Burkett certainly had his problems, but he seemed to be competent at his job.

  “Find the material from the adjacent sites and compare the concrete to the cylinders they have. They’re supposed to take six from each truck. I know two have probably been crushed for the compressive strength test they do after twenty-eight days. There are two for water permeability tests and they keep two extra. Test them.”

  He looked spent. This was not the outcome that the room full of Miami-Dade officers probably watching through the one-way mirror wanted, but he seemed sincere and I thought he had done me a favor. I decided to do one in return and turned the pad to a clean page. I scrawled get a lawyer on it and slid it across the table. He looked up, relieved, as if he now had a friend, and nodded. After taking the pad back, I tore off the note, stuffed it in my pocket, and left the room.

  “What was that all about?” Grace’s partner was in my face. He would have been eye to eye if he had another four inches to add to his elevator shoes.

  “Sketch of the bridge.” I showed him the drawing.

  “What’s that going to do and what was that note you wrote?”

  “Nothing,” I said, inflating my chest and pushing past him. For the police, it was often a worst-case scenario when a suspect lawyered up. I just wanted the truth and if protecting Burkett was going to get it, he deserved an advocate.

  I left the building feeling the looks that had been tempered earlier had returned to their previous animosity. On the way to the truck I decided I’d call Grace later and apologize if this had caused her any trouble. For now, I was going to keep my cards close.

  Sitting in the truck I checked my phone. Allie had returned my message with a smiley face and Justine’s message asked if I was still around and if I wanted to have dinner. I called her right back and we decided on a restaurant and time. I had about an hour to kill and it only took fifteen minutes to get to the restaurant. On a hunch, I entered the address on Shelton’s business card into the map app on my phone. It told me eighteen minutes.

  The app took all the guesswork out of the drive. It calculated the fastest route and all I had to worry about was not crashing. This gave me some time to think. The drawing in my pocket was a surprise and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. There was no doubt that Burkett knew his business and was correct; the question was, why had he given it to me—something I had not wanted to ask with a room full of Miami-Dade detectives sitting next door expecting a confession.

  I needed to figure it out on my own. Sitting at a red light, I took the page out of my pocket and stared at it, wondering how finding the sections of debris that had been blasted would change anything. The light turned green and I started following the directions from my phone again. The way the computer voice gave me directions brought to mind working with my dad.

  During summer breaks while I was in high school, I had started as a laborer for him then moved up to a carpenter. Then after a failed stint in college I had worked as a foreman until I joined the park service. It was all about the process and procedures he repeated over and over. “Measure twice and cut once” was all good advice, but it was the sequence you followed that separated the good carpenters from the bad. If you didn’t brace the walls, then string and line the structure, the roof was not going to go on right. I assumed it was the same thinking when you were building a bridge.

  An expert would be a big help and I pulled into the parking lot of a small strip center and made a quick U-turn. They might have had the knowledge, but I also remembered my dad cursing out the architects and engineers who’d had no idea how to actually build anything. Calculating the strength of a structure and actually building it were two different things entirely.

  A gas station occupied the corner of the next block and I pulled in, parked, and tried to find Willis’s phone number. He might be young, but he had the background to answer my questions. I found his number and sent him a quick text asking if he wanted dinner. It turned out to be an offer he couldn’t turn down.

  After pulling back into traffic, I drove to the restaurant. Justine’s car was already there when I arrived. I parked and went inside, hoping to have a few quiet minutes with her before Willis arrived. I found her at a corner booth and slid in beside her. After a warm kiss, she looked at me as if I was doing something wrong. We had moved on from the sitting side-by-side phase of our relationship a long time ago.

  “Sorry to bring work to dinner, but I have a guest coming.” I saw the look on her face when I said it and scolded myself for putting work first again. It had been my downfall before.

  “Some us time would be nice, too,” she said.

  I was planning on staying at Adams Key tonight as well to get an early start with Ray in the morning, but changed my mind. I was going to make this up to her. Willis was at the hostess stand and I waved him over.

  “That’s gonna be expensive,” Justine said, watching him walk over to the table.

  As he slid in across from us, I pulled the table a little closer to us to give him some room. After introducing him to Justine, we immersed ourselves in the menu. Justine and I had our standard order. I glanced across the table at Willis and saw the troubled look on his face. “I already saw you eat. We can share a bunch of stuff if you want,” I said, thanking myself that we had decided on Chinese food. He smiled, knowing he was not going to go hungry, and we ordered.

  After the first plates were cleared I pulled out the drawing and showed it to him. It stayed on the table as we tore into course number two, but as I watched him eat, I saw he was studying it.

  “’You were to blow a bridge, those would be the spots.”

  “Why?” I asked the question that was costing me dinner.

  “Got cold joints there. The adjacent sections are the ones built in place.” He pointed to the abutments. “These here are wheeled in with heavy equipment and attached with tension rods.”

  I had the procedure, but he wasn’t finished. Course number three interrupted the conversation. Justine and I had both exceeded our calorie limit for the week and started picking at our food. Willis continued on. When he was finished, we boxed up the remainder and I placed it in front of him. “Can’t have any starving students.”

  “Appreciate that,” he said, moving the boxes to the side and setting the drawing in the center of the table. “I heard all that talk about the tension rods being over-tightened. You want to prove that it was otherwise, this would be the area to look.”

  That was all well and good, but they were in a pile sixty feet underwater. “I’m going to help Ray set the mooring balls in the morning. I guess I can have a look then.”

  “You’re going diving without me?” Justine folded her arms across her chest and made a face.

  I recognized an opportunity when I saw it. “Of course not.”

  19

  Ray was pacing the dock when we came down th
e next morning. I checked my watch to see if we were on time; it was just six, our agreed on time. Ray must have abided by the same doctrine as my high school football coach: on time is ten minutes early. His boat was loaded with buoys, line, and tools, including a large gas-powered compressor. We had decided to take two boats, both for the added space and in case we ran late; then Justine could head back in the extra boat and get to work in time. With a grunt that might have been “good morning”—or not, he left the dock first and we followed.

  I could feel Justine at my side and the worry about the case was far from my mind as we headed into the rising sun. Shades of yellow and red illuminated the small wind waves as they came toward us and a brilliant sky brought the dawn. The beauty was short-lived; by the time we reached the site, the sun was clear of the horizon and I could already feel its heat.

  We stood off as Ray dropped anchor in the sand and paid out line, allowing the current to push the boat over the wreck site. The visibility looked good, but with the sun still low in the sky, I couldn’t see the bottom. He signaled when the anchor was secure and I idled over. Justine dropped my fenders as I maneuvered around to his port side. The boats met and we quickly secured them to each other.

  “Gear on up. Got a lot to do.”

  Ray was a man of few words, but I needed to know what he expected from me once we were under. After only a dozen or so dives, I was still a little nervous about working underwater and wanted a full briefing and a review of hand signals before we dove. “How’s this going to work?” I asked.

  He came over with his coffee mug and sat on his gunwale. Justine and I situated ourselves across from him on my boat.

  “I’ll carry the drill down, y’all take the anchors and line. Girlfriend here will keep everything from getting tangled.” We had already decided that it would be easier to drill and use expansion bolts to attach the moorings to the bridge parts, rather than to haul out the large blocks of concrete often used to anchor the moorings.

  My shoulders were tense as I dropped the buoyancy compensator over the steel cylinder and attached the regulator. Turning on the air, I checked the gauge, then scrolled through the screens on my dive computer, which confirmed that our bottom time at this depth could be as much as sixty minutes before decompression stops were required. From my previous experience and Ray’s assurance, we wouldn’t have to worry about time. Doing physical work underwater, our air would expire well before the hour was up.

  Justine checked my gear and nodded. We were ready to go and I moved to the starboard gunwale, ready to drop into the water. She handed me the drill and I looked over at Ray before rolling over the side. He gave me a thumbs-up and splashed as his tandem tanks broke through the surface. He would be diving with twice the air that I had in a Nitrox mixture, which would allow him additional bottom time. When my air expired, I would surface and switch places with Justine while he remained below.

  I gave him a few seconds’ head start, gathered some extra hose, and rolled over the side. In addition to the weight of the drill and hose, Ray had me add weight to my BC to make it easier to work on the bottom. Instead of the eight pounds I usually carried when diving without a wetsuit, I had twelve. At thirty feet below the surface, the rubble came into view and I steered myself to a spot in the sand near Ray. With the additional weight, the bottom came up fast, and I inflated my BC to slow the descent.

  He had warned me about stirring up silt if I tried to walk on the bottom and I added another blast of air to the BC. It took a few adjustments before I found the right amount of air to attain neutral buoyancy and I was now floating a few feet above the sand. As I approached him, Ray motioned for me to stop about ten feet away and started drilling the first hole. The air-powered hammer drill easily powered through the concrete and he inserted a large expansion bolt that had been clipped to his vest in the new hole. With a wrench he tightened the nut at the top and after it was secure, he motioned for the line, which he secured to the bolt.

  With the first buoy set, we moved on to the next location about a hundred feet away. The work, especially my part, soon became routine and I started to notice my surroundings. Sea life had already been attracted to the beginnings of a slime coat that would eventually encourage the growth of coral and sponges. In a few years the only evidence that this had been a manmade structure would be its straight lines. Small fish swam in the open and through the gaps in the rubble, secure now, but soon enough the predators would find them.

  I checked my watch and air gauge. After only thirty minutes I was down to 700 psi. We had decided that with the boat directly overhead, we would make our ascent at about 250. Ray was still working on the second hole. He was having a harder time with this one and I wondered what the difference was. Moving closer to him I ran a gloved hand over the concrete. This was a large section that had not failed, but rather had been broken with machinery to allow it to be loaded. I wanted to go back to the first hole and see what was different about that concrete, but Ray was ready to set the anchor. By the time the second mooring was secure, it was time for me to surface. I signaled to him and started my ascent.

  With the extra weight I misjudged the expansion of the air in the BC and once I reached twenty feet, I started to shoot to the surface. I started to panic, recalling from my training that uncontrolled ascents were the leading cause of embolisms. Finally my left hand found the inflator hose. I held it over my head, and released some of the air. Under control now, I floated up to the surface and finned over to the dive ladder.

  Justine helped me aboard and we quickly swapped gear. Taking two lines with her, she rolled over the side of the boat, gave me the okay sign, and submerged. As she descended I paid out the precut lines with the buoys attached to her. While I waited for her to reappear, I thought about what I had seen.

  A picture began to form in my head of the bridge parts lying on the bottom. I thought if I had some time that I could possibly identify the sections that Burkett had marked. It wouldn’t solve the crime, but any samples would be legally obtained and admissible as evidence.

  I saw a flurry of bubbles breaking the surface and a minute later Ray and Justine surfaced together. So far we were on schedule and after an hour of diving, we had set four of the balls. We had figured on setting half of the eighteen balls today and half tomorrow. If you did the math based on the four we had set in another hour we would be almost done for the day, but that didn’t account for the nitrogen in our bloodstreams. Even with the increased oxygen in the Nitrox mix, Ray would still need an hour or two on the surface before he could dive again. Three dives each day would get it done without putting us in jeopardy of decompression sickness.

  After Ray and Justine were aboard, the gear was swapped to fresh tanks and the spent ones stowed, I opened the cooler we had brought and offered around sandwiches and water. Ray, true to form, finished his coffee and moved on to a small cooler full of beer he had brought.

  While we drank, I asked Ray about retrieving a few samples.

  “You know Martinez’ll be up my butt if we don’t get this done by tomorrow. Even though there ain’t nothin to see here yet, they’ll still be here in droves this weekend.”

  He was right. I had already seen several boats cruise by on my surface interval. “There’s not a lot to do while you’re drilling and setting the bolts. You’re doing all the work.”

  “I can gladly hand off some of that to you. You guys are now official bolt setters.”

  I wasn’t sure if the promotion helped or hurt the cause, but accepted it. Maybe with two of us doing the work, we could move faster. “Can we use any extra time to have a look around?”

  “You get the quota done and you can play detective.”

  Also as SOP, Ray had set out a rod with a hunk of dead bait on a rig with a large weight after we had surfaced. Suddenly the reel buzzed and line started paying out. Ray took a long swig of his beer, crushed the can, and picked up the rod.

  The tip bent over to the middle of the rod as Ray tightened
the drag and started pumping the fish toward the boat. Several times he paused and allowed the fish to run, but he always seemed to know when to cut it short before the prey could entangle the line in the debris below. I hadn’t seen any big fish down there, but if there was bait there would be predators.

  “Kingfish, from the feel of him,” Ray said, pumping hard. “Got him now. You want to come over here and get the leader?”

  I hopped over the gunwale and waded through the lines and balls scattered on the deck of his boat. Leaning over the side I waited for the swivel to appear. I thought I saw it, but before I could reach down and grab the heavier leader, the fish must have seen the boat and made one last desperate run.

  Ray was patient and allowed line to peel off the rod, but as before, he sensed when it was near the bottom and tightened the drag. This time the fish came up easier and within a few minutes I could see the swivel again. Reaching over the side, I grabbed the line below it and wrapped it around my hand.

  “No herky-jerky now. Just lift it,” Ray cautioned.

  With one motion, I straightened my body, lifting the fish from the water in the process and swung the large silver fish over the gunwale. Ray opened the lid of the cooler that also acted as a seat in front of the console and I slid the fish in.

  “Best get back to work. Wouldn’t be surprised if Martinez has a fleet of drones to go with his cameras,” Ray said, eyeing a seagull that had been attracted by the fish.

  Justine would have to leave for work soon and the surface interval had been plenty long to allow her to do back-to-back dives. I helped her with her gear and was ready with the lines when together they dropped into the water to fix the next two moorings. When the lines went slack, I checked my watch. I expected they would be down longer this time. Justine had almost 800 psi of air left from the previous dive. It was Ray who had run out of air.

  I figured forty-five minutes and settled in to wait. Pulling my phone out of the waterproof glove compartment in the helm, I checked my email and messages. Out this far there were only two bars of service and it took a while for the messages to come through. There was the usual good morning text from Allie, which I returned by sending her a picture of the mooring balls we had set bobbing in the small waves.