Roger would later say249 he had no memory of the motel bill remark, insisting it would have been out of character. But he was the first to admit that he hadn’t been feeling like himself in the days after the accident. On the same day Hoss remembered the Norwesco owner balking at the motel costs, Roger had been summoned to meet with several high-ranking Kiewit executives who’d flown in on the company’s private jet. Someone had handed Roger a list of three lawyers and told him to choose one. The whole exchange had felt so coldly matter-of-fact that as he left, his head was spinning.
Hoss could tell that Roger was now trying to make amends. He was covering some of the cost of this memorial service for Tim, including the spread of salmon that had been laid out and the hotel rooms for him, Riggs, and DJ. Even Harald appeared to be trying, giving Judy and Tim’s parents copies of a photo he had taken of Tim back in Tap’s yard, looking rugged and relaxed as he leaned against the white Humvee.
Hoss couldn’t get over how forgiving Tim’s parents, Bob and Shirley, and his younger brother, Todd, managed to be. Like Tim, they were clearly just kind, easygoing people. Todd delivered an uplifting eulogy, saying his first thought after hearing the horrible news of his brother’s death was “What a great life Tim had.” Part of Hoss wished he could be so positive in his outlook. Then again, maybe he knew too much about what had gone down on the tunnel job to offer that kind of blanket pardon.
Hoss watched as Riggs stood to deliver a special reading. The reflection had actually been published250 as a letter to the editor in The Boston Globe two days after the accident. Written by a stranger named Parker Pettus, it contrasted the “lavish” wall-to-wall coverage of the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., who had been granted a mariner’s funeral aboard a warship, with the “unadorned” news report about the deaths of Billy and Tim.
These men were not rich or famous or privileged. Certainly they would have preferred not to have been in a dangerous tunnel hundreds of feet below the surface and miles from any help.
They died while doing a hazardous, unheralded job, and their contribution to a clean, revived Boston Harbor will last for generations. They will not be immortalized in the media, they will not be buried at sea from the decks of a warship.
These workers are the kind of heroes who are so often taken for granted. We would do well to think of Boston’s clear, blue, living harbor as a monument to the courage and sacrifice of the ordinary heroes who made it a reality.
After Riggs finished, there was more silence. Then another diver friend stood and declared, “I think Tim would just want us to go drink a beer.”
Even if Hoss’s mind had fixated on the failings of Roger and Harald, he knew there had to be others who bore some responsibility for what had happened. Toward that end, he, Riggs, and DJ met the day after Tim’s service with two lawyers who had flown in from Boston251.
Judy had already signed up with one of the lawyers, a forty-year-old by the name of Bob Norton, who had been a competitive hockey player in college and still had the build to show for it. DJ had signed up with a friend of Norton’s from another firm, a tanned and slim forty-four-year-old named John Prescott, and had recommended that Billy’s parents do the same.
Hoss attended the meeting with his wife, Heather, bringing along his own healthy suspicion of lawyers. His main motivation in suing wouldn’t be to get money but rather to have the satisfaction of seeing the responsible parties stand up and acknowledge their failings. After a three-hour meeting with the lawyers, Hoss had to admit he was impressed.
While DJ and Riggs flew home, Hoss and Heather stayed with Judy for several days, helping her go through Tim’s things. Hoss knew that as close as Tim and Judy had been, there was one secret that Tim had kept from his wife.
“Judy,” Hoss said finally, “I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if you know it, but Tim has some guns.”
“Oh, I know,” Judy replied nonchalantly. When it came to their dueling views on guns, she and Tim had tried to keep things light. Tim would threaten to sign her up for the National Rifle Association as a Christmas present. Judy would counter with a threat to send a check in his name to gun-control activists Jim and Sarah Brady.
“No,” Hoss pressed on. “Tim has a lot of guns.”
Judy’s ears perked up. “What’s a lot?”
Hoss retrieved a cache from the plywood compartment Tim had built under the mattress in the guest bedroom. He helped Judy find other stashes in the deep recesses of closets. At one point, after he had built a pile in the living room containing more than fifty weapons, a couple of Judy’s neighbors came by to drop off a casserole. Seeing them nervously eye the giant cache, Judy had to laugh. It looked as if her house in rural Washington State was the headquarters for some end-of-days homegrown terrorist organization.
The man cage jerked and swayed as it went down the shaft. Since Mary McCauley hated heights—and heights in reverse—the state police detective tried to distract herself, downloading observations into her small notebook. As unsettled as she was, she realized this trip on the day after the accident would be a lot more frightening if she had been granted her request to journey all the way out to the actual crime scene, to the spot where Billy and Tim had lost consciousness. That request turned out to be a nonstarter. Even though she was taking the lead on the death investigation, OSHA had jurisdiction over the tunnel work site. The federal safety agency had ruled that no one would be allowed to venture past the base of the shaft until mechanical ventilation—the kind of bag line that the sandhogs had ripped out before the divers went in—had been reestablished.
McCauley heard people at the MWRA grousing about the decision. How were they ever supposed to finish the tunnel—and by extension, the multibillion-dollar Boston Harbor cleanup—if they couldn’t get back in? But McCauley didn’t care about this question. She had plenty of others weighing on her mind. Since all five divers had been breathing off the same system, she still couldn’t understand how the pair doing the easier tasks had somehow had less time to switch to their emergency air than the three doing the backbreaking work at the end of the tunnel. Even more pressing for the detective was the overarching question of accountability: Who should be held responsible for Billy and Tim’s deaths? After all her hours with the surviving divers, she had concluded that they’d been pawns in a much bigger game of risk.
The man cage touched down, and McCauley, wearing a yellow hard hat, headed over to the deck where the gray Humvee and trailer were parked. After a crime scene photographer documented everything inside the Humvee, McCauley climbed in. She couldn’t get over how jam-packed it was. Every inch of the interior seemed to have some kind of hose or valve or tool taking up space. There were also everyday artifacts252, like the crumpled-up green Nature’s Valley granola bar wrapper on the driver’s-side floor, which now served as an unnerving reminder of Tim and Billy’s presence. Examining the mixer, the manifolds, and the big tanks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen on the trailer, McCauley had two intense and yet contradictory thoughts. First, the breathing system was incredibly complicated, with hoses going in every direction and attached to all kinds of contraptions. Second, this incredibly complicated system seemed so jury-rigged. The gas cylinders looked old and rusty. The manifolds where the various hoses met were made of plywood—plywood! And the quarter-turn valves were labeled with pieces of tape. McCauley couldn’t believe it. the millions that they poured into this project, and this is what these divers were given to keep them alive? Where did all these supplies come from—Home Depot? It was like an eighth-grade science fair project gone horribly wrong.
249 (Chapter 12, note 9)
Roger would later say: “I have no recollection of something like that,” Roger told me. “Good God. I mean I paid Harald all the way through the whole thing. Maybe he heard something out of context.” Hoss, however, told me his recollection on this point is crystal clear, and Riggs, with whom he discussed it at the time, confirms Hoss’s account.
250 (Chapter 12, note 10)
The reflection had actually been published: Parker T. Pettus, “A Salute to the Ordinary Heroes,” Letter to the Editor,
251 (Chapter 12, note 11)
two lawyers who had flown in from Boston: Bob Norton and John Prescott, interviews by author, 2009-12.
252 (Chapter 12, note 12)
There were also everyday artifacts: Trooper John O’Leary, “Inventory of Evidence from Outfall Tunnel,” Massachusetts State Police, Suffolk County Detectives, September 20, 1999; also, video footage.