DJ’s lawyer looked shocked. It was less than half the minimum sentence called for under the guidelines. Lorraine, knowing her son had already served more than a year while waiting for the wheels of justice to turn, looked overjoyed. With a few months shaved off his sentence for good behavior, she figured he might be released by the end of the summer, in time to celebrate his fortieth birthday.
The judge also ordered the pair to make restitution payments to the banks. Chris would be required to pay back $41,004, for the money he had pocketed from his six-month string of robberies. DJ would be required to pay back one dollar346, for the buck he’d used at the tollbooth on their getaway ride.
Wolf acknowledged that his sentences were far lighter than the federal guidelines suggested, but he argued the variances were justified. The case, he said, was about drugs much more than it was about theft. He told DJ he thought he was a good candidate for beating drugs. “It’s hard,” he said, “but you’ve demonstrated that you can do hard things that require discipline.” It all depended, Wolf told DJ, on how he responded to this break the judge was giving him. “If you blow this off, I’ll see you within the year. Then I may lock you up for three years,” the judge said. “But if you take advantage of the opportunity, your future will be much happier than your past.”
Wolf said he had closely read Prescott’s letter about DJ’s role in the tunnel accident and he had been moved by it. “Your problems didn’t begin when your friend died and you survived that horrible accident,” the judge said. “But they got a lot worse.” While stressing that the tunnel accident didn’t excuse his role in the bank robbery, he said, “it helps explain it.” The accident, he was suggesting, must still loom large over DJ’s life. With that, the judge stood up and left.
As he was led out of the courtroom, DJ turned and winked at his mother, mouthing the words I love you. Underneath his off-white shirt, there was evidence to support the judge’s hunch. There, on his right shoulder, was the reminder DJ saw every morning when he looked in the mirror. It was the tattoo he’d had inked in a dodgy basement shortly after the accident, when Riggs had been staying with him.
At its center, there was a large diving mask. Below it were the names Billy and Tim. Above it were the words: not to be forgotten.
Epilogue
I stood at the registration desk of the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, waiting for my day pass, hoping it would lead me to him. The conference was called OCEANS ’10, an international gathering of oceanic engineers and scientists. I had come in pursuit of the man I had spent so much time thinking about, and talking about, but had never met.
It was a gamble, since Harald Grob’s name appeared nowhere on the conference materials. Since his return to Canada shortly after the deaths of Billy and Tim and his four-hour interview with the state police and OSHA, Harald had managed to lie low. The many investigators and lawyers who had tried to chase him down, during the years of criminal investigations and civil litigation, had come away frustrated. They warned me not to get my hopes up.
I had communicated once with Harald, however. In 2009, shortly before I wrote about the tenth anniversary of the tunnel deaths in The Boston Globe Magazine, I e-mailed Harald a request for an interview. He sent me this one-paragraph reply:
Two colleagues died347 on the Deer Island Outfall project and it deeply affected all of us. Over the years we have learned to live with this tragedy. For my part, I do not wish to start the healing process over again. Therefore, I respectfully decline your offer of an interview.
Thank you H. Grob
After I included his note in my article, some of the divers’ family members told me they were offended by his comments. “It’s great that he was able to finish the healing process,” Billy’s mother told me, “but we’re still struggling to heal.”
Although I already had plenty of material conveying Harald’s point of view when I decided to write this book, I was determined to gather much more. Over the course of several years, I was able to amass a mountain of documents and correspondence involving Harald: transcripts of his conversations with investigators and lawyers; audio recordings of his interview with OSHA and state police; video footage of his work in and out of the tunnel; official logs and unofficial notations scratched into day planners by Kiewit managers after their phone conversations with Harald; faxed memos and e-mails between him and his equipment suppliers; and e-mails between him and Roger as they strategized their defense following the accident (including the unforgettable one describing his sightseeing trip to Borneo).
By then, I was confident that I could accurately describe Harald’s perspective and the role he had played. Still, I wanted to talk to him in person. I learned he was working for a Canadian company called OceanWorks International. Based in British Columbia, OceanWorks specializes in cutting-edge diving systems, such as atmospheric diving suits that are designed to withstand underwater pressure at two thousand feet. At the OCEANS conference held in Germany in 2009, Harald had been a featured presenter, delivering a paper titled “Cabled Observatory Technology for Ocean Renewable Energy Devices.” He seemed to be getting the kind of industry recognition that investigator Joan Parker had come to believe was a far bigger motivator for him than financial gain.
Unlike the conference in Germany, this gathering in Seattle in the fall of 2010 did not list Harald as a presenter. Still, as I made my way into the exhibition hall, I figured there was a good shot he’d be in attendance. As I rounded the corner, I spotted the OceanWorks booth. There were three men standing behind a table, including a short guy who held his arms out, as though he were carrying something under each one. Aside from the gray-white hair on the side of his head, he was completely bald. He wore a blue Oxford shirt, and as I drew closer, the name tag clipped to his breast pocket came into view. Harald.
As I offered my hand, I watched his eyes travel to my name tag, and then saw his smile disappear. I introduced myself, although by then it hardly seemed necessary. I asked if we could speak privately. At a table in a far corner of the hall, I told him that, with this book, I hoped to understand the project from every perspective. As much documentary evidence as I had describing his role, I said, I was sure he could offer some additional insight. And I reminded him that my goal was not to look for simple black-and-whites in the story but to explore the many shades of gray. He told me he had not read my pair of magazine articles about the tunnel project. Based on his body language, I wasn’t persuaded that was the case, but I took him at his word and said I would send the stories. My initial impression was that he was polite and remarkably soft-spoken—so soft-spoken, in fact, that I had to crane my head to hear him over the din of the exhibition hall.
Eventually, though, the other side of Harald—the one that the divers and investigators had described to me—came through. When I told him I would like to continue our conversation after he’d had a chance to read what I sent him, he narrowed his eyes and snapped, “I know that’s what you would like.” The comment instantly took me back to the exchange when an OSHA investigator had pressed Harald on how using an unreliable handheld analyzer to measure the oxygen content could possibly be accurate, and Harald had huffed, “It is certainly accurate.” I asked him to call me after he’d a chance to read the materials I sent him, and he said he would consider it.