What he wanted more than anything was to see the body first. To pull at his dad’s coat, and say, “Over there, Dad,” or, “What’s that out on the water, toward the middle?” To be the first one to see Owen Cook’s body.
Chris and Mars and a dozen others walked the banks of the Mississippi between the Stone Arch Bridge and the Lower St. Anthony Lock and Dam downstream. Three Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department Water Patrol boats struggled with the current on the river. Attempts to drag had been postponed until the river dropped and slowed, maybe the following week or later. All they could do now was search for a body—or some remnant of a body—that had been caught in a vortex.
Chris’s wish gave way to other thoughts. The fierce, dark water left him thinking about what it would be like to die in water like that. Of how it would feel dropping into the water from the bridge above. Would you see anything if you opened your eyes under that water? Would you touch bottom? Could you swim back to the surface if you wanted to? Would you hit bottom hard enough to break bones?
Mars’s thoughts weren’t much different. If the river had been at normal level, there wasn’t any way Owen Cook would
have survived the jump. But the river was up at least eight feet over its normal level, and it was moving so fast. Mars looked at his watch. Almost 8:00 A.M. He tapped Chris on the shoulder. “Come on. I made an appointment to talk with a guy who runs the locks in the U.S. Army Corps of Civil Engineers building, other side of the bridge.”
Together they scrambled up the side of the bluffs to the east end of the bridge.
Halfway over the bridge, Chris said, “Is it a real waterfall, Dad?” Chris faced upstream, awed by the water’s violent power.
“Yes and no. Remember when we toured Ft. Snelling State, about five miles downriver?”
Chris nodded.
“Well, the original falls was there. But the bed of the river is sandstone, covered by limestone. What happens is, the sand-stone washes out and the limestone crumbles. So the falls kept moving upriver. When settlers came here in the eighteen-hundreds, they didn’t want to lose the falls. So they built a kind of platform under the water to stop the erosion. They tried to build a tunnel under the river to direct some of the water’s force toward the other bank, toward the bluffs, but the tunnel collapsed, almost destroying the falls.”
“Was anyone in the tunnel when it collapsed?” Chris’s voice was tense with a mix of horror and thrill at the image of being in a collapsing tunnel under the force of water he saw before him.
“Don’t know. Anyway, eventually a concrete apron was built to preserve the falls.” Mars gave Chris a little pull. “Let’s hustle. I’m late for my meeting.”
The U.S. Army Corps building was just the other side of the bridge. Todd Richard met them at the door and walked them back up a tile stairwell to a big, windowed room that
looked out over the falls and the bridge. It was the locks’ control center and Richard’s office. It felt a little like being on the helm of a ship.
“I saw that guy go off the bridge yesterday,” Richard said. “Couldn’t figure out what was up. Why were you guys after him, anyway?”
“He was a suspect in an investigation.”
“Ha! You must have had the right guy. One hell of a guilty conscience to take a flying leap off the bridge, I’d say.”
“Well, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever know the answer to that one. Like I said on the phone yesterday, I’d be interested in any information you can give us about what might happen with a body going off the bridge under these conditions.”
Richard nodded. “Come over to my computer. After I talked to you yesterday, I called a pal of mine over at the university. A physicist. Me, I’m a hydrologist. Got an under-graduate degree in civil engineering, my Ph.D. in hydrology. A lot of the things you’re going to want to know are more in the line of physics. So I called my friend, and he gave me a program we could use. I think you’ll find it interesting. I’m kind of looking forward to playing around with it myself.”
Richard slipped a disk into his computer. As the machine cranked, he said, “I paid attention to where the guy went over. Couldn’t see much after he jumped, but I’ll say this: He jumped over the eighteenth arch of the bridge, which is directly in line with one of the deepest channels in this stretch of the river. Two arches over, the bed of the river is higher. Even under these conditions, he’d have had a hard time coming out alive if he’d landed there. But where he went over, he had as good a shot as you’re going to get when you do a damn fool thing like that. Other break he got, the river’s highly oxygenated given how much turbulence there is. That creates a pillowing effect. If the water surface had been calm,” Richard shook his head, “it wouldn’t have mattered how deep
the river was where he went off. The impact of landing from that height on a flat surface would have killed him.”
Program images began flashing on the computer screen. Richard said, “Tell me the guy’s height and weight.”
“He was about six one, a hundred and ninety pounds.”
“You see if he went in feet first, belly flop, or what?”
Mars shook his head. “We haven’t been able to find anybody who saw him after he jumped.”
Richard grimaced. “Makes a difference. Let’s try this a couple of ways.” He muttered under his breath, his right hand flicking a mouse back and forth. The image of a man standing on a level surface came up. Richard said, “I’m giving the program a description of your guy, the depth of the water, and the current velocity. And now”—Richard held his head up, looking down his glasses at the keyboard—“and now I’m gonna give your guy a little shove … .”
The figure on the screen moved from the top of the screen into the water. Under the water was a scaled topographical map of the riverbed below the bridge’s eighteenth arch. Chris said, “Cool, Dad.” The figure hit the water and the program made a splash. The figure went down fast, but at a perpendicular angle, dragged by the powerful flow of the river. The figure slowed as it moved down, touching the bottom in a gentle bounce.
“Dad!” Chris looked at Mars, uncertain what the image on the screen meant.
Richard said. “Well, like I said. As far as surviving the jump, I’d say your guy had a chance. But it would depend on a lot of things, most of which we can’t capture with the computer—at least with the program we’re using here.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like wind direction. And that would be pretty hard to pin down. The river channel has a lot of draft variation, and it can shift dramatically in seconds. So we’re not going
to be able to pin that down with any certainty. And I pushed him in feet first. If he went in, say, cannonball, back kind of flat toward the river, it would have slowed him down some. Even how he carried his weight could make a difference. How much body fat did he have?” Richard clicked keys and the mouse and the figure reappeared, this time in the shape Richard had described. Richard gave the figure another shove and it took another plunge. This time it didn’t hit bottom.
“Cool!” Chris repeated.
Mars looked at him. “Number three.” Chris blushed slightly and shrugged.
“Well, like you see, the position he was in when he hit the water would make a difference. Then there’re other factors to consider, like how many layers of clothes he had on, the type of fabric—all that could make a difference between coming out of that jump alive or not.”
Richard shoved his chair back and walked over to the windows. “But say he survived the jump. He could still get hung up underwater. Water as powerful as it is right now, that’s a real possibility. Then you’ve got the Lower St. Anthony Lock and Dam just downriver. Given the volume of water coming through now, they’ve had the locks wide open and the grinders are off, but still, that’s a real gauntlet for a body to pass. And you’ve got the cold. Our ambient air temperatures have been running twenty to twenty-five degrees below normal for the past few weeks, lower than that upriver. So the water’s colder than normal. I’d say the guy would slip into serious hypothermia in—oh, maybe thirty, forty-five minutes, tops. Put it all together, and it’d take a small miracle for him to still be alive. Still, with the breaks he got, who knows …”
“Let’s take a little walk,” Mars said when he and Chris came out on the deck of the locks building. Together they walked
downriver toward the Lower St. Anthony Lock and Dam. A gauntlet was a good description. Richard was right. It would take a miracle to get through that alive.
Mars stopped, looking out across the river, than back toward the falls. It was anyone’s bet if Owen Cook had survived the jump and made it past the lock and dam.
Mars’s money went with the miracle.