This story is dedicated to now-retired Sgt. S,
former the head of the State Police Special Services Department. He oversaw the dive team,
search and rescue team, and the bomb squad.
I was introduced to Sgt. S just a couple of weeks after I finished writing my story. His dive team was hauling stolen and abandoned vehicles from a quarry located just a couple of miles from the one described in my story. I was at the scene with the rest of the reporters who'd been invited to witness the event. Unlike the other reporters, however, I quickly found myself standing amid the dive team rather than behind the safetly line drawn to protect the naieve reporters and photographers from the danger of a possible cable-snap as the heavy duty wrecker hauled the cars up from the murky depths. Divers, you see, are a quirky bunch--distrustful of others, but quick to embrace one of their own. Somehow it surprised none of the team when one member snuck up to my Jeep then returned to report, "She wasn't kidding, she really does have her wetsuit and tank with her."
Sgt. S told me to stick around, so I joked with the team until the rest of the press cleared out. The lingering stench of petroleum fumes hovered pungently above the surface of the quarry as we set out in an inflatable boat for a water-tour of the area. In the shallows, I could see rusting frames from some old Fords--too old and rotted to be worth hauling up to investigate. The silt stirred up from removing the recovered vehicles completely obliterated my view of the deeper sections of the quarry where many of the abandoned vehicles drifted and slid, piling up on one another. As we toured the quarry, I mentioned my story to Sgt. S. He found it amusing that I'd picked another local quarry for my fictional setting. He asked if he could read my story--and I could tell he thought it would be filled with inaccuracies as he really didn't believe I'd actually dived the quarry I picked to write about.
I sent him a copy of my story and the day he got it, he called. He sounded very distressed and his colleagues confirmed that my story had sent him into a cold sweat. Why?
Well, you see, the quarry does exist, just as I described it--above and below the surface of its forever frigid waters. The quarry has always been a magnet, luring divers to explore its underwater mysteries. Over the years, it's also been a death trap for a few novice divers who failed to successfully navigate their way out of the underwater cave's passageways before sucking their air tanks dry.
Sgt. S dove that quarry and its cave with his team of recovery divers after one such late autumn mishap. They tried to penetrate the cave, but found automotive debris blocking the entrance. Sgt. S got tangled in the debris. By the time his colleagues got him free and hauled him to the surface, a chopper was waiting to take him to "the chamber." He stayed overnight in the hyperbaric chamber, recovering from his "hairbrush with death," as his dry-witted dive team referred to the incident.
Unable to return to the quarry until he could secure equipment to move the debris, Sgt. S had to wait until Spring to make a second recovery dive with his team. On that dive, he found the bodies of the two young boys he originally dove for. Both were inside the cave. Both were less than 20 feet from the entrance. One was in a side chamber. The other...was exactly where the haunted Corvette parked in my story.
Copyright 1996 Barbara Spear
