Steam Tunnel

Victor had a new job with the university police, and he was teamed up with a veteran, Ed Slack, on Thursday nights. Ed told him right away that he would appreciate it if Victor would do anything related to the steam tunnels, but that he, Ed, would carry his weight in every other way and do most of the work, even show Victor around. He kept his word. Ed Slack was a hard worker, fearless, able and willing to do anything the job called for.

One night there was a call to check out the steam tunnel at the entrance over by the Physical Plant; somebody had heard noises over there. Ed said he’d accompany Victor over there if Victor would kindly go down in there himself and check out the noises. He didn’t suspect there was reason for two cops down there, and besides, one person was needed above ground to be available for other calls. They went over to the Physical Plant together and found the entrance to the tunnels. Victor took a large lamp down there and started investigating the noises. The tunnel was dark, but not especially scary to Victor. He came to a crossroads where the tunnel went off in three different directions.

The tunnels were all about four feet wide, and six feet high; there was a little water on the bottom of them, but not much. They would occasionally widen into areas where there would be pipes connected to each other, or places where crawl spaces went up in one direction or another, in order for someone to reach something that they had to work on, presumably. Victor couldn’t imagine who would want to be down here at a time like this: nine at night, on a Thursday. This is not how Victor would want to spend his Thursday night. He shone his light in every direction; he heard nothing.

He finished looking around, and found nobody. No sounds, no evidence of people down there, no nothing. One of the tunnels led to a locked gate; others went on indefinitely, but he could figure out where they went, and didn’t want to get too far from the physical plant entrance. After a good while, he gave up and came back, so he could file his report and move on to the next call.

Ed maintained that he was willing to do what Victor had just done, but didn’t want to. It brought back bad memories, he said, of twenty years ago. And he made it clear he didn’t want to discuss it or explain it. Case was closed. He did extra work on another of their joint ventures, and Victor had to allow that he’d got the easier end of the deal. There was nothing particularly hard about walking around in the steam tunnels at night; there was no special reason for him to refuse the chore. It was most likely students, and they were most likely unarmed. There was a remote possibility that it could be someone else, or perhaps animals.

He talked to some other people on the force about it, though, and found out that it was, in fact, a tradition going back many years. A large number of students took great pleasure in breaking into the system of tunnels, in one place or another, and exploring the vast network that went under the entire campus, from one end to the other. The workers had a system of locked metal gates, but those gates were often left open, and if they could be opened from one end or the other, the students would figure out how to open them and leave them open for the next people to come through. They didn’t seem to do dark and dangerous things down there; there was no evidence of drugs, for example, or correlation with all the other serious crimes that happened on campus. It seemed to be simply the desire to go where one doesn’t belong, explore in places where there was some risk, some danger, and where one could get caught, if one wasn’t careful.

Ed Slack was getting close to retirement; he had two more football games to work, and he had a very limited number of serious confrontations left, he was pretty sure. Thursday night was still a problem, because anything could happen on a Thursday, but he was looking forward to the day in May, already set, when he’d have his last Thursday, his last report to file, his last possible arrest. He had a motor home ready, and he and his wife were ready to see the country, and get a little less attached to the responsibilities of the police force and the other things he did. It had reached the point where he dreaded Thursdays the most, because of the possibilities that it entailed, and one of those was the steam tunnels.

And sure enough, they got another call from the Physical Plant two Thursdays later; this came at about ten. There was a little more noise on this one, they said, when Victor and Ed arrived. We may have to show you a little, said one guy, where we thought we heard the noises coming from.

The Physical Plant worker, Jeb, led them down into the tunnels, both Ed and Victor, and toward the intersection that Victor had found before. The tunnels were the same: claustrophobic, and slightly wet, with some passages blocked by metal fences.

They turned right at the intersection, went down a ways, then turned left. They had gone quite a ways when they came to a little side-tunnel that went off to the right. Jeb suggested they check up there. Victor went first, carrying a large light. For safety he held onto his gun, even though he was aware that if there were people up there, they would most likely be students. What struck Victor was how tight the tunnel seemed; there was only one way out; there was nobody else who even knew about the place.

Up about a hundred feet, he and Ed came to a crawl space up to the left. And there, in a mud tunnel about four feet by four feet, were three kids – well, one was a little older. Three young men, crouching in the mud, with a lamp, off, and very little else. Their clothes were dirty, but all three had shoes, pants, flannel shirts.

Victor did the talking. He demanded their ID’s and got student ID’s from the two, a driver’s license from the third. He took their lantern. He made them come out in front of him and Ed, and walk back toward Jeb at the intersection. A glint of recognition passed between Ed and the older guy. Ed knew him; he was sure. Victor could see that Ed was having trouble with the memories, the setup of the steam tunnels, the whole thing. And now, running into this guy, down there, that was almost too much.

Back up in the Physical Plant, they handcuffed the guys and put them in the patrol car for the ride across campus. They had radioed for help, and had another patrol car there for the trip as well, driven by a guy named Frank, also on duty. Victor stayed with Ed and the two younger kids; the third went in Frank’s car.

Back at the station they ran into the stubborn truth: there was very little they could charge the three guys with. The two students were not even trespassing, though they certainly were someplace they didn’t belong. Ordinarily a fatherly guy like Ed would give them a lecture, tell them how dangerous it was, and send them on their way. But Ed wasn’t up to it, and he asked Frank, who had some experience with this situation, to do the lecture. Frank was ready. Frank often said that there were two things he liked to make clear in these situations, and he assured them he would do it this time. The first was that kids could die down there, and in fact, someone had died, one time many years back. Frank in fact knew nothing of this, and would tell that to anyone, but he repeated it as a solemn fact, that any students wandering around down there were subject to the same thing. They closed the gates; they trapped people; they acted like they were alone down there. And the second thing he would tell them was, the steam pipes burst occasionally. Once again, Frank knew nothing about this, yet he could repeat it like it was the coming of the great volcano. He made a big story for each kid, and both of them, one at a time, came out white-faced, somewhat embarassed, glad to be released, even glad to be still alive. They might get a call from the disciplinary wing of Student Affairs, but they were basically getting off.

The third guy was a little more of a problem. He was about forty, identified as a resident of the city, and looked like he’d spent twenty years next to a video game. Ed, in the end, agreed to join Frank in interrogating him, knowing that eventually they would give up and let him go, as well, knowing that even trespassing on university property, even in a dangerous and prohibited place, was hardly worth their time in prosecuting him. In other words, he was guilty, and everyone knew it, but it was unlikely that he would even have to pay a fine, although they could probably, with a lot of effort, force him to do so.

The guy, who identified himself as John Barton, had talked the students into taking him down there. He said he was looking for a knife he had left down there many years ago. It happened that the knife was inlaid, a kind of family heirloom, but that he had left it in a crawlspace out of fear, when they were arrested and brought out of there in another incident. When was this? Together they tried to conjure up a date; John wasn’t sure. Ed was looking at him carefully. About twenty years ago, he said, though he hedged a little, changed it in both directions. Ed was getting increasingly uncomfortable; perhaps he was the one involved in this very arrest, or, to be more specific, apprehension. This kid had been told to stay out of these tunnels, what, twenty years ago? John fidgeted, very nervous, and admitted that. They’d caught him in the tunnel; they’d warned him; he’d agreed not to do it again.

But now Ed’s questions became more pointed. Ed, in fact, had brought him out of the tunnel. And Ed suddenly brought up the subject of the kid who had died that night, or soon after. He had gone down one passage that no longer led anywhere, that had no legitimate or possible exits, and when he’d come back to the intersection, it had been locked, with the people gone. None of the kids who had been caught down there that night, John included, had told about the other kid, who had gone the other way. The kid was a friend of John’s, and John was haunted by that. He hadn’t told the police that there was one more kid down there somewhere. He had assumed that his friend would find a way out. But it hadn’t happened, and the kid was stuck down there; he’d starved to death.

Ed, as it turned out, was haunted by the same situation. Had he forgot to ask or inquire about other kids? Had they failed to search the tunnel system afterward? How was it that they were unable to hear anyone, after that, when it was so common to hear them on nights like tonight?

Frank and Victor, also, were floored. Frank was there, basically, hearing John’s admission that, basically, he was in those same tunnels twenty years ago, and had come back tonight. Victor caught it on the camera. There was nothing to say or do now. John finally broke down in tears; he had had twenty years of bad dreams, wondering if he could retrace his steps, if he could relive the experience. He’d become fixated on the knife, which he’d left down there in a spasm of fear. He’d finally gotten up the nerve to go down there, to revisit the place. But it had only made it worse.

In the end, they let John go, just as they let the others go. His bad dreams, his twenty years of guilt and recrimination, were punishment enough. They gave him a talk, told him of the danger. They actually promised him they’d look for the knife, given enough information about exactly where he had left it. The problem was, that information was long gone; even John couldn’t remember exactly where he’d been. And neither could Ed. Thirty years on the police force, and he knew this would be the story that haunted him the most, that he would have trouble getting past, even when he was parked, with the mobile home, on some beach down on the sea. Things happen. You can’t blame those Physical Plant guys for locking the gates.

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