“Devyn, I’ve worked on hundreds of construction sites. When my dad brought me to watch one when I was a kid, that’s all I ever wanted to do, and I have. I have degrees in construction management and mechanical engineering, and I’ve been working sites since I could lift a hammer. The ground was stable.”
“I was going to ask why you didn’t use outriggers or bearing plates.”
“We didn’t need to. We didn’t need the outriggers, or even the bearing plates though the ground is mostly dirt.” He points to what looks like legs coming out from the middle of the truck. “There was mud, but do you know how much it rained the day before the lift?”
I shake my head. I hadn’t looked into that part of it.
“Not even a quarter of an inch. Now you tell me if that’s enough to make the earth move under our feet.”
“The wheels sank. I saw it for myself in the video online.”
“We parked in a shallow puddle, and by no means was that enough to cause the truck to tip over.”
I stare at the model. “Can you demonstrate how it happened?”
Tony adjusts the boom. “I don’t have a replica of the framework, so you’ll have to imagine it’s hanging from the hook.” He flicks at a little silver hook hanging from a thin string at the end of the boom.
“All right.”
“The truck was positioned like so, parallel to the hotel’s lobby. The framework was to go on what would have been the fourth floor. We were building a tearoom on that floor, and the framework was going to be part of the picture window. It wasn’t heavy, not by my standards, anyway, though I don’t want to shrug off how important the lift was. Rick planned it for days, had everything in place.” He swivels the boom. “See, the weight is always in position.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Now, when I was positioning the boom so the framework would be situated where it needed to be, the truck was like this.”
He adjusts the boom, and the counterweight is positioned to the side of the truck, right over the tires sinking into the mud.
“All of a sudden, the truck starts to tip. I thought it was a gust of wind, maybe, or the truck lurching, and the next thing I know I’m slammed against the window and I’m waking up in the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“Hell if I know.”
“You could have used the outriggers and bearing plates.” I try not to sound accusatory.
“I could have. I know that went into the report—that I had a lapse in judgement. Maybe I had. We wouldn’t have tipped over, granted, but the ground was solid. The only thing I can think of is that the counterweight was too heavy, but that’s impossible.”
I perk up. That would make the most sense out of anything I’ve discovered since looking into this. “How do you determine that?”
“We go by the truck’s manual. The tables specify down to the pound how much to outfit the truck with based on the weight of the framework and how many feet the lift is going to be.”
“And you had help,” I ask to be sure.
“Oh, yeah. We use the truck’s hydraulics system to place the weight, we can’t lift those ourselves.”
“Do you have the manual?”
Tony positions the crane to the way it was before he acted out the accident. “No. They took it. If you’ve been digging through the things they collected from the investigation, you should have it.”
“There was something, I think. I’ll be going back to Rick’s office today to have another look. Beau said there were warning signals that should have gone off in the operator cab. Why did you ignore those?”
“There wasn’t anything. All the numbers remained stable.”
“Do you find that odd?”
“Yes and no. No because nothing was going wrong, not until the second the truck tipped over, but there should have been a warning before the truck tipped, even if it was too late to correct it. Devyn, I will swear until I’m buried in my grave that I didn’t miscalculate that lift. I followed the counterweight table; my dashboard didn’t indicate anything was happening. There hadn’t been enough rain the previous day to do what they claimed it did. If you can figure out what happened, I’ll be in your debt. I don’t talk to anybody because I’m afraid someone’s going to think I’m crazy.”
“I’ll do my best. When I watched the video online, something didn’t sit right with me. Do you think someone could have tampered with the crane?”