The Deputy Stopped My Crawler Before I Could Finish The Survey

The first thing I saw in the culvert was a white river that did not move.

Concrete washout had settled across the bottom of the pipe. Someone had rinsed a truck into a storm inlet above it. The water ran over the pale ridge, but the ridge stayed put.

"Well, Orion," I said into my headset. "That isn't mountain clay."

I named every inspection robot after a constellation. Lyra handled small lines. Cassiopeia had a bad wheel. Orion was my biggest crawler, with three white stars painted on his black carrying case.

I was thirty, an Italian American woman with olive skin, dark curls cut at my jaw, and a small white scar through my left eyebrow.

My job was to put cameras where people could not safely go. I ran a one-woman storm-drain survey business out of a used van in Asheville, North Carolina.

That Tuesday, Tilden Vale Development owed me $6,480 for six days of work at its new hillside project. A city drainage easement crossed the site. The company needed my survey before the city would accept repairs to the old culvert.

I stopped Orion at station eighteen feet, six inches. That meant the crawler had gone that far from my marked starting point.

I saved a front-camera still, then called the city number on my work order.

"Cole," a woman answered.

"Lucia Moretti. I have what looks like fresh concrete discharge in the Ridge Shelf culvert."

"Don't name the material before we sample it," she said. "Show me where it is."

I liked her already.

Nadine Cole was the city drainage engineer assigned to the project. She told me to email the still, keep the raw survey, and leave the loose material alone.

"Rain's coming," she said. "I need the shape of the blockage, not a fight about it."

I sent the file. Then Grant Pell, the developer's owner, came down the gravel slope with a deputy beside him.

Wade Haskett was a broad white American man of forty-five, with a red neck, flat gray eyes, and a pale groove where his wedding ring had been.

The site safety sheet named him as my access partner. That meant he handled gates and traffic while I handled the camera.

"You called downtown?" Pell asked.

"The drainage office. It's on my reporting sheet."

Haskett leaned over my monitor.

"That's sediment."

"The engineer wants a sample."

"I inspected this outlet this morning. It was clear."

I pointed at the image. "Then your time would help establish when this arrived."

He looked at me as if I had asked to search his pockets.

"You questioning my statement?"

"I'm asking what time you were here."

Pell stepped between us. "Wade does our security details. He knows the place."

Haskett tapped the monitor with one thick finger.

"Pack it up. You're done."

Orion sat inside the pipe with both cameras running. The front camera measured cracks and joints. The little rear camera watched the tether so I could back out without wrapping it around a root.

Clients usually bought only the front video. Both streams went onto a removable survey module, along with a sealed route counter. The operator could mark a distance, but could not rewrite the underlying wheel counts or erase one stretch of a run.

I had paid an extra $2,100 for that feature after a customer once claimed I had skipped a pipe.

"I need to bring my machine back," I said.

"Go shut the upper gate first," Haskett said. "Nobody else enters."

The gate stood thirty yards uphill. I set the brake on the control reel, put on my hard hat, and went. From there, I could see Pell beside my van. The deputy had walked toward the outlet, below the bank.

When I returned, Haskett held Orion's tether in his bare hand.

"Your toy's stuck."

I eased the crawler backward. Its tires climbed something hard. A short piece of orange cord dragged past the rear lens.

At the outlet, broken concrete crowded the opening. A temporary debris screen lay flat behind it. Its tie had been cut.

"That wasn't there," I said.

"Funny," Haskett said. "I was going to say the same about you."

He photographed my crawler against the pile. Pell stood close enough that I could smell his mint gum.

"You report a problem," Pell said, "then make sure there's a problem."

My hands went cold. I shut down Orion in the normal order, removed the warm module, and put it in its numbered sleeve. Three white stars showed through the clear pocket.

Haskett asked for the client export. I gave him a copy of the front video and wrote its file name on his receipt.

"All your records belong to the company," he said.

"My agreement says they receive a survey copy."

"Nobody's taking a subcontractor's word over my inspection statement."

He slid a complaint form onto my hood. In the box marked suspected offense, he had written damage to drainage property.