With the squeal and squeak of four angry tires, I pulled the car back into its correct lane.
I picked the phone back up. Jamie was mid-way through saying something, but since I’d missed the first part I cut him off. “Wait. Call the cops. Christ won’t like it, but if the river’s really coming up, I think he might be in real trouble. ”
“If he’s down at the undersides then, well, yeah. What’s he doing there? And how do you know he’s there?”
“He left me a voicemail. He went there looking for one of his missing friends, and he said—” I stopped myself. “He said he was down there, but the signal was all shitty and I could hardly understand him. ”
“Shit. ” Somewhere behind him, his girlfriend asked what was going on. He shooed her away with a promise to fill her in later. “He’ll kick my ass if I call the cops on him. ”
“Then call the cops for him. At least see if someone will go down there and look for him, you know?”
“What are the odds?”
“Probably not good. But try it, please? I’m going to try to get downtown now, and if I do, I’m going to start at Greyfriar’s. If he made it out of the tunnels, he might go dry off there. Or the library. I don’t know. ”
The white noise of the rain around my car made it hard to hear, but I think Jamie was getting up and moving around. “Eden, stay on the mountain. Just stay up there and I’ll look into it. I’m not doing anything right now anyway; I got sent home from work. The restaurant closed up when they started talking about shutting the bridges. That goofy little car of yours isn’t made for wading. ”
“Don’t insult the wheels, man. ”
“The Nugget isn’t exactly an SUV. Half of Red Bank is already under water,” he said, but that didn’t tell me anything. Every time it rains too bad, big chunks of the main drag lose their sidewalks and storefronts.
“You’re going to get stuck down there. Don’t do it. Stay put, and I’ll see if I can get a lead on Christ. ”
“Oh, I will get across the river. You just watch me. And be at the ‘Friar in half an hour. But first—call the cops. ”
“And tell them what, exactly?”
“Tell them—tell them you heard someone calling out for help down at the undersides entrance, the one beside the amphitheater under the pedestrian bridge. Tell them you think someone’s trapped down there, by the river. Tell them anything, except don’t tell them it’s Christ. And I mean it: thirty minutes. Be there. ”
I hung up on him and threw the phone back onto the seat. I was almost down off the mountain, and 27 was beginning to straighten out. But it unnerved me, the way the unrelenting rain gave everything such a weird sense of urgency—between the pounding noise and the zero visibility, it was enough to make you crazy.
The very thought that they’d shut down the bridges was ridiculous. They never shut down the bridges except for road work. The bridges were plenty high off the ground, and plenty high away from the river.
But Jamie was right. The road began backing up and the loud blue and red lights of cop cars beamed wetly through the storm. Flashing lights with arrows indicated detours and recommended shelters.
“I need to watch more TV,” I said to myself, pulling up next to a raincoat-bedecked officer waving a flashlight.
I rolled down the window. “Excuse me? What’s the situation? I’m trying to get downtown. ”
“Emergency,” he told me, blinking through the droplets that ran down his nose and dripped off his mustache. “Trouble with the locks at the dam. We’re trying to keep everyone up away from the river until the situation is resolved. ”
“But—”
“I realize it’s an inconvenience, ma’am. If you’re trying to get to work—”
“I’m not trying to get to work. I’m trying to get home,” I lied.
“Sorry, ma’am. Give us a few hours to sort things out. Right now, we’ve got a couple of businesses that look like they’re headed underwater, and we’re shutting down the Veterans Bridge. ”
“No way! Has this ever happened before?”
“Not so far as I know. Ma’am, please move along. ”
“What about the hospitals? What about the interstates?” I shouted over the rain.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you—”
“To move along. Y