Page 13 of South of Nowhere
“For now. It won’t last, and if the levee goes, it won’t mean athing. I want the town empty ASAP. We need your people going door-to-door. That search team from your fire department, looking for the SUV that went into the river?”
“They haven’t found…”
“Of course not or we would have heard. Not my point.”
B…
“Pull the team back, all except one.”
“I’m not going to do that. It’s a family.”
She blinked at the response. “I know it is. You told me. We have to make choices in this line of work. Four people against a thousand. The math is easy.”
DRB strode to the nearest tent, relocated the stake Debi Starr was pounding into the ground and said, “That’s loam. You want clay. Computers?”
Debi fixed the stake and glanced at TC McGuire’s pickup plodding up the hill. Debi nodded. “TC does our computer stuff. That’s him now.”
McGuire climbed out and pulled on a rubber-protected hat. He was dressed the same as Debi—in a brown Hinowah Public Safety uniform, though his rain shield was a clear poncho. It was a souvenir from a concert, the Kiss Tribute Tour. He was a big man who could glare you down with the best of them. Fearless too—he’d climbed into a burning Jeep to pull a drunk driver out of the wreckage. He was also knowledgeable about the law, and was the front-runner for the chief position. Apart from himself, of course.
If Tolifson came through this test and took the job, he would be most troubled about passing over McGuire, who he knew was also hoping for the spot. But in Tolifson’s opinion McGuire lacked “vision,” though he wasn’t sure exactly what that meant in the context of being chief of a small town like Hinowah. “Computers?” DRB encouraged in a mutter.
Tolifson told McGuire to hook them up and get online.
“Will do.” The officer took two laptops and Verizon jetpacksfrom the backseat and booted the units. As he did, he glanced at the river and said, “We may have a break. They say the rain’s going to let up by noon.”
A pair of small binoculars had appeared in DRB’s hand and she scanned the west side of the village. She was saying absently to McGuire, “It’s not the rain. It’s themelt. Record snowpack in the mountains from November fourteenth through January twenty-fourth. Record heat in the past four days. Andthat’sonly going to get worse.”
“Oh.”
Tolifson was thinking again—evacuate a whole town?
How?
His phone hummed. Marissa Fell. “Hey,” he said, picturing the woman hunkered down at her desk back in the Public Safety Office.
“Han. Just heard from the Army Corps of Engineers. They’re sending a team. One that specializes in flooding.”
“Thank God. ETA?”
“They just said soon.”
He thanked her and turned to DRB. “Looks like Prescott Moore came through after all. He must’ve called the army engineers.” He found himself eager to defend the local government.
“Who’s in charge, the engineers?”
“Uhm, I’ll get a name.”
He called Marissa Fell back. She couldn’t remember the name. “A sergeant. A woman.”
He relayed this to DRB, who nodded. “All right. She got the number, I assume.”
After posing the question he said to DRB, “Not exactly.”
Her reaction was “Ah.” The neutral sound nonetheless was thick with displeasure. He guessed it meant, Either you got the number or you didn’t. What’s the point of hedging?
Debi said, “City’s been talking about getting landlines with caller IDs for ages. Just doesn’t end up in the budget requests.”
DRB said, “Might want to think about that.”
