Floodgates Read Online Free PDF Page A

got word that someone had been found dead here, nothing was going to stop her from running home.
    Not many minutes passed after Faye thumbed her cell phone off until she saw Nina bounding out of a still-rolling Ford. Charles hit the parking brake and caught up to her in seconds, running with an athlete’s easy grace.
    Nina rushed to Faye, loping awkwardly like someone who hadn’t run a step since high school P.E. class. She looked uncertainly at the detective at Faye’s side, as if unsure which of the two women could answer her question. Finally, she blurted out, “Can one of you tell me who it is? Who’s dead?”
    Jodi’s voice slipped from the conversational tone she’d been using with Faye, all the way down into the range that said I’m-an-officer-of-the-law-and-I’ve-got-everything-under-control. “We’ve got our people working on that identification.”
    Nina turned her eyes back to Faye, and they showed a naked need for reassurance. Charles still stood beside her, with his arm cupped around her elbow. Faye wondered why Nina didn’t look to him for comfort. He slipped an arm around her waist, but she never took her stricken eyes off Faye.
    Because the situation apparently wasn’t painful enough, a television van pulled up to the curb and disgorged a cameraman who couldn’t have been over twenty-five, a graying man who hadn’t seen twenty-five in a long time, and a crisply dressed young woman. Faye could tell that the woman was the newscaster because she was carrying a microphone.
    The oldest member of the party carried a notepad, which he was rapidly filling with notes. He stooped over the pad, squinting like a man who rarely worked in unfiltered sunlight, but his obvious discomfort didn’t slow his frenetic scribbling.
    Jodi walked toward the TV crew, maneuvering their position so that the exposed human bones remained out of view of the camera. Faye heard her talking to them, but she didn’t say much.
    Yes, a body had been uncovered.
    Yes, it was buried under debris that seemed to have been undisturbed since shortly after Hurricane Katrina.
    No, there had been no identification of the victim.
    “Can we talk to the person who discovered the remains?”
    “That person is fifteen years old. I’d suggest that you talk to her minister.”
    Adroitly maintaining control of what the camera did and did not see, Jodi beckoned to the minister, then backed away in Faye’s direction while he was interviewed.
    “It’s been a long time since we found a hurricane victim,” Jodi said. “This could be the last one, I guess. I hope. I imagine the TV station will give this some serious air time, with a very serious title like Closing the Door on Katrina .”
    The reporter finished with the minister, then beckoned to the gray-haired man, who was still scribbling on his pad.
    Faye edged closer, because the man’s scholarly air seemed out-of-place in this setting. She wondered why he was riding around with a TV crew.
    The reporter pointed her microphone at him, saying, “This is Louie Godtschalk, author of an upcoming book on the Katrina levee failures. He’s here today to do research on the book, and we’ve asked him to tell us about—”
    Godtschalk held up a pale hand. “No. The levee failures prompted this book, but that’s not my topic. I’m writing a history of New Orleans, told in terms of water. The city is here because of the river—our country desperately needed it to be here—but many, many people have had to work for their entire lives to keep it dry. New Orleans is an engineering marvel, really, and I don’t think that story has ever been told—not the mechanical side and certainly not the human side.”
    He cleared his throat nervously and cocked his head to the left, as if his collar were too tight. He clearly didn’t like being on the air. Faye wondered if he was prepared for the wave of media attention that could accompany a successful book on the flooding of New Orleans.
    “After