Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) Read Free Page B

asked.
    “It’s a disaster,” Sam said, “But it could be worse. We’ve got people staying in churches on the other side of the river, but we didn’t lose any lives that we know of, and the rest of it will get fixed one way or the other. I’m just glad it’s not my problem to find the money. My real problem is going to be getting a little sleep before I have to go back over to Cathay. I’d better skip the coffee.”
    “You’re going to Cathay?” Hunter asked. “How are you going to get there?
    Sam dug into his breakfast for a while before answering.
    “National Guard’s coming in,” he said. “We’ll have a chopper here by noon for emergency purposes.”
    “Can I come with you in the chopper?”
    “Sorry,” Sam said. “They’ve got room for me and for two nurses from the hospital who’ve volunteered to help over there, and then we’ve got this pregnant woman and her husband to bring back over here. She’s like three days past due already, and they’re about to panic that she’ll go into labor and they won’t be able to get to the hospital.”
    “What are the nurses going for? Are people hurt?”
    “They’re going to be giving tetanus shots to anybody getting into the floodwater,” Sam said. “It’s filthy—dead animals, runoff from the dairy lagoons and chicken houses, garbage, you name it. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of setting up a first aid station until the Red Cross comes in. Clarence Bartow is on top of all that.”
    “I really need to get over there,” Hunter said. “How can I get there in my car?”
    “I can give you a pretty good idea of which way you can’t go, but I don’t know what you’re going to run into once you get out of Magnolia County. You might drive 50 miles and come up on a bridge that can’t be crossed.”
    Hunter thought it over as she ate her ham biscuit.
    “I heard some of the rescue unit guys were out in boats picking up dogs,” she said. “Do you know where I could catch up with them?”
    “You really want to go out in a motor boat with Sonny and Sonny Junior and pick up wet dogs?” Sam asked with a grin.
    “No. I want to see if I can talk them into taking me across the river.”
    Sam laughed aloud.
    “Believe me, city girl, nobody is going across that river in a boat. You’d be more likely to wind up in the Gulf of Mexico than in Cathay.”
    His cell phone buzzed and he picked it up.
    Somebody else was doing most of the talking. Sam listened and sat up straighter.
    “Wood? Must be an old one.”
    He listened some more.
    “Sounds like you’ve got it under control for now. You got Skeet and Clarence both there, they’re going to figure out how to get it pulled out. Have them take it over to the fire station.”
    “Here’s a story for you,” he said when he hung up. “That was Taneesha. They’ve got an old wooden casket stuck in the bridge debris out where the Timpoochee Lake dam broke and the bridge caved in. Must’ve been a mudslide upstream of the lake. Clarence and his guys have got a tow truck and they’ve got Skeet and some other guys down there trying to pull it out it out so it won’t wash on down to the river.”
    Hunter wished she were there to take pictures.
    Shellie called from the next room.
    “Hey, y’all come out here and look. They’ve got us on TV, from the air.”
    “I can’t even tell where that is,” Hunter said a minute later, as she stared at the TV screen, and tried to relate what she was seeing to the Magnolia County she knew. It looked like a giant mud puddle, and then the camera zoomed in closer.
    “Which bridge is that?” Hunter asked. “It’s not under water.”
    “Missed by about four feet. That’s the new one,” Sam said, “It’s higher than the others, but it’s closed until somebody from the Army Corps of Engineers can check the foundations. None of the bridges were built with this kind of flood in mind.”
    “Would you look at that buck?” Shellie said. There were deer on the road