All this, from the kid pointing to the water to my instructions to the newspaper driver to my climb over the fence, took maybe ninety seconds. But it was long enough for me to think of last fall and 14-year-old Ellie Bernhardt. I’d jumped into the Mississippi River after her and briefly made myself famous around the department for it, particularly because I wasn’t a very strong swimmer.

I wish I could say that when I flashed back on Ellie Bernhardt I was thinking something ironic, like, Why does this stuff always happen to me? But I wasn’t. I was simply thinking, God, don’t let me drown. Then I let go.

This water was warmer than I remembered the waters of the Mississippi, but still cool. And turbulent, pulling in varying directions, but not hard. I felt the tugging most strongly low down, toward my calves and feet, in the direction of the underpass, where the water was being drawn under the street.

Diving down, I opened my eyes, to see nothing before me but a brown-gray wall. I felt around in the direction the water was flowing, toward the street. It stood to reason that anything heavy that had fallen into the water would have gotten pulled in that direction. But my fingers brushed nothing, and my lungs began to burn. Air never seems to last as long as it should in these situations. It didn’t help that my heart was probably slamming away at 140 beats a minute. I rose and broke the surface, panting. As I did so, something bumped my foot.

I inhaled fast and made a jackknife dive, feeling ahead of me again. This time, something brushed against my hand, not solid, more like cloth. It was animated by water, so that it rippled against my hand. When I caught it in my hand and pulled, I felt a corresponding resistance. It wasn’t just an old shirt that had ended up in a canal. Someone was in it.