“She’s a runaway from Thief River Falls,” I said. “At least, I’m pretty sure she is. Her older sister was downtown reporting her yesterday.”

Vignale nodded. “Water patrol is sending out a boat. Just in case we have to fish her out.”

I looked down at Ellie and the water below that.

Ellie had picked a particularly low bridge to climb out on, and that in itself was interesting. I’d never learned a whole lot about psychology, but I’d heard that when people make survivable suicide attempts, it’s often a way of asking for help. Then again, Ellie could simply have been confused, angry, and impatient and rushed out to the first structure across the Mississippi that she could find.

Either way, it was a fortunate situation. Up to a point: The river she was over was still the Mississippi.

I had grown up in New Mexico, and in the high country where I’d lived, the terrain had been crosshatched with creeks, but we’d had nothing like the Mississippi. At the age of thirteen I’d come to live in Minnesota, but even then I hadn’t lived near the river. The Mississippi had been an abstraction to me, something to be seen from a distance or crossed on the occasional road trip. It wasn’t until years later that I’d gone down to the river to check it out at close hand.

Down at the bank, a kid had been pretending to fish with plain string tied to a long branch.

“Does anyone ever go in?” I’d asked him.

“I saw a man go in once with a rope around his waist,” the kid had said. “The current took him under so fast that both his friends, they were both grown-ups, had to pull just to get him out.”

Since then I’d heard dissenting opinions on the strength and the malice of the river that divided Minneapolis.