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“So the physical state of the county contributed to the disaster that took place on June fourteenth?” I ask.

“Definitely,” Linda says. “I’m the only employee, and I had a handful of volunteers, but they were all busy taking care of their own—which, I totally get. The pound used to be down by the creek, you know the place?”

“Yes,” I say. I’d already gone out to the location, seen the old cinder-block building, no bigger than our gardening shed. It’s empty now, though you can still see the waterline above empty cages if you peek through the windows. I’d estimated it to be about eight feet high.

“I drive the dog truck home every night and to work in the mornings, which turned out to be a blessing because you couldn’t even get down to the pound. Trees and limbs were everywhere, plus the roof to the old granary had landed in our parking lot. I still had my truck, though, so I just drove the roads, calling in loose dogs when I saw them, hauling them back a few at a time and walking them down to the pound. I had three dogs to a cage by then, which wasn’t good for anybody, but half those dogs had tags, so I figured we’d be emptying out sooner rather than later.”

A door slams in the hallway, and a high female voice calls out, bringing a chorus of greetings from the dogs that are still indoors. It’s loud and overwhelming, and absolutely lovely to hear, knowing what comes next in Linda’s story.

“That’s one of my volunteers,” Linda says. “Never had any trouble bringing them in before. But after the flood, I’ve had to turn people away. Guilt weighs heavier than taxes, you know.”

“Would you like to explain that?” I ask.

“Sure, but it doesn’t need to be,” Linda says. “We’d been running campaigns for ten years to get a levy passed to build a new pound. Always voted down . . . until 1995. Thank you, taxpayers of Markham County,” Linda says, her smile holding more shades of gray than a M. C. Escher drawing.

“So you were underfunded until 1995?”

“And overworked,” Linda adds. “But never like that week. Never. Like I said, I had three dogs to a cage, and a few had more than that. We lost thirty-seven dogs, when the waters rose.”

“Can you talk about that night?” I ask.

“Sure . . . ,” she says, though her voice has lost its vibrancy. “The day after the tornado it was hot, real hot. Everything that got soaked then got baked, and everybody was working around the clock, trying to get the roads cleared so that the telephone and electric crews could get their work done. About midafternoon the clouds were piling up and everybody had their radios on, expecting to hear an emergency broadcast system warning any minute. It was like none of us had ever seen a tornado in our lives, and here we were looking for another one, right on top of the first.”

“But it wasn’t a tornado,” I say.

“No, it was rain. Crazy rain. Rain like a blanket. I was out on 96 chasing down a shepherd mix—he had a collar because I could hear his tags jingling, but he wouldn’t let me get close enough to grab him. I knew he had to be somebody’s dog, so I just kept trying, and he kept luring me out farther from my truck. Pretty soon those first big fat drops of rain start falling, and I look up and there’s a wall of water coming at me from the west. I got a good visual on my truck and ran straight for it, hoping I could get there in time. I didn’t, and when that rain hit me, it was like somebody dropped a veil over my eyes. Couldn’t see my truck. Couldn’t see the road. I kept going what I thought was straight and ran into the bed of my truck so hard I dented it.”

“Ouch,” Bristal says, her voice coming from a few feet above my head.

“Knocked me over, tell you what,” Linda says. “I went down hard but pulled myself up by the rear wheel. I knew I had to get down to the pound, and right now. That creek has always been prone to flooding, and there’s more than once I waded in there and found the doggos standing on their crates, whining. But this was something else entirely. This was worse, and I knew it.

“I drove like a crazy person. Couldn’t see shit. Couldn’t hear shit. Just water and the sound of it bouncing off my windshield. I missed my turns two or three times, and I can’t tell you how often I’ve counted up the seconds it took me to back up, cover my tracks, trying to figure out if it would’ve made a difference.”

I remember the waterline inside the old building, above my head, and way higher than any dog’s. “I don’t think it would’ve,” I tell her.

“Probably not, but you still think about it,” she says. “Anyway, I got down to the crossroads right before the pound, and Foxglove was out there. There’d been an electric crew working, and they were all huddled in their trucks. Foxglove hit his lights as soon as he saw me, pulled up, and blocked the way. He knew well enough that I’d try to get down there, try to save those dogs. Even though . . .”

She stops, swallows. There’s a click in her throat, and the edges of her mouth turn down as her eyes drop to her desk. She takes a second, raises her chin, keeps going.

“Even though the water was up to the windows by then. I could see it, from where I was. I tried to push past him, but Foxglove stopped me, grabbed my arm and told he’d put me in cuffs if he had to, but I wasn’t going down there.”

“Was he right?” Bristal asks.

“He was,” Linda says, sighing. “It took me years to see it, though. I was just this side of twenty and ready to dive in, fight the current, save those animals that I’d condemned to death when I shut them in their cages. But the water was already at our toes a mile out and that stream was running with a sound like a freight train. I knew those dogs were dead already, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to try.”

The three of us fall silent, and a high yip from the play yard reaches the office. In the hallway, I can hear the volunteer talking to a dog whose name seems to be Buster, and who is going for his bath time.

“That is the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard,” Bristal says. “Seriously. I’m glad you’ve got this episode, Lydia. I couldn’t do it.”

I turn in my chair, looking up at her over my shoulder. “But you can cover a murder?”

“I’ll swerve to miss a dog,” Bristal says. “Humans get a fifty-fifty.”

“Amen,” Linda says.

“I won’t air that, for both your sakes,” I say, then turn back to Linda. “The sheriff’s daughter was taking phone calls during the long stretch, and she took quite a few about missing dogs as well. Do you know how many of the dogs who passed away had families looking for them?”

“Twenty-eight,” Linda says automatically, the number seared into her mind. “There were twenty-eight of those dogs who had tags on, or their families came in and identified them after the fact. The other nine might have been true strays, or just nobody cared enough to come look.”