The Empress File

before the river turned and slid out of sight. From the water we could just see the tops of the buildings. A couple of dogs were yapping, but there was no othersound except the boat motor and the water cutting around the bow.
    “Goddamn it,” I said. “I thought we could see in there.”
    “Why don’t we go on down, tie off, and climb that little hill?” LuEllen asked, pointing across the water. A short, steep hill poked up just beyond the corrugated metal roofs. “We could take the glasses up with us, and we’d be looking right down on it.”
    “All right. Let’s see if we can find a place to tie off,” I said. We drifted down until we were a quarter mile below the complex, where the river began to turn away from the town. The near bank had been reinforced with concrete mats and made a decent landing. We tossed some foam bumpers over the side to protect the boat’s hull, climbed the revetment, and tied off on a handy tree. A faint, twisting game trail rambled along the top of the levee, winding back toward town. We followed it toward the base of the hill, LuEllen in the lead.
    Twenty yards down the levee she did a half hop and jump, blurted, “Jesus H. Christ,” and took three hasty steps back toward me. “Big fuckin’ snake,” she said.
    “Probably a garter snake,” I said. “Sunning itself.”
    “Bullshit. I know garter snakes.”
    We eased up the path, and LuEllen picked up astick and swept the grass on either side of the trail. A few seconds later we saw the snake again, sliding through the grass. It had a wide reddish brown head and brown bands across a thick body. The snake turned, froze for the blink of an eye, then uncurled into a tussock of dead grass.
    “Copperhead,” I said.
    “Ugly.” She shuddered.
    “Poisonous. First cousin to a rattlesnake. We better take this slow,” I said. “If there are copperheads, there could be rattlers around, too.”
    With the snake sighting, it took another ten minutes to climb to the top of the hill. LuEllen, a city girl, was thoroughly spooked.
    “If they know you’re coming, they’ll get out of the way,” I said, trying to reassure her.
    “They’re going to know we’re coming,” she said, using the stick to whip the weeds in front of us.
    The crest of the hill was free of heavy vegetation, and though it wasn’t particularly high, it rose above everything but the grain elevators. The view of the river was terrific, and a fire ring with blackened stones suggested that the hilltop was a popular camping spot. A dozen old beer cans were strewn in a small depression just below the summit, along with plastic bags and a rotting half roll of toilet paper. We climbed past the garbage pit to the grassy patch at the top and stopped to catch our breath.
    LuEllen had turned to say something, her mouth half open, when three shots banged out below us.
    “Jesus,” LuEllen said, dropping to her knees.
    The shots continued, a series of three, then a couple more, a measured pause, then another three. By that time I was kneeling on the ground beside her.
    “Target practice,” I said. “Down by the dogcatcher’s.”
    Crouched, we eased across the crest of the hill down next to a butternut tree on the far slope. Duane Hill and another man were standing forty yards away and seventy feet below us inside a rectangle made by a chicken-wire fence. Two lumpy burlap bags lay next to Hill’s feet. The second man, a short, balding redhead who ran to fat, was loading the magazine into a heavy black automatic. A .45, I thought. I put the glasses on him. I wasn’t positive, because I’d seen only bad newspaper photos of him, but I thought it was Arnie St. Thomas, the city councilman who ran the loan-sharking business.
    “What are they doing?” LuEllen asked, puzzled. “And what’s that noise?”
    The noise was an ooka-ooka-ooka pumping sound coming from the animal control building. I had no idea what it was.
    “I don’t know and I don’t know,” I said. “Targetpractice, I guess. I hope they’re not shooting up here.”
    The sound of laughter drifted up to us. The bald man suddenly dropped into a Weaver stance and fired four shots in sets of two: tap-tap, tap-tap. After the second set he straightened and called, “Whoa-oh.”
    LuEllen said, “There’s something down there.”
    “What?”
    “There’s something in the cage. They’re shooting at something,” she said.
    I scanned the wire enclosure but saw nothing. “I don’t see