in his head, the reasons why Erman Joseph Ainsley could have had a hand in the attack on Elise Linsey’s life. He rereads the article in the
Then, just like the old days, Jay tries to tear down the state’s argument, piece by piece, just to see if he can:
Anger doesn’t mean murder, else we’d all be in jail, this lawyer included.
He would pause here, waiting for the jurors’ smiles.
The harassment mentioned by the prosecution, Jay would add, is no more than one neighbor’s word against another’s. The state has entered no evidence that law enforcement was called or legal complaints made against Mr. Ainsley.
And as to Mr. Ainsley being in possession of Ms. Linsey’s home address, well, I believe some of you might likewise be in possession of that information, or anyone else who has a phone book for the city of Houston in their house.
He would pause again, letting the jurors take in this last bit.
But of course the strongest counterargument Jay can think of is that he doesn’t know where a retired mine worker would get $25,000 to blackmail
The old man sounds more like a kook than a criminal, a man more likely to take his fight to Washington than to an empty field alongside Buffalo Bayou. But then again, Jay knows firsthand what frustration with one’s government can do to a person. Many people have taken up arms over far less. Maybe in the end, Ains ley decided Elise Linsey, as a representative of the Stardale Devel opment Company, was an easier target than Ronald Reagan.
It may only be a circumstantial case against the old man, but absent any other workable theories about who wanted Elise Lin sey out of the picture, Jay comes back to Erman Ainsley again and again. He can’t, for the life of him, get the
He can’t shake the idea that there’s more to the story.
So just a few days after Rolly’s advice that he back away from a bad situation, Jay loads up the Skylark with ten gallons of unleaded at $1.39 a pop and heads out toward Baytown, his .38 snug in the glove compartment. His only plan is to talk to the man. But if it comes down to it, Jay plans to make his message heard loud and clear: he and his family are not to be touched.
He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going—not his wife or Rolly or Eddie Mae—and it’s not until he’s about twenty miles east on the I-10 that he starts to think that was maybe a bad idea. He is lately coming to the conclusion that secrets, in and of them selves, are dangerous. He makes a vow to call his wife when he gets to High Point.
The town is a few miles southwest of Baytown on the Trinity Bay shoreline, which is north of Galveston Bay and Texas City and the Bolivar Peninsula. Baytown itself is a Gulf city of the classic model, balmy and thick with vegetation. There are rubber plants and banana trees, sandy-colored palms and butter-colored houses, arched high on stilts. They look like rows of startled house cats. The houses have white or blue shutters, all weath ered to a soft gray by the constant breath of warm, salt-cured winds, and almost every other house has a motorboat anchored in its front yard. People come to retire here. The ones who can’t afford to live in Galveston or just don’t want to. Galveston, with its ancient town center full of bead shops and pubs, too closely resembles the tourist trap and liberal cesspool of New Orleans for some. Baytown is where good Christians come to retire, cow boys and refinery workers who made good, saving 15 percent every two weeks their whole working lives. There are American flags waving hello to passersby and more crosses in more front windows than Jay can count. It’s not a place he wishes to stay any longer than he has to.
He passes through Baytown, turning south on Farm Road 219.
A green highway sign puts him eight miles outside High Point.
Eight treeless miles of prairie and marsh, the land dotted every half mile or so by shallow ponds and snowy egrets lying in wait. The air is softer out here, more forgiving. It’s a good ten degrees cooler than it is in Houston.
The first thing Jay notices coming into High Point is the rise in elevation. It’s no more than a few hundred feet. But along this flat Gulf coastland, driving over an anthill can feel like climbing the side of a mountain. Jay feels the pull of gravity on the back end of his car as he drives over the swollen landscape. At the crest, he can see all the way to Trinity Bay, drilling ships and pleasure boats tiny in the distance.
Main Street is easy enough to find. A simple turn off FM 219, and he’s in downtown High Point, driving past the elementary school and a hardware store and a United States post office, which looks, inexplicably, closed at three o’clock in the afternoon. A lot of the storefronts are either empty or have their windows cov ered in cheap plywood. Jay has no trouble finding a parking spot right in front of the Hot Pot, which is sandwiched between a dress shop and a bait-and-tackle store with a handwritten sign in the window: we sell guns too.
Erman Joseph Ainsley is not out in front of the Hot Pot res taurant passing out flyers. That would have been too easy, Jay supposes. He shuts off the car engine and steps out of the car, feeding two nickels into the meter before walking into the Hot Pot cafe. Inside, he takes an open seat at the counter and orders from the pie case. A slice of lemon meringue and a cup of black coffee. He asks the woman behind the counter where he can get hold of a phone book.
The directory, when it arrives, is thinner than a high school yearbook. Jay opens to the
The question catches Jay off guard. “Why do you ask?”
The woman scoops the bills and loose change from the coun tertop, crumpling them all together and stuffing the money into the front pocket of her apron. “He’s the only one still left on For rester, the only one left in that whole neighborhood, in fact. But I guess you already knew that,” she adds, taking particular notice of Jay’s suit and
