to be respected, and his privacy was intruded on far less than my isolation. Ames had the bearing of man whose space and dignity should not be violated. I had the bearing of a man whose isolation seemed to call for intrusion.
His room had mine beat in size, cleanliness, and color. There was a bed against one wall under the only window in the room. The view through the window was the alley behind the Texas Bar and Grill. There was a chest of drawers, slightly scratched, against the opposite wall. A heavy, dark wood rocking chair sat in one corner next to a floor lamp. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with heavy dark legs. There were no prints or paintings on the wall, just a small battered wooden crucifix next to a magazine-sized, framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman in an evening dress. The photograph looked as if it had been taken at least half a century ago. Ames McKinney sat at the table in one of the three chairs that faced the door.
In front of him were the parts of what looked like a rifle.
“New?” I asked.
“Hmm,” Ames answered as he finished polishing a black metal bolt about six inches long. “Marlin, New Model 1895 Cowboy,” he said, looking up at me, blue eyes, leathery face. “Ed just bought it. I’m checking it out.”
He began to put the rifle back together.
“Good feel,” he said as he worked. “Old Western-styled 45/70 with a twenty-six-inch tapered octagonal barrel with deep-cut Ballard-type rifling, nine-shot tubular magazine, adjustable Marble semibuckhorn rear and Marble carbine front sight.”
I sat across from Ames and watched quietly while he finished, put a cap on the oil can in front of him, wiped his hands on an oily piece of dark soft leather, and lay the gun gently down in front of him.
“Here about the dead lady?” he asked.
“Maybe. Probably. I want to take a look at Midnight Pass. Like to see it?”
“Want me to carry?”
“Don’t think it’ll be necessary but it can’t hurt to bring something small.”
He stood up and showed me that he was wearing his belt with the built-in pistol.
“That should do it,” I said.
Ames nodded, picked up the rifle, and left the room, closing the door behind him. When he came back a few minutes later, he was wearing his yellow slicker.
“Looks like it might rain some more,” he said.
I looked at the window. It was definitely getting darker.
“Then let’s go,” I said.
The rain started when we were no more than five minutes out of downtown. It stayed light and steady but the wind began to pick up when we made the turn on Stickney Point Road, turned left on Midnight Pass and headed down the two-lane road.
It still wasn’t heavy when I made a right turn into Sarasandbay Cove, a private, spaced-out quintet of huge houses facing the water. I had been here before, serving papers on a plastic surgeon named Amos Peet, who was being sued for malpractice. Women who didn’t like the way things had turned out were constantly suing plastic surgeons. Usually the insurance companies settled, knowing that if it got to a jury, the plaintiff would walk away with a very large check. So, insurance for a plastic surgeon’s practice was higher than the annual salary of a Sarasota fireman. So the plastic surgeons charged more and more. It costs about two thousand dollars to get eight hours of cardiac-bypass surgery and six months of follow-up, and four thousand dollars to get an hour of plastic surgery. I had served papers to Dr. Peet on behalf of one of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz’s dissatisfied clients.
Amos Peet had been a gentleman about it. He had been through it all before. He did not blame the messenger. He offered the messenger a cup of coffee.
I remembered him telling me that he was about two hundred yards from Midnight Pass. I wasn’t interested at the time. This time I was. I parked next to a short, thickly leafed clutch of trees.
Ames and I got out of the car. It still wasn’t raining hard, but it was getting darker and the threat of something more was out there. I didn’t mind being soaked. I liked going back to my office, getting out of my clothes, toweling down, and getting in bed in a fresh pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
A little distant thunder, a slight increase in the rain, and a noon as dark as night. We went behind Amos Peet’s house and headed in the direction of Midnight Pass. Ames led the way through the miniature rain forest. My sneakers were muddy long before we got to the clearing and the open stretch of rocks and shrubs.
“You think this is it?” I said.
“Don’t seem like much,” Ames said. “Can’t even build on it.”
“It’s worth millions,” I said. “Maybe a lot of millions.”
A trio of small crawfish scuttled behind a rock on the gravel to my left, and the wind picked up. The rain was steady and getting stronger and the sky was almost night black. Lightning crackled out across the Gulf. Neither wind nor rain made it any cooler. It was humid and hot. A steamy mist was forming close to the ground.
I couldn’t see Kevin Hoffmann’s house from where we stood, but I imagined it surrounded by fog. Inside that house lay William Trasker, and I didn’t seem to be getting very far in earning the money the Reverend Wilkens had given me.
There was nothing much else to see. It didn’t look like it would take millions of dollars to study the narrow strip of land to determine if it could be dredged. I didn’t know why it would take millions more to keep the Pass open once it was dredged.
“They could just put in a canal,” I said, kneeling and picking up a handful of stones and cracked seashells.
“Not that easy,” Ames said.
Ames had a degree in engineering. I didn’t know what kind of engineering but I was sure he knew more than I did.
“Erosion, pressure from drifting land, storms, level differences to be considered,” he said. “Not that easy.”
“Maybe this storm will turn into a hurricane and God will part Midnight Pass and everyone will rise up in jubilation,” I said.
Ames didn’t say anything. In fact, he was no longer standing next to me. I turned and saw him about fifteen yards away, looking toward the thick bushes and heavy-leafed trees swaying and rustling noisily in the wind.
Then the shot came. I wasn’t sure it was a shot at first, just another cracking sound that could have been an old rotted tree weighted down with water and breaking at the trunk. It was the second shot that convinced me, partly because I saw the spray of mud, wet leaves, and pebbles fly up about ten yards in front of me.
I went down on my stomach and heard a third shot, but this one sounded different, a lot different. I looked up and Ames was holding a sawed-off shotgun. It was aimed at the bushes in the direction from which we had come.
Ames fired off a second blast. Leaves exploded. Standing upright in his yellow slicker, Ames cracked open the shotgun and was reloading it with shells taken from his pocket.
I expected another shot from the dense blowing trees and bushes. I was a good target. No shot came from whoever seemed to be trying to kill me, but Ames was advancing slowly toward the direction of the shooter. Ames fired another blast, stepped to the edge of the thicket, and fired again.
Maybe I heard something or someone moving in front of Ames. Maybe a frightened animal. Maybe nothing but more sounds of wind and rain.
“He’s gone,” Ames said over his shoulder, reloading again.
I got up, mud-covered and brushing debris and something that looked like a centipede hanging from my chest.
“We going after him?” Ames asked.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going after him.”
Shotgun held with barrel forward in his right hand, Ames hurried back the same way we had come. I was right behind him. Ahead of us a car started.
Something crawled up my leg. I swatted at it.
Mud crept into my shoes and squished with each step. I couldn’t do anything about it.
We moved faster. When we were in sight of my car, we could hear the shooter’s car turn a corner and kick up
