“Bullshit. I know garter snakes.”

We eased up the path, and LuEllen picked up a stick 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. “Target practice, I guess. I hope they’re not shooting up here.”