“I was thinking of Kelly’s submachine gun. It’s illegal.”

Kelly smiles and draws a pistol from his holster.

“What you gonna do with that?” Ike asks, dropping his hand to his own gun.

Kelly fires three quick rounds into the night sky, then holsters the pistol. “Browning Hi-Power,” he says with a smile. “Chambers the same nine-millimeter cartridge as the MP-5. Very convenient, as long as they don’t do a ballistics analysis.”

Ike nods as if noting this for future use. “Well, let’s get this over with. Let me call the sheriff.”

He starts back toward the warehouse, but I take his arm and stop him. “Who sent the sniper, Ike? Who’s trying to kill me?”

He looks back, his face indignant. “How you know he was shooting at you?”

He pulls his arm free and walks on, but I stay where I am, breathing the cooler air blowing off the river. The stars are bright here, the water close. A few minutes ago a silent bullet passed within inches of my face. But I am still alive. And the last Hanratty brother is finally dead. My daughter is a lot safer than she was before Daniel Kelly did something not many men could have done.

“Thanks, Kelly,” I say softly.

He gives me a self-deprecating smile. “Just doing my job, boss.”

Right.

CHAPTER 28

The sheriff’s office looks like an armed camp when we arrive. It’s a modern, fortress-like building, with a state-of-the-art jail occupying its upper floors. Uniformed deputies swagger through the halls like cowboys in a western, stoked by the air of incipient violence blowing through the city. Ike disappears for a few moments, leaving Kelly and me in the entrance hall.

Five minutes later, he returns and escorts us into the sheriff’s office. I sense immediately that we’re going to benefit from the jurisdictional rivalry that exists between the police department and the sheriff’s office. Had we reported the levee shootings to the police, the chief would have kept Kelly and me all night, mercilessly grilling me as payback for the constitutional lesson I gave him earlier in the day.

The sheriff is tan and fit-looking, with the watchful eyes of a hunter. He seems to view the death of the youngest Hanratty as a fortuitous event, though the timing could have been better.

“When those black kids shot Billy Earl Whitestone,” he says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his neck, “they turned this town into a powder keg. The Sports Center sold out of ammunition at four o’clock. They sold mostly to whites. Wal-Mart sold out of everything but paintball rounds. They sold mostly to blacks. We may have a world of trouble coming down on our heads tonight. And all because of that newspaper story.” He looks at me like a wise poker player. “You think going after Leo Marston is worth all this trouble?”