by Dave Butler
“The second thing is that, while he claims to have a background in ski area development, he was charged — though not convicted — of fraud in Idaho. I don’t know the circumstances yet.”
“That matches up with those whispered questions I was telling you about,” said Speer. “Anything specific?”
“Nope,” Willson said, “but I have a suggestion I’ll get to in a moment. The third point is that he allegedly threatened Albin Stoffel, the wolverine researcher who’s working in the area. Austin seems to view the research as a threat to his project, so he’s obviously not happy about scientists poking around in Collie Creek, stirring up concerns — scientists who aren’t on his payroll, that is. You may have heard that the research office in Golden burned down in early December, killing a woman who was inside. Now it appears the deceased was Stoffel’s assistant. With both arson and homicide investigations underway, Austin’s definitely on the suspect list.”
Speer smiled. “You’ve dug up a lot in a few short weeks, Jenny. Good work. What next?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Willson. “Because both the RCMP investigations and the project review process are going to take a while, I’m thinking this would be a good time for a trip to Boise — Austin’s old stomping grounds. I can dig up more on him, talk to people who know him or have worked with him.”
“How do you see doing that?”
“I’ve still got some vacation days left from last summer, and I’ve racked up some OT with a string of middle-of-the-night call-outs. So, in about two weeks, I’ll head to Boise, and I’ll take my mum with me. It’ll just be two women on a ski holiday. Bogus Basin ski area is only twenty-five kilometres from Boise. While I’m there, I’ll spend some time in the local library and see what pops up. I can access newspaper articles, court documents, you name it. Once I gather more background info, I’m sure I can find ways to run into people who’ve done business with Austin.”
“I like it,” said Speer. “Have you talked to Church about it?”
“I told him I wanted time off to spend with my mother, but obviously I didn’t say what I was going to do, or where.”
“That means you can’t claim any travel costs. You understand that?”
“I do. But Mum and I need a holiday, so I’m good with it.”
“Make it happen, then,” said Speer, his eyes bright in the light of his dashboard. “I’m keen to see what you find hiding out there.”
“Thanks,” Willson said. “While we’re here, have you got anything new that would help my investigation?”
Speer smiled, but it was ironic rather than joyful. His eyes were dark and weary. “Funny you should ask. I’ve been hearing rumblings via Calgary that this project has caused some people in Edmonton and Ottawa to resurrect the idea of a highway through Howse Pass.”
Willson’s eyes widened at the mention of Howse Pass. She’d been there once while on a resource management course with some other wardens. It was a relatively low pass in the Rocky Mountains connecting Alberta’s Banff National Park with the Blaeberry River drainage to the west, in B.C. She and her colleagues had ridden horses in from the Banff side, following an old trail that dated back to 1806, and stayed overnight at a warden cabin. The valley was wide there, the river constantly changing course on its broad flood plain. The next day, they’d hiked the five kilometres up to the pass. Looking west from there on the border between Alberta and B.C., they’d seen the rugged valley of the Blaeberry River beyond. Knowing that the indigenous peoples had used the pass as a trading route for centuries before, she recalled that it had felt like they were standing in the midst of Canadian history.
“I thought that highway was one of those ideas people like the idea of but will never see happen in our lifetime, like jet packs, or flying cars, or a bridge to Vancouver Island,” Willson said.
“Before I heard these recent rumours,” said Speer, “I would’ve agreed with you. The scheme has been talked about on and off since it was first raised in the 1940s. It keeps coming up, like bad takeout, and it seems to be on the table again. I don’t know who’s brought it forward or who’s supporting it, but with a possible ski area in the Blaeberry in the mix, the idea has been resuscitated. And what’s disturbing is that the highway is being linked to the oil sands. The fact that a new route would cut off almost one hundred kilometres between central Alberta and the British Columbia coast seems to be a focus of the conversation.”
“The oil sands? What the hell do a ski area and a highway have to do with the oil sands?”
“I have no idea. But someone is connecting them. And whoever that someone is, they’re well up the food chain.”
“You don’t mean the Prime Minister’s Office, do you?” asked Willson.
“I don’t know, Jenny, I really don’t. But if it is the PMO, that would explain why any of this is being taken seriously.” Speer shook his head, a look of worry crossing his face. “When I first heard about the ski area, I was worried about its impact on Yoho Park. Now, with a possible cross-provincial highway rearing its ugly head, it’s become about both Yoho and Banff. And it’s a whole lot more political. Not good. Not good at all.”
“Wasn’t there legislation passed by a previous government that made it illegal to put a road through Howse Pass?”
“There was. It was designated as a National Historic Site in 1978. But we already know that the boys and girls in Ottawa have no problem changing laws with little or no debate. I’m afraid the idea of a highway could become possible again with the mere stroke of a pen.”
“Jesus,” said Willson, “every time I turn over a rock, more surprises crawl out. I wonder if Austin is aware of the highway discussion — he did say he was talking to government. Maybe he knows a hell of a lot more than he let on. Son of a bitch.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in the middle of it,” Speer said. “But even if he isn’t, think about how his project would benefit if someone else — like the taxpayers of Alberta and B.C. — paid for a paved highway that would run right past his doorstep.” He looked at his watch, barely visible in the weak light. “I have to get to a meeting in Lake Louise. Let’s connect again when you get back from Boise.”
Speer’s vehicle circled away, leaving Willson alone once again in the parking lot. She rolled up the window and turned the heater up another notch. She shivered, more chilled by what she’d just learned than by the outside temperature. Looking north, she saw the peak of Mount Bosworth, its eastern face now turning orange in the first rays of the morning sun. The sight should have warmed her, but it didn’t.
CHAPTER 11
FEBRUARY 1
After an exhilarating day in fresh powder on the slopes of Idaho’s Bogus Basin, Willson and her mother returned to Boise for an early dinner. When she saw Cynical Dark Ale on the menu at 10 Barrel Brewing Company, Willson’s decision was instant. It’s as if they knew I’d be here, she thought. The dark ale, nearly but not quite a stout, was a perfect companion to her mac and cheese: a bubbling sauce of smoked Gouda and tangy cheddar over elbow macaroni, bacon, and jalapenos, with pub chips as a side. She watched her mother enjoy a peanut butter and bacon burger washed down with sweet iced tea. Outside the window, streetlights illuminated the light snow falling on West Bannock Street. It was an ideal finish to their fifth day in the state capital.
It had taken the better part of two days to drive the 1,200 kilometres south from Golden to Boise, following Highway 95 the entire way. It gave the two women time to catch up: while Jenny navigated the wintry roads, her mother talked and talked.
Like ocean currents, Willson’s emotions ebbed and flowed as she listened to her mother reminisce about her father, a train engineer. The two of them had been married for only twelve years when the train he was operating left the tracks on the Golden side of Rogers Pass, plunging into the icy Beaver River. It had been a week before Christmas. Willson had been ten at the time, her mother forty. An hour after the derailment, rescuers had finally found
her father on the banks of the river, hypothermic, clinging to rocks and to life. He’d died of a massive heart attack moments after the rescue helicopter touched down at the Golden hospital.
While the railway had paid her father well, at least in comparison to Willson’s warden salary, the nature of the job had still made for a tough family life. He could be called out with little notice to take trains east or west, and his workplace was emotional and tense, with the union and management constantly fighting pitched battles for control. Willson recalled her parents’ evening discussions around the dinner table, her father accusing “the billionaires who owned the company” of underpaying and mistreating their workers, of always trying to take things away from the people who made them their money. Whether these claims were true or not, those evening discussions had been the birthplace of Willson’s own distrust of authority.
But when they could get away as a family, they had escaped to the mountains to ski or to hike. She remembered those times with fondness and longing.
Later, with her father gone and no siblings to lean on, Willson had relied on her uncle Roy and her biology teacher to fill the void, to offer her any perspectives on life that only men could. It was in her late teens that she’d begun to read the works of Edward Abbey, the American author and former park ranger known not only for his advocacy on land-use issues, but also for his deep distrust of institutions. By then, without some new age psychiatrist pulling it out of her, she’d come to realize that her father’s untimely death had contributed to her becoming an independent hard-ass who struggled to trust others.
While Willson dealt with her own grief, her mother had spiralled downward in bouts of depression and anxiety. She suffered the most during the darkest months of winter. The fact that the railway had not offered her mother any support, and in fact delayed delivery of survivor benefits, did not help the healing process.
To break up the long drive south to Boise, Willson had reserved a room for them at a casino hotel in Bonners Ferry. She savoured the sweet irony of the overnight stop, knowing that the casino had previously been owned by Luis Castillo, her nemesis in the poaching investigation that had consumed two years of her life. Months after the case was over, Willson had decided that Castillo’s murder, just as he was to start a life sentence in Washington State’s Walla Walla Penitentiary, was a fitting punishment for the myriad horrific crimes he had committed. The fact that he’d died by hanging at the end of a dirty bedsheet, alone and on humiliating display in a prison cellblock, seemed incredibly fitting. He had taunted, misled, and toyed with her and her colleagues on both sides of the border, at the same time coldly and without conscience executing trophy animals right under their noses.
Sitting in the hotel’s hot tub overlooking the Kootenay River, Willson had taken great pleasure in toasting Castillo’s demise, with her wine glass raised and her eyes cast down toward the fiery place where he no doubt currently resided. “Rot in hell, you son of a bitch,” she’d hissed.
“Did you say something, dear?” her mother had asked from the other side of the tub, barely visible through the rising steam.
“I was just saying that this is a nice switch from Golden.”
“It is,” her mother agreed. “This is my first holiday in years.”
With dinner done, the two women walked arm-in-arm to the main branch of the Boise Public Library, a nondescript four-storey brick building that seemed to be doing everything it could to conceal the collection of knowledge inside.
With her mother comfortably settled in the magazine section, Willson found an empty computer station and wiggled closer to the desk, the feet of her wooden chair scraping on the plank floor. An elderly man at an adjacent station looked up and scowled, momentarily distracted from his game of solitaire. Willson glared back until the man’s eyes returned to his computer screen.
Thus she began her quest. For the first hour, using a range of search terms, she found a surprisingly short list of references to Stafford Austin. The first was the 2011 announcement of his hiring as a vice-president at Sawtooth Development Corporation, based in Boise. A media release indicated that Austin had come to Boise from Salt Lake City, Utah, with a background in ski hill construction. Willson saw that at the time of Austin’s arrival, Sawtooth specialized in residential subdivisions. Other search results were more innocuous, showing Austin attending Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce events and announcing the completion of two new development projects on the boundary of the Boise National Forest. But when Willson jumped to Sawtooth Development’s own webpage, Austin’s name was nowhere to be found, not on current pages, nor in any company history.
That was weird. Based on all of this, Austin seemed to be nothing more than a fine, upstanding member of the business community — albeit something of a mystery man. But knowing what Fortier had told her, Willson knew there was something more lurking in the shadows. She just had to find it.
Only after searching the archives of the Idaho Statesman newspaper did she find what she was looking for.
Boise Pair Charged with Wire Fraud
Special to the Idaho Statesman
Michael Berland, Investigative Reporter
May 20, 2012
Jennifer Clarkson, assistant U.S. district attorney for the District of Idaho, Criminal Division, announced today that a grand jury has indicted Stafford Lee Austin, 52, of Boise on two counts of wire fraud. In the same case, the grand jury also indicted Marie Antonetti, 48, of two counts of wire fraud, three counts of tax fraud, and five counts of conspiracy.
Until recently, Austin was the vice-president and minority shareholder of Sawtooth Development Corp. The indictment is based on allegations that Austin assisted Antonetti, the president and majority shareholder of Sawtooth, in submitting false and fraudulent applications so the company could participate in two federally funded programs: the U.S. Small Business Success Administration program (SBSA) and a Department of Transportation roads program. Both programs are designed to help economically and socially disadvantaged businesses compete in the marketplace. To be admitted into these programs, the owner/shareholder who qualifies as socially disadvantaged must demonstrate economic disadvantage by having a personal net worth below a certain statutory cap.
It is alleged that Antonetti took steps to artificially lower her personal net worth by failing to report all of her income from Sawtooth and by transferring assets into the names of nominees in order to appear economically disadvantaged.
A person convicted of wire fraud faces significant potential penalties. A single act of wire fraud can result in fines and up to 20 years in prison. However, if the wire fraud scheme affects a financial institution, the potential penalties are fines of up to $1 million and up to 30 years in prison.
Clarkson advised that the investigation is ongoing and is being led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Boise Police Department.
“Right friggin’ on,” said Willson, pumping her fist in the air. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Shh!” said the man next to her.
“My apologies.” Willson resisted her natural instinct to say something inflammatory and inappropriate. Being evicted from the Boise Public Library would not be a smart way to run a covert investigation.
Turning back to the screen, she dug deeper, following the manoeuvrings of the case in the pages of the Statesman. An article from September of that same year, using the same background material from May, stated that Austin and Antonetti were scheduled to stand trial in U.S. district court.
Next, she clicked on an article written two months later. At that point, Antonetti had been convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to twenty-four months in prison for conspiracy and tax fraud. She’d also been ordered by the court to pay restitution in the amount of nearly $150,000. But there was no reference to Austin.
Thinking she’d missed something, Willson went through the links relevant to the case again, but she could find no explanation as to why Austin was no longer connected with the fr
aud case. She did notice, however, that all of the articles had been written by the same reporter, Michael Berland. Talking to him was the obvious next step.
Michael Berland wasn’t easy to reach. After Willson had left three messages for him the next morning at the newspaper’s main number but gotten no response, she drove to the offices of the Idaho Statesman, which was were located in a commercial-industrial area just south of Highway 184. It was their second-to last day in town, and her mother was content to wander the aisles of a thrift store half a block away.
“Hi, I’m Jenny Willson,” she said to the young receptionist, “and I’m here to see Michael Berland.”
“Do you have an appointment?” asked the receptionist.
“I don’t. But I left him three phone messages. I have information about a story he’s working on that I think he’ll want to hear.”
“Let me see if he’s available. You said your name was Willson?”
“Yup, Jenny, from Golden, British Columbia.”
The receptionist picked up her phone and dialed. “Michael, there’s a Jenny Willson here from Canada who wants to talk to you? She said she has information for a story you’re working on?” She paused, listening to Berland. “Okay, I’ll tell her.”
Replacing her handset, the receptionist turned back to Willson. “He’s working on a deadline, but he said he’d see you in about thirty minutes if you don’t mind waiting?”
“Thanks, I’ll wait.” Willson walked over to a set of chairs in the lobby.
Berland came down to the lobby forty-five minutes later. He was tall, with a shaved head and the lanky physique of a runner. His pants were too short, as were the arms of his blue button-down shirt. Willson was the only one in the waiting area, so Berland immediately strode toward her. One large hand gripped a file folder and a reporter’s notebook. A mechanical pencil was tucked behind his ear.
“Jenny?” he said. “Mike Berland.” They shook hands. “I understand you’re down from Canada. I’m not working on anything that touches north of the border as far as I know, so I’m wondering why you’re here.”