by Dave Butler
Fortier remained beside her, staring at the body on the forest floor beside them. “Is that who I think it is?” he asked.
“Hank Myers.”
“What’s Myers doing out here?”
“I don’t know. He sure as hell can’t tell us now.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Shit, Jenny. I can’t believe you took off like that. The staff sergeant was yelling at me to get you back, but you were too damn fast, like a jackrabbit. What a crazy-ass thing to do!”
Willson started to rise. “Ben, we have to get my mother away from Trueman …”
“Take it easy, Jenny,” Fortier said, his hand still on her shoulder, gently holding her down. “Sit for a moment longer. Your mother is okay, and you’re going to need an ambulance. As soon as the first shots rang out, the ERT teams moved in on the cabin, arrested Trueman, and they’ve advised us that your mother is safe. She’s shaken up, but she’s fine.”
Willson stood up shakily, with Fortier supporting her. “I need to see her. Let’s get to the cabin. What the hell happened?”
“Myers tried to leave on his bike, up the back road. When he saw the ERT guys, he fired two shots at them, they shot back, and then he took off through the trees to here. Those guys don’t miss, so I bet we’ll find other holes in him. And then you ruined the rest of his day.” He looked down at Myers. “Dumb bastard. Let’s go find your mother. She’ll be happy to see you.”
When Willson finally saw the trapper’s cabin, it was not what she had expected. Rather than a rough log structure with a mossy roof and a pit privy, it was a large building, relatively new, with big picture windows, a steel roof, and even a new barbeque outside. It was obviously used for more than just trapping.
Desperate to see that her mother was indeed safe, she scanned the scene quickly. With the situation under control, most of the ERT members stood in a relaxed circle. The centre of everyone’s attention was Sandy Trueman, who sat on the gravel in front of the building. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, the right side of her face was dirty and scratched, and her hair stuck up as if windblown. With a black-uniformed officer on each side of her, she looked like a wild animal after capture — wide-eyed, frightened, and clearly confused about what had happened.
When Willson locked eyes with Trueman, the woman struggled against her bonds and tried to stand. But two sets of gloved hands pushed her to the ground.
“You fucking bitch!” Trueman screamed. “You ruined everything!” She tried to fight off the two Mounties holding her down, but they were too strong.
Willson ignored the woman’s rabid outburst. “Where is she? Where’s my mum?”
Fortier pointed to a nearby firepit. Willson saw her mother at the same time that her mother noticed her. She was sitting on a stump, rocking, hands clasped in front of her. A female ERT officer stood beside her. Mother and daughter moved toward each other at the same time, meeting with a hug in the middle of the yard. Willson grunted when her mother gripped her injured arm, but continued to hold her tight, ignoring the pain. Finally, she pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Are you okay, Mum?”
Her mother’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I am so sorry, Jenny.”
“You have no reason to be sorry, Mum. This wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have been there to protect you from these people. I should have realized that my obsession with taking them down could endanger you.” She held her mother at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Did they hurt you?”
“I was so scared, but no, they didn’t hurt me.” Willson saw her mother’s eyes drop and take in the blood on her arm. “Oh my god! What happened to you?”
“I’ll be all right. Hank Myers and I had … a bit of an altercation in the forest back there. He got the worst of it.”
Her mother began to cry again, deep sobs this time. Willson gripped her hard, letting her mother’s head rest on her shoulder.
“I am so, so sorry, Jenny,” said her mother, speaking in ragged, breathless sentences as tears poured down her cheeks. “I never should have trusted that man. I had no idea this would happen … I really thought he was a friend. I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know, I know. What happened, Mum? How did you end up with them?”
“I … Hank invited me for dinner. He seemed so nice, so willing to listen to me. It’s been a long time since someone seemed so interested in me. I should have known better … and you warned me about him. Mike did, too.”
“It’s okay. You had dinner?”
“We went to that new restaurant on the highway. I enjoyed myself, although maybe I had one more glass of wine than I should have. We talked and laughed. And then that Trueman woman showed up.”
“Was Myers expecting her?”
“He didn’t seem surprised that she was there. Right away, she started talking about the ski resort, trying to persuade me that it was a good idea, that I should support it. She was really aggressive.”
“But why was she trying to convince you?”
“She said you were getting in the way — I needed to get you to back off.”
“What did you do?”
“I told them that I didn’t know anything about it … that I didn’t know anything about what you were doing. I said they should talk to you directly. But some of the things she said made sense, and she was awfully persuasive. After a while I started to get confused …”
Willson’s stomach turned sour with guilt, realizing that her fervent investigation had victimized her mother. She had inadvertently put her mother in the centre of things and almost gotten her killed. “Then what?” she asked gently.
The tears flowed again. “And then I don’t remember anything until I woke up here, in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, with a bad headache and no idea how I got here … and that insane woman ranting about getting revenge on you for killing the project.”
Willson thought about Myers lying dead in the forest. The bastard must have drugged her mother when they were at dinner, following through on the threat he’d made when they’d last met. Now, she felt even better about putting three bullets in his chest. She stared over at Trueman, fighting the urge to do the same to her. “I saw you on a security tape, Mum, setting fire to a studio south of town.”
“She had a gun, Jenny! She made me do it. She said she’d kill me if I didn’t, and then she’d kill you, too. I was still feeling groggy, and I was more scared than I’ve ever been my whole life!”
“Oh, Mum. Do you know why Myers came here today?”
“I think he came to ask Trueman if she knew where Stafford Austin was. He seemed to think that Austin had skipped town. They argued and yelled at each other. When Hank finally left, I thought Trueman was going to kill me. She was storming around the cabin, muttering, waving the gun around … I felt like it was all my fault, like I could have done something to change things. And I thought that Hank might be coming after you next …”
Willson hugged her mother again, holding her tight, ignoring the flashing pain in her arm. “It’s okay, Mum. We’re both safe. These people won’t hurt us anymore.”
She looked at Fortier, who stared back with deep compassion in his eyes. She dipped her head and whispered into her mother’s ear. “I am so sorry I put you through this. It’s over now.”
CHAPTER 39
MAY 9
The aroma of freshly brewed Kick Ass coffee was wafting through the house when Willson heard a knock at the front door. Wiping her hands on a towel, she walked through the hall to open the creaky door.
“Is the coffee ready yet?” asked Frank Speer, a smile on his face. He was in civilian clothes, and his head showed the obvious white forehead of a man who normally wore a hat, like a rancher or a farmer. “I need a cup, bad …” he said.
Behind him stood Jack Church, looking down at the gaping floorboards on the porch. “Jesus, isn’t this thing condemned yet?” The Yoho Park superintendent smiled wryly at Wills
on. “And make that two cups. I like mine with milk and sugar — lots of both.”
“Come in, gentlemen,” said Willson, standing aside to let them in. “Make yourselves at home. Coffee’s coming right up.”
With one hand, Willson brought a cutting board back from the kitchen on which she’d placed three full mugs of coffee, a bowl of sugar cubes, a small jug of milk, and a trio of spoons. It was the poor woman’s version of a fancy serving tray. The two men had already seated themselves in two mismatched chairs in the living room. Willson placed the board on the wobbly coffee table — really just rough plywood on four plastic milk crates — and sat in a lawn chair that had seen better days.
“Damn, that’s good coffee,” said Church, after his first noisy sip. “Kicking Horse?”
Willson smiled and nodded. “Where to start? A lot’s happened in the last few weeks.”
“You’ve been busy as hell, Jenny, since I saw you last,” said Speer. “How’s the arm?”
“I was lucky,” she said, unconsciously touching her left arm, which was still heavily bandaged and in a sling. “The bullet went right through my tricep. Missed my deep brachial artery by centimetres. The muscle will take time to heal, and it probably won’t ever be as strong as it was before. But it’s better than if I’d been hit somewhere else.”
“I’m relieved you’re a better shot than Myers was,” Speer said. Willson flashed back to the dead man lying in the forest, three bullets in his chest. She felt neither guilt nor sadness. The son of a bitch got what he deserved. “I’m glad you’re okay. And your mother? How is she?”
“She’s really struggling. She thinks what happened to me, to us, was all her fault. She talks about it every time I see her, keeps apologizing, no matter what I say. But she has been seeing a PTSD counsellor since we rescued her, so I hope she’ll be able to work through it. It’s gonna take a while, though. She was already suffering from depression, and this experience sure as hell didn’t help.”
“Give her my best,” said Speer. “Let me know when she might be up for a visit.”
“I’ll do that. She and I are going out for dinner tonight.”
Church put his cup down, but held out his hand for a moment, ready to grab the handle in case it toppled off the table. “So, what did you learn when you interviewed John Theroux and Sandy Trueman afterward?” he asked.
“Ben — Corporal Fortier and I spoke to Trueman first,” said Willson. “That was an interesting conversation, to say the least. It turns out that she has bipolar disorder, and had stopped taking her medication. If she was having trouble managing it before this whole business, her involvement in the ski resort project made it even worse. But I used her anger toward me to get her to talk. I apologized for my role in what happened, and asked her to tell us why she was so upset. We didn’t have to push her very hard to get her to admit to everything: starting the fire that killed Sue Webb, breaking the window at the coffee shop to try to shift blame onto the anti–ski area folks, abducting my mother and forcing her to burn down Sara Ilsley’s studio and vandalize her house. She admitted to all of it, saying it was all justified because getting the ski area approved was so important. She firmly believes that the project’s demise was because of my meddling, that I somehow made her do all those things. In her mind, it was all my fault.”
“Do you think she acted on her own?”
“I think her husband knows more than he’s willing to say. Trueman told us that Austin had offered them good jobs at the resort and a big payday if it was approved.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Not much when you think of the millions that would be needed to build the resort. Maybe a few hundred thousand or so. But it was more than they’d ever had their hands on. It must have seemed like a fortune to Trueman.”
“Do you think Austin and Myers knew? Did they maybe tell her what to do?”
“We’ll never know for sure, with Myers dead and Austin out of the country. But I’m thinking that at the very least, Myers knew what was going on. They were using Trueman as a means to an end. She was like a rogue scud missile fired without a clear target in mind …”
“What did her husband say about it?” asked Speer.
“Theroux told us that once his wife saw the potential dollar signs and got a sniff of the prestige they might have in the community, she went off the deep end. He supported the resort, but he couldn’t control her. He says that she did it all on her own, but he tried to stop her. He’s got no loyalty to her after all, that’s for sure. He seems willing to blame her for all of it. And because of her current mental state, it’s an easy play.”
“And Austin has definitely left the country? He’s not just hiding somewhere?”
Willson shook her head. “He’s gone. At Ben Fortier’s urging, the RCMP put out an all-points bulletin for him. It turns out that he left Canada on a false passport. An officer actually spoke to him at the Vancouver airport, but let him go.”
“Shit. Anyone know where he went?”
“I tracked him through Toronto, then onto a flight to San José in Costa Rica. I assume he’s there because it’s a non-extradition country. But he could still be travelling under yet another name, so there’s no way to know for sure. For what it’s worth, I let that Chilean private investigator know about Austin’s movements. I’m betting he’s hard on Austin’s trail now. Costa Rica, or wherever he is now, may not be as comfortable as he thinks it’ll be …”
Speer shook his head. “And what about the money?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve spoken with an officer in the RCMP’s commercial crime section. She’d just begun to pose as a potential investor and met with Austin once. She thinks that he moved millions out of the country, maybe tens of millions, before he flew away. And I reinterviewed a sports agent who represented some of the money invested with Austin. He was particularly pissed off because he was one of the last people to see the guy before he left the country. He’d tried to talk a Mountie into detaining Austin at the Vancouver airport, but had no proof that he was anyone other than the guy listed in the false passport.”
“Ouch,” said Speer.
“Ouch is right,” Willson said. “He and his clients’ money literally flew away. Based on our interviews with him and other investors who’ve since come forward, I think our original estimate of the missing money is low. I’m no accountant, but I think it was a classic example of a Ponzi scheme on a very large scale. He left a string of furious investors behind. For his sake, he’d better keep one hell of a low profile. There will be people looking for him, from here and his previous escapades.”
Church moved forward in his chair. “I understand from my sources in Ottawa that someone in the PM’s office has somehow been implicated in all of this. Is that true?”
“Yep,” said Willson. “In her desire to lay the blame on everyone around her, Trueman told us all about a man named Brian Cummings, who is, or was, before he was fired, a senior policy adviser in the PMO — as well as Theroux’s cousin. Apparently, he was urging them to keep going because, according to Trueman, ‘the Prime Minister wanted the project to proceed so he could justify building the highway through Howse Pass.’ But of course, the prime minister is distancing himself from the whole thing. You’ll see it in the news tomorrow. He said Cummings was acting without his knowledge or authorization. Now that the questions are out there, though, they’ll only get louder. There’s also a female MP from Alberta who’s under investigation for taking money from Austin in order to get government contracts to build the new highway.”
“That goddamn highway again,” said Church, shaking his head. “What I can’t figure out is how that American journalist got the inside information that led to all of this happening. Any ideas, Jenny? Or do I not want to know?”
Willson glanced at Speer, then stared at Church. “Would you like more coffee?”
“No thanks. If I have another cup, I’ll be awake until next week,” said Church.
�
�If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you two some questions,” said Willson. “First, have you heard what’s happening with the ski area application?”
“It’s as dead as Hank Myers,” said Speer, “pure and simple.”
“For sure?” asked Willson.
“The funeral is well under way,” he confirmed. “The federal and provincial governments jointly announced this morning that they’ve disallowed the project, claiming that their review showed it to be neither viable nor sustainable. The fact that the proponent skipped the country is almost irrelevant. The politicians are running away from that thing as fast as their scrawny little legs will carry them.”
Willson was surprised — although perhaps she shouldn’t have been — by the speed at which the two governments had closed rank and slammed the door on the project. “No mention of the Ponzi scheme, the violence, or back-room influence peddling?”
“Nope,” Church said. “In fact, they’re talking about re-amending the federal legislation so that no new ski areas in parks will be allowed.”
Willson smiled. “Back to the future, then?”
“Exactly.” Church nodded.
“Can they file charges against Austin?”
“They can, but if you’re right about him being in Costa Rica, he’s essentially untouchable.”
“That leads me to my second question,” Willson said. “Where does this leave us? The three of us, I mean?”
Speer and Church looked at each other for a moment. Church was the first to respond. “I’m being transferred to a national park in Ontario. I’m not being blamed for this mess, per se, but I should have listened to Jack when he tried to warn me, back at the beginning of this thing.”
Willson looked at her old boss. “And you, Jack?”
“I’m pulling the pin at the end of July.”