Full Curl

by Dave Butler

  “That’s a hell of an idea,” said Jenkins.

  “Can you get me copies of their driver’s licences, Brad, so I have pictures of them?”

  “I’ll get them to you as soon as can.”

  “This is fantastic!” she said excitedly. “I’m going to start now, gotta go. Thanks for this. I may finally have a good lead.”

  “Good luck, Jenny. Keep me —”

  In her haste to get moving, Willson disconnected too quickly, but no matter. She’d apologize to Jenkins some other time. She immediately jogged down the hall to the maze of seasonal warden cubicles.

  “Bill!” she yelled to Forsyth. His head popped up from behind a divider like a prairie dog in a brush fire. “I need you in my office, now.”

  “I’ll just finish what I’m doing,” Forsyth said, sitting down again, “and then I’ll come down to see you later.”

  “No, Bill,” Willson said, like a pet owner to a disobedient dog, “not later. I need you RFN. Right fucking now.”

  Forsyth hurried to Willson’s office, cellphone in hand and a curious look on his face. “What’s up?”

  Willson had a map of the town of Banff spread out on her desk and did not look at him as he came through the door. “Whatever else you’re working on, Bill, stop. Starting now, you and I are going door-to-door.”

  “Looking for what?” asked Forsyth.

  “Looking for evidence that one or both of these two guys,” Willson said, handing him a piece of paper with the two names on it, “ate or stayed in Banff during the few days prior to the shooting of the elk at the end of last October.”

  “You think these guys are our perps?”

  “If they aren’t,” said Willson, “there’s a good chance they know who is.”

  “How did you identify them?”

  “Seems a friend of mine saw them in Wilcox Pass only days before Jasper lost its ram, and then we saw them last night here in town, at Giorgio’s. I got one name from running the licence plate and I got confirmation of the other name from a friend who’s a conservation officer in B.C. I drove around Banff early this morning to see if I could locate their truck, but no luck.”

  “B.C.,” Forsyth echoed. “Are they from there?”

  “Yup,” said Willson, pointing one at a time to the names in Forsyth’s hand. “Clark is an assistant hunting guide from Cranbrook, and Eastman is the guy he works for. He’s a guide-outfitter with a territory in the Purcell Mountains. I’ve requested copies of their driver’s licences. They might be in my inbox now. I’ll make copies for us if they are.”

  “So where do you want me to go?”

  Willson pointed to the map on her desk. “I want you to take all the hotels on the west side of Banff Avenue, and I’ll take the hotels on the east side, including the Banff Springs, the Rimrock, and the others on the south side of the river. I need you to ask at each one of the places about the three or four days leading up to and including the night of October thirty-first. Check to see if either of these guys stayed overnight. Talk to the desk clerks first, then the managers if you can. We can use the driver’s licence pictures to jog memories. If either of these guys are in their records, get a copy of a credit card receipt as evidence and find out which employee checked them in or out so we can follow up.”

  “Geez,” said Forsyth. “This is going to take a lot of time. Shouldn’t we get others to help us?”

  “This one is just you and me, Bill. Welcome to the world of slogging it out in the investigative trenches, where you get muddy and tired and pursue thousands of leads before you uncover something substantial. Let’s quit talking and get at it.”

  He turned to go, but she stopped him with, “By the way, Bill, did you ever find any photographs of the elk taken before it was poached?”

  “I did,” he replied. “It took some digging but I tracked down a wildlife photographer who took some shots of the bull two days before he was killed. He was happy to share them with us when I told him what it was for. I’m pretty sure it’s the elk we lost. I had him sign and date the photographs and put them in the case file.”

  “Excellent. If we get lucky, we’ll need those.”

  Two days later, Willson leaned against her truck in the parking lot outside the warden office. It was the end of the day and she was exhausted and frustrated, with nothing to prove that either Clark or Eastman had stayed in town prior to the elk’s death. She looked up at the face of Cascade Mountain, a cold breeze blowing her hair across her face.

  She watched as Forsyth pulled into the lot and parked, then climbed out of his truck. As he approached her, his hands were in his pockets, and he had a smug look on his face.

  “What’s up?” Willson asked.

  “Well,” he said, unable, it appeared, to hold back a grin, “I checked all the hotels in my area and found nothing. So when I finished an hour ago, I thought I would drop in to Giorgio’s because you told me that was where you saw these guys the other night. It seems we’re not dealing with a bunch of geniuses. Would a credit card receipt in the name of Charles Clark for two people for dinner on October 30 of last year, be of interest to you?” He waved a piece of paper in front of Willson, his eyebrows raised, his grin wider. “Isn’t that the night before the elk was shot?”

  Willson grabbed the receipt and the young warden in a bear hug that was both vigorous and awkward. When she regained her composure, she asked the next obvious question. “If they were here in Banff for dinner that night, they must have stayed somewhere. Jesus, Bill. What are we missing?”

  “I have no idea,” said Forsyth. “If they were here the night before the elk was shot, they wouldn’t have gone all the way back to East Kootenay and then come back again the next day. That makes no sense. They must have stayed somewhere.”

  Suddenly Willson had a thought. “Did you check the Juniper Hotel?

  “No. Where’s that?”

  “Shit!” she said, and in a flash, she was in her truck and gone, leaving Forsyth to cough and wave in the cloud of dust she left behind.

  Willson’s mind raced as she drove. The Juniper was the only hotel in Banff on the north side of the Trans-Canada Highway and was, as a result, easy to forget. It was a place people stayed if they had money or wanted privacy. Willson sped through Banff, nearly clipping a tourist taking pictures of Mount Rundle while standing in the middle of Banff Avenue. She passed the train station, crossed the Trans-Canada highway on an overpass, and turned left into the Juniper’s long driveway.

  She left her truck running in front of the hotel and burst through the main door, heading directly to the front desk. The big, blond-haired woman behind it looked up as Willson approached.

  “I’m Park Warden Officer Jenny Willson and I need to speak with the hotel manager.” Willson could barely contain her excitement and sense of urgency.

  The woman smiled at Willson. “I’m the on-duty manager for the day. What can I do to help you, Officer?”

  “I need to see a few of your guest records from last fall — the nights of October 29, 30, and 31.”

  The woman looked uncertain. “Uh … I’ve never had to deal with a request like this before. I might have to talk to our general manager, who is away in Calgary.”

  Willson had dealt with issues of guest confidentiality before in previous investigations and realized that she had to jump on it quickly before company processes and policies acted as needless speed bumps. She leaned across the counter, looked the woman in the eye, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “With all due respect,” Willson said, “it’s your decision if you want to give me the information or not.” She paused for effect. “But I don’t have time to screw around. I bet your boss does not want to have to deal with a bunch of parks people showing up to review your garbage and waste-management systems, your water system, and your fire protection, and to check whether your landscaping matches our wildlife requirements. Who k
nows what might come out of that …”

  The woman visibly gulped. With a nod to show she had decided, she moved over to a computer and worked her way through the hotel’s guest records, her fingers flying across the keys with confidence.

  “Can you tell me who you’re specifically looking for?” the manager asked.

  “How about if you let me look at those dates, and I’ll see if the folks I’m interested in are there,” Willson said, not yet wanting to name names.

  The woman flipped the large computer monitor around so Willson could see the list of guests on the three nights. There appeared to be about thirty guests on the twenty-ninth, and fewer on the thirtieth and thirty-first; they all appeared on one screen. Willson’s eyes first moved slowly down the list for the thirty-first, the night the elk was killed, and saw neither of the names she was looking for. Her heart sank.

  Then just as quickly, her spirits leaped when she saw the name “Clark, C.” printed twice on the list for the night before the elk died.

  “Bingo!” she said softly.

  “You find what you want there?” asked the manager.

  “I did,” Willson said. “Now I need your help. I see the same name twice on the night of the thirtieth. Can you explain that?” She pointed to Clark’s name on the screen.

  “That means one person paid for two rooms.”

  “Was there a reservation made for the rooms?”

  “No,” responded the manager. “They’re coded as walk-ins.”

  “How do I know who actually stayed in the rooms?”

  “I’ll have to go a separate screen where we’ll have the actual guest names.”

  “Could there have been a third person staying in one of the two rooms?”

  “There’s no record of it,” said the woman, “but someone could have joined them without us seeing them.”

  “Okay. Can you please print a copy of this screen and then give me a copy of the full records for that night under the name of Clark?”

  “I can do that for you.”

  The manager handed the three pages of records across the counter to Willson, who looked carefully at the list, running her finger down one name at a time. The name Charlie Clark was there, twice, on the first printed page. He had paid for the two rooms. On one of the next pages, she saw that a Bernard Eastman was registered as the guest in the second room. At this point, Willson realized she held another piece of evidence that might crack open her poaching case.

  “Can you tell me which desk clerk was on when these guests checked in?” asked Willson, “I need to talk to him or her.”

  The manager again returned to the computer and then wrote a name and phone number on the back of a hotel business card for Willson.

  “The clerk that afternoon was Samantha Haskins,” the manager said, handing Willson the card. “She’s here from Australia. She’s not working today and won’t be on again until Saturday night. But give her a call on her cell and maybe you can catch her.”

  Willson thanked the manager for her assistance and then walked out to her idling truck, much calmer than when she arrived. Sitting in the cab, she punched in Haskins’s number on her cell and, when there was no answer, left a message asking the woman to call back as soon as possible. Willson sat for a moment, digesting the importance of the information she’d uncovered at the hotel. The investigation had suddenly changed. “Those guys were here in town the night before the elk died. It must be them,” she said to herself. “Now the real fun begins.”

  It wasn’t until a frustrating day later that Willson interviewed the young desk clerk who checked in Clark and Eastman at the Juniper Hotel. She met the woman at the warden office, speaking with her in a small interview room. Willson discovered that Haskins, a twenty-three-year-old with rainbow hair, remembered the two men. She told Willson it was Clark who paid for the rooms, and she remembered the larger man lurking behind him.

  “The little guy looked like he was scared of the big guy, and that’s why I remember them — the big guy didn’t want to give me his name,” she said. “I remember telling them they wouldn’t get the rooms if I didn’t know who was staying in them.”

  “Do you remember the big man’s name?” asked Willson.

  She watched Haskins think for a moment, her eyes moving up and to the right, concentrating.

  “Sorry,” said Haskins. “I really don’t. I see and talk to so many people in my job that I can’t remember them all.” Willson saw her face brighten for a moment. “But his name should be in the hotel’s guest records. I always note the names of all guests who stay in the rooms, just in case. It’s hotel policy.”

  “That’s okay,” said Willson. “I’ve already got it.”

  Then she showed Haskins the driver’s licence pictures.

  “That’s them. That’s the two guys!”

  Willson pushed Haskins about the presence of a third man.

  “I don’t know,” said Haskins after a pause. “There may have been a third guy with them when they came back to the hotel later that night, but I really don’t remember. I was helping other guests check in, so I was a bit distracted. Sorry. I wish I could help you more.”

  After the interview with Haskins, Willson sat in the empty interview room. She now had the identity of two of the key suspects for the elk kill. But she was stymied by the mysterious third man, if in fact there was a third man. She remembered the three distinct sets of footprints the night the elk was shot, so this would not necessarily be inconsistent. Willson also knew she now had enough to pursue search warrants. She walked down the hall to her office and phoned Brad Jenkins in Cranbrook.

  “Brad,” she said, trying to stay calm, “I think I’ve finally busted this thing open.”

  “Don’t tease me now,” said Jenkins. “What have you got?”

  “Evidence that Clark and Eastman rented rooms at the Juniper hotel here in Banff the night before the elk died, and that Clark and one other person — probably Eastman but no way to know — were at dinner in Banff that same night,” said Willson. “And Clark and Eastman are the same guys Canon saw in Wilcox Pass the day before the ram was found there. This has got to be more than a coincidence.”

  “This is good … really good,” said Jenkins, his voice rising in excitement.

  “It friggin’ well is,” said Willson. “I’m thinking that two of our suspects — likely Eastman and Clark — were here on October thirtieth, maybe doing some scouting … and then a third guy somehow joined them the next day. They did the deed that night, left the park right away, and then I found the animal the next morning.”

  “Makes sense, said Jenkins. “Now we’ve got to find a judge who’ll give us a warrant to search Clark and Eastman’s houses here in the valley. If we can find a rifle and then match its ballistics to the slug in the elk … or if we can find the elk’s rack and match it to any photographs of the bull, we’ve got these assholes.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. I’ve got pictures of the bull on file. And the same goes for the sheep in Jasper. So, Brad, tell me which of your local judges I should call.”

  Chapter 11

  April 9

  The clock on the mantel chimed twice, softly, respectfully, a gentle reminder that it was two o’clock on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Luis Castillo sat in a leather chair in his den, a section of the Spokesman Review newspaper open on his lap. He was thinking about the upcoming city elections, about the slate of candidates running for mayor and council.

  According to recent polls, the current mayor — with whom Castillo had a long-time understanding — was in second place behind a contender campaigning to clean up City Hall, to make it more transparent and accountable to Spokane taxpayers. Castillo knew that this kind of platform played to the public, a public with a deep distrust of politicians. He also knew that a leadership change would mean a change to the way he ran his business. And
not in a good way. He couldn’t let it happen. It was time to take action, to stall the competitor’s momentum by investing more money in his favoured candidate and by uncovering dirt on the upstart, dirt that would find its way into the local media.

  Castillo heard a knock on the den door. “Por favor, pase,” he said.

  His housekeeper, a sixty-something woman who’d been with him long enough to have met both his daughters when they were first brought home from the hospital, poked her head around the heavy door.

  “Señor Castillo,” she said, “the men are here with your animals.”

  “Ah, muchas gracias, Juanita. I will be right there.” Castillo smiled, carefully folded the newspaper, and set it on the table to his right. He stood, stretched, and then strode down the hallway, his leather slippers whispering on the polished wood floor.

  “Jimmy,” he said when he saw the man standing in his front entrance. He shook the man’s hand while glancing at the logo on his fleece jacket. Spokane Valley Taxidermy. “I’m excited to see what you’ve brought me today.”

  “Hello, Mr. Castillo,” said the man, passing him a clipboard and pen. “If you would sign this receipt for me, please, we’ll bring them in from the truck. The third one should be ready in a few weeks.”

  Ten minutes later, Castillo stood in his den, alone, gazing at two mounted trophies that leaned against adjacent sides of his desk.

  The first was a massive bull elk’s head, the antlers wide and thick and spreading beyond the edge of the desk. He knew the antlers were from the elk he’d shot, but what was really impressive was the skill of the taxidermist, how he’d artfully connected the rack to an equally large skull from another animal. It was a magnificent job, well worth the money, with no sign that the parts had not spent their lives together as one.