by Dave Butler
His gaze shifted to the other trophy. It was the bighorn ram from the other Canadian park, its horns rugged and ridged, full curl. Castillo stared at the eyes. They seemed alive and bright and curious, as though pondering their new surroundings.
As the clock ticked gently in the background, Castillo stood without moving, his chest swelling with pride. Visions of his childhood in Chiapas flooded back, a time when his father would leave home in early-morning darkness to hunt the red brocket deer, white-tailed deer, collared peccary, and small rodents known as paca that lived in the forests and fields adjacent to their neighbourhood. Not only did his father’s hunting protect the local crops from the voracious animals, but those animals then became food for the family, and often for other local families in need. And when his father returned home with his quarry over one shoulder, his gun over the other, his steps echoing down the cobblestone street, Castillo recalled their neighbours smiling and nodding in respect and appreciation. Because his father took lives purposefully and skillfully, those looks were often edged with a glimmer of fear.
Because of his ability as a hunter, his father had played a more prominent role in the community than was normally afforded a common shopkeeper. For his father, it was not about the thrill of the hunt, and it wasn’t a deep-seated spiritual appreciation for the lives of the wild animals he harvested. Instead, it was about providing for his family and about his position in the community; he was a provider, protector, predator rather than prey, a man not to be taken lightly. Since then, Castillo had always associated a successful hunt with the admiration of friends and family. It was no different now. He wanted to be like his father, a successful hunter respected — and perhaps somewhat feared — by those around him.
Castillo turned when he felt a presence at his right shoulder.
“Are you okay, Luis?” said his wife.
“Ah, Adelina, I did not hear you come in. How did things go today?”
With a sigh, she dropped a leather attaché case on the floor to her right. “The planning meeting went well,” she said. “We’ve almost raised enough money to begin building our first supervised injection site at the edge of downtown. It’s not going to stop people from doing drugs … but it should keep them a lot safer when they do.”
“That’s good,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “I hope my contacts helped you obtain the permits. Any chance my company will get the construction contract?”
Adelina smiled and shook her head. “Luis, you and I both know that’s not a good idea on so many levels.”
“Perhaps you’re right, but I had to ask.” He saw his wife shift her gaze to the two trophies against the desk. Her eyebrows and mouth moved downward in tandem, a sign of either distaste or — after twenty-four years of marriage — resignation.
“Are those new?” she asked.
“Yes, the taxidermist delivered them this afternoon. They’re the ones I got in Canada.”
“He is an artist, that taxidermist. His skills are remarkable.”
“I think the hunter should also be given credit for his skills,” said Castillo.
“I’m sure you do. But as you often say, Luis, the hunter is only as good as the guide he hires to accompany him.”
Castillo realized that his wife was not in a praising mood, which was a surefire way to dampen his spirits. He stared at her. Since his daughters had left home for university, he had noticed a change in the woman. Whereas before she had been loving and largely obedient, he now found her to be increasingly distant and willful. As long as there was money to spend, her interest in his businesses turned to disinterest. And most difficult of all, her passion for him had turned to indifference, the passion transferred to her charity work.
“After all these years, you still do not understand or approve of my hunting, do you, Adelina?” It was more a statement than a question.
“I certainly understand why you hunt and … at least on the surface, I don’t disapprove,” she said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. “I simply wonder how many lines you’re willing to cross, how many laws you’re willing to break, how much you’re willing to put our family at risk, all in the single-minded pursuit of your beloved trophies.”
“What do you mean?”
“Please, give me some credit,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve heard you speaking to that Eastman fellow on the phone. I know you pay him more than you’ve ever paid any other guide. I know you talk to him about parks, about hunting only at certain times, about getting the animals back into the United States. It sounds to me like you are literally crossing some of those lines, Luis, lines that could get you into serious trouble with the law.” She paused, then continued. “What do I mean? I mean that none of us can afford such trouble.” Suddenly her gaze was full of challenge. She was clearly daring him to disagree with her, to lie to her. “Am I wrong, my dearest husband?”
“I have always put the well-being of this family first,” Castillo said. “As long as I do that, and as long as I keep doing that, then how I run my affairs should be of no concern to you.”
“You did not answer my question, so I will leave it at that for now. But despite your elusive assurances, Luis, you need to understand that I’m very concerned about your actions. How you do something is just as important as what you do. You must remember that your decisions affect all of us.”
Castillo watched his wife pick up her briefcase and walk away from him, with a quick baleful look over her left shoulder as she entered the hallway.
For the third time that afternoon, he was alone in his den, the clock ticking from its place on the mantel. Earlier, it was a subtle sound in the background, marking the pleasant passing of time, the celebration of the arrival of his latest trophies, an opportunity to reflect on his role as a successful hunter. Now, the clock was loud, insistent, obtrusive. It reminded him that his world was shifting under his slippered feet, second by ticking second.
Chapter 12
April 11
Jenny Willson understood how Hudson’s Bay Company governor Sir George Simpson must have felt when he first passed through Sinclair Canyon in 1841, and why he had written of his impatience to escape “this horrid gorge.” While Bill Forsyth drove, Willson was just as impatient about having to follow a trio of transport trucks crawling down the long hill into Radium. The road was snowy and slippery, the trip unbearably slow.
“You’re right, Sir George,” she said, “this is friggin’ horrid. C’mon people, c’mon!” She pounded her fist on the dash to make her point. “I could walk faster than this.”
Forsyth nodded his agreement. But eventually, like popping out of a rocky birth canal, they passed through the final dramatic walls of the canyon and entered the broad valley of the Rocky Mountain Trench. Ahead of them, silhouetted by the setting sun, were the Purcell Mountains and the blocky form of Farnham Tower.
Now they were in the open, freed from the horrid gorge, Willson heard her cellphone chirp to indicate a waiting message. She listened to it as they rolled to a stop at a service station at the corner of Highways 93 and 95 in Radium Hot Springs. Their gas tank was nearly empty.
“Jenny, this is Paul Hunter from the Jasper Warden Office. You left me a message yesterday asking whether we had information on the weapon that killed the bighorn sheep ram in Wilcox Pass. I finally had a moment to get back to you.”
As soon as she heard Hunter’s annoying, nasal voice, Willson felt skepticism and suspicion rise in her throat like bile. She put the message on speakerphone so Forsyth could hear it. Hunter had a reputation as a competitive jerk who looked for every opportunity to put himself and Jasper ahead of everyone else. It was common knowledge that his goal was to be a park superintendent one day. While few in Parks Canada shared his optimism for achieving it, Willson knew that it made him happy to look good at the expense of the Banff wardens. She had no time for the ambitious prick.
Hunter’s voice droned
on. “We don’t have anything conclusive yet. The bullet that killed the ram in Wilcox Pass could be from a .357 Magnum revolver. But it could be from something else. We’re not sure yet. We heard you might be heading into the Kootenays today to execute search warrants and we thought it best that you not do that until we are sure what we’ve got and can work with you on it. Give me a call if you need anything else.” Hunter left his phone number before the message ended.
Willson and Forsyth looked at each other for a moment, expressionless. Then they both guffawed.
“Does he really think we’re that stupid?” said Willson when she caught her breath. “I don’t believe a word of what he said. Fuck ’im.”
A few moments later, Forsyth steered them to the café at Kicking Horse Coffee on the edge of Invermere. Willson saw an army of windmills rotating slowly on the roof, and with a deep inhale, she smelled the aroma of roasting coffee beans lingering in the air.
“I’ll grab you a coffee,” said Forsyth. “It’s something special here. You’re gonna like this.”
While she waited, Hunter’s message began to crawl in the back of her mind like a reptile searching for prey. She considered him to be an arrogant, uncooperative son of a bitch, the kind of slimy ladder-climber that she hated as much as she did poachers. Infuriated, unable to avoid the impulse, she punched in Hunter’s number.
The Jasper warden answered after three rings. “Hunter here.”
“Paul, it’s Jenny Willson. I got your message.”
“Ah, Jenny. I’m glad I caught you before you did something you shouldn’t. I hope you are not going ahead with the search warrants. We’re just not ready for that yet. It’s too soon.”
“Look, Paul,” said Willson, “I am going ahead and it’s not your place to tell me if I am or am not ready. I guarantee you that I’m ready, even if you’re not. In fact, I’m only moments away from visiting a Justice of the Peace to get the warrants. I discovered the names of our two main suspects only two days ago, and I’m not prepared to waste any more time. So … I need you to tell me what you’ve got on the weapon that was used for the Wilcox Pass ram. If you tell me what you have, I can use that in my application for the warrants. If you won’t, then I can’t. We might only get one chance here.”
“Which JP are you meeting with?” asked Hunter.
Willson knew better than to tell him anything. She wouldn’t put it past Hunter to phone the JP and derail their application before they met with her. “I don’t know. The B.C. Conservation officers are taking the lead on that.”
“Well, we’re disappointed you’re jumping the gun on this, and we think you’re making a mistake.”
“Paul, you’re making a mistake by assuming I care what you and your multiple personalities think,” Willson said, trying but failing to keep her anger in check. “And you’re making an even bigger mistake by withholding critical information to our case. Have you got something for me or not? I’d hate to lose the opportunity to grab the gun if I see it. And it would be a real shame for me to have to tell everyone later that Jasper wouldn’t co-operate with me on this … or even worse, that Jasper purposefully sidetracked the investigation. That would not look good for you.”
Now back in the truck, Forsyth grinned, giving her a fist pump to show his support.
With her free hand, Willson took the cup that Forsyth had placed in the console between them. A warm calm flooded her body when the deep, rich flavour of the coffee hit her taste buds.
“This is not a matter of us not co-operating with you,” Hunter said, not taking the bait. “It’s an opportunity for us to slow down so we can both go to our bosses in Calgary and show what we’ve done together … on what could be a very big case.”
“That’s where you and I differ, Paul. For me, this is all about protecting the park. It’s not about trying to impress people higher up the food chain so I can get a promotion.”
“That’s not what this is about … and I resent that remark. You’re trying to twist my words. Why are you being so uncooperative?”
“Look, Paul,” said Willson, her patience exhausted, “I have no time for your bullshit. Tell me what I need to know.”
“Sorry, I wish I could help, but I’ve got nothing for you. I again ask that you not go ahead with this. You’re making a mistake, Jenny,” he said.
Willson had enough. “Once again, you’re the one making the fucking mistake,” she said, ending the call with a punch of a button. It was at times like this that Willson found cellphones frustrating. It was so much more satisfying to slam a phone into its cradle when dealing with an asshole like Hunter.
Two hours later, Willson, Forsyth, and Conservation Officer Brad Jenkins sat in the living room of a Kimberley home across from a surly Justice of the Peace, a woman who was clearly annoyed at being pulled from a family dinner to deal with their request. When they’d met on the street outside the woman’s home, Jenkins had passed on a greeting from Kim Davidson. At that point, Willson had finally given up on there ever being anything between the CO and herself. Jenkins was happy, his fiancée annoyingly likeable. It was time to move on.
Even though she was the JP on evening duty, the wire-haired, middle-aged woman — who seemed afraid to smile — was putting them through the wringer, making them as uncomfortable as she could. Willson let Jenkins start with the introductions because he’d met the woman; he sat on a provincial union committee with her and knew she had a left-leaning environmental bent, perhaps useful in a case like this. But that didn’t appear to help, so they quickly switched to Willson in the lead.
“Let me lay out our case for you, if that’s okay,” said Willson.
“Let me tell you something,” said the woman, wagging her chubby finger at Willson. “When I get calls like this, after normal business hours, my assumption is that your case is weak and you don’t want to appear before a real judge.”
Willson had observed this kind of response from other judges and JPs, so she waited out the woman’s rant, trying to act calm and compliant so as not to further annoy her. When the woman’s momentum finally waned, Willson presented to her the Information to Obtain (ITO) document, where the basics of the warrant request were laid out. She also gave the JP a copy of the warrant they wanted her to sign.
Their application focused on proving that the shooting of the elk in Banff National Park was a National Park Act offence, why the items they were searching for were relevant to that offence, and why they were asking to search the houses, outbuildings, and vehicles of both Charlie Clark and Bernie Eastman that night. It also referred to the shooting of the ram in Jasper. Willson had attached to the ITO a series of background documents, including the crime lab report on the .308-calibre weapon, the sworn statement from Jim Canon indicating when and where he’d seen the two men in both Banff and Jasper parks, and copies of the hotel and restaurant receipts from Banff proving the date they had been there.
After reading the reports, some of them two or three times, the JP peered up over the reading glasses perched low on her sharp nose.
“So, is this about the elk in Banff or the ram in Jasper?” she asked.
Willson responded quickly. “Along with the elk, we believe these suspects were also involved with the bighorn sheep, and we believe they — or someone with them — shot it with a handgun. But we don’t at this time have enough evidence to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, nor can we confirm the calibre of the weapon used. The crime lab report on that should come in any time. As you can see in the ITO, we’re asking you, in anticipation of that, to give us the authority to seize any handguns we might find during the search, along with any .308s.”
After tense back-and-forth discussion that focused largely on why they had to do the search that night, the JP finally agreed to give them warrants based on what was presented in the documents. She let them know of her lingering reluctance. “The evidence you’ve presented to me doesn’t
make me comfortable,” she said. “However, because of the concerns you’ve expressed over the potential for these two individuals to hide or destroy evidence if they get wind of your investigation and because, quite frankly — and I did not say this — I’m personally sickened by people using our national parks as a source of trophies for their walls, I’m prepared to sign the warrants. But I’m going to make them very specific.”
After signing, the JP wrote and initialled comments on the bottom of the warrants and then looked at each of the officers in turn, like the teacher of a class of remedial students. “These warrants relate only to the main residences at the two addresses on your application, along with any outbuildings, vehicles, or equipment at those addresses,” she said. “I am allowing you to seize any and all .308 calibre weapons you find, elk antlers if you find any, and any other evidence directly related only to the shooting of the elk in Banff National Park on or about October 31 of last year.”
The woman dashed Willson’s hopes with her final statement: “I’m not prepared to give you the authority to seize any handguns or to go beyond evidence relating to the elk,” she said while glaring at Willson, daring her to raise a challenge. “And you cannot seize evidence that is in the personal possession of people other than the two named subjects.”
Willson’s mind was filled with profanity, all directed at Hunter and his Jasper warden colleagues. But she was smart enough not to poke this woman any further. “I understand,” she responded. “Thank you very much for your time tonight. Our apologies for disrupting your dinner.”
From the Justice’s house in Kimberley, Willson drove Forsyth and Jenkins directly to a Tim Hortons coffee shop at the north end of Cranbrook. By now, she had discovered that not only was Forsyth was a pain in the ass to work with, he was a certified coffee snob. This became more evident when he complained, like a petulant child, about entering a place that he claimed served an inferior brew to that of his beloved Kicking Horse Coffee. On this point, Willson thought him to be a nutcase in need of professional help, but she’d already decided not to tell him — so as not to encourage him — that whatever it was he’d bought for her in Invermere was the best damn coffee she’d ever had. “Suck it up, Princess,” she said to him as they entered the coffee shop.