The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  “I’m not from Oracle, Mr. Blackwater.”

  Cole put his coffee down and folded his hands before him.

  “OK , let’s move on. What time did you arrive at the mine?”

  “About quarter to five.”

  “Did you talk with anybody when you arrived?”

  “I signed in with security. The fellow there told me that he might be on rounds when I left, so I should sign myself out.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “I talked with Hank Henderson, the Assistant Mine Manager. He was just leaving. He didn’t seem too impressed with Mike Barnes,” Cole added.

  Reimer made more notes. “How do you mean?”

  “Just seemed not to like Barnes is all. Called him ‘college boy.’ Not really how you’d expect the Assistant Mine Manager to refer to his boss. Called him ‘his eminence’ too. Struck me as petty.”

  Reimer made another note in her pad. “And what time did you leave?”

  “I think it was about 6:20 when I left the grounds. I signed out at the gate and jotted the time down there. Barnes told me he had another meeting.”

  “Was anybody waiting to see him when you left?”

  “I didn’t see anybody.”

  “Not in his office, not down in the main reception?”

  “Like I said, the building was empty as far as I could see, but it’s not like I was looking into other offices.”

  “Did you see the security guard when you left the mine site?”

  “No. I signed myself out.”

  “And then where did you go?”

  “I drove back to town. To my hotel.”

  “Did you see anybody on the road as you drove back?”

  Cole counted the trucks in his mind. “I must have passed a dozen or more trucks.”

  “Anybody you might recognize?”

  Cole shook his head and winced. It felt like his brain was sloshing around.

  “Are you OK , Mr. Blackwater?”

  “I’m sure I’ll live.”

  “After leaving the mine you drove back to your hotel. Is that when the alleged assault on you occurred?”

  “No, that was later in the evening. Closer to midnight. I did some work in my room first, called my daughter in Vancouver, had a shower. Then I went to the bar. And as you can see, the assault isn’t alleged.” He held up his bruised hand and pointed to the stitches under his eye.

  Reimer ignored the remark. “Can you remember the make and models of any of the vehicles you passed on your way back from the mine last night, Mr. Blackwater?”

  Cole rubbed his eyes, which stung, and thought. “Some big SUV types. I think a Ford Expedition. A couple of Ford F150s. A Dodge Ram. A few smaller trucks.”

  “Can you remember any of the smaller trucks?”

  “No, it was getting dark by then.”

  “Do you remember if one of the trucks was a Chevy?”

  “I got a telephone call as I was getting closer to town, so my mind was on that call, not on the types of trucks that passed. I really can’t recall.”

  “A Chevy S10?”

  Cole was silent for a moment, then said, “Why do you ask?”

  “Tell me about the injury on your hand. It looks like you gave as good as you got,” said Reimer.

  “I used to do some boxing,” said Cole, still thinking about the types of trucks on the road.

  “I assume there were witnesses to the fight?”

  “About forty or fifty.”

  Reimer made some notes.

  Cole shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “How was Mike Barnes killed?” His voice sounded suddenly very small in the empty interview room.

  Reimer looked up from her notes. “I’m not at liberty to say just yet.”

  “Well, you’re asking me about my hand. Do you think that I beat him to death after my meeting with him?”

  The Sergeant levelled her gaze at Blackwater. “As I said, I’m not at liberty to say right now. But I told you, you’re not a suspect.”

  “If I am a suspect, I think I should know. I’d want to talk to a lawyer.”

  “You’re not a suspect,” she repeated. “Someone saw Mike Barnes alive after you left the mine.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “How was he killed?”

  “Mr. Blackwater, I am the one conducting the interview. Or are you playing reporter again?”

  Cole smiled.

  “Tell me about your client, the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group.”

  Cole sat back in his chair. He thought about Peggy McSorlie and her band of community activists. He thought of Dale van Stempvort and shook his head. “There’s not much to tell, really. Peggy McSorlie called me last Friday and asked me to come out to help put together a strategy to stop the mine. I normally don’t take on such small projects, but this one is really important. The Cardinal Divide is very special.”

  “Besides Peggy McSorlie, who else are you working with?”

  “There were about twenty people in a meeting I facilitated a couple of days ago,” said Cole. “I can’t remember everybody’s name, but Peggy could probably give you a list.”

  “We might ask her for that list,” said Reimer, returning to her notes. She stopped writing and looked up at Cole. “Now I want you to tell me everything you know about Dale van Stempvort.”

  10

  It was late afternoon when Cole left the RCMP detachment. A squall had rumbled past like a giant bulldozer while he was inside, and now he had to squint against the glaring wet blacktop. He fished in his jacket pockets for sunglasses but found none. Eyes closed, he walked blind down the sidewalk to his truck, feeling about two hundred years old. He leaned his forehead against the hot blue metal of the truck door, and took one, two, three big breaths, slid his hand down the panel and into his pocket, and pulled out a handful of debris. Pine needles, the tab off the top of his Tim Hortons coffee cup, a strangely short pencil like the ones you find at IKEA, and finally keys. He slung himself into the driver’s seat and let his head fall back against the back of his seat. His sunglasses sat on the dash, casting golden brown prisms of light onto the windshield. He eased his eyes open again.

  The Toyota’s engine roared to life with one turn of the key. At four hundred and fifty thousand kilometres, this truck was just getting warmed up. Cole’s body clock was tuned to listen to the CBC every hour: what time was it? Four o’clock in the afternoon. He turned the radio on and caught a static-laced signal; likely the storm was messing with the reception. He turned off the engine and, through hiss and crackle, Cole heard the top story.

  “The RCMP is preparing to make an arrest in a sensational murder in Oracle, Alberta, where the manager of the Buffalo Anthracite Mine, the town’s largest employer, was found dead late Wednesday night. Mike Barnes had been in the community for just six months when he was killed. Police say they have interviewed a number of people who might be connected to the murder, and that an arrest will be made soon. Chamber of Commerce president David Smith says that the mine is a vital component of Oracle’s economy and that Barnes’ death must not be allowed to derail plans for its expansion.”

  Cole clicked the radio off and closed his eyes. A real compassionate fellow, that Smith.

  Preparing to make an arrest was how the CBC had put it. That seemed like pretty brazen language for the RCMP to be using. They must be getting a lot of pressure from the town’s fathers, thought Cole, David Smith among them.

  Cole opened his eyes and a wave of dizziness washed over him; the truck’s dashboard spun. Was he fit to drive? The lump at the back of his head was painful to touch and his head ached. There should be a bottle of aspirin in the glove box, he thought. Without water, he swallowed hard to get two of the white tablets down. When had he eaten last? No breakfast this morning. Then the RCMP station. The day-old bagels hadn’t appealed. What about the night before? The meeting at the mine, his hotel room, the bar, blackout. Pizza at dinner the day before was the last time he had eaten.
No wonder he was weak.

  A good square meal was what the body needed. And a couple of drinks to kill his hangover.

  He found, or rather his truck found, the Big Sky Restaurant. He guided the Toyota into a parking stall, and as he turned the engine off his cellphone rang.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said, picking it up, and then clutching the steering wheel to avoid a minivan packed with kids, before pointing the truck into a parking stall.

  “Blackwater here,” he said.

  “Cole, it’s Peggy. Where have you been?”

  “RCMP,” he said, and stepped out of the truck.

  “All afternoon?”

  “Well, the hospital before that.”

  “How is your head?”

  “Awful, thanks for asking. I feel like someone hit me with a chair.”

  Peggy laughed. “That’s funny. I feel like I haven’t laughed in ages. Cole, what did the RCMP ask you?”

  Cole leaned against the front bumper, and faced Big Sky Restaurant’s large front windows.

  “They asked me a lot about the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group.”

  Peggy stopped laughing. “Me too.”

  “You?”

  “Someone came to the farm this afternoon. They were here for over an hour.”

  “I spent nearly three hours at the detachment this afternoon. I’m starving. Haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “You better get something to eat.”

  “I will, but I want to tell you about my interview with Sergeant Reimer first. And I want to hear about your meeting with the cops too.”

  “You first.”

  “Well,” said Cole. He shifted his weight and tucked one foot up under him against the truck so his weight was balanced on his right leg. “First they wanted to know about my meeting with Barnes. I was the second last person to see him alive.”

  “Who else saw him?”

  “The night watchman at the mine saw Barnes sometime around ten. The Mounties wouldn’t say at first, but I finally got that much out of them.”

  “That’s a lucky break for you.”

  “I’ll say. I didn’t catch many more details, though; the sergeant was tight lipped. Sometime after I left, Barnes was killed.”

  “I might be able to fill in some of the blanks there, Cole, but tell me more.”

  “There are a lot of blanks to fill in Peggy. Tell me what you know.”

  “I will, but I want you to finish first. I need to keep all of this straight.”

  “Alright. Well, next they launched an inquisition into ESCoG. Sounds like you’re on their terrorism watch list.” Peggy sighed at the other end. “They wanted to know everything about your operations, your members, your activities, your plans. But that was only a warm-up to the main event.”

  “Which was?”

  “Dale van Stempvort.”

  “Figured.”

  “I swear, Peggy, I knew Dale was trouble from the moment I met him.”

  “He hasn’t done anything, Cole.”

  “Peggy, please, are you defending Dale? The RCMP have been keeping very close track of him.”

  “Well, there are only suspicions that Dale is involved in eco-sabotage. In Canada people are innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Dale has never publicly denied or denounced violence, and that leaves a lot of people to draw their own conclusions.”

  “Including the RCMP.”

  “Their line of questioning suggests that they’re treating this as a case of escalating violence. They see Dale as an eco-vigilante who started with tree spiking, graduated to blowing up gas derricks, and has now moved on to murder.”

  “Still, to blow up a well when there are no people for ten miles, and to kill a man are very different things.”

  “Tell that to the cops.”

  “I did.”

  Cole rubbed his aching head. “They questioned me on the connection between Dale and ESCoG. I told them that Dale is a lone wolf who causes more trouble than he’s worth. They can’t think Dale acted on behalf of ESCoG or they’ll pin a conspiracy charge on you.”

  “Cole, you make it sound like Dale is already behind bars.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he is before the end of the day.”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “That may be, but the RCMP are getting pressure from the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce, and Barnes’ family are insisting an arrest be made.”

  This sobered Peggy: “What else did you learn?”

  “That’s about it.”

  They were silent for a few seconds, then Cole said, “What’s your news?”

  “The constable that came to the house is an old friend. He was quite chatty – they don’t investigate a murder in Oracle every day. He told me that Barnes was found dead on the ground in the mill. Looks like he was hit on the head with a heavy drill bit. They found evidence: blood on a big steel bit and on the ground.”

  “Who found him?”

  “That security guard, around midnight.”

  The trusty Toyota caught him as Cole’s legs buckled under him. “That’s it, Peggy, I have to eat or I’ll fall over. Our next task is to create some spin. If Dale’s arrested, the town, hell, the whole country, is going to think ESCoG is somehow responsible for the murder. We have to nip that in the bud.”

  “OK , Cole. We’ll do whatever you suggest. Get something to eat and call me later.”

  “Right,” he said and hung up.

  Cole walked to the front door of the Big Sky Restaurant on rubber legs. The place was Smitty’s Pancake House with a face lift.

  Cole didn’t care anymore. In his previous life he wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this. Sure, he liked a greasy spoon, but it had to be genuine grease. He liked the Windmill on Elgin in Ottawa where he always ordered sausage and eggs with toast. And The Stem on Queen near Spadina in Toronto was an open kitchen diner straight out of the nineteen thirties. At The Stem they used actual duct tape to patch the cracks in the red vinyl benches, and even the coffee was greasy.

  Of course, his tastes also aspired to the upscale restaurants in Ottawa’s Market where you were likely to sit next to a Cabinet Minister or senior political staffer, or sometimes a national correspondent for a major newspaper.

  He shook his head side to side to get rid of the memory. He wondered what made him think of that.

  The hostess approached: “Just yourself?”

  Cole looked up to see an attractive and very young woman in uniform before him. He hated it when they put it like that. It made him feel like such a loser. “Only me, unless you’re not doing anything.”

  “Sorry?” She was too young to have a sense of humour. He was too ugly at that moment not to.

  “Just me,” he said and followed her to a table near the back. He scanned the room, determined not to let his guard down.

  “Can I sit in that booth?” said Cole, motioning with his chin to a booth along the back wall, where he could see the door. With only the slightest roll of her eyes, she seated him and asked, “Can I bring you coffee or something to drink?”

  “A Kokanee would go down well,” he said.

  She turned without a smile.

  He had to admit that he was in a foul mood; even a pretty face couldn’t fix that. His list of woes was long. He hadn’t eaten, his face was bruised and scarred, his body was battered, his hand ached, his head throbbed, and his only paying client was closely associated with a murderer. Not a good day for Cole Blackwater and Blackwater Strategies.

  He picked up the menu and scanned it quickly.

  His beer was delivered by another woman, not as pretty as the hostess, but she had a down-to-earth feel, and her authentic smile eased some of his pain. “I’m Pat,” she said, “Have you decided or do you need more time?”

  “Pat,” he said, “I’m Cole. I haven’t eaten in a day, and someone beat the heck out of me last night. I’m hungry and worn out, and if I say anything mean while I’m here, I’m sorry in adv
ance.”

  She grinned. “OK, Cole. I’ll try not to say anything mean either. If I do, I’m sorry too.”

  Cole smiled, and felt the sutures in his face stretch. “Good. Now that that’s settled, I’ll have your twelve-ounce steak dinner. I don’t want to see the thing still chewing its cud, but I don’t want it to have been dead for long either.” He handed her the menu. “And you can bring another one of these with dinner.” He motioned to the beer, and then added, “Please.”

  “You bet,” she said and smiled again.

  Cole drained half the frosted mug of beer with one long, slow swallow. That helps too, he thought.

  Better empty the bladder, he mused and walked, still a little wobbly, to the bathroom. The men’s room smelled strongly of indus-trial cleaning products. The lighting was stark and in the smudged mirror he saw his miserable face. His left cheek was black and blue and red, the angry gash held together with neat black stitches. He probed it gently. It would heal well enough, but for the next week he was sure to scare the children. He leaned closer to the mirror and saw that his eyes were dark, whether from being beaten or from weariness, he didn’t know. Maybe both. Quite the handsome devil, he thought. At least he had his charm.

  He used the urinal and then washed his hands and waved them under the automatic dryer for a few seconds before wiping them on his jeans. The instructions on these hot air dryers should read: 1) wash hands 2) wave under dryer until impatient 3) wipe on pants.

  Hands still damp, he opened the door. On the way back to his booth he scanned the room, not entirely certain who he was looking for, the identity of at least one of last night’s assailants still unknown to him. The other two he would remember. They would be the ones with the bruises. He smiled. His eyes moved from table to table, from booth to booth, and then, as he was about to sit down, he glanced at the front entrance. “Sweet mother of pearl,” he breathed, it couldn’t be. He seated himself quickly, ducking so he could not be seen from the doors.

  He steadied himself with another deep pull from his beer, hid his face with the dessert menu, and watched. He held his breath as the hostess turned down his aisle. Maybe it wasn’t her. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and drained his beer. It was. Nancy Webber had just walked into the Big Sky Restaurant and back into the ruin of his life.