“Three years,” said Gilbert.
“How many cases have you handled?”
“Fifty, maybe sixty.”
“How many murders?”
“This is my first,” he said. “But I’ve got lots of help.”
Cole looked around.
“In Red Deer,” added Gilbert.
“Right. The phone call.”
Gilbert shrugged.
“Did Dale van Stempvort tell you he killed Mike Barnes?”
“Look, I don’t think I should be talking with you about this.”
Now it was Cole’s turn to shrug. “Suit yourself. But your client’s already been convicted by this town, and I just thought you’d like to compare notes.”
Gilbert looked down at his shoes. He kicked a stone across the parking lot and it hit the tire of an RCMP cruiser. “Guess that couldn’t hurt.”
“Let’s take a walk,” suggested Cole.
They strolled off Main Street and into the older residential neighbourhood adjacent to downtown, turning up Fifth Street to-ward Andy’s bar. Cole asked, “What do you think of this Sergeant Reimer? The one who’s leading the investigation?”
Gilbert shrugged. “Seems competent enough. She’s just the local Horseman. They sent a team in from Edmonton yesterday. You know, a detective and a scene-of-crime team. They only stayed the day. Figured it was cut and dried. They headed back to Edmonton with the forensics.”
“And now it’s in Reimer’s hands?”
“Looks like.”
Cole shook his head.
“What?”
“Just feels wrong to me. To leave the whole thing up to a bunch of backwoods cops.”
“They all get trained in the same place.”
“Yeah, but when was the last time anybody in this detachment had to handle this sort of case?”
“Maybe never. But they move around a lot.”
Cole looked at Gilbert. “You have faith in them?”
“I didn’t say that.”
They walked along the quiet streets of town. Gilbert changed the direction of the conversation. “So the first time you met my client was on Tuesday?”
“That’s right, at Peggy McSorlie’s ranch.”
“And the following morning you and he argued about the newspaper quote that appeared in the Red Deer Advocate, the one the RCMP suggest establishes motive?”
“That’s right, he drove me around and we argued about the wisdom of saying such a stupid thing to a newspaper reporter.” Cole snarled the word “stupid.” “At the time I never imagined the RCMP would use it as grounds to put the man in jail.”
“So what you’re telling me,” said Gilbert, “is that Mr. van Stempvort didn’t call the reporter but the reporter called him?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” said Cole.
“And that means that someone else who was in that meeting on Tuesday called the reporter to tip him off?”
Cole was getting frustrated. “That’s what I said.”
“I’m just getting up to speed on this case, Mr. Blackwater,” said Gilbert. “I’m trying to understand all the angles.”
Cole nodded.
“You think that the environmental organization you represent has a mole?”
“Look, I don’t represent them. I’m a strategy consultant, and the answer to your question is yes, I think someone inside the organization leaked information.”
Perry Gilbert walked at a brisk pace. Cole figured Gilbert was an athlete in high school, whose law degree and career as a PD kept him off the track or court.
“Whoever tipped off the reporter,” said Cole, “probably tipped off Mike Barnes. Barnes had a lot to say. He knew I was working for ESCoG and he still wanted to talk. Maybe Barnes planted the mole himself.”
Gilbert thought about this. “Maybe he learned about you some other way?”
“Maybe so. Why?”
“Well, I’m only guessing, and really, but was Dale van Stempvort set up?”
Cole stopped walking, waited until Gilbert stopped too. “How do you figure?”
He shrugged with one shoulder: “I don’t know. I’m just guessing.”
“Well, guess out loud.”
“Somebody infiltrates ESCoG. They’d have to do it a while ago, right, because the environmentalists won’t let just anybody come to their top secret strategy meeting, right?”
“Right,” said Cole, thinking hard.
“So the infiltrator calls the reporter from the Red Deer Advocate after the meeting and suggests that Dale van Stempvort is the leader of the group. The reporter, knowing that Mr. van Stempvort is a hothead, calls him up for a quote, and gets a doozy.”
Cole listened and nodded.
“The next day the quote appears in the newspaper. Months of tension boil to the surface as environmentalists are pitted against the mining company in a battle for Cardinal Divide.” Gilbert ran his hand across the space in front of him as if outlining a newspaper headline.
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” said Cole.
Gilbert was on a roll. “Maybe. So the newspaper story runs and everybody now looks at Dale van Stempvort. He becomes a known commodity. Wing nut, eco-terrorist. And that’s when our man ...”
“Or woman,” Cole said.
“Or woman,” added Gilbert, “decides to make his or her move.”
“So she calls up Barnes and asks for a meeting that night and drives out to the mine and clubs him on the head with a piece of drill steel,” said Cole.
“Knowing full well that with the temperatures running hot, the heat will come down on Dale van Stempvort. Maybe he calls up Mr. van Stempvort and invites him to a meeting at the mine that night so that his vehicle is seen at the scene of the crime.”
“Now you’re sounding a little thin,” said Cole.
Gilbert shrugged again. He turned and began to walk. “Look,” he said “it’s not really my job to find out who killed Mike Barnes ...”
“Me neither!” said Cole.
“My job is to defend Mr. van Stempvort, and I’ve got to consider what else might have happened that night.”
“Fair enough,” said Cole. “And my job is to save the Cardinal Divide.”
“That’s right, which you can’t do if Dale van Stempvort is convicted. So we had better come up with some other possibilities for who caused the untimely demise of Mike Barnes.”
“Can’t argue there,” said Cole. “And on that note, I should tell you about another little piece of information I came across.”
Cole told him about Deborah Cody’s affair with Mike Barnes, what Cole believed was a scrap of paper with damning evidence on it, the confrontation between the couple, George’s absence from the bar on Tuesday night, and Deborah’s bruised hand.
“This is starting to sound like a Dick Tracy comic,” said Perry Gilbert with a grin.
Cole smiled weakly. “I don’t do hats,” he said.
It was after four when Cole and Perry Gilbert walked back to Main Street. Cole’s head hurt and the stitches in his cheek itched and if Nancy Webber slapped him again, he’d have to slap her back. The lawyer said he would keep Cole in the loop. Perry Gilbert’s cooperation provided Cole with access to helpful information. Gilbert had some plausible theories about how Mike Barnes had really been killed. What was more, he actually believed Dale van Stempvort was innocent, which was more than could be said for Cole Blackwater, at least at first blush.
And now? Was Dale innocent? Cole mulled this question over as he walked to the Legion. He was certainly leaning that way, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. But why had van Stempvort fallen into the trap so easily? He didn’t strike Cole as a scared rabbit. Who had set the trap?
Cole walked up the front steps of the Legion Hall.
Oracle’s Legion was like a hundred Canadian Legion Halls. Administrative offices and meeting rooms were upstairs as well as a large assembly room where, once or twice a year, the community’s vets assembled to remember fallen comra
des. Cole had been in the High River Legion Hall almost as often as he’d been in Prize Fight, at least until he was a teenager and able to choose where he spent his time.
The social club downstairs served beer and light snacks to vets and the public alike. That’s where Cole found Nancy. Seated at a table in a dark corner of the room, past the pool table and toward the emergency exit (which Cole noted) Nancy sipped coffee from a porcelain cup. As Cole scanned the room, alarm bells went off left, right, and centre. A table of three men drank beer and smoked cigarettes and eyed him suspiciously as he walked past, as did two vets playing pool. Now Cole knew why Nancy chose the venue.
He sat down at the table across from her. She wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans which fit her very well. A classic white button-down shirt completed her ensemble. Her black hair hung loose and fell over the shoulders of the leather coat. He smelled a familiar fragrance. He damned himself for being so weak and pushed the arousal from his mind.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” he said cordially.
She stared at him. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“Let me tell you what I know,” he said, trying to start off on the right foot.
Cole ordered draft beer and he began. First he told her about his meeting with Barnes, and about the fight in the bar. She sat expressionless.
He told her about George and Deborah Cody, and Deborah’s affair with Mike Barnes. He told her about the mole within ESCoG and the suspicion that whoever leaked information to the media might have set up Dale van Stempvort, or worked with someone who set Dale up to take the fall for the murder. He didn’t mention Perry Gilbert. No need for Cole to divulge all his sources. That was all he had right now. It was thin. But it was his.
Throughout his explanation, Nancy sat and stared at him, drank the last of her coffee, and looked sour. Her beauty had become overshadowed as bitterness had seeped into her every pore. Cole looked at this woman who had once been so lovely, and was sad.
“I don’t know what I ever saw in you, Cole,” she finally said. Cole was startled to hear her express his own thoughts. He was silent. “I can’t imagine why I ever trusted you. I was young and stupid and ambitious and thought that you, somehow, were part of the ladder I could climb to success. That’s the way it is in Ottawa. I know that now. Snakes and Ladders. With greased rungs. In real life, you can fall off the board,” she said, and fingered the rim of the cup. “You were the greased rung for me, Cole. You were the one wrong move. You were the snake.”
“Then I guess we’re even,” he finally said.
He saw it coming. She had to let go of the coffee cup to swing and he was ready for her. He blocked her hand with his arm and shoulder. None too gently. The sound of her smack against his own leather jacket was loud. The few heads in the Legion turned to look and conversations hushed.
“You’re a bastard, Cole. You know that.” Despite his earlier notion that he might strike back, he had no desire to do so. He could see tears in Nancy’s eyes. If she knew that her eyes betrayed her, she didn’t let on. She rubbed her hand on her leg, trying to dull the sting.
“Yes,” said Cole. “I know it. I’ve heard it enough to make me believe it.” Neither Cole nor Nancy returned the stares that the patrons directed their way, and conversations finally started again.
“You ruined my career, and you have the audacity to tell me that we’re even.”
“I ruined my own career too. I guess that’s what I meant.”
“Don’t play cute with me, Blackwater.”
“OK , Nancy.” He looked her in the eyes. “I’m really just trying to say that I’m sorry.”
She was silent. The tears that had welled in the corner of her eyes now spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her sore hand.
“I really am sorry.”
“It’s too late for that. You lied to me. You took advantage of our relationship and lied and I printed it, and the truth came out, and I got fired for it.”
“It was my fault,” he said. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
“I got fired from the best job in the business, Cole. I will never get to report from Ottawa again. Do you understand that? I can’t go back. It doesn’t work that way in my business. In your business, people can come and go. In mine, once you’re gone, you’re gone. For good. I had to move to fucking Saskatchewan to find a job as a reporter. Do you know what goes on in Saskatchewan? Not a fucking thing. Nothing happens. I was the senior parliamentary reporter for The Globe and Mail one day, and the next day I’m covering agricultural fair visits by the deputy agricultural minister in one of the least populated places on the planet.” She shook her head, the tracks of her tears obvious across her face. She wore no make-up to smudge.
“What do you want me to say, Nancy?”
“There is nothing you can say.”
“I know it was my fault. I know I was the one who made the mistake. It was my lie.”
“But I printed it, is that what you’re going to say?”
He was thinking it. She printed it, and her editor didn’t check it. But he simply shook his head.
“I’ve paid for this mistake, Nancy. Big time paid. I lost my wife.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You lost your wife long before we started fucking.”
“I lost my little girl. I lost my job. My dream job. I had to leave Ottawa too. It’s not been easy for me in Vancouver.”
“Am I supposed to shed tears for you, Cole?”
“I don’t want your sympathy,” he said, his temper on the rise.
“Good.”
“What I want,” he said, breathing out through clenched teeth, “is your cooperation. And for you to stop hitting me.”
Nancy smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile since before his moment of indiscretion more than four years ago. It changed her face. The bitterness drained, if only for a moment, and once again she was impossibly beautiful. It lasted only a moment.
They sat in silence.
“Truce?” he said.
“For what purpose?”
“To get to the bottom of who really killed Mike Barnes.”
She shook her head. “Dale van Stempvort killed Mike Barnes.”
“Maybe so. But I’d like to know for sure before he’s condemned to prison for the rest of his life, and before the Cardinal Divide is handed over to the coal miners because of it.”
“Is that what this is about? You trying to save some wilderness for the grizzly bears?”
“What did you think it was about, Nancy. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done.”
“I thought that maybe it was about people this time, not just about some God-forsaken valley with a few grizzly bears in it.”
“It’s about both. It’s about Dale and about the ESCoG and about this stupid town, and about the Cardinal Divide. It’s about Mike Barnes, and his family. It’s about lies and deception,” he said.
“And redemption?”
“I don’t believe in redemption,” he said. “There’s no such thing.”
She watched him.
“Deep background only,” she said, finally.
“Yes, deep background only.”
“If my editors knew I was talking to you, I’d be writing for the Red Deer Advocate before the week was out.”
“Funny you should say that,” said Cole Blackwater.
The drive back to Peggy McSorlie’s ranch was longer than he remembered. The road wove in and out of the woods, across meadows and a few clearcuts, and past natural gas wells. He had a lot of time to think.
Nancy agreed to talk with the Red Deer Advocate reporter who started the whole mess to discover his source within ESCoG.
Cole reasoned that if they knew who tipped him off, they might be able to determine if Dale was being framed. Nancy thought it was a longshot, but saw no harm in a simple conversation between peers.
She also agreed to talk with Deborah and George Cody. Cole warned her that o
ne, or maybe both of them, might have split Mike Barnes’ skull open with a baseball bat. Nancy thought that talking with them as part of a background story on the man’s life in Oracle was a good place to start.
Cole’s job was to attempt to find out the mole’s identity from inside ESCoG. They agreed to talk the next day.
“I’m not doing this for your cause, Blackwater,” Nancy said as they rose from the table at the Legion. “And I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for a story. That’s all this is to me,” she said.
What she meant was, that’s all you are to me. A path to a story. Cole figured that’s all he had ever been. But he didn’t really want to believe it, given the years they had spent together sneaking around a city that didn’t tolerate sneaking.
He was weary from the day, and drove carefully along the gravel road toward the McSorlie place. There were so many loose ends and dead ends and fatal ends that Cole could hardly keep them straight. He wasn’t even certain what he was trying do to. He had better figure that out first before he set off on some wild goose chase.
His conversation with the lawyer from Legal Aid nagged at him. Perry Gilbert said that they ought to try and figure out who might have tipped the Red Deer Advocate reporter. Was the mole working individually, or with someone else in the community? And if so, was that person, or those people, trying to frame Dale van Stempvort for murder, or merely drive a wedge into the community for some other purpose? To make sure the mine was dug.
Then he thought about Jim Jones. Was it only two days ago that he and Jones had talked? When Jones speculated that the mine was merely a paper tiger? Cole thought about that, and how Mike Barnes had said it was dangerous for Oracle to depend on the mine so heavily for its economic future. Dangerous was not a word to be used lightly by an educated man like Barnes. He had written his dissertation on the social and economic implications for communities like Oracle when a company decides to pull up stakes. Mike Barnes knew what it was like to work for projects that shut down.
College boy, thought Cole Blackwater. Mike Barnes certainly was that.
Cole rubbed his head. Where had he heard that before?
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The Cardinal Divide Page 20