The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  “I got the same impression. He told me that he was setting himself up for a run for the Conservative nomination when it comes open.”

  “Should be soon. Old Chester Thomas is due for his next heart attack right about now,” said Nancy, looking at her watch. “Doubt that he’ll be able to run after number five. Four should be the limit. Anyway, David Smith is a driven man. He had a lot to say about the future of Oracle.”

  “No storm clouds on his horizon, are there?”

  “I get the sense that he’s the kind of guy who would change the weather. After that I did some follow up with the RCMP on logistics. Dale is being moved on Saturday morning, first thing. Seems like there was a mix-up with the forensics and they aren’t getting the results from the suspected murder weapon back until Friday at noon, so they’re holding him here a bit longer. I also talked to Reimer about a few odds and ends. I think she’s getting suspicious. Most of the other press has left, and she wanted to know why I’m still hanging around. So did my editor for that matter, but I was able to tell him I was onto something juicy.”

  “He believed you?”

  “Sure, I just haven’t told him that you’re involved is all. Every-body believes what I say so long as I don’t mention you.”

  “Nice,” he said, and tilted his head back to finish the second tumbler of wine. His chin had stopped aching. “Well, that’s all great.”

  “I’m not done.”

  “Carry on,” he said. He filled his glass and topped up hers.

  “So I snooped around both Deborah and George’s vehicles today.”

  “Ohhh, do tell.”

  “Well, Deborah’s is as clean as a whistle. It was unlocked so I was even able to get a look inside. George’s is another story.”

  Cole felt his pulse quicken. He sat forward.

  “He actually has two vehicles. A 2002 Ford F150 king cab, which is registered to the hotel.”

  “How do you get that information?”

  “Trick of the trade. He has the F150 and he has a 1983 Pontiac Pinto.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I am not kidding. I couldn’t believe it either. The truck’s clean. Looks like he uses it for hauling booze from the liquor store and bottles to the recycling depot.”

  “How very environmentally conscious of him,” said Cole, his words slightly slurred.

  “He must hose the thing down every other day, ‘cause you could eat off the bed of the truck. It has a cap on the back and it was unlocked. I got a good look around. The front of the truck is pretty clean too, but it was locked up tight and I couldn’t look in. The Pinto is another story. It was locked too. But the back seat was down and from what I could see through the window, there was some kind of tarp over the hatchback.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I couldn’t tell if it was there to cover something up, or protect the seat from something. ”

  “Or both.”

  Nancy nodded. “There wasn’t anything on the tarp itself, mind you, but the way it was tucked into the corners of the seat and the hatch, I’d guess that it was done pretty deliberately. Anyway, George Cody has had something in the back of that Pinto that leaks or spills or makes a real mess.”

  “Like Mike Barnes’ head?”

  Nancy made a face. “Maybe.”

  Cole was silent. He watched Nancy intently, holding the now empty glass loosely in one hand. He sat that way for almost a minute, regarding her, until she said, “Well, what have you got?”

  “A lot.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You don’t have any more wine around here, do you?”

  “No,” she lied. “And if I did, you don’t need it.”

  “Need and want are two different things.”

  “Tell me what you’ve got, you bastard!” she said loudly, but she smiled when she said it.

  “OK, OK.” He told her about his calls that morning, and about the confrontation with Hank Henderson, and the tipping of that hand. He told her about his conversation and ride with JP, and about his revelation that when JP had found the body the murderer was likely still in the mill. And then he told her about the bathroom and the blood.

  “Have you called the RCMP?”

  “What for?”

  “It’s important. It might force them to reopen the case!”

  “It’s not enough yet. They’ll just say that Dale clubbed Mike in the john and dragged him to the mill.”

  “They might take it more seriously than that.”

  “Come on, Nancy. You know they won’t. They don’t care about Dale, or even about Mike Barnes. They’re just doing what they’re told. They’re protecting pricks like the corporate brass who run the mine, and wankers like David Smith. People who don’t care about other people, only their own selfish interests. People whose only motive is to make sure that their own butts are covered.”

  Nancy sighed. She finished her own wine. “That was good wine,” she said.

  Cole stood up. He felt flushed and a little dizzy. “As I see it, we’re down to two.”

  “George Cody and Hank Henderson.”

  “That’s right. I haven’t ruled out Deborah entirely, but somehow this seems more, I don’t know, manly. I mean, you should have seen the blood in the bathroom.”

  “Pretty awful?”

  Cole nodded and steadied himself on the desk.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now what?” he repeated. “Now what? Now I have to catch a mole. I have to flush a mole from a hole.” Cole slurred and told her about Peggy McSorlie’s effort to narrow down the possible moles in the ESCoG from a score to just three or four names, and their plan to trick the mole into revealing himself.

  “Can I get in on it?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

  “No way,” he said. “For all I know it has nothing to do whatsoever with the death of Mike Barnes. It’s just a hunch. Plus I’ve got to protect my client. There might still be something left to save when this is all over with.”

  Nancy shrugged.

  “And we’ve got to follow up on a couple of things. First, were Mike Barnes’ keys found on him when he was killed? And what about that blasted Day-Timer?”

  “Reimer says nothing has turned up about the appointment book. I asked about it today. She says they have searched the mill, the admin building, Dale’s truck, Dale’s ranch, and even Mike Barnes’ place, but nothing.”

  Cole steadied himself against the wall. “It’s got to be around somewhere.”

  “Cole, it could have been thrown out of a car window into the woods and eaten by a bear.”

  “Bears have better taste than that,” he quipped.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I’ll look into the keys,” she said. “And I’m going to try and find out more about George Cody’s past. See if he has any history of violence.”

  Cole stood against the dresser. “This is just like old times,” he said.

  Nancy’s face soured. “No it isn’t, Cole. It had better not be. Because if this is just like old times, you’re about to fuck me over, and if you do, you and Mike Barnes are going to have a lot in common, got it?”

  “Calm down. I just meant, you know, you and me working together.”

  “There was never a you and me working together. There was you working to jerk off your own ego, and there was me, getting bent over and fucked because of it.”

  “You liked it.”

  She grabbed the empty wine bottle and threw it at him. Maybe because he had drunk most of its contents, he was able to step aside quickly enough that it grazed his shoulder and bounced off the wall and hit the dresser behind him. “You take that back, you shithead.”

  “I’m sorry. I was only joking.”

  “It’s not funny. I lost my job. My career. I’ll never be able to work the Hill again.”

  “Sorry.” He let his head hang down, but didn’t take his eyes off of her lest she throw something els
e.

  “And I loved you, you asshole.”

  He was silent.

  “You broke my Goddamn heart. You shattered me. Losing my job was bad enough. But I lost you, you fucker. It nearly killed me.”

  For the first time Cole Blackwater became aware that he wasn’t alone in the world. It had never really occurred to him that she had loved him. He always felt that to her he was just entertainment, the sort of thing you do when you’re bored and you want to live a little closer to the edge of things.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Yeah, well so am I. Now get the fuck out,” she said, and turned her back on him.

  18

  He knew he should head straight back to Peggy McSorlie’s ranch, but he went to the bar instead. He inspected every face in the joint deliberately as he entered. So intent was he on watching his back that he didn’t see George Cody behind the bar until George greeted him.

  “Howdy stranger!” he said cheerfully when Cole leaned against the counter.

  Cole turned quickly, startled. “Hi George.”

  George peered at him “Your face is healing up. You’re no uglier now than you were when you first got here. Though it looks like you cut yourself pretty good shaving this morning.”

  “Close shave of another kind.”

  “You like to mix it up, don’t you?”

  “Keeps me from being too big of a horse’s patoot.”

  George laughed. “Around here that’s called a horse’s ass.”

  “Where I come from too, but I promised my daughter I’d clean up my language. Its hard, but I’m trying.”

  “Very noble.”

  “Thanks. Can I get a Jameson? Rocks.”

  George poured. “Didn’t make any promises about the booze though, huh?”

  “You my counsellor now?” said Cole testily.

  “None of my business,” said George, holding his hands up. “Just giving you a hard time.”

  Cole took a hearty pull on the Jameson. It burned a little after the wine, but it felt warm in his belly. “Forget it. I’m just in a foul mood.”

  “I thought you had headed home. Deborah told me you checked out.”

  “I did. I was. But I changed my mind. Unfinished business.”

  “Oh?” George drew beer for the waitress.

  “Don’t like the way things turned out with the mine and with Mike Barnes and with Dale van Stempvort.” Cole finished his whiskey, put the glass on the bar, and tapped it lightly. George looked at him and poured another measure.

  “Don’t like it at all,” said Cole, and pulled on his fifth drink of the night.

  “And what don’t you like?”

  “None of it. First, Dale van Stempvort is an idiot, but he’s no killer. Second, Mike Barnes was a prick, but he didn’t deserve to get his brains splattered all over the b – ” Cole checked himself. “All over the place. Third, the Buffalo Anthracite Mine has had its day, and something new is needed around here, but that isn’t going to happen if Dale gets framed for Mike Barnes’ murder.” Cole spoke quietly and quickly, and looked at his hands wrapped around the tumbler of Irish whiskey.

  George leaned on the bar, resting his elbows there. His head was low, but his eyes were on Cole. “You’ve got some strong opinions.”

  “Sure do. Always have.”

  “Seems to get you in trouble.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Seem to remember you not being able to handle the chair the other night.”

  “OK, so the chair was a surprise. I was out of practice. I’m back now.”

  “So you stuck around Oracle to solve the mystery of Mike Barnes’ murder.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Got any suspects?”

  “I got a few.”

  “Care to share?”

  Cole sipped his drink. He felt both foggy and razor-sharp at the same time. His peripheral vision had vanished and all that remained was straight ahead. Dead straight ahead. “Two types of people,” he said. “People who didn’t like what Mike Barnes was up to at the mine, and people who didn’t like what Mike Barnes got up to when he wasn’t at the mine.”

  “That sounds like a lot of people.”

  “Yep. Whole town pretty much.”

  “You narrowing it down?”

  “Yep.” He sipped his drink.

  George poured a couple of beers and mixed a rum and coke. He came back and resumed his place across from Cole. “So you’ve narrowed it down.”

  “Yep,” Cole said again. “Two people.”

  “That’s pretty narrow.”

  “Pretty narrow,” Cole agreed.

  “You going to tell me who those two people are?” George spoke evenly.

  Cole sipped his drink. He set it down and looked at his hands. He used to have fast hands as a boxer. How fast were they tonight? “Nope,” he finally said. After five drinks, slow as molasses at Christmas.

  “Suit yourself. But I’ve read a lot of mystery books, and I got a pretty good eye for this sort of thing.”

  Cole shrugged. The adrenaline born from being so close to one of his murder suspects was now wearing off. He finished his drink. When George served him this sixth, he said, “I even got a magnifying glass somewhere around here, and one of them silly hats, if you want it, Sherlock.” Cole smiled as George laughed. Funny, he thought. Very funny.

  He drove himself back to Peggy’s place. George wanted to call him a cab, but it was a half-hour drive, and would cost him half a day’s wage, so he drove slowly with the window down and the music turned way up. When he pulled into the yard he felt a bump and thought maybe he’d run over a piece of wood, or if he were lucky, a cat, but didn’t bother to check. He stepped heavily out of the truck, almost fell, and staggered across the yard.

  He walked to the barn, figured he was drunk enough to find a saddle blanket or two and fall asleep in the hay. Better than crash through the unfamiliar house, wake everybody up, and explain how he drove home snot-hanging, toilet-hugging drunk. That wouldn’t go over big.

  But when he opened the barn door, sleep was the last thing on his mind. The swarm of hay-scented air hit him like a leather glove in the face and he reeled in the thick aroma. He took two steps and tripped on a loose floorboard and fell heavily to the ground. He lay on the floor, feeling a trickle of fresh blood seeping from his face. He felt so tired. So tired.

  A golden cloak of evening light draped itself over the gentle folds of Alberta’s Porcupine Hills. Summer insects buzzed and droned. The delicate light slanted across the rolling hills and caught the myriad insects in their evening dance, like so many dust motes.

  The hills rose and fell, rose and fell, sparse clumps of aspen trees tucked in among them. On their flanks, grasses grew thickly, making the Porcupine Hills some of Canada’s finest ranch country. In the distance, the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains towered like the fortified ramparts of an ancient castle. Free of snow in early June, they formed a blue-grey wall of limestone rising three thousand feet above the gently rolling plains that broke like shattered waves at their feet.

  The slopes of the Porcupine Hills were pocked with the black and brown forms of free-range cattle grazing their way downslope toward evening pasture. Where once buffalo roamed, now domestic breeds took sustenance on the rich nutrients of rough fescue.

  At the base of one hill, a ranch was laid out among a few spreading cottonwood trees that lined a tiny creek. The trees gave meagre shelter from the harsh summer sun, the biting winter winds, and the nearly constant howl of the Chinook that blew year round.

  The ranch house was a rambling, single-story affair with a wide porch and shuttered windows and a small kitchen garden on the creek side of the building. First built in 1895, it was added to when the market for cattle would permit and when war did not pull the homestead’s men overseas. A chicken coop, pig pen, tack shed, and drive shed were scattered around the ranch house. Half a dozen derelict automobiles and a ramshackle assortment of barr
els littered the near pasture and interrupted the picturesque ranch image.

  Light shone from the kitchen of the ranch house, but no shadows passed across its windows.

  The barn, set back against hills that rose toward the west, leaked light though its weathered boards. The broad doors stood open and the incandescence spilt across the ranch yard.

  The sound of a man’s voice rose above the hum of the evening. A dog barked. Feet shuffled on canvas. The heavy sound of bodies colliding went out like a dull call into the night.

  Inside the barn the walls were piled high with hay, the bales stacked ten or twelve high around the outside of the barn. But at its centre there were no bales. Where in other barns there might be cattle feed or farm machinery a boxing ring stood. No crude arrangement of hemp ropes strung between crates or chairs, this ring was complete with a raised canvas floor and cloth-covered ropes strung tightly between corner poles fixed firmly in place in the barn floor. Four overhead lights hanging from the barn ceiling filled the ring with a harsh white light and cast tall shadows of three bodies onto the straw-lined walls.

  Two boys circled each other in the ring. One of the boys is nearly a man, fifteen or sixteen years old. The other is younger, not more than thirteen. They each wear heavy gloves and trunks, and sweat streaks their bodies. Farm boys both, they wear the broad shoulders and lean, muscled arms of those accustomed to pitching bales of hay onto the bed of a tractor. They circle each other while a man, also in gloves, call to them.

  “That’s it, boys, that’s it. Keep light on those feet,” he says.

  The border collie circles the ring, herding the boys, barking.

  “Watch for the opening, Walt, watch for the opening. That’s it. Now step in,” shouts the man.

  The older boy feints and then steps in with a quick right hand jab, and the younger boy is knocked back. The older boy steps out and the two continue to circle each other.

  Stockier than the younger boy, Walter is 5’11’’, heavy across the chest, with short-cropped dark hair and a heavy, brooding brow. But he smiles as he circles the ring, and winks at his brother as they trade jabs.