The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  David Smith laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. It didn’t take a boxer to know that David Smith was a heavyweight. He was big and not so much overweight as stout. Cole figured he weighed a solid 230 pounds, and while he might not be all muscle, he sure wasn’t all blubber either. A wide grin came to David Smith’s face. “So you’re no longer masquerading as a reporter. Now you’re a PI, is that it?”

  “I’m just trying to save the Cardinal Divide is all.”

  “Well you can thank Dale van Stempvort for its destruction. He’s turned the whole town against the environmentalists. Nobody’s going to listen to their whining now.”

  “Dale van Stempvort didn’t kill Mike Barnes.”

  “And you think I did?”

  Cole was silent. He regarded the man opposite the desk, so effusive, so confident. “I’m not saying that,” he finally said. “But I think that you set Dale up to say something stupid to that reporter. I think that you had one of your stooges from the Chamber of Commerce get inside the ESCoG and snitch on their goings on, and I think you got some Neanderthals from the mine to use me as a punching bag on the night Mike Barnes was killed.”

  Cole wasn’t sure about the Neanderthals part. Hank Henderson could have easily set that up too. But he was on a roll.

  Smith broke into laughter. “I’ll admit that you don’t look nearly as pretty as you did when you first waltzed into this office last week,” he said, catching his breath, “but if I had wanted to give you a beating, I would have done it myself, son. That’s how we do things around here. No, I didn’t get those boys to lay some lumber to you. You’ll have to go looking for another perpetrator for that one. And as for your conspiracy theory about a ferret in amongst the fish-kissers, you should probably know that Dale van Stempvort doesn’t need anybody’s assistance to put his foot in his mouth. That man was born with it there. He’s been saying cockamamie things to the press for as long as he’s been in this town. Looks like now he’s finally fallen off the deep end and actually done something really awful.”

  Cole stood up. “I’m going to be doing some digging, Mr. Smith. You better hope I don’t find whatever it is you’re hiding behind that politician’s smile.” He turned to leave. Before he could step through the door, David Smith stopped him.

  “Hold it there, pal. Hold it. You just better think twice about who you’re threatening. You better think about it long and hard. I run this town. This town is mine. And no washed-up pecker-head like you is going to march in here and tell me what’s what. I’ve been calling the shots here for a long time. I’m going to be calling them long after you leave. And if you don’t watch yourself, watch that mouth of yours, and keep that busted-up nose of yours out of trouble, you’re going to find yourself in way, way over your head.”

  Cole smiled. “Who’s threatening who now, Mr. Smith?”

  “Its not a threat, Mr. Blackwater. It’s just the way things are. It’s just the way things get done.”

  The two men regarded each other. David Smith leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Blackwater,” he said, leaning forward. “That’s a funny name. What is it?”

  “My father was black Irish. But the name comes from Scotland,

  where my great-great grandfather worked in the mines.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Smith. “You know what black water is?”

  Cole smiled. “Yeah. Mercenaries. In Iraq.”

  Now Smith grinned. “Hm,” he said, “I hadn’t thought of that one. You fancy yourself a mercenary, Blackwater?”

  “This has been fun, but it’s time for me to see about shutting your little plans for this town down now,” Cole said and turned to go.

  Smith stopped him again. “It’s the water that forms at the bottom of the pit, or at the bottom of a stope in a coal mine. It’s poison. It’s deadly. Men in a mine know to avoid it like the plague. Better watch yourself, Mr. Blackwater. You’ll find your name a fitting epitaph.”

  20

  “Was Mike Barnes attacked from front or from behind?” Cole asked Perry Gilbert as he walked to his truck, cell-phone in hand. Main Street smelled of wet pavement as raindrops spattered the street. The sun dogs of several days ago yielded their moisture.

  “There were two wounds. A wound to the front of his head, which seems to have bled a great deal, and a wound to the back of his head, which fractured his skull.”

  “Which killed him?”

  “I don’t know. The RCMP still haven’t released the results of their forensics, and because of that, the autopsy still hasn’t been released.”

  “What about the bathroom?”

  “I talked to Reimer this morning. She’s lifted samples of the blood for a match with Barnes, and had the room sealed.”

  “They didn’t happen to check the toilet, did they?”

  “I didn’t ask. Why?”

  “Remember I told you that it was plugged?”

  “I don’t remember that, Cole, sorry.”

  “I might have forgotten to mention it. Getting hit in the head will do that to you.”

  Perry laughed, then sobered. “Sorry, I guess it’s not funny.”

  “Go ahead and laugh; it feels pretty funny to me right now. Listen, I just got out of a meeting with a fellow named David Smith. Know him?”

  “Should I?”

  “He’s president of the local Chamber of Commerce. Connected politically. Likes to play tough guy. I’m starting to think he might be the one who set the snitch up in the ESCoG, though I’m not one hundred percent certain who that snitch is. We’ve laid some bait and are waiting for the trap to be sprung. Anyway, this guy Smith came across pretty aggressive in a meeting just now. He’s going on the suspects list.”

  “You’re keeping a list?”

  “You know what I mean. If I was a betting man, I’d still put my money on Henderson, but Smith is closing the gap on those odds.”

  “You have something new on Henderson?”

  “Right, I almost forgot. I am losing my marbles. I cased Henderson’s place this morning. I talked with his wife.”

  “You what? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “Look, just about everybody is threatening to kill me right now. Henderson had already made that list. Anyway, I talked to the wife this morning. Motherhood and apple pie, I tell you. Invited me to dinner.”

  Gilbert chuckled. Cole continued, “She tells me that our man Henry gets home from work every night by six-thirty.”

  “So?”

  “So one of the nosey neighbours says that last Tuesday night Hank didn’t make it home ’til after midnight.”

  “Man, you are really taking this pi bit seriously.”

  “I’m a serious guy.”

  “So maybe he was out with the boys?”

  “Why would the old lady lie?”

  “Got me.”

  “Me too.”

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t know now what,” said Cole, arriving at his truck. “I need something to eat. Check in with Nancy. Try to make some sense of all this. Can you look into the head wound?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Something that Smith said. Said that if a good old boy had been running the shop he wouldn’t have let someone sneak up behind him and club him.”

  “I’ll look into it. Call you tomorrow.”

  Cole hung up.

  He had no sooner hung up than his phone rang.

  “Blackwater.”

  “It’s me. Nancy.”

  “Hi.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I really unloaded on you. It wasn’t fair.”

  “I deserved it,” he said, leaning against the passenger side door, looking up the street toward the Chamber of Commerce office.

  “True, you do, but just the same, I went pretty rough on you.”

  “I can take it.”

  “Would you shut the fuck up and let me apologize?” He could tell she was smiling when she sa
id it.

  “OK ,” he said, and grinned.

  “So, I’m sorry. Now, back to business. I got something on George.”

  “Things aren’t getting any less complex, are they?”

  “Why, what have you got?”

  “Suspect number three.”

  “Who?”

  “David Smith.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “All right, let’s compare notes. Can you come by?”

  “Can’t we go out?”

  “Better not, Cole. I really can’t be seen with you. You know the drill.”

  “OK ,” he said, and examined his boots. More sneaking around. It really was like old times. “I’ll grab some food and come by.”

  “Get a bottle of wine, too, OK?”

  “I’m still nursing a hangover.”

  “Hair of the dog that bit you,” she said, and hung up.

  It was seven o’clock before Cole arrived at Nancy Webber’s room. He balanced a stack of take-out containers of Chinese food in one hand and a bottle of red wine and a six pack of Tsingtao beer in the other.

  “Thank God you’re here. I’m famished,” Nancy said at the door.

  They opened the boxes and arranged the food at the centre of the little round table. Nancy opened the wine and poured herself a glass. Cole opened a bottle of beer and took a sip.

  “Where did you find that in this town?” Nancy asked.

  “Ancient Chinese secret,” replied Cole, and dug into the food.

  “All right,” announced Nancy when she had cleaned her first plate of food and heaped a second plate full. “Our man George has a record, and a history.”

  Cole took a sip of beer. “What’s he done?”

  “Well, he has one aggravated assault charge against him that was dropped when the victim refused to press charges. Looks like a bar-room fight. More interesting than that, he has a history of domestic violence. No charges, but I talked to some people in the community where he lived before he met Deborah, and they say the cops were always out at his place to break up fights between him and his old lady.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

  “It gets better,” said Nancy, and deftly guided chow mein noodles into her mouth with chopsticks.

  “Do tell.”

  “When George Cody discovered his lady friend was having an affair, he slapped her around and went storming off in his Pinto to find the boyfriend. The lady called the cops and they had the wherewithal to intervene. They stopped George outside the bloke’s house. Guess what he had with him?”

  “Roses and a box of chocolates?”

  “Funny. No, he had a baseball bat in the car.”

  “Ho ho!” said Cole, taking a pull on the beer.

  “So old George has a history. When he found that note it must have been déjà vu all over again. I guess he figured, if at first you don’t succeed try again. Picture this. He gets in his car, packs his trusty Louisville Slugger, drives out to the mine, gets into the building unseen, watches for his opportunity, and whappo, slugs Mike Barnes in the head. Then he carries him downstairs from the bathroom, loads him into the Pinto, drives him across the yard to the mill, carries him in through those double doors you’ve told me about, and walks right into the skid of bits and stuff, and knocks it over. Must have hurt like a bugger. Barnes falls onto the floor and his head hits one of the bits. That’s when the night watchman opens the big bay doors at the far end and George beats a hasty retreat.”

  Cole opened another bottle of Tsingtao. “What about the Pinto?”

  “Well, maybe he parked it somewhere out of sight.”

  “And what about the Day-Timer?”

  “That bloody appointment book is a problem, isn’t it? I doubt that George called ahead for a meeting. Maybe that appointment book has nothing to do with this. Maybe Barnes just lost it?”

  “Between when I left him at seven and when he got killed?”

  “You’re right. Seems unlikely.”

  “Let me tell you about my day. That might help us sort out who’s who.”

  He told her about his meetings with the three possible moles.

  “This is so juicy!” Nancy said when he finished.

  “You can’t write about this!”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ve got to get a story out of this, Cole, or I’m going to get fired again.”

  “Never had a job so good I couldn’t quit or get fired from it,” he said, echoing Jim Jones.

  “That’s you, not me.”

  “At least let the mole surface. Then I’ll talk it over with Peggy.”

  Nancy held up her hands in surrender.

  “Things got more complex today, I’m afraid, not less. Let me tell you about Hank and about David.”

  He told her about his meeting with Emma Henderson, how he snooped around the neighbourhood, and what he learned as a result.

  “You’re taking one hell of a risk, Cole. When Henderson connects the dots, which,” and she looked at her watch, “should be about now, he’s going to be furious.”

  “No doubt, but I had to figure out if he was at home that night. And he wasn’t.”

  Cole then told her about his run in with David Smith. “I went to see him because he got a copy of the environmental assessment. He would have figured out after one read that the company had no intention of digging the mine after putting in the rail line and the road to keep shareholders or trust unit owners satisfied. I doubt he would have been very pleased.”

  “You think he killed Mike Barnes because of it?”

  “It’s a possibility. Hear me out. Smith gets a copy of the report late on Monday night of last week. That’s the day I was getting settled in with the ESCoG.” Cole shook his head. “It seems like a year ago,” he said, rubbing his face to feel for the various scars. “So he gets the report, and by Tuesday he’s gone through it. Outraged, he calls Barnes and demands a meeting. Barnes tells him to come out to the mine in the evening, ’cause he’s booked up with other meetings, including mine. Smith shows up and they get into a shouting match. Or maybe Smith goes berserk and Barnes keeps his cool – that seems more likely – and one thing leads to another and Smith finds something heavy and follows Barnes to the can and cracks him in the head. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “So then he what? He drags the body downstairs and loads him into his what? What does he drive?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think to check,” said Cole and shook his head.

  “So he loads him into his truck, a safe guess, right? And drives him across the yard to the mill,” continued Nancy, “and brings him through the double doors into the little room.”

  “Right,” said Cole. “Smith used to work in the mill, so he’d know his way around there in the dark. But he wasn’t anticipating the mill doubling as storage now, so he smashes into the drill bits and down goes Mike Barnes. Splat! His head connects with a bit.”

  “That’s when the night watchman arrives.”

  Cole frowned. “What I don’t get is why none of these guys are limping. If I knocked over a pallet full of drill bits with my shanks I’d be hobbling around on crutches. Dale, David, and George are all just fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “I think so.” Cole thought about it. He tapped his bandaged chin with a finger. “Come to think of it, I haven’t ever seen David Smith walk. He didn’t get up when I was in his office today. He could be immobile for all I know.”

  “What about Smith’s vehicle?” asked Nancy. “We’ve got the same problem with this story as George’s. Why didn’t the night watchman see his vehicle?”

  “Maybe he parked it out of sight somewhere?”

  “But how did he get the body from the office to the mill? It’s a long walk, isn’t it? Be a hell of a risk to just saunter across the yard like you were going for a quart of milk and a loaf of bread with a body over your shoulder.”

&nbs
p; “It’s not that far, but Mike Barnes was a big man, and it would be a heck of a risk to take.”

  “Murder is a hell of a risk, period.”

  “Fair point,” said Cole. He set his beer down and stood up.

  “It all seems to come down to that appointment book,” said Nancy. “If we could only get our hands on it. It’s like the thing has been flushed down the toilet and out to sea.”

  Cole turned around so fast that Nancy started. “That’s it!” he cried.

  “What’s it?”

  “The toilet was plugged,” said Cole, pacing like a tiger in a cage. “I bet anything that the Day-Timer is there.”

  “In the can?”

  “Why not? Barnes goes to the washroom before heading home. He’s got his Day-Timer with him. Whoever clubs him stuffs it in the toilet in a panic, but the toilet gets backed up. But he doesn’t have time to deal with it, so he leaves it there and gets rid of the body.”

  “That’s pretty thin. Even in a panic you’d think that whoever killed Barnes would know that a book like that isn’t going to go down the toilet.”

  “It’s worth checking out, don’t you think?”

  Nancy thought for a moment. “What about Henderson? What if he has the appointment book? Maybe he hid it. Or threw it out with the trash. We may never find this thing, you know.”

  “I know. But I’m going to give it one more try tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going back to the mine and see if I can’t get into that bathroom.”

  “That’s a big risk, Cole. What if Henderson catches you?”

  Cole rubbed his chin. “I can handle Henderson,” he said, being cocky. But in his mind he wondered if he could.

  They promised to be in touch first thing in the morning. Nancy would pester the RCMP about the forensics report and vowed to add the autopsy to her list of demands. She too was curious about which head wound killed Mike Barnes: the front or the back?

  “And call me from the mine,” she added, “I think you’re out of your league going back there alone.”

  “There’s no cell coverage there.”

  “Well, call me as soon as you have coverage.”

  “I’m touched that you’re worried about me.”