The Darkening Archipelago

by Stephen Legault

  “What about you?” said Nancy, reaching for her trump card.

  “What about me?” said Greg, tilting his head to the side.

  “What do you stand to gain?”

  “If I do my job right, my people will re-elect me. That will be gain enough.”

  Nancy steadied herself and said, “I have information that suggests Stoboltz provided you with money during the election. Money that went above and beyond a campaign contribution.”

  Greg looked as if he had been punched in the stomach. “What are you accusing me of?”

  “Nothing, Mr. White Eagle. But I have seen this information, and it reflects very poorly on you, on Stoboltz, and on certain members of the provincial government.”

  “That’s horseshit, and you know it.” Greg White Eagle sat back in his chair and looked out the tiny window.

  “Did you accept a bribe from Stoboltz Aquaculture that you then passed onto others in this community in return for votes?”

  “Where do you get off coming in here and making accusations like that?”

  “Did you? Did Stoboltz give you money in return for your support for expanded salmon farming in the archipelago?”

  Greg White Eagle shifted his bulk in the chair. Nancy watched him, saying nothing. Let him play out the rope, she thought.

  He turned to look at her. “I think you’re in with that Cole Blackwater character, aren’t you?” he asked. “I think you and he are working together. I know that he and Archie were pals. I know all about Archie, see. Archie, the white knight. Archie, the noble savage, protecting his people’s traditions and culture. Archie, salmon king. Well, Archie Ravenwing was a bold-faced crook. Bet your Cole Blackwater didn’t tell you that, did he? Bet he didn’t tell you that Archie Ravenwing had been stealing money from his own people for personal gain.”

  “I know about it. Grace told me,” said Nancy, trying to remain calm. “But I’m not asking about Archie Ravenwing, Councillor. I’m asking about you.”

  “I’ve got all the financial records,” said White Eagle, ignoring her. “Looks like old Archie Ravenwing was even skimming money from his friends. Invoices sent by a company called Blackwater Strategies were to be paid in cash, according to Archie. I wonder if that money ever made it to your friend?” White Eagle smiled a smug grin. “You start writing about corruption, Ms. Webber, I’ll see to it that all sorts of stories get told.”

  Nancy smiled. “Where were you on the night Archie disappeared, Mr. White Eagle?”

  “Right here at home.”

  “You didn’t go out that night? Or maybe in the afternoon?”

  “I was in Alert Bay for a band council meeting in the morning, and I got home around suppertime.”

  “Were you seen?”

  “What do you mean, was I seen? Of course I was seen. My kids saw me, my wife saw me. Maybe even my neighbours saw me! What are you suggesting?” he yelled.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. I want to write a story about Port Lostcoast on the day Archie went missing is all.”

  Greg White Eagle took a deep breath and let it out. “You got a particular way of asking things, Ms. Webber, that gets a man pretty riled up. You know that?”

  — “It’s my specialty,” said Nancy Webber, standing and extending her hand.

  Grace Ravenwing heard the phone ringing as she walked up the pathway that cut through the windblown grasses from the dirt road. She ran the last twenty feet and burst through the unlocked door in time to catch the phone on the fifth and final ring.

  “Hello?” she said, catching her breath.

  “Is this Grace Ravenwing?”

  “This is she.”

  “It’s Detective Sergeant Alan Bates calling. Constable Derek Johns of the Alert Bay detachment has briefed me on this incident. I’m with the Integrated Major Crimes unit based in Victoria. We’re made up of officers from the RCMP, Victoria pd, and the Oak Bay pd. I’m with the RCMP, myself. Do you have a few minutes to chat, Ms. Ravenwing?”

  “I do. Go ahead.” She sat down at the kitchen table and looked out the windows at the ocean.

  “We’re going to open a case file on the disappearance of your father. At this time we’re not willing to call it a murder investigation. It will officially be a missing person file, and his disappearance will be treated as suspicious. The Integrated Major Crimes unit is called in to investigate all such suspicious activities. Do you understand, Ms. Ravenwing?”

  “I do.” She touched her cheek with her free hand and let the fingers rest there. “Does that mean you found something? Something on the boat? Was it blood?”

  “The substance you discovered around the seals of the engine compartment was human blood. There was quite a lot of it. Using Luminol, we also picked up minute traces of it around the wheelhouse, around the bottom of the seat, and in a pool that extended from the wheelhouse to the engine compartment. It appears to have been significantly diluted with salt water by the time it got to the engine hatch, but that seems consistent with what we are told were the weather conditions that night.

  “What we haven’t found is any indication that your father hit his head on anything other than the deck of the boat. There is no evidence of blood on the wheel, for example. Nothing on the control panel. Nothing on the sides of the wheelhouse walls. Nothing to suggest that the Inlet Dancer was hit with a particularly powerful wave that caused him to pitch forward or sideways and hit his head in a fashion that would produce such a volume of blood.”

  Grace was silent. Her hand rested on her cheek. A flock of glaucous-winged gulls circled over the harbour, pitching and diving.

  “Ms. Ravenwing, I’m sorry. I know this is difficult.”

  “It’s okay. Go on.”

  “Well, the fact is, ma’am, we’re not sure what to make of this situation. Without having recovered your father’s body, it’s next to impossible for us to speculate on what might have happened to him. So, our plan now is to come to Port Lostcoast and do some further work. We’ll want to have a look around your home, the docks, any other place your father may have spent his time over the last few weeks before he disappeared. We’ll also collect some dna samples from you at that time. If you would please not disturb any of your father’s things from this point on, we’d appreciate that.”

  “We’ve been in his office a fair amount, Sergeant.”

  “That’s okay, but please, don’t disturb anything from this point on. And please don’t touch his toothbrush or hairbrush at this point.” The sergeant drew a long breath. “I’ll be leading a team that will come to Port Lostcoast to chat with a few folks about Mr. Ravenwing. Constable Johns will accompany me, as well as our forensics experts. We’ll have a few questions for you and others. You know, did he have any enemies. That sort of thing.”

  “When will you be here?”

  “We should be in Port Lostcoast by tomorrow evening. We’re going to wrap things up in Alert Bay tomorrow morning. Will you be able to meet with us then?”

  “Yes,” she said. She lowered her hand and looked at it, as if surprised to find it next to her face. “And you should meet with Cole Blackwater then, too.”

  “I have his name here from Constable Johns. What’s his involvement?”

  “I guess you should know, Sergeant, that we have suspected my father was murdered since seeing the blood in the seal of the engine compartment several days ago now. We’ve been, well, doing our own investigation.”

  “Who is we? Are there more people other than you and Mr. Blackwater involved?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking down. “A friend of Cole’s named Nancy Webber has been helping. She’s a reporter. And my brother Jacob, though he’s just been taxiing us around. And Darren First Moon, Archie’s employee on the Inlet Dancer. He and Archie were also close friends.”

  She heard the detective sergeant take a long breath on the other end of the phone. “I need to repeat that we’re not declaring this a murder investigation. It’s a missing person’s case. And I also have to ask that you
leave the investigation to the Major Crimes unit from this point on. Any interference from civilians could compromise both the investigation and, should we determine that this is a case of murder and apprehend a suspect, any contamination of evidence will limit the possibility of a conviction. It’s important, Ms. Ravenwing, that you leave the investigation to the professionals at this point. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Good then. I’ll call you from Alert Bay tomorrow if I think we won’t be able to make it to Port Lostcoast by evening.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” She broke the connection.

  The gulls were gone. The ocean outside the harbour had picked up some chop. Whitecaps formed and broke on three-foot swells. Overhead the sky had darkened again, threatening more — storms.

  Cole walked through town toward the bluff house. The wind was hard at his back, the afternoon having turned tempestuous. When he stepped inside the house, he went straight to Archie’s office, picked up the phone, and dialled the number for Stoboltz in Vancouver.

  “Can I have a number for your research facility at Jeopardy Rock?” he asked the receptionist.

  “We don’t have phone lines there. There’s a satellite phone on station. I can give you that number. Is it an emergency?”

  “Not really,” said Cole, unable to come up with a convincing lie. He was learning his lessons. “I’m trying to reach Dr. Thurlow is all.”

  She gave him the satellite phone number and he dialled it. The strange ring echoed in his ear and finally he heard a distant voice. “Jeopardy Rock.”

  “Dr. Thurlow, please.”

  “A minute.”

  A minute passed. Cole fiddled with a piece of paper. “Thurlow,” came a crackling voice.

  “Dr. Thurlow, it’s Cole Blackwater calling. We met at Archie Ravenwing’s potlatch.”

  “How are you, Mr. Blackwater?”

  “Fine, sir. Listen, I know that this is an expensive call —”

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, sir, I’m trying to close up some of Archie’s files, you know, for the family, and I came across something that has me puzzled.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it’s about some work that you seem to be doing at Jeopardy Rock. It has to do with sea lice. It seems that Archie had some evidence that you are finding sea lice on both farmed Atlantic and wild Pacific salmon that are hundreds of times higher than other samples taken from the area. Can you explain that to me?”

  “We’re breeding them here.”

  “Sorry, say again?”

  “We’re breeding them. All above board, I assure you. We’re trying to understand what impact they have on both farmed and wild fish. If we can understand this, maybe we can put a stop to it.”

  “I’m not really following that, sir. How would that work?”

  “Well,” he laughed, his voice sharp over the line. “We haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Seems to me like it’s a big risk to take.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Blackwater, it isn’t. These lice are being bred in the onshore facility here. We had it renovated, and we updated the old dfo station. It’s a state-of-the-art facility now. Really something to see.”

  Cole was silent. He hadn’t been prepared for Thurlow’s admission and explanation.

  “Would you like to see it for yourself, Mr. Blackwater?”

  Cole took a breath. “Sure.”

  “Do you have a boat?”

  “No, but I can have someone give me a lift.”

  “Why don’t you come out this way tomorrow? I should be here, though I have to get back to Vancouver in the next few days. I’d love to show you around.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  “Good, then. We’ll see you.”

  Cole hung up. Once more into the lion’s den, he thought.

  24

  They all started talking at once. Cole Blackwater, Grace Ravenwing, Nancy Webber, and Darren First Moon were huddled around the kitchen table. Grace had served a simple meal of poached salmon, green beans she’d found in the freezer, and roasted potatoes. Cole had bought a couple of six packs at off-sales at The Strait, and they all sat drinking bottles of cold Race Rocks.

  “Okay, okay,” said Cole, smiling and taking a pull from his beer. “One at a time. Grace, first tell us what Carrie Bright told you on the phone this afternoon. Let’s see if it fits into this at all.”

  “Who’s Carrie Bright again?” asked Nancy.

  “She’s the executive director of the Save Our Seas coalition,” said Grace. “They’re based in Sointula, on Malcolm Island. They work with some environmental groups across the province trying to shut down salmon farms —”

  “Among other things….” added Cole.

  Nancy nodded her understanding. Grace continued. “I can’t believe the timing of this, but the minister of agriculture is coming here the day after tomorrow to make an announcement on the First Nations Opportunity Fund. Picked Port Lostcoast because it’s a symbol of the sort of community the fund will help. According to Bright, the ministry thinks that the fund will put nearly everybody in Port Lostcoast to work on salmon farms.”

  “On Stoboltz-owned salmon farms,” said Cole.

  “I got something similar out of Greg First Eagle today, too,” added Nancy.

  “The band chief will be here, and the minister of labour,” said Grace.

  “It’s going to be a media circus around here,” said Webber.

  “It’s an opportunity for us,” said Cole.

  “How?” asked Grace.

  “Spotlight,” Nancy answered for him.

  Cole swigged his beer. “If we wanted to, we could blow this whole thing wide open. We could turn this media event into a feeding frenzy.” Nancy could see a familiar light in Cole’s eyes. She’d seen it many times in Ottawa when he was pursuing, with the single-minded determination of a dog chasing a rabbit, an environmental issue close to his heart. It was the smell of blood, thought Nancy, plain and simple. Cole Blackwater could sense that the kill was near at hand.

  “I don’t get it,” said Grace. “Doesn’t Lance Grey know what we’ve got?”

  “Sure he does,” said Nancy. “Or at least he strongly suspects.”

  “So why have a media event here?”

  “I’ll admit it seems pretty brazen,” said Cole, standing to get another beer from the fridge. “The only thing I can think of is that Lance Grey is so far out on a limb that he doesn’t care at this point what happens to the minister.”

  “There would be no way to protect the minister if this were to get out. He’d be tarred with the same brush.”

  “If what got out?” asked Darren First Moon. He’d been sitting quietly up until this point.

  “The fact that Stoboltz is genetically engineering sea lice at their Jeopardy Rock research station,” said Cole. “And the likelihood that they plan on introducing those sea lice into the inlet.”

  “Do we know that for sure?” asked First Moon.

  “Pretty sure,” said Cole. He told them about his conversation with Cassandra Petrel. “She thinks that the only reason they could be producing such a virulent strain of sea lice is to somehow infect the wild salmon. That’s why they’ve been doing genetic work on their own farmed Atlantic salmon. To strengthen their own resistance to sea lice so that they don’t lose their own stock.”

  “I don’t know,” said First Moon, shaking his head, looking down.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Grace.

  “I just don’t trust Cassandra. She’s a nice lady, but sometimes she and Archie could really get themselves all worked up.”

  “I called Dr. Thurlow at Jeopardy Rock. He admitted that they are doing the research. He came out and admitted that. Of course, he just said it was to try and prevent outbreaks.”

  “And you think
he’s a liar?” asked First Moon.

  “Pretty sure. But I need some proof.”

  “How you going to get it?”

  “I’m going to go to Jeopardy Rock.”

  “Really? I want to come too!” exclaimed Nancy.

  Cole smiled. “Let’s discuss the rest of what we know here first,” he said.

  “Okay. I had lunch with Greg White Eagle today,” said Nancy. “What an unbearable blow hard. I confronted him with the evidence we have that he’s on the pad with Stoboltz, and, of course, he nearly went through the roof, a pretty good sign that he’s guilty. I think if we ask around we’ll find that Greg provided some incentives for people to vote for him.”

  “That makes me sick,” said Grace, her face twisted into a knot. “Not just that he was taking the money and bribing others with it, but that people would be conned by such a thing. Makes me sick.”

  “Darren, you were going to ask around?” said Cole.

  “I’ve been talking with some people and haven’t come up with anything yet. No — what do you call it — smoking gun?” Darren cracked a wide smile.

  Nancy took a deep breath. “Greg didn’t have any love for Archie. He pretty much spit every time he said his name. He said some pretty awful things.”

  “Like what?” asked Cole.

  Nancy looked at Grace, and then scornfully back at Cole.

  “It’s okay,” said Grace. “I’ve heard it all before.”

  “Well, he said that Archie had been stealing from band coffers, and not just what we talked about the other day. Greg said that Archie used labour paid for by the band to build the addition to this house and do repairs on the Inlet Dancer. He also told me that he was paying you in cash, Cole.”

  Cole looked down at this beer. “I never got paid by Archie.”

  Grace was silent. The others looked down at the table, at their hands. Cole picked at the label on his bottle of beer. He reached out and took Grace’s small hand in his big paw.