Polar Bear Dawn

by Lyle Nicholson

  “Well, the wolves could only be connected if they learned to use sharp knives. There are knife wounds on both bodies,” Tom said.

  “Really? What do the tracks show?”

  “Three enter, one leaves—you have to love winter murders and tracks in the snow,” Tom replied. He was walking along the tracks as he spoke.

  “You find any ID on the victims?”

  “Yeah, from the name badges on the parkas, we have Alisha Sylvester and a Kevin Buckner. They both have ID tags for Clearwater Technologies.” Tom was holding the ID badges up to the light. They were covered in tar and oil.

  “Okay, thanks Tom, I’ll start my search on the victims and on Clearwater. How long will you be at the site?”

  “Well,” Tom replied, looking around at the several other RCMP officers and crime scene investigators, “I guess until we have the evidence wrapped. It doesn’t look like there’s much, so should be back after lunch.”

  “Great, we can have a conference by three or so and everyone can report where we are. Stay warm.” Bernadette hung up and entered “Clearwater Technologies” into her computer. A website with some nice graphics came up—pure water flowing. Imagine that, she thought to herself. A Vancouver address and phone number was provided. Her first step was finding out who else the victims had been working with.

  The oil sands mining operations were a mass of corporate infrastructure. Thousands of employees worked for the hundreds of companies in Fort McMurray, and thousands of subcontractors worked for the oil sands companies. All the companies maintained strict access points to their mine sites and maintained directories of who was on their sites at all times.

  To get to the directory, Bernadette called her source at Synthetic Oil Company. Her name was Cynthia Ladoucer, a Fort Chipewyan First Nations single mother of one whom she had become good friends with in her three years in Fort McMurray. Cynthia was in charge of all contractors who came and went on the site. If you wanted a pass to get on the site, you saw Cynthia. If you wanted to keep getting access to the Synthetic Oil site, you never pissed off Cynthia. She was a round, low- to-the-ground, straight-dark-haired girl of thirty-one who was good natured until angered. A black bear and Cynthia would have been good companions.

  “Hey Cynthia, how’s the shit today?” Bernadette said.

  “Hey Bernie, I knew you’d be calling. When the shit hits the fan, you’re always upwind, girl,” Cynthia answered.

  “Hell yeah, you know there’ll be blowback on this one.” Bernadette was smiling into the phone.

  “So, did the wolves do it?” Cynthia asked.

  “Hell no, wolves are too smart to eat people. Too much cholesterol—bad for their hearts.”

  “Ha, Bernie, you know it. So what can I do for you?”

  “Clearwater Technologies. I have Alisha Sylvester and Kevin Buckner who worked for them. Do you have anyone else listed as working for them at your site?” Bernadette doodled on her notepad as she waited for an answer—water drops over the Clearwater Technologies name.

  “Let’s see . . . Clearwater Technologies . . . yep, here we are. I have your Alisha, Kevin, and . . . here we go . . . Emmanuel Fuentes; he’s listed as their driver and supervisor.”

  “Do you have Mr. Fuentes on your site now?” Bernadette was leaning into her computer screen, entering the name of one Fuentes, Emmanuel into the system—the Violent Crime Linkage System; it linked every violent crime to every criminal in Canada and was the first choice for most RCMP. If Fuentes had done something in the past, he would show up.

  Bernadette found it useful to enter any possible suspect into the system sooner rather than later, as she was always amazed at how many hits on felons she would get from the system. Bad guys seemed to do bad things in multiples.

  Cynthia came back on the phone. “Mr. Fuentes left the site at approximately 1407 hours yesterday and has not come back since then. So, is he your suspect?

  “Well, you could say he is a person of interest. Is he billeted at Synthetic Oil Camp or does he have digs in Fort Mac?”

  “Ah, you know how I hate it when you go all official on me when the shit gets good. Now let’s see . . . says here that Mr. Emmanuel Fuentes has been staying at the Best Western Nomad Hotel and Suites.

  “Hey, you know it’s the badge, not me. Thanks for the info. By the way, how is your little Ritchie doing?” Ritchie was Cynthia’s four-year- old son, who was not doing well with leukemia.

  “Ah, you know good days and bad. He just got back from the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton and man, I was happy to see the little bugger. Now he’s making me crazy with the racket he’s causing.”

  “Well, give the little guy a big hug from me,” Bernadette said. “When I get some time I’ll bring over some cheap wine, chocolate, and chips and we’ll watch some trash TV.”

  “Hey, sounds good girlfriend. Call me if you need me, ’cause you know I’m always here,” Cynthia said.

  Bernadette ended the call. She wondered how long Ritchie had, and if he was responding to treatment. The incidents of cancer in the oil sands area appalled her. What really brought the situation home to her were the native murder victims she reviewed. The coroner’s reports often showed high levels of heavy metal in their blood: mercury, arsenic, beryllium, copper, cadmium, thallium, nickel, zinc, and silver—all known carcinogens.

  Her next call was to the airport manager at the Fort McMurray airport to get the passenger manifest for the past twenty-four hours. Mr. Fuentes was listed as boarding a WestJet flight to Vancouver that connected through Calgary. He had a return booked for that day, but the WestJet liaison informed her he had not boarded the flight in Vancouver. She called the Nomad Hotel, and found that Mr. Fuentes was still listed as a guest but that they had not seen him that day.

  Bernadette leaned back in her chair, and her hand instinctively reached for the empty plate her doughnut had been on. She had eaten it. She made a mental note to stop eating crap and eat apples instead. She knew she would never read her note. Back on her computer, she entered the name Emmanuel Fuentes on the All Points Bulletin as a person of interest in the two murders. She also made a special note to the British Columbia RCMP to be on the lookout for him. She would send the picture ID that Cynthia had just sent her.

  Her next stop would be the hotel where Fuentes was registered. She had a feeling he would not be coming back to Fort McMurray, so she would see what she could find in his room. She would pick up lunch first though. Maybe something healthy this time? She thought.

  Parsons had caught the early flight from Vancouver that landed in Fort McMurray just before noon. The snow was just as deep, and the temperature was a balmy minus fifteen degrees Celsius—it had warmed up. He had to move fast. He knew the RCMP would identify Fuentes’s body on the beach and link it with Clearwater. It was only a matter of time before someone went looking for the missing Alisha and Kevin from Clearwater as well.

  Fuentes had been smart enough to drop his rental truck off at the airport. That would at least lead them away from Fort McMurray, but it was Parsons’ job to make Fuentes disappear. He took a cab back to his hotel, dropped off his bag in his second-floor room, and made his way to Fuentes’s room on the fourth floor. The “Do Not Disturb” sign had been left on the door, and Parsons breathed a sigh of relief. At least the little asshole did something I told him to do.

  He waited until the cleaning ladies entered other rooms and then slipped into the room using an old credit card in the doorframe as an entry key. The key of all qualified thieves, he thought. He never left home without it. The room was the usual Fuentes pigsty. Pizza boxes and beer cans. He grabbed what was left of Fuentes’s clothes and shoved them in a duffel bag. The chrome case with the detonation device for the polywater was sitting prominently on the coffee table in the middle of the room. It was supposed to be in the closet or under the bed.

  Parsons shook his head in disbelief at Fuentes’s sloppiness. He snapped the case closed, left the room with the case and the duffel bag, and
removed the “Do Not Disturb” sign. The maids were still in the other rooms. Just then the elevator chimed—it was about to open on that floor.

  He made a dash for the exit door, not wanting to be seen by anyone outside Fuentes’s door. He always had a “just-in-case” program running in his head. He made it inside the stairway door as Detective Callahan came out of the elevator with the hotel’s front desk manager, who was telling Callahan what a good guest Mr. Fuentes had been as they walked to his room.

  Parsons watched them from a slight opening in the exit door. There was no mistaking the woman. She was the same detective he’d seen take down the suspect the day before at the airport. Parsons felt lucky to have missed her. He realized his chances for luck were slimmer the longer he stayed in Fort McMurray. He padded softly down the stairs to his room, threw the duffel bag of what was left of Fuentes’s clothes in his closet, and opened the chrome case. He stood over it, looking at the control dials.

  According to his instructions, one click of the dials in the case and the polywater would be activated. The mission would be over. With the police closing in, his finger was twitching for the switch. He needed to speak with Cordele.

  His cell phone rang, he could see from the area code it was Cordele in Alaska, “Hello Cordele,” Parsons answered. “The shit is pretty thick down here.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I just emptied Fuentes’s room.”

  You have the case with the controls?”

  “Yeah, and I just missed a meeting with a lovely detective lady who was on her way to Fuentes’s room.” Parsons still felt the fear of his brush with Detective Callahan. He had seen handcuffs on her belt—and they were definitely not sexy.

  “Yeah, well, have you checked YouTube lately?” Cordele asked. “That may give you an idea of where we’re at.”

  Parsons went to his laptop. It was still on the coffee table where he had left it. He turned it on and went to YouTube. There, prominent and pointing, was the fuck-you finger from the dead girl of the oil sands.

  Parsons let out a slow whistle. “As they say back in my hometown in Newfoundland, we be fucked, me boys!”

  “Yeah, the shit is going to hit the fan pretty quickly. Especially when they put Alisha and Kevin together with the deaths of Constance and Mark up here, as they were all registered with the same contractor. Do you have anything that ties you with Fuentes?”

  “Not directly. We stayed apart for most of the mission; I made sure I was never seen with him.” Parsons scrolled through YouTube as he spoke. The video of the fuck-you finger had over 10 million hits. The world loved it.

  “You should be okay for a while,” Cordele said, using his most reassuring voice.

  “How long is a while?” There was a definite strain in Parsons’s voice. He had heard bullshit before. His field commanders in Afghanistan would always say reassuring things when the Taliban had their asses pinned down with machine gun fire. “You should be okay” was always code for “we hope you live through the night.”

  “I’ll speak with our boss in Seattle and see if we can activate the device and get you out of there.”

  “Soon would be very nice indeed. I dearly love the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but I’ve never been their guest and have no need to try their hospitality.” Parsons tried to put as much sincerity as possible into his words.

  “I hear you. Stay close. I’ll have an answer soon.” Cordele hung up and walked over to his window. The sun was bright over Cook Inlet, bouncing a blinding light off the ice flows. He closed the drapes. He wanted this mission to end soon. There had been far too many fuckups. The client at Ironstone had given them terrible intelligence. He wondered about the decisions of his boss—he had worked for the disembodied voice on the phone for all these years, and rarely had miscalculations been this bad.

  18

  RCMP Constable Christos Christakos was the lone RCMP officer of the Galiano Island detachment. Now, in broad daylight, he surveyed the beach that Parsons had escaped from in the early morning.

  Constable Chris, as he liked to be called, had heard the sound of gunfire and explosions in the early morning. All of Galiano Island had heard it. His phone had been flooded with calls, and he did what any level-headed RCMP officer would do in a one-person detachment: he called for backup—lots of backup.

  Now on his once-quiet island roamed the Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Squad, Bomb Squad, and the RCMP Emergency Response Team. Guns bristled. Helmets glistened in the sun. They picked up shell casings, investigated bodies, and performed line-of-fire calculations. Constable Chris felt like an outsider on his own turf.

  The sergeant of the RCMP Emergency Response Team only wanted his statement of facts. What time did he hear the gunfire and explosions? What time did he call it in, and whom did he call? The one other item the sergeant wanted—who owned the house up on the ridge? They had determined from the impact wounds on the man on the beach that the majority of gunfire had come from the house.

  Constable Chris gave the sergeant Professor Alistair McAllen’s name, and the sergeant gave him a nod, slapped his notebook shut, and left him alone. The seagulls squealed overhead, crows and ravens circled in hopes that some of the body parts might be left for them. A single cloud advanced across the sky. Waves lapped rhythmically.

  Constable Chris loved his island. He had grown up in Toronto, with deep roots in the Greek community. As he grew older, he tired of being a Greek Canadian. His mother yearned for him to have a Greek wife, raise good Greek children, and live nearby. His sister Lenya meddled in his life constantly. He wanted to just be a Canadian and blend in—watch hockey while drinking beer and catch salmon—simple things.

  Galiano suited him well. The island was filled with good people who kept to themselves. A few stolen boats or salmon poachers to chase, but other than that, he had enjoyed good, clean living—Canadian style. However, the drug smugglers who now washed up on his shores were becoming a problem. He would be happier if they stuck to killing themselves out at sea.

  He walked back to the lone body on the beach. The body looked Hispanic—dark skin, dark hair, or what was left of his hair. There was a massive bullet hole in his head. The arms, legs, and torso had similar large wounds. The RCMP crime scene investigator was by the body and asked Constable Chris to help turn him over. There was very little recognizable in the face. A massive bullet had exited through the forehead and taken most of the face with it.

  “What kind of bullet does that?” Constable Chris asked the investigator.

  “That looks like a .50 caliber,” the investigator answered. The investigator was a thin, wiry, balding man in his mid-fifties. He looked like someone who tired of finding bodies to look at.

  “Holy shit, that’s some massive firepower. We usually get small arms fire—the 9 mm kind around here. Any ID on him?” Constable Chris asked.

  “No, I’ve already checked his jean pockets—no wallet, no papers of any kind,” the investigator said. He was starting to pack his examination case to get the body ready for bagging and shipping.

  Constable Chris saw the small piece of white paper in the shirt pocket of the body. He pulled it out slowly—an airline boarding pass and seat assignment. Emmanuel Fuentes was the name on the boarding pass for Flight 144, which had left the previous day at 7:30 p.m. from Fort McMurray, and Flight 131 that had arrived at 11:28 p.m. in Vancouver. He showed the paper to the investigator.

  “Looks like we have a tourist,” the investigator said. He had developed a dry sense of humor from collecting bodies all day.

  Constable Chris then did something he was not supposed to do. He opened his cell phone and checked his RCMP All Points Bulletin files for Fuentes, Emmanuel. He should have, by RCMP protocol, handed the information over to the officious sergeant of the Emergency Response Team. The sergeant’s name was Tingly; Constable Chris thought it should be Tight Ass. The sergeant was barking out orders to the Bomb Squad, Coast Guard, and everyone else who was within range of his voi
ce. Constable Chris thought Sergeant Tight Ass just liked to hear his own voice.

  He walked over to a large pile of driftwood just by the shore as he scrolled through his All Points Bulletin file. There was a hit. The Fort McMurray branch of the Serious Persons Crime Unit was looking for Mr. Fuentes.

  He first looked around the driftwood pile—the various teams had now moved up to the house, with the sergeant herding them as they went. He found the number of the Fort McMurray RCMP detachment and dialed it. After a conversation with the receptionist, he was put through to a Detective B. Callahan.

  “How may I help you, Constable?” Bernadette answered. She was getting ready to head into the 3:00 p.m. conference with the other detectives and constables to discuss the tar pond murders. Her desk was a mess, and she was grabbing papers and her coffee as she spoke.

  “Ah, Detective Callahan, I believe I may have found your person of interest, a Mr. Emmanuel Fu-e-n-tes,” Constable Chris said. He was squinting at the boarding pass. He was good in Greek, but Spanish had never been one of his strengths.

  “You have him in custody?” Bernadette asked. She stopped in her tracks, almost spilling her coffee.

  “Well, yes and no. We have a dead body here on the beach at Galiano Island. I pulled a boarding pass from the body that states Emmanuel Fuentes, and from the description of the APB, the body height and weight might be a match.

  “Do the facial features match?”

  “Hard to tell—a large caliber bullet took off most of his face.” Constable Chris described the battle that had ensued on the beach. “I have what could be your Mr. Fuentes on the beach, and two young Asian males who look like they were impacted by explosives on a trail leading up to a house.”

  “Sounds like it was quite a party,” Bernadette said. She was taking notes and listening intently. “Any idea of what they were involved in?”

  “No, but the resident of the house, a Professor Alistair McAllen, is nowhere to be found. The investigators found a large number of M16 shell casings in the house, as well as some .50 caliber shell casings. I would say these boys were effectively repelled,” Constable Chris said.