by Dave Butler
“Am I … still in Canada?”
“No, you’re not in Canada. You’re in Idaho, in the United States of America,” said the man. “Here, we shoot trespassers first and ask questions later.”
“Oh shit,” said Barber. “Then I need your help, please. My buddies and I were having a few cold pops up in B.C. and they dared me to cross the border in the river.” He took some deep breaths. “I’m so screwed. I guess I bumped my head on a rock and ended up on the shore over there. I have no idea where I am.”
When it came to having a gun pointed at him, Barber’s fear was real. In fact, he had to work very hard to control a growing sense of panic and an intense desire to run, both of which were symptoms of his time in Afghanistan.
The armed man slid a cellphone from his pocket and punched in a number with the thumb of one hand, his shotgun still pointing at Barber. “Stay there and keep your hands in the air,” he said. “I’ll let the border patrol decide if your story makes sense or not.”
A few moments later, two U.S. border patrol vehicles raced down Moyie River Road toward the house, their emergency lights flashing. When they reached the edge of the property, their headlights illuminated Barber’s back, his hands in the air, and the property owner standing on his front porch with his shotgun. A commanding voice came over a loudspeaker: “Man on the porch, put the gun down!”
When the weapon was no longer a threat, three border patrol officers jumped out of the vehicles. Two of them immediately handcuffed Barber, thoroughly searching him for weapons. In the process, they found his driver’s licence. They immediately put him in the back seat of one of the vehicles. The other officer moved toward the front porch, asking the man there if he’d made the phone call.
“Yes, I did,” said the man. “The guy tried to feed me a bullshit story about floating down here from Canada.”
Barber had expected that the American officials would be suspicious of his story, and later, in a concrete holding cell at the border station, he was proven right. The officials aggressively interrogated him. They challenged his story, accusing him of drug smuggling. They threatened him with a lengthy jail sentence and forced him to undergo a full body-cavity search.
“Come on, Mr. Barber,” said one agent. “We see B.C.-grown marijuana moving south across our border in a never-ending list of increasingly creative ways. Drugs moved in secret tunnels, hidden in commercial transport trucks, inside the wheel wells of cars, in diaper bags, musical instruments, and loads of lumber. You’re the first one trying to do it in the river. We’ve got teams of agents, with dogs, scouring both banks of the river upstream of the bridge. They’re going to find what you dropped there. So why don’t you just come clean and tell us where you hid the stuff?”
“Honestly,” said Barber, “I’m telling you the truth. I wasn’t smuggling drugs.”
“Why’d you have your driver’s licence with you,” asked a second officer, “when you say this was a spur-of the-moment, drunken stunt?”
“I always carry it with me when I go out with the boys,” said Barber.
“And why was there no alcohol in your blood when we tested you?”
“I have no idea. I had a couple of beers but maybe they wore off in the cold water?”
“While you were down here, did you have contact with any U.S. citizens other than the homeowner who nearly shot you?” asked the first officer.
“No,” replied Barber, “and I’m sorry about that. I guess I’m pretty lucky that guy didn’t shoot me.”
“You got that right,” said one officer.
“Look,” said Barber, “phone my buddies in Yahk and they’ll confirm my story.” He recited two phone numbers.
Both friends backed up his story of the drunken dare. They’d been sleeping off a bender, they told the officers, and were going to phone the RCMP later that day if Barber didn’t show up. They both expressed gratitude that he’d been found.
Through it all, Barber repeated the same story. “Guys,” he said, “I am very, very sorry about this. I just want to go home and forget that this whole stupid thing ever happened.”
Late the next day, after a meeting with an immigration judge in Sandpoint, two U.S. border patrol agents walked Barber across the forty-ninth line of latitude past a white concrete marker. Beneath a large maple-leaf flag moving slowly in a slight breeze, they handed Barber to a Canadian Border Services officer. In Barber’s hand was an expedited exclusion order, issued by the U.S. judge. It required him to leave the country immediately and barred him from re-entry for five years.
After a long, cold swim in the river, the adrenalin rush of facing a loaded shotgun, hours of interrogation in a windowless interview room, and drives back and forth to Sandpoint chained to the floor of a van, Barber was drained as he walked north from the border. The only thing keeping him going was elation. He’d done what he told his uncle he would do. Unless something had gone seriously wrong, he knew that the package he’d given to the men in the truck was safely at its destination. Barber smiled. He admired his uncle and looked forward to a congratulatory hug from the man. Payment was almost an afterthought. Almost.
Barber stuck out the thumb of his left hand as he trudged north on Highway 95, still dressed in the black neoprene wetsuit. Two vehicles passed him without slowing down. The third, a car containing three young men, pulled over to the shoulder ahead of him. He walked as fast as he could to catch up. He quickly realized that of the three, only the driver was sober. He sat in the back seat, fending off drunken questions about why he was walking on a highway in a wetsuit. The men were surprised when Barber asked them to let him out only three kilometres up the road.
The car drove off, sending a shower of stones back at him. He walked down the gravel road to his truck and found his keys tucked safely under sandbags in the back. Once inside, he turned on the ignition and cranked the heater on full-blast. He again looked at the two beers. Still not a good idea. Knowing he would fall asleep if he stayed in the warming cab, he called his uncle’s number.
“Uncle Bernie, this is Steve,” he said, his voice slow with exhaustion as he left a message. “It’s done. I’m heading home now.”
Disconnecting, Barber drove northward, first on the gravel road and then on the highway. He barely made it to his house in Yahk before exhaustion overtook him. He peeled the rank rubber suit from his body, took a hot shower, and crawled into bed. He slept for fourteen hours, visions of cold, flowing water filling his dreams.
Chapter 30
September 6
The day after Barber made his delivery, Jenny Willson smiled grimly as she, Brad Jenkins, and two burly colleagues walked Bernie Eastman, his hands cuffed in front of him, across the parking lot from her truck to the B.C. Environment office in Cranbrook. Every window on the west and north sides of the one-storey building was lined with faces of staff, all anxious to see the much reviled guide-outfitter in custody. It was, thought Willson, the East Kootenay version of the “perp walk” the FBI used when arresting high-profile financial offenders. With a lone Daily Townsman photographer shooting pictures, Eastman’s walk of shame wouldn’t be on the front page of the New York Times. But for Willson, it was equally satisfying.
Inside, she escorted Eastman down a hallway. More faces peered from doorways. “Have a seat, Bernie,” she said when they reached a sparse interview room. “You and I are going to talk.” She gestured at the burly colleague accompanying her. “This officer will babysit you until I’m ready to begin.”
Eastman sneered at Willson as he eased his big body into a small chair in the corner. “Hey, Warden, how’s your head?”
“Why do you ask?” she said, stopping in the doorway.
“You seem sure of yourself when you’re surrounded by men in uniform, but I hear you got beat up when you didn’t have ’em around to protect you.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, you
know. Around. Lots of folks are talkin’ about it.”
Willson knew that Eastman, arrogant bully that he was, would try to push her buttons, get her to lose her cool. But she understood that to get what she needed from the outfitter, she’d have to control her emotions, ignore his baiting, as tough as that might be. “Thanks for your concern, Bernie, I appreciate it.”
Eastman’s sneer evolved into a smirk, a subtle shift that made Willson want to drive the heel of her hand into his nose. Instead, she clenched her fists behind her back.
“I heard you got beat up by someone who didn’t like your attitude,” he said, “someone who didn’t like you poking your nose into things that maybe aren’t any of your business.”
Willson stared at Eastman for a moment, wondering how much he knew, how much he’d been involved in the violence at Clark’s trailer.
“It was nothing,” she said, “just a knock on the head. No big deal. If the coward who did it was trying to hurt me, he didn’t succeed. I don’t know … maybe he’s proud that he murdered an old man with Parkinson’s, an old man who could barely defend himself. And then jumped me from behind. That’s pretty brave, eh? If anything, my experience there made me more curious to find answers to questions that are very much my business. And that’s why you’re here today, Bernie. You’re going to help me with those answers before you spend time behind bars. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll have more things to talk about once my colleagues finish their search at your place.” She looked at him, without expression, and left the room.
By the time Willson reached Jenkins’s office, she was wringing her hands with anticipation. “Brad, I am so going to enjoy this. It feels good to get that smug asshole where I want him. Not getting him and his client is like finishing second in a race, but damn, this still feels good.” She laughed at herself, at her own elation. “Maybe I should’ve done this sooner like my bosses wanted me to.”
Jenkins smiled with her. “I still think you made the right call, Jenny,” he said, “despite the pressure from above to get a conviction … any conviction. We knew you had almost everything you needed on Eastman, so waiting to see if you could get the client didn’t put you in a worse position. For what it’s worth, I was with you one hundred percent. Still am.”
“Thanks, Brad,” said Willson warmly, her eyes bright. “I appreciate that more than you know. I haven’t given up. Now’s my chance to work my interrogation magic on Eastman. Who knows what I can talk him into?” She placed her Stetson hat on the desk, crown down. “Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.”
As she jokingly reached for the inside of her hat, she felt her cellphone buzz in her breast pocket. She unbuttoned her pocket and slid out the phone. “Willson here.”
“I told you I’d phone you back … and now I have,” said a male voice.
“Who’s this?”
“You don’t recognize me? I’m hurt. It’s Sprague.”
Willson’s eyebrows shot up. She motioned to Jenkins for a piece of paper and a pen. She scribbled “informant” and pushed the paper back at him.
“Sprague,” said Willson, trying to hide the excitement in her voice. “Long time, no hear. Let me put you on speaker so my colleague can hear you.”
“Wait,” said her caller. “Who’s your colleague?”
“Don’t worry. He’s a B.C. conservation officer who’s working with me on the poaching case that you and I talked about in early summer. Remember, we don’t know who you are, so there’s nothing to worry about if he listens in. His name’s Brad and he’s going to take notes so I don’t miss anything you say. And I’m not tracing the call. Have you got something for me?”
“Well, I heard you didn’t catch my guy when he was up there,” said the informant, a chuckle punctuating his observation. “You folks must be seriously pissed off.”
“How do you know that?” asked Willson, looking across the desk at Jenkins, her eyebrows still raised.
“I talked to him this morning,” said the man, “and he boasted about making you guys look like incompetents … again.”
Willson ignored the cheap shot. “So he was up here recently?”
“Yeah, I met him this morning. He told me he was there in the last couple of days.”
“We thought so,” said Willson, “and you’re right. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to talk to him while he was in Canada. Did he, by any chance, tell you why he was here?”
“You mean, besides shooting a caribou with that outfitter?” the man said mockingly.
Willson couldn’t hide her surprise and anger. “He did what?”
“He shot a caribou,” said the man. “It was all the little fucker could talk about.”
“Did he say where and when he shot it?” she asked.
“Nope,” said the man, “I can’t help you there. All I know is it was north of the border and a day or two ago.”
“Are you sure he got it across the border?”
“Oh, yeah,” said the man, “there’s no doubt. He said the thing was already at his taxidermist. He can’t wait to show it off when it’s done. He’s extra-excited that it’s an endangered species.”
Willson could barely contain the excitement and despair that were fighting for control of her thoughts. “Interesting. Did he tell you how he got it across the border?”
“I can’t help you there, either,” said the man. “All I know is he’s damned proud of himself for shooting it at the same time you guys were looking for him. If you ask me how I think he did it, I’d bet one of his trucks was involved.” The man paused and then spoke again. “You should see the picture. He got a real beauty.”
“He showed a picture to you?” asked Willson, incredulous at the poacher’s arrogance. Either his ego had completely overwhelmed his common sense, she thought, or he had something so significant on the informant that he believed the man wouldn’t talk to law enforcement.
“Yup. He showed it to me on his cellphone. All I could see in the background was trees, like pine trees or something. It was dark. And it was just him and a really big bull caribou. Dead. That’s all I know.”
Jenkins wrote furiously on the same piece of paper and slid it at Willson. It read, “Salmo-Creston. Mountain caribou.”
“Sprague, this is information we weren’t aware of,” said Willson, again focusing on the caller. “It’s a major step forward in our investigation. I’ve got two questions for you. First, you said something about ‘his trucks.’ What did you mean?”
“Well, do you know that he owns a trucking company?”
“No. We wondered about that though,” said Willson. “But because we don’t know who he is, that doesn’t help us at all. Do you know anything about it?”
“If I tell you more, you’ll figure out his name,” replied the man. “Let’s just say it’s a subsidiary of a subsidiary. And he owns a bunch of warehouses, too. Some of them buildings might fall down one day,” he said, laughing at a joke only he understood.
“You haven’t given me much to go on,” said Willson.
“Look, I gotta go,” said the man impatiently. “What else did you want to ask me?”
“If what you’ve told us is true, are you willing to make a formal statement about your guy shooting the caribou, exactly what he said to you?” she asked.
“First,” said the man on the phone, “what I told you is true, and as I said, he showed me a picture of the caribou. He was kneeling beside it. And second, we’re dealing with a guy who scares me. I’m in deep with him on stuff that would be a problem for me if it ever came out.”
Willson and Jenkins could hear the man breathing over the speaker. It was a long time before he spoke again.
“I don’t want to testify against him in court,” said the man. “If he finds out I talked, I’m a dead man.”
Unlike Jenkins, Willson had worked with confidential informants in
the past. She fully understood their reticence. But she’d never had an informant claim he would be killed if he talked.
“Look, Sprague,” she said, “I understand. We’re probably never going to see your friend up here again, so my goal now is to convict him in a U.S. court. I can talk to my contacts in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about you becoming a confidential informant for them. No guarantees. But I bet if they find other evidence to corroborate what you’ve told me, I don’t believe you’d have to testify. Are you willing to do that?”
“Can I keep my other business with him out of this?”
“I can’t speak for the U.S. feds,” said Jenkins. “But if it’s anything like here, all they’ll want to know is details about his poaching up here and bringing the animals into the U.S.”
Willson waited through another long pause. She could almost hear the man thinking.
“Jesus, I’m scared shitless,” said the man. “But at the same time, I hate that little fucker more than I can tell you. Give me a day to think about it.”
“Can I call you as soon as I’ve talked to our colleagues at U.S. Fish and Wildlife?” asked Jenkins.
The man laughed. “Nice try. I’ll call you at the same time tomorrow,” he said. “Make sure you’ve got a solid offer. And if there’s a bit of cash in it for me, even better.” The phone line went dead.
Willson and Jenkins looked at each other in silence for long seconds.
“Holy shit,” said Willson at last. “I’m not sure if my system can take more of this. Yesterday, I was feeling about as shitty as I could possibly feel. It looked like the American had fucked us up again. But things have changed. Now we know the guy was in and out of Canada in a very short window of time.”
“How’s that going to help?” asked Jenkins.
“Remember that list of twenty-seven names that you worked on with Bill Forsyth? The names of Eastman’s American clients?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Brad, you’re going to get on the phone with Canada Border Services and cross-reference our list with the names of U.S. citizens who came north over the past three days. At some point, we’re going to find the same name on both lists. And that, my friend, will be our guy.”
