by Dave Butler
Willson watched Jenkins’s face move from confusion to understanding. “That,” he said, grinning, “is fucking brilliant.”
“And once we’ve got the name, we can ask Canada Border Services to contact their U.S. counterparts and confirm when he returned to the U.S. That will give us the timing for his visit to Canada. And if we can connect that with what we just heard from our informant, then maybe the U.S. agents will have enough to pursue a charge under their Lacey Act.”
“I love it,” said Jenkins. “I’ll get on the phone now. Because there’s no caribou east of here, I’ll start with the Rykerts and Kingsgate border crossings and see what comes up.”
“Excellent. And while you do that, I’m going to talk to our friend Bernie. Now that I know something he doesn’t know I know, maybe I can wipe that smug smile off his ugly face.”
Chapter 31
Willson placed a thick and well-worn file folder on the interview room table and then sat across from Bernie Eastman. Like Charlie Clark had done months before, she saw Eastman’s eyes flick to the file quickly, furtively, and then back to her.
“So, Bernie,” she said, “I’m sure you’ve been looking forward to this as much as I have. Before we get started, do you want your lawyer here while we talk?”
“Ha,” said Eastman, again sneering at her, “you give yourself too much credit. I don’t need no lawyer.”
“Fair enough. I have to give you that opportunity, even if you don’t feel you need it.”
“What the hell do you want? You got nothin’ on me.”
Willson watched him sit back in the chair, only the back legs on the floor, his cuffed hands behind his head like he was enjoying himself. Time to go for it.
“Was your client happy with his caribou, Bernie?” Her pen was poised over a blank pad of paper as if to record his every word.
Eastman slammed forward in his chair, his confined fists coming over his head and banging on the table like two beef roasts, the look on his face making Willson’s day. And she was barely getting started.
“What did you say?” he asked.
It was Willson’s turn to smirk. “I didn’t realize you were deaf. My apologies, Bernie. Maybe it’s from all that illegal shooting you’ve been doing. I’ll speak louder and slower. I asked if your client … was happy …with the caribou … that you found for him?”
“Why are you askin’ me that?”
“Because he’s already telling everybody about it back home, showing a photo.”
Suddenly Eastman looked much less comfortable, less cocky. “I had nothing to do with shootin’ any caribou.”
“That’s not what your guy is saying. He’s telling everyone you led him to it. It was up on the Salmo-Creston, wasn’t it?” She tried hard to keep her face neutral; she hoped the outfitter was too surprised to notice how much she was enjoying the moment.
“You keep sayin’ ‘he.’ Do you even have a name for the guy I allegedly helped shoot a caribou? Or is this more of your bullshit?”
Willson lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head to one side. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. Do you want to take the chance that I’m talking to him and not to you?”
“Oh, fuck off. You got nothin’.”
“If I had nothing, Bernie, how would I know about the mountain caribou bull your client shot? How would I know where you got it … and that you took his picture kneeling beside it? How would I know all that?” She watched waves of surprise, anger, and incredulity wash over Eastman’s face.
“Who … who’ve you been talkin’ to?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter, does it? The important thing is that the situation’s beginning to unravel, Bernie. And it’s all coming down on you. All the evidence is pointing at you. So, you have decisions to make. You can talk to me now and get out ahead of this or —” she paused for effect “— you can sit there and drown in the tsunami of shit that’s coming at you. It’s your call.”
“I think I want my lawyer now,” Eastman said, bringing his shackled hands to his chest as if praying. “I’m done talkin’.”
“That’s your call, too. Are you using Samuel Lindsay, the same guy who represented Clark?”
“Fuckin’ right. I want him here now.”
“Not a problem, Bernie. I’ll call him now, tell him you’ve asked him to come here to speak with you. I guess we’re done for now. When your lawyer gets here, I’ll have more questions for you. Until he does, I’ll change your babysitter so no one has to sit here and look at your ugly face all day.”
Willson rose, gathered the file folder and notepad, and left the room. She saw Jenkins coming toward her in the hallway. She held up one finger while she called Lindsay’s law office.
She got his secretary. “This is Jenny Willson, park warden. Please tell Mr. Lindsay that his client Bernie Eastman is under arrest and being held for questioning at the B.C. Environment office in Cranbrook.” She thought about her first encounter with the elderly lawyer. “He may not remember me, but I’m sure he’ll want to get here as soon as he can. I won’t be speaking to his client again until he arrives.”
When she disconnected the call, she turned to Jenkins. “Let’s go outside. I need some fresh air.”
When they were standing amongst the wild roses and kinnikinnick in the front yard of the office, with Fisher Peak and the Steeples Range of the Rockies their backdrop, Willson breathed in the warm mountain air.
“How did it go in there?” asked Jenkins.
“Good. Real good,” said Willson, running her fingers through her hair. “I jumped right in with the caribou and it rattled him. He thinks we know more than we actually do, but he asked for his lawyer. While we’re waiting, tell me what you found. I need something new so I can keep him off balance.”
“Well, Jenny, this day just keeps getting better and better for you. First the call from your informant and now some fascinating news. The boys searching Eastman’s place called me a few moments ago. Guess what they found? They found a hidden basement in a Quonset hut and they think it was being used as a grow op. It was full of lights and piping — and hundreds of young marijuana plants.”
“What? Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. It’s a huge space. And in the midst of that grow op is a gun cabinet. And in that gun cabinet, along with a bunch of other rifles, they found a .308. It’s on its way to the crime lab as we speak.”
“Un-friggin’-believable!” Willson said, her arms and clenched fists high in the air, triumphant. In an instant, she’d moved from a second-place finish into a healthy lead.
“Yup,” said Jenkins. “The drug squad is waiting in Eastman’s driveway for their own warrant.”
Willson smiled a confident smile.
“But wait, there’s more,” said Jenkins, grinning.
“This is like Christmas in September! Tell me, Brad.”
“I’m waiting for confirmation from the U.S. border folks, but it appears that Eastman’s client is a guy by the name of Luis José Castillo, from Spokane, Washington. He’s on the list of American clients from Eastman’s past guide declarations, and he came into Canada on September third via the Rykerts border crossing near Creston. That matches with my guess that they shot the caribou somewhere on the Salmo-Creston. His is the only name on both lists. He must be our guy.”
Willson stared at the Rocky Mountains to the east, trying to process the avalanche of information that had swept over her through the course of the day. Her mind raced like a Ping-Pong ball thrown into an empty room, bouncing off one wall to the next, each time at a different angle.
When Willson returned to the interview room an hour later at the request of Eastman’s lawyer, it was hard not to feel giddy with excitement.
Lindsay spoke first. “Ms. Willson, I presume? My secretary said that we’ve met, but I don’t recall. My client tells me that you arrested him on
federal and provincial wildlife charges and that you tried to question him about his alleged involvement in the alleged shooting of a caribou?”
“That’s correct,” said Willson. “And now, here we are. We can talk about the poached mountain caribou … or we can talk about a .308 rifle that we seized at your client’s residence, a rifle that was probably used in the commission of a number of serious offences … or we can talk about the grow op we found there, a grow op that the RCMP drug squad is searching as we speak. Or, if none of that’s of interest, perhaps we can talk about … Luis José Castillo.” She stared hard at the outfitter, whose wide eyes revealed his surprise. “Where would you like to start, Bernie?”
Chapter 32
September 8
Jenny Willson left I-90 at Exit 289, grateful to be off the busy interstate freeway. She was in the Spokane Valley, east of downtown Spokane, in a featureless mix of commercial and industrial buildings. Always distrustful of GPS units and their insistent voices, she had an old-school street map spread across her lap below the steering wheel, her finger tracing the route. Shining in the rear-view mirror was one of the wheels from her road bike, spinning in the morning sun. Willson had locked the bicycle in the back of the Parks Canada truck in the hope that she’d have some free time to ride the trails along the Spokane River.
After two wrong turns, she found East Mansfield Avenue, negotiated a roundabout, and then saw the offices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on East Montgomery Drive. The offices were in a squat two-storey commercial building with plenty of glass, not unlike thousands of similar buildings scattered across North America.
Entering the double front doors, Willson found the building directory, ran her finger down the list of tenants, and saw what she was looking for. She walked up the stairs to unit two, where she was met by a smiling Tracy Brown, Special Agent in charge of the Spokane office.
Brown shook Willson’s hand vigorously, her other hand on Willson’s shoulder. “Good morning, Jenny. It’s great to see you again,” she said. “Welcome to Spokane.”
As the two women walked down a narrow hallway toward a conference room, Brown looked over her shoulder at Willson. “You’ve been busy since we met in Sandpoint,” she said with a grin.
“It’s been an interesting few months,” said Willson, “but I gotta say I’m pleased to be here. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done at your end.”
“We’re as happy as you are that we can finally move on this,” said Brown. “Come in to meet the team.”
When they reached the large windowless room, Brown introduced Willson to her three USFW colleagues, along with a federal prosecutor, six members of the Spokane Police Department, and four deputies from the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office. Amidst coffee cups and partly eaten muffins, Willson saw files, maps, and air photos spread across a rectangular table in the centre of the room.
When everyone was seated, Tracy Brown kicked off the meeting.
“Thank you all for being here this morning,” she said. “Not all of you know all the details of the situation that’s brought us together today, so this morning’s session will be part briefing, part tactical planning for execution of search warrants. Before we get into it, I want to express a special thanks to our Canadian colleague for her investigative diligence and her willingness to share her work with us.” All eyes momentarily shifted to Willson.
“I’m going to turn things over to Assistant District Attorney Roger Hancock, who works with us on poaching cases,” said Brown. “But first, I want to say how pleased I am that we’ve persuaded a judge to give us warrants, under the Lacey Act, to search a South Hill residence, a downtown office, and a series of warehouses east of here.”
Brown paused for a moment. “And second, all of you now know that our person of interest today is a Luis José Castillo,” she said. “In front of you are full dossiers on Castillo. As you can see, he’s a forty-two-year-old, prominent local businessman, a U.S. citizen born in Mexico. He operates a group of construction, trucking, and warehousing businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest, all headquartered here in Spokane.”
The sound of rustling paper filled the room as the officers reviewed the files on Castillo. The officers paused to stare at the picture of their quarry, memorizing his facial features.
“Depending on what we find during the searches,” said Brown, “we may or may not arrest Castillo today under the Lacey Act. However, you can be sure that he’s ultimately facing a large number of Canadian and American wildlife-related offences.”
Brown continued. “Before I turn this meeting over to Roger, I also want to take a moment to let Jenny Willson tell us how she and her Canadian colleagues broke this case open two days ago.”
“Thanks, Tracy,” said Willson. She passed a series of images around the table, waiting until each person had a full set. They were Jim Canon’s photos of the massive bighorn sheep in Wilcox Pass. Willson heard a few whistles of admiration as the officers studied the images. Some were head on, some were in profile, and a few were close-ups of the full curl horns. “This all began with the shooting of a bull elk in Banff National Park, and then shortly after, this bighorn sheep ram was shot with a handgun in Jasper National Park. We also lost a mountain goat to the same guys. We’ve been chasing these perps — the B.C. guide-outfitter who’s been offering guaranteed hunts, a guy by the name of Bernie Eastman, and his American client — for nearly a year now. Each time we got close to catching them in the act, they found a way to avoid us. One example is when we recently undertook a major backcountry surveillance based on information received from an assistant guide who was subsequently murdered. Neither the outfitter nor the client showed up when and where we thought they would. Based on intel from a confidential informant down here, we learned that the client shot an endangered mountain caribou just north of your Idaho border at the same time we were cooling our butts in the Purcell Mountains well to the north. To say we were pissed off is an understatement.” Officers around the table chuckled. “But we were able to identify Castillo from that one call from the informant because he was the only U.S. citizen who crossed the border around that time who was also on Eastman’s list of past clients.”
“Two days ago,” Willson continued, “I went back at Eastman and I went back hard. The guy is a classic bully, so he started out smug, not willing to say a word. You’ve all seen it dozens of times. His lawyer is an old guy who was completely unprepared for my interview or my accusations, which worked in my favour. By then, we’d executed another search of Eastman’s property and found the rifle I was looking for. With all that in hand, I laid out the charges he was facing, I told him we had a signed statement from an informant about the caribou hunt, and I told him how much time he’d spend in jail and the huge fines he’d pay as a result. After I finished, his face had changed from a ruddy red to a scared-shitless white. He decided that rolling over on Castillo made a lot of sense.”
She paused to look around the room. “But wait,” she said with a grin, “there’s more. Seems there’s an interesting drug angle to all this. When my colleagues searched Eastman’s place the second time, they also found a marijuana grow op hidden in the basement of one of his buildings. It was actually quite clever. When Eastman realized that he was facing even more serious federal charges, he rolled over so far on Castillo that he almost ended up back where he started. Seems that Castillo was his main buyer. Based on what Eastman told me, our RCMP are now trying to find proof that Castillo was involved in, or even ordered, the murder of nine competing drug dealers. It appears they may have hit Eastman’s facility back in June, and Castillo told Eastman he had taken care of them, made them disappear permanently, once he found out who they were. Because the Canada International Extradition Treaty with the United States comes into play on a murder charge, the Mounties are leaving no stone unturned in their investigation.”
“Holy crap,” said Brown. “Talk about peeling
back the layers on this, Jenny. Nice job. I think we’ll be using this case for future training.”
“Thanks, Tracy,” Willson said with a smile and a slight flush in her cheeks. “It was hard work and a lot of luck. But eventually, I got Eastman to admit to guiding Castillo to the caribou in Kootenay Pass and seeing him shoot it. He gave me a full statement on how they used the assistant guide to create a diversion so they could pull it off. But that was only after I promised he wouldn’t be charged with that offence. Our B.C. conservation officer colleagues found the caribou carcass where the outfitter said it would be, so we have a solid DNA sample to compare to anything we might seize down here. But no matter what persuasive tools I used, Eastman refused to tell me how he got the caribou head across the border into the U.S. Unfortunately, we may never find out for sure.”
Willson checked her notes to ensure she hadn’t neglected anything important. “So, here I am,” she said, “happy as hell to be hitting Castillo right where he lives and works.”
“Thanks, Jenny,” said Brown. “We love persistence down here and you’re an example of that in action. Well done.” She then pointed toward the assistant district attorney. “Take it away, Roger,” she said.
Hancock, a lanky lawyer who’d been a power forward on the Gonzaga University Bulldogs basketball team, led the assembled officers through the warrants, carefully describing the locations they were authorized to search and what they could seize. Because of the work done by Willson, and because Hancock had appeared before a sympathetic judge, the list was extensive, their latitude for search and seizure broad. When he finished, Hancock gave the officers his cellphone number. He told them he would stand by while they undertook the searches, ready to answer questions during the day.
When Hancock sat down, Willson again took over the meeting, leading the officers through detailed planning to execute the warrants.
