Cole let the phone slide down the side of his face. It came to rest on his lap. Peggy still spoke, but he couldn’t make out what she said. Instead he heard Mike Barnes’ voice in his head. He could see him, sitting comfortably across the coffee table in his office, his shirt tailored, his shoes polished. He saw himself shake Barnes’ hand and watched as the young man turned back to his office to prepare for his next meeting.
And now Barnes was dead.
“Cole, are you there?” he heard the tinny voice in the phone ask.
He lifted the receiver again. “I’m here, Peggy.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No, sorry, I was lost for a minute.”
“I said that we should get caught up on this as soon as possible. I think this is going to have an impact on our work.”
“You think?” Cole said sarcastically.
Now it was Peggy’s turn to be quiet.
“I’m sorry,” said Cole. “I’m just a little overwhelmed. This news about Barnes comes as quite a shock. I was just with the man twelve hours ago. And I had a bit of a run in myself last night.” Cole described the fight and how George Cody came to his rescue and sat with him through the night.
“Jeepers, Cole, you should go to the hospital to make sure you’re OK .”
“I’m OK , but I will swing by for some stitches this morning so I don’t have to play Scarface this Halloween,” he grinned.
“We should expect calls from the RCMP, don’t you think?” asked Peggy.
“I know I should. In fact, I’ll probably save them the trouble and give them a call before I get breakfast.”
There was a long silence.
“Cole, you don’t think Dale had anything to do with this, do you?”
“I don’t know, Peggy. I want to believe that he didn’t, but I don’t know.”
“I’ve known him for ten years, Cole. He’s crazy but he’s not a killer.”
“I want to believe you, Peggy. But I’m not the one who will be making that judgement. He really stepped in a pile of it this time, if you ask me.”
“It was a harmless comment, Cole.”
“It wasn’t harmless, Peggy, and you know it. Lets not play naive. He said he’d be willing to do anything to stop the mine. That’s far from harmless for a man with Dale’s history.”
“Come on now Cole, you know that quote was out of context. He would do anything legal to stop the mine. And you know as well as I do that Dale has never been convicted of anything, he’s never even been in jail. It’s all just rumours and hearsay, likely the product of the same people who tried to crack your skull last night. There’s a lot riding on the development of the McLeod River Mine.”
Cole was silent. How far down this rabbit hole did he want to go? He was in unknown territory. Finally he said, “I’m not the one who will be making that judgement.”
“Well.” She sighed deeply, “Let’s keep in touch today, OK?”
“OK . Thanks for the call, Peggy.”
“No problem, I guess,” she said softly.
Cole sat on the bed and held the receiver. A sliver of light poked through the heavy curtains. A Leonard Cohen song came to mind: There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. For Mike Barnes there was no longer any light and that made Cole sad, unexpectedly and overwhelmingly so. Though Barnes was the man responsible for the imminent destruction of the Cardinal Divide, Cole Blackwater had not considered him the enemy once they had met face to face. They had become human beings to one another.
Mike Barnes was reasonable and straightforward, likeable: a fellow human. Flesh. Blood. Bone. Memory. Gone.
Cole stared at the crack of light. In all the years he’d worked to stop ventures like logging of old growth forests, drilling of oil and gas wells in the wilderness, and mining in places like the Cardinal Divide, he had never wished his opponent dead. Sure, he’d made jokes that his life would be a lot easier if so-and-so got run over by a cement mixer, but he didn’t really mean anything by that. Now a man he had worked to oppose was dead, and Cole Blackwater was one of the last people to see him alive.
Murdered, no less. Cole watched the sliver of light grow sharper as the sun moved higher. Murder: how many people could even consider such a barbaric act? Cole wondered. He closed his eyes against the thought. It would be a lie to say that he had never considered it as a solution to some of his own problems. But it had never been about work. And Cole knew all too well that acting on such an impulse was another matter all together.
Cole sat on the floor, his back to the bedraggled bed, his fist, face, back, and head aching, and looked at the seam of light in the heavy drapes over the motel room windows. He couldn’t get much closer to the floor unless he fell over, he thought. A pretty fair metaphor for his life. Now what? he wondered. Pick himself up, dust himself off, as the Peter Tosh song implored? Start all over again? He steadied himself with his left hand and was preparing to do just that when the phone rang.
He looked at it a moment. Seemed as though everything bad that had happened in his life had started with the jangling of a telephone. That’s how this folly had begun, less than a week before. He reached for it and picked up the receiver.
“Blackwater.”
“Mr. Blackwater, this is Staff Sergeant Reimer from the Oracle RCMP. I wonder if you might have a moment to come into the detachment this morning. We have some questions we’d like to ask you concerning the death or Mr. Mike Barnes.”
Beaten to the punch again.
9
Cole closed his eyes as he listened to the Staff Sergeant request his presence at the RCMP detachment. “I can. It will be about an hour or so. There are a few things I need to deal with first.”
“Come as soon as you are able, please,” she said politely, but firmly enough to leave no doubt in his mind that his presence was not optional.
“Do I need a lawyer?” he asked.
“You’re welcome to have counsel present, but you’re not under suspicion in the death of Mike Barnes, if that’s what you’re asking. You were likely the last person to see him alive, and that makes you an important witness in his murder.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” Cole said, and hung up. He stood hesitantly and made his way back to the bathroom. Not more than ten minutes had elapsed since he had started to undress, but in that time his world had altered perceptibly. Ten minutes ago his biggest problem was that he had been beaten unconscious by thugs, likely hired by someone who didn’t want him to do his job. Now he was, at the very least, a witness to the last hours of a man’s life. Even worse, the suggestion of murder had unlocked a memory he had buried so deeply it had remained hidden for three years.
He reached into the shower and turned the water to hot. While he waited for the cold water to exit the pipes he stripped off his pants, then stepped into the shower. The hot water relieved his aching back. He stood and absorbed the heat. The water massaged his neck and shoulders and cascaded down his bulky frame. The cuts on his face stung, but the pain helped push that unpleasant, unwanted memory from his mind. Standing with his left hand pressed against the tiled shower wall, the water coursed over him and he let it wash away the past, if only for a moment. Finally he lifted his head to wash his face beneath the shower. Fresh blood ran down his body and turned the water in the shower stall to the colour of faded roses.
As he drove from the Rim Rock Hotel toward Main Street, he contemplated: stitches or coffee? His need for caffeine was definitely greater, but the stitches would have to come first. The cut beneath this eye had opened in the shower and bled into a hunk of toilet paper that Cole pressed to his face. It probably wasn’t the first time someone in this town asked for an extra large double double while bleeding on the counter at Tim Hortons. Just the same, he made his way to the hospital and found the emergency room blessedly empty. He was given a gauze pad for the cut, ushered into a small room that smelled of disinfectant, and told to sit on the tissue paper-covered bench to wait f
or the doctor. He wished he’d picked up the Red Deer Advocate to read local coverage of the murder. Instead he stood and perused the charts and posters on the wall.
A knock at the door was followed by the doctor in black pants and a black turtleneck. He introduced himself with an extended hand. Without thinking Cole shook it and winced in pain.
“Oops, sorry about that,” the doctor said. “Have a seat.” He pulled on a pair of gloves and poked at the cut beneath Cole’s eye.
“What happened here?”
“Bar fight.”
“How’s the bar look?”
“Funny,” said Cole, grimacing.
“I try.”
The doctor looked at his head. “You’re lucky. This could have been much worse. Let’s have a look at the hand.”
Cole held it out, and the doctor gently turned it over. “We’ll need to have this X-rayed.” He scribbled something on a form. “Why didn’t you come in last night?”
“I was unconscious, I think.”
The doctor frowned. “That’s not good, Mr. Blackwater.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Someone should have brought you in. No friends in the bar with you?”
“Just the bartender. He says he woke me every hour throughout the night.”
The doctor nodded, opened a cabinet, and removed a suture set. “Not too squeamish, are you?”
“I’ve had my share of stitches, Doc,” said Cole. He felt macho until the first suture was inserted into the cut, driving a hot nail of pain into his eye. “Christ almighty,” he grumbled. “I think one of those will be enough.”
The doctor smiled. “We’re going to need about a dozen of these to make sure you don’t end up scaring small children and pets.”
“Can you at least give me a caffeine drip?” Cole begged. “This is a little much to take without so much as a coffee.”
The doctor smiled and completed the job. Then he directed Cole to Imaging. “The results will only take a minute or two. If it’s broken, you’ll be sent back here to have it immobilized.”
Cole did as he was told and half an hour later was in the Toyota headed downtown. His hand, badly bruised but not broken, was wrapped with a tensor bandage to prevent further injury, and the black stitches beneath his eye looked like a caterpillar had lodged on his face. Now it was almost noon and he still hadn’t had a cup of coffee. He was hungover, bruised, aching, beaten, and grumpy as a buckshot bear.
He drove to the highway and made a beeline for Tim Hortons. It was lunch hour as he walked stiffly across the lot to the double doors and into the line up with construction workers, bank tellers, and a couple of yummy mummies with small children. People waited for soup and sandwiches, cups of coffee, and doughnuts, and Cole overheard the name Mike Barnes more than once. He kept his ears open to pick up on the gossip. By the time he reached the front of the line and ordered his coffee and sandwich, he’d also heard Dale van Stempvort’s name mentioned no less than half a dozen times.
The townsfolk of Oracle had connected the dots between van Stempvort’s reputation, his comments in the newspaper the day before, and the murder of Mike Barnes as easily as Cole had. Cole Blackwater predicted a lynching. Keeping his eye open for anyone who might look as though they could swing a chair, he ordered coffee and sustenance, eliciting a slightly fearful look from the girl behind the counter. He caught sight of himself in the doors as he left and understood why.
He retreated to his Toyota and burned his tongue on the first few sips of his day’s first coffee. Dale van Stempvort could have arranged a meeting with Mike Barnes last night. He could have been on the mine property when Cole left, or Cole could have passed him on the road without recognizing his faded red Chevy S10 in the fading light. Maybe Dale van Stempvort hadn’t scheduled himself in; maybe he waited for the Barnes to finish work and killed him when he left the office.
Cole rubbed the back of his aching head. He took a deeper draught of his coffee now that it was cooler.
Was van Stempvort capable of killing a man? That was a tough question to answer. Killers came in all shapes and sizes. He’d fought a number of boxers who’d seemed inclined to kill Cole had he given them the chance, but those young men had been punched in the head too many times, and some of them used boxing to vent their rage. The coffee ran through his veins and sped up his thoughts. What about Dale? He was a pretty angry dude, thought Cole. But despite his super-heated rhetoric, Dale didn’t come across as a killer. Not for a mine. And not for the Cardinal Divide, as lovely as it was.
Cole was long overdue for his visit to the RCMP. He started the Toyota and turned stiffly to shoulder check as he backed out of the busy parking lot. He drove to Main Street where the RCMP detachment office was located. Like others of its kind in small towns all across Canada, it was a square brick building, landscaped with anonymous shrubs, and decorated with the maple leaf up a flagpole. Cole parked next to the only cruiser in the five-car lot and stepped out of his truck, carrying the dregs of his coffee. The sun-light made him squint and the swelling around his eye was tender where the sutures were threaded.
Steps led up to the main doors of the detachment. Cole entered into a cool reception area with a white linoleum floor. A bulletin board displayed posters of Canada’s most wanted next to a small sitting area. Cole presented himself at the reception desk, as unpresentable as he was. The woman behind the glass was on the phone and motioned that she would be a moment. He stood, looking around the sparse sitting area at plastic plants, a small coffee table with last year’s magazines on it, and three grey, threadbare boardroom chairs. Beyond that a door led to what Cole guessed were the inner offices of the detachment.
“Can I help you?”
Cole looked back to the woman. Her phone rang again.
“Busy morning,” he smiled.
She said nothing, and raised her eyebrows to hurry him along.
“Cole Blackwater to see Sergeant Reimer.”
The woman picked up her phone and gestured to Cole to take a seat beside the plastic fern.
He shuffled over, sipped his coffee, and chose to stand, reading the “Most Wanted” posters rather than back issues of Time magazine and Maclean’s. A minute later the door by the reception desk opened and a constable walked briskly through.
She was maybe five-and-a-half feet tall with dark hair pulled back and twisted into a knot. The grey-blue long-sleeved shirt and black tie hugged Reimer’s compact body, suggesting a rower or weightlifter. Cole’s fleeting fantasy was interrupted by her businesslike voice: “Mr. Blackwater?”
“That’s me.” Cole reminded himself that this woman led a murder investigation into the death of a man, and he was among the last to see Barnes alive. Even so, he liked the way her gun belt, loaded with service weapon, extra magazines, handcuffs, pepper spray, collapsible baton, and radio, hugged her hips. A number of female police walked Vancouver’s downtown eastside beat, and Cole couldn’t help but appreciate them as they performed their service to their community.
“I’m Sergeant Reimer,” she said. “Would you join me in the back?” It wasn’t really a question.
Cole followed her through the door and down a hall into a sparse interview room. A second officer joined them as they arranged their chairs. “This is Constable Paulson. He’ll be sitting in on our conversation. Have a seat,” said the Sergeant. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
Cole motioned to his Tim Hortons cup and sat down. “Kind of formal,” he said, taking a sip from his coffee to steady his nerves.
“Standard procedure,” said the Sergeant. “We don’t do informal when investigating a murder.” She sat opposite him. “Looks like you had a rough night.”
Cole managed a smile. “Could say that.”
“What happened?”
“I got jumped at The Quarry, the bar at the Rim Rock.”
“Pressing charges?”
Cole considered it. “I don’t think so. Just a little disagreement over a game of pool.
”
“OK ,” said Reimer, ending that conversation. “Tell me about your meeting with Mike Barnes yesterday.”
Cole took another swallow of his coffee, now almost cold. He wondered if he could interrupt to take Reimer up on her offer. He decided against it. “Well, I went to the mine under the pretence of interviewing Mike Barnes for a story for Business Week magazine.”
“What do you mean pretence?”
“Well, I wasn’t really writing a story.”
Reimer jotted something in her notepad. “Go on.”
“I work for the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group. They’ve hired me to stop the mine from being built. So I invented this cover to interview Mike Barnes so I could learn how the company plans to push through their application for the new mine at Cardinal Divide. But Barnes had me figured out. And the strange thing is we had a really good chat anyway.”
Reimer made notes and didn’t look at Cole. “So you impersonated a journalist?”
“I guess so,” he said. “Is that illegal?”
She allowed herself a slight smile. “I think we have a more serious crime to discuss.”
The seriousness of the conversation sobered Cole. He was in an interview room with an RCMP officer to discuss the murder of a man he had seen only the night before. He swallowed hard.
“What did you and Mr. Barnes talk about last night?”
Cole cleared his throat. “We talked about a lot of things. About the existing mill, its operations, its productivity. We talked about the market for coal, and the various problems with getting the product to market. We talked about labour, and about the union at the mine. Mike Barnes was very forthcoming with me.”
“Did he have any reason not to be?”
“Well, he could have just thrown me out when he learned who I was. That’s what I would have done. Mike Barnes struck me as a very bright man. I frankly couldn’t figure out what he was doing running a mine in a backwater place like Oracle.”
Reimer looked up from her notebook.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to offend you,” he said honestly.
The Cardinal Divide Page 14
