The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  “Need a moment of your time this morning, Sergeant,” said Gilbert. “Something has come up that I think you’ll want to know about.”

  “My office,” she said.

  The followed her. She offered them two chairs opposite her and looked at them.

  “Cole was at the mine site yesterday meeting with a few folks, and found something that we think will interest you.”

  “You were at the mine site?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to interfere with this investigation?”

  Cole took a deep breath. “Are you interested in what I’ve found or not?”

  Sergeant Reimer looked visibly angry. She said nothing.

  “When I was using the washroom on the fourth floor, I happened to drop something from my pocket. I bent over to pick it up, and found blood splattered under the sink and on the walls beneath the counter. It looked to be about a week old.”

  Cole could see Sergeant Reimer processing this information.

  “I don’t think the blood came from some everyday kind of injury, you know, like a paper cut or what have you. There was a quite a lot of it.”

  “Will you reopen the investigation, Sergeant?” Perry Gilbert asked.

  Reimer smiled thinly. “It’s a bit too early for that, Mr. Gilbert. If anything this may be a case of changing the scene of the crime, not the perpetrator.”

  “But you’ll send a team out to look at the room? Cole tells me there aren’t any men working on the fourth floor now.”

  “That’s what Mike Barnes’ secretary told me,” added Cole.

  “So there shouldn’t be too many prints on the door to the washroom.”

  “Assuming that the perpetrator didn’t wear gloves,” added Reimer.

  “One way or another, it’s worth looking into. You can at least match the blood types, and determine location. Maybe you’ll get lucky and lift some prints too.”

  “I’ll call Red Deer and have a forensics team sent in. Might take a day.”

  “Can you have the room sealed?”

  “I don’t have the manpower to put someone on the door, but I’ll call the mine and ask that it be locked.”

  Perry smiled. “Good enough.”

  “Mr. Blackwater,” said Sergeant Reimer. “Don’t think that this information changes how I feel about your involvement in this case. This investigation is a matter for the police, not for a private citizen.”

  “Then it would be helpful, Sergeant,” said Cole, failing to hide the contempt in his voice, “if the police actually investigated, instead of merely convicting a man based on a quote in a newspaper. If I hadn’t found that blood, you’d still think the murder took place in the mill. What else don’t you know? You still haven’t established the murder weapon.”

  “Those results will be back tomorrow.”

  “And what will they show? That Mike Barnes hit his head on a drill bit? That could have happened after he was dead.”

  Sergeant Reimer stood up. “You gentlemen know your way out?”

  Cole stood. “You’ve got an innocent man behind bars while the real killer is walking the streets of this town, Sergeant.”

  “That will be all, Mr. Blackwater.”

  “I have one more question, if you don’t mind, Sergeant. Were Mike Barnes’ keys found on his body when he died?” asked Perry.

  Reimer shook her head, but she picked up the phone. “It’s Reimer,” she said into the handset. “Were there keys on the deceased when he was brought in? OK, thanks.”

  “Full set, including car keys, office keys, and the master key for the mine.” They left.

  “That went well,” said Perry Gilbert, stepping lightly down the entrance stairs.

  Cole moved ponderously behind him. “’Bout as well as I expected. Can you get anybody to light a fire under her butt?”

  “I’ll call my supervisor and ask her to file a complaint. What are you up to for the rest of the day?”

  “I’m going to ferret out the snitch inside ESCoG.”

  “You still think that’s connected?”

  “Who knows? But if nothing else, it will close up one hole in what is fast becoming a very leaky weir.”

  “Let me know if anything turns up.”

  They said goodbye and Cole drove across town to his meeting with Peggy McSorlie.

  “You ready?” he asked her in front of James Preacher’s house.

  “I think so.”

  He rang the bell and a moment later James Preacher answered the door. Cole remembered him from the now-distant strategy session at Peggy’s house. James Preacher stood under five foot ten and Cole pegged him as a welterweight. His narrow body was tucked into a pair of grey workpants that were clean, and a red and black chequered shirt that had been carefully pressed. He had thin, grey hair cut short and wore glasses. He greeted them and ushered them inside. “Come in, come in. Will you have coffee?”

  “No thanks,” said Cole, “not for me.”

  “Only if you’re having some, James,” said Peggy.

  “I’ve got a pot on. Come on into the kitchen.” The home was neat and clean, but showed signs of wear and age.

  “How long have you lived here, James?”

  “In this place, since 1967. In Oracle, all my life. I was born here. 1938.”

  Cole looked at the photos on the mantle of the fireplace. Two grown sons, with children of their own. “You’re a grandfather, James?”

  “I have four grandchildren. Three girls and a boy.”

  “Do you see them much?”

  “Not as often as I’d like. The missus and I get out to Toronto about once a year; that’s where our oldest son lives. Our other boy is in California, Silicon Valley, and we only get there every couple of years. It’s just too expensive. But they all come here for Christmas every year, so that gives us a lot of time with the little ones.”

  They sat at the table. “What’s this all about?” asked James.

  “Well, we’re trying to get the campaign started again, James,” said Peggy.

  “We’re hoping for your input. Peggy and I are contemplating a new tack,” said Cole, “and we want to see what you think. He explained the new direction that the campaign might take, watching the miner’s face for any sign that might betray his intentions. He added the variation that he and Peggy had agreed on and then sat back. “What do you think?”

  James folded his hands on his chest. “I don’t know. It seems like a pretty big risk to take.”

  “We feel we need to get our side of the story out right now, James,” said Peggy.

  “But to publicly condemn Dale before he’s gone to trial seems unnecessary.”

  Cole watched him. “Do you think the media will pick up on it?”

  “Pick up on it? They’ll eat Dale van Stempvort alive. I thought you two believe he’s innocent.”

  “We do, James. But we’re up against a wall.”

  James looked at his hands. “I trust you, Peggy. And you too, Cole. If this is what you have to do, I’ll support you. I just feel bad for Dale is all. He’s no killer. I don’t think so, at least.” The old man sighed. “So, when are you doing this?”

  “Middle of next week,” said Cole. That gave the story enough time to leak.

  “Thanks for including me on this.”

  “We’re going to try and meet with everybody today,” said Cole.

  James showed them to the door. When they were back at their vehicles Cole said, “That went well.”

  Peggy looked downcast, “I hate to set people up like that.”

  “Well, one of them is setting us up pretty good. And Dale too.

  They’ll understand. Let’s go and see Basilo.”

  They drove downtown and parked. Basilo was behind the counter at his hardware store when they walked in. He called for one of his store clerks to come, showed them into the small office behind the front desk, and closed the door.

  “I know what you are thinking,” he said after they
shook hands and sat down. “You think I am the one who gave that information to that reporter. It’s not so.”

  Cole and Peggy looked at each other. “That’s not what this is about, Basilo,” said Cole.

  “Please, call me Basil. And it is OK. It makes sense, no? I am a business man, a member of the Chamber of Commerce. You think that because I run a business, because I take my lunch with people like David Smith, that I am only in favour of development. Of the mines. Of the mill. Well, it is not so. I came to Oracle because I wanted to make a better life for my family. We moved to the Crowsnest Pass when I was three years old.” He held up three fingers to emphasis the point. “My father, he worked underground his whole life. He died when he was just sixty-two years old. Lung cancer. Breathed coal dust his whole life. My mother, she worked like a slave. Six kids. No running water until the 1950s. No telephone until 1961. We had nothing. That mine, they did nothing for us. Nothing, I tell you. When my father died, they did nothing for us. So I moved here. I knew mining was good for a town, but I see now that mining isn’t what this town needs. Some day the mine will close. Maybe it will be next year. Maybe ten years from now. But what will be left after the mine closes? A hole in the ground. A bunch of rock in the creeks. What will the tourists want to see? A hole in the ground? I say no. I think they will want to see grizzly bears. So if the Cardinal Divide is turned into a hole in the ground, then in ten years there will be no Oracle. No town. No future. All the tourists, they will go someplace else. They will go to Banff. To Jasper. They will drive through here and not stop. They will not stop because there will be nothing to see.”

  Cole and Peggy watched him.

  “So what do you think we should do?” asked Cole.

  “Keep fighting. That’s all we can do, no?”

  “We were thinking about announcing our support for Dale van Stempvort in the newspapers next week,” said Cole.

  “I think that’s nice, but I don’t see how that stops the mine.”

  “We can use it as a hook to tell the story that the company only wants to build the haul road and rail line, and that Mike Barnes’ murder is really just a diversion from the mine’s plans.”

  Basilo looked at the two of them. “I would not do this. I would not say anything about Dale one way or another. Instead, I’d focus on the economics. What happens to a town after the mine closes? Then what? What about the independent businessmen like me?”

  “You’re taking a big risk being against the mine, aren’t you?”

  “Life is risk. To be alive is risk. My father taught me to stand up for what I believe. This I believe: if the mine is dug into Cardinal Divide and the McLeod River, then all will be lost for his region. We will have killed the goose that gave us the golden egg.”

  They left.

  “We should put him on TV,” said Cole as they walked out of the hardware store.

  “We could, if the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t first.”

  “Two down, one to go.”

  They drove back through the residential part of town and up the hill to the new homes and condos to find the building where Anne Stanton lived. It was a new building, three stories tall, with wide balconies that overlooked the forested foothills beyond the Portsmith River Valley.

  Anne Stanton was twenty-two years old, a recent graduate with a degree in political science, and a poster child for the modern urban environmentalist. She wore her brown hair long and tied back in a pony tail, and wore black calf-length lululemon yoga pants and a matching shirt. She smiled when she greeted Cole and Peggy and welcomed them into the apartment. “I could have met you downtown,” she said, “and saved you the trip to the ’burbs.”

  “We don’t mind, Anne,” said Peggy. “We’re trying to stop in on everybody that was at last week’s strategy session.”

  “Nice place,” Cole said, looking at a print on the wall of a bull elk in rut.

  “Thanks. I’m just subletting it for the summer,” said Anne, looking at the print.

  “Are you staying in Oracle after that?” asked Cole.

  “We’ll see about work,” she said. “I might also head back to Edmonton to continue my Master’s degree.”

  Cole moved around the apartment. It was sparsely furnished, with a couch and two overstuffed chairs in the living room facing the fireplace. There was no TV. Wildlife prints hung on the wall, most by local or amateur artists, Cole guessed. There was a cabinet of china in the dining room, along with some trophies for sporting events: curling, hockey, and skeet shooting.

  “Who are you subletting the place from?” Cole called to Anne, who was in the kitchen making tea.

  “Oh, a friend of mine from school. His family owns this place. They come out at Christmas. Otherwise it’s mostly empty.”

  Funny place to have a Christmas retreat, through Cole. No skiing. No accounting for taste, though.

  “So Anne, you know why we’re here. We’re trying to plot our course forward.”

  They talked for half an hour and when Cole and Peggy left, waterlogged with too much herbal tea, they stood by their vehicles and talked.

  “Now what?” asked Peggy.

  “We wait. See what happens.”

  “What did you think of Anne?”

  “Idealistic,” said Cole. “Too much school, not enough world.”

  Peggy smiled her agreement.

  They parted ways. Peggy headed back to the farm and Cole drove downtown to find lunch and a bathroom to empty his bladder of herbal tea and think over the morning’s conversations. There was something bothering him. Something that wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on it. But it was there, in his brain. He needed more coffee to shake loose whatever it was that was needling him.

  19

  It was early afternoon when Cole parked the Toyota across the street from the Henderson residence. Next on his to-do list was to figure out if Hank Henderson had had the opportunity to kill Mike Barnes.

  He sat in his truck for twenty minutes, working up the story he planned to give to Mrs. Henderson, if in fact she was home. He spent another ten minutes calculating how he would deal with Hank Henderson should he come home from work early. It was unlikely, but Cole wanted to have an escape plan etched clearly in his mind.

  Cole grabbed his notebook, straightened himself as best he could, and examined his face in the Toyota’s mirror. The cut on his chin was still covered with a bandage that Cole had forgotten to change that morning, and a little spot of blood showed through it. The wound on his cheek, now a week old, was healing, but the dark sutures still bristled, and had now begun to dig into the skin that they held fast. His eye was no longer discoloured from the beating in the bar, but both eyes were red and puffy from his night of drinking, and from his slumber on the barn floor. His hair was a curly mess. Really, he looked like someone who had just been released from prison, and he was not confident that anyone who answered the door at the Henderson residence would speak to him.

  “What the hey,” he said. Cole stepped out of the truck and heard his joints pop and protest as he called his body into action. He walked across the road and up the steps to the neat 1950s side-split that the telephone book said was the residence of H. Henderson, the only Henderson in the book.

  He rang the bell and forced a pleasant smile onto his grisly face.

  The door opened and a diminutive woman looked out through the screen door. “Yes?” she said.

  “Mrs. Henderson?”

  “Yes, I’m Emma Henderson.”

  “Ma’am, my name is Carey Blackstone. I’m with Report on Business magazine. I’m to meet Mr. Henderson here today.”

  “Oh, he didn’t say anything to me.”

  “We were going to meet here and discuss a story I’m doing on Oracle’s economy, and the role that the mine plays in it. He didn’t say anything to you?”

  “No,” she said, and looked a little worried.

  “May I come in to wait for him?”

  “I should give him a call.”

&nb
sp; “He’s likely on his way home right now,” said Cole quickly.

  “I’ll try him on his cell.”

  Cole held his breath. She closed the door and went to the kitchen to make the call. A minute later she came back.

  “I couldn’t reach him.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll just forget it,” said Cole calmly.

  “Oh, no, Henry always keeps his word. He’ll be here. Please, do come in.”

  Cole stepped inside.

  “Don’t worry about your shoes, Mr. Blackstone. Here, come sit in the kitchen while we wait for Henry.”

  “Thank you ma’am.”

  They sat at the Formica-topped kitchen table. Emma Henderson offered Cole coffee or tea, neither of which he accepted. “Just water please,” he said.

  She sat across from him.

  “Have you lived here long?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, both Henry and I were born in Oracle. And we’ve lived in this house all our married lives. Raised three children here, two boys and a girl.”

  Cole looked around the room. It was the picture of a well-kept home. Counters bare and orderly. Floor scrubbed. The CBC played low from a radio in the corner.

  On the wall across from the kitchen table was a portrait taken in the early 1970s. It was easy for Cole to tell the photo’s age; no other time in history presented such easily distinguished fashion. The image looked to be a Sears Portrait Studio picture. It showed a younger Hank Henderson surrounded by his family. The two sons and the daughter, all pre-teens, smiling, the boys flanking a grinning Hank Henderson. The boys resting their hands on their father’s shoulder. The girl with her hand on Emma Henderson’s arm. A loving family. The image startled Cole. It was not the one he had of Hank Henderson in his mind.

  “What did you say your story was about?” asked Emma Henderson.

  “Well, with all the news about the Buffalo Anthracite Mine these days, we thought we might look past, well, the unfortunate events of the past couple weeks and try to understand what makes Oracle, and the mine, tick.”

  Emma nodded.

  “Your husband has been with the mine a long time?”

  “Oh yes, he’s been there for ...” She thought a moment. “For seventeen years now. He’s been working his way up the ladder you know. He started on the shop floor at the mill here in town when he was just a young man, and now of course is the mine manager.”