The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  “You must be very proud of him.”

  “Oh my goodness, yes. He should have been manager long ago, but those fools in Toronto kept hiring men who didn’t know the country, didn’t know this town, and surely didn’t know mining.”

  “Mike Barnes included?”

  She looked down. “I know it’s not Christian to speak ill of the dead, and I feel terrible for his widow and their little children, but Mike Barnes was nothing but trouble. He played around, you know. Was having an affair with some blonde that he met at his hotel. Can you imagine?”

  “It’s hard to believe,” said Cole.

  “It’s shameful. My Henry is a family man. He runs the mine like it’s his family. Those boys out there depend on him and he takes good care of them.”

  “Was Mr. Henderson unhappy when Mr. Barnes got the manager position?”

  “Oh, he was pretty disappointed. Like I said, he should have had that job five years ago. But he waited his turn, and when the last manager left a year ago, he was certain that the job would be his. When they hired that Barnes fellow, well, he was beside himself.” She looked away. Cole suspected that Hank Henderson had likely blown a gasket.

  Well, he must be very happy now.”

  “He never liked that man Barnes. Said that he was out to ruin the mine, ruin the town. It’s sad what happened to him, but yes, I’d say that Henry is happy to be running things over there.”

  “It’s just temporary, isn’t it?”

  “We’ll see,” said Emma.

  “So his mood has been better since Mike Barnes was killed?”

  “Oh my goodness, when you put it that way...” She drew in a quick breath.

  “What I mean is, he’s happy to be finally doing the job he wanted to?”

  “Well, yes. He’s happy to be helping the mine and the town.”

  “Listen, Mrs. Henderson, I don’t mean to pry, but is Mr. Henderson pretty dependable?”

  “My Henry is the most dependable man you’ll ever meet.”

  “So he’s usually on time for things.”

  “Oh, yes. Should I try him on his cellphone again?”

  “No, no. I’m just wondering what time he usually gets home from work. Maybe I got my wires crossed and he thinks that he isn’t meeting me until then.”

  “Henry comes home from work every night at six-thirty on the dot. You could set your clock by it.”

  “No exceptions?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he doesn’t go bowling on Tuesdays or play cards on Fridays?”

  “My Henry is a family man, and even with the kids grown and gone, he still comes home to me every night at six-thirty.”

  “Every night in the last two weeks?”

  Emma Henderson looked at him closely. “What are you getting at, Mr. Blackstone?”

  “Nothing at all. I’m thinking about profiling Mr. Henderson in my story and I’m just trying to learn more about his character.”

  “Well, he’s been home every night the last two weeks at sixthirty sharp,” she said. She sounded suspicious.

  Cole stood up. “I think I must have mixed up the times. I’ll call Mr. Henderson this evening after six-thirty and see about making arrangements to meet.”

  “You could come for dinner if you wish. I’m sure Henry would love to chat. We’re having pot roast tonight.”

  “That’s a lovely offer,” said Cole, imagining the look on Hank Henderson’s face should he come home to find Cole seated at the dinner table. “But I think I’ll leave you two to enjoy your dinner and maybe catch up with him afterwards. Thank you for the chat, Mrs. Henderson. I enjoyed your company.”

  “No trouble,” she said. She stood and wiped her hands on her apron, through they weren’t wet. “I’ll show you to the door.”

  When he was back in his truck he let out a long, deep sigh of relief. Emma Henderson had painted Hank – Henry – Henderson as a model husband, father, community member, and businessman. But her own scorn for Mike Barnes was palpable, no doubt a pale reflection of her husband’s contempt. And she had grown suspicious when he had queried her about Hank Henderson’s arrival home each night over the last couple of weeks. If Henderson had been late on the night Barnes was killed, it seemed pretty unlikely Emma Henderson would give that information up.

  Cole looked around the neat neighbourhood of post-World War II side-splits and back-splits. He was willing to bet that these folks kept an eye out for one another. He was willing to bet that they kept an eye on one another.

  He knocked on six doors before he found someone home, and then the elderly man couldn’t hear him when he spoke. The man fumbled with his hearing aid and yelled “What?” at the top of his lungs. Cole apologized and beat a hasty retreat. Maybe he wouldn’t find anybody who knew the comings and goings of the neighbourhood after all.

  But two houses down the street a woman in her fifties answered the door.

  “Hello, ma’am. My name is Casey Blackstone. I work for Citadel Insurance. One of our clients had a fender bender and we’re investigating the claim before we pay out. Could I ask you a couple of quick questions?”

  The woman looked up and down the street. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Thank you. Do you know Henry and Emma Henderson?”

  “Well, of course, they just live two doors up there.” She pointed a long finger toward the Henderson home.

  “Well, it seems that Mr. Henderson’s truck was rear-ended and suffered a little damage.”

  “Oh, my goodness, I do hope Henry is OK. I didn’t hear anything about this.”

  “Oh, he’s just fine. Not even a scratch. They build vehicles so well these days,” said Cole. “But there was some damage to his bumper, and with these new plastic alloys they use nowadays, re-placing a bumper is very expensive. The accident was last Tuesday night, and I wonder if you remember Mr. Henderson’s truck in the driveway that night, say after six-thirty or so?”

  The woman thought about it for only a second and said, “You know, it’s funny, but last Tuesday I noticed that Henry was late coming home. I mean, Mr. Henderson is always home for dinner. Emma is such a wonderful cook. But last Tuesday it was almost midnight before I saw the truck. I have such a terrible time falling asleep since my husband passed away, and so I was up watching a little television and was about to call Emma when I noticed the truck there.”

  “Do you remember what time you noticed it?”

  “Well, I checked at midnight just as The Price is Right was coming on. It was a rerun, but I hadn’t seen it so I thought I’d watch. I love that Bob Barker fellow. I noticed that Henry wasn’t there then. I checked again about half way through the episode. Someone had just won a brand new car, and it made me think to look again. And there he was. I felt relieved that he was home.”

  “Thank you so very much. This has been very helpful,” said Cole.

  “Will Mr. Henderson get what’s owed to him?” asked the neighbour.

  “Oh, yes, he’ll get what’s coming to him,” said Cole, walking down the path to his truck.

  He pulled into the Tim Hortons parking lot when his cellphone rang. He snatched it up from the jumble of papers on the passenger seat.

  “Blackwater.”

  “It’s Jim Jones.”

  “Hiya Jim. Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “No trouble. Sorry it took so long.”

  “Did you find out who got advance copies of the report?”

  “It took a little doing. I’m pretty deep in I-owe-you debt right now, but Jeremy Moon at Wild Rose Consulting gave me the list. It includes a bunch of government types in Edmonton which I’m guessing you don’t really care about.”

  Cole locked the Toyota and walked into the doughnut shop for a coffee boost. “That’s right. Just folks in this neck of the woods, really.”

  “Well, there’s me, Mike Barnes, Hank Henderson, and somebody named Frans Lester at the mining company’s head office in Toronto. He’s one of their planners. A copy of
the report was sent to the mayor of Oracle, but apparently she was out of town and hasn’t even signed for it yet.”

  “I haven’t met her,” said Cole, standing in line. There was one person in front of him.

  “And a fella named David Smith called and requested a copy, and received it last Monday by courier. I guess he’s the head of the Chamber of Commerce. Powerful dude in Oracle. Wants to run for office or something.”

  Cole stood stock still.

  “May I help you, sir?” said a young woman from behind the counter. Cole was silent. He didn’t see the young woman. Instead his eyes visualized the information that Jim Jones had just presented him.

  “May I help you?” she said again, her voice growing annoyed.

  “You there, Cole?”

  “Coffee, double cream, no sugar.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, Jim. Just ordering a coffee.”

  “Do I sound like a drive through to you, Cole?” chuckled Jim Jones.

  “I’m at Tim Hortons. Did you say last Monday?”

  “Yeah, last Monday. He should have got it by about 4 PM, according to my man at Wild Rose. I guess he wasn’t on the original list, and was pretty pissed. Called up and demanded a copy. I guess he figures that as head of the Chamber, he was owed one. Was talking about how he was going to be the next MP, and that he sure as hell would remember who was who when he got to Ottawa. Wild Rose sent him a copy after OKing it with the mine.”

  Cole was served his coffee. He fumbled, phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, to fish some change out of his pocket. He spilled some receipts, the cap from a ball point pen, and change on the floor and had to stoop, awkwardly, to collect them and present the change to the counter girl.

  He took his coffee and stepped into the parking lot.

  “Do you need anything else, Cole?”

  “Not right now, Jim. That’s really helpful information. Thanks.”

  Cole snapped the phone shut and jammed it into his pocket.

  It was pretty clear where he would stop next. He sipped his coffee as he walked down the street, checked the time on his cell and found that it was almost four. My God, he thought, time sure flies when you’re having fun. He didn’t feel any closer to singling out a suspect.

  George Cody had motive, means, and opportunity, but nothing conclusive pointed to him as the killer. The tarp in the back of his Pinto could be there to protect the seats and hatch from spilled beer when he was hauling bottles, or any number of things. Cole wondered if Nancy had turned anything up on George’s past. If the man had a history of violence, then that might be something else altogether.

  Hank Henderson had a clear motive: to stop Mike Barnes from shutting down the mine, and ascending to what must be in Henderson’s mind his rightful place at the head of the operation. But surely Henderson must know that the company would send another flack to wind down operations, and that offing Barnes was only a temporary solution. Cole imagined that a man so possessed by anger and jealousy might conveniently overlook that sort of fact while in a murderous rage. Henderson’s late arrival home on the night of the murder certainly established opportunity. A plethora of potential murder weapons in the man’s office left no wiggle room for the establishment of means.

  But there was a sticky loose end in all of this that festered in Cole Blackwater’s mind. It was just too convenient that Dale van Stempvort had opened his mouth, inserted foot, and established such a clear motive to frame himself for the murder. Though it didn’t make complete sense to Cole, he still believed that the mole was somehow tangled up in the murder of Mike Barnes. And the feeling that something from that morning held the key to both the mole and the murder still niggled in the back of his mind.

  It niggled as he walked up the steps to the Chamber of Commerce offices.

  “Is David Smith around?” he asked the woman at the reception desk. He didn’t recognize her.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but we’re old friends.”

  “Who should I say is calling?”

  “Cole Blackwater.”

  “Hold on a minute, Mr. Blackwater.” She picked up the phone, punched a number, and told Smith that Cole Blackwater was there to see him. She listened a moment, then said, “Go on back. Do you know the way?”

  “Sure do.” He smiled and dropped his coffee cup into a trash can.

  David Smith didn’t rise when Cole entered his office. He sat with his back to the door, at work on his computer when Cole stepped in. “Still playing reporter, Mr. Blackwater?” he asked with an audible sneer.

  “Still playing politician?”

  “That’s the difference between you and me, Mr. Blackwater,” said Smith, turning around in his chair to face Cole. “I’m an upand-comer, and you’re a has-been. I learned everything I needed to know about you with just one little phone call. And I know you’ve been poking your nose into my business around these parts.”

  Cole shrugged. Although he appeared blasé on the outside, a fire kindled on the inside. He wanted to know, more than almost anything, who that phone call was directed to. “I haven’t really been looking to learn anything about you. I have been poking around your town, though.”

  “Oh, and what have you learned?”

  Cole helped himself to a seat. “Lots of interesting things. I’ve learned that Dale van Stempvort was set up.”

  “Dale van Stempvort is a lunatic and a killer,” Smith insisted. “He’s going to find life in a maximum security facility very difficult indeed.”

  “I bet that makes you plenty happy.”

  “Why shouldn’t it? A man kills another man in cold blood. He should go to jail. That’s the rule of law in this country. Maybe you bleeding-heart liberals think that he should be embraced by his community and spend some rejuvenating time on a tranquil gulf island to realign his what-have-you’s, but here in Alberta, a man kills someone, he gets put away. If I had my way he’d hang. In fact, when I’m a Member of Parliament, I’ll be pushing for a return to the noose.”

  “Might make for good politics here in Alberta, but good luck getting a government elected on that platform.”

  “I don’t need political advice from a washed-up hack such as yourself, Blackwater,” Smith said, smiling. “Save it for the environmentalists. They must have scraped the bottom of the barrel to hire you.”

  Cole had heard it all before. But still it rattled him.

  “So how did you feel when you figured out that the mine was going to close, Smith?” Cole prodded.

  Cole watched David Smith for any change in his expression. He had read that behavioural scientists using video recordings of subjects could slow the frames of the film down and see nearly imperceptible changes that projected emotions in a person’s face. They could tell when a person was lying, or when, say, a couple having a seemingly innocent conversation actually hated each other’s guts. These scientists got so good at this work that after a while they were able to do it without the video recordings and slow motion. Cole Blackwater didn’t have that expertise. But he thought he saw a slight change in David Smith’s ruddy face, despite a clear attempt to maintain equanimity. “That’s just one of the options for the mine’s future. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen. I’ve talked with people in Toronto about it.”

  “But Mike Barnes was brought in with the sole purpose of wrapping up operations.”

  “Well, that was Mike’s take on things, but it wasn’t the only option.”

  “So you spoke to Mike about this?”

  “We had words.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I learned about the possible closure some time ago. Mike and I had a long talk about it one night. Long talk. We didn’t see eye to eye on the matter, but that’s the way it goes. I’d say that the closure option is less than likely at this time. Mike Barnes was a fool. I knew that the day he arrived in this town. He was Bay Street and this is Main Street. He didn’t know the first thing ab
out how we do things here. And it cost him.”

  “That’s not what you told me last week. You said he was a go-getter.”

  “And you said you were a reporter.”

  Cole remained implacable. “You think Barnes’ being Bay Street got him killed?”

  “I think that a man like Hank Henderson, for example, wouldn’t have let anyone sneak up behind him and club him on the back of the head, that’s what I think. But that’s all said and done, isn’t it? And I think the mine will stay in operation for some time to come.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, I think the mining company has seen the error of their ways. They should never have sent Mike Barnes to do what he was here to do. It was the wrong approach to dealing with this mine. It was wrong for the mine. Wrong for the company. Wrong for the town.”

  “And wrong for you. For your political career.”

  “My job as Chamber president is to make sure this town flourishes. When I become MP, it will still be my job to safeguard the future of this town.”

  Cole watched the man carefully. His face was flushed, but no more so than Cole’s. He sat back in his chair, trying to look relaxed. Cole imagined him sitting behind one of the looming mahogany desks in a Centre Block office on Parliament Hill. The image wasn’t hard to conjure. David Smith looked every bit a Member of Parliament. Even a Cabinet Minister.

  “Tough on crime, subsidies for the mining industry, to hell with regulations,” said Cole, “That will be your campaign platform?”

  “Something like that,” grinned Smith. “Let’s face it, in this riding, I don’t have to worry about running against the Liberals or the NDP. All I have to worry about is winning the nomination battle. That’s a ground game.”

  “Sell nominations. Turn out your vote.”

  “We speak the same language after all,” said Smith.

  “But if the mine closed, there would be a lot of people out of work in this town, wouldn’t there? The economy of Oracle, and other towns in this area would hit the skids. That can’t be allowed to happen, can it?”