The Darkening Archipelago

by Stephen Legault

  Nancy found a place that served milkshakes and ate a salad for the sake of achieving balance, and then walked back to the High River Tribune’s office to look for Casey Brown.

  As she walked to the newspaper’s front doors in a circa 1970s strip mall, she heard a voice call from behind her. “Ms. Webber?”

  She turned to see a man pedalling his bike up onto the sidewalk. He wore a helmet with a blinking red light on top and an orange safety vest, and his pant leg was safely tucked into one woolen sock. She waited for him to dismount and offered her hand. “It’s Nancy.” She smiled at him.

  “Hi,” said the man, catching his breath. “I’m Casey Brown. Sorry to be late. The auction went a little longer than I expected. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting?”

  “Not at all. Just got here myself.”

  Casey opened the door to the newspaper office and pushed his bike inside. “Come on in.”

  He wheeled his way between the desks to the back, and when he re-emerged he had doffed his cycling attire and was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt.

  “I bet you fit in around here better when you’re dressed like this, rather than with the bicycle road-warrior get-up on,” said Nancy, looking around the cluttered space.

  “You can say that again. I grew up in Toronto. I rode my bike everywhere. When I graduated from Ryerson, I didn’t just want to go to work for some leftie Toronto magazine filled with ads for gay dating services, you know what I mean? Not that I have anything against gays. God, listen to me, now I’m starting to sound like an Albertan. Anyway, I applied for positions at a bunch of little papers in the Rockies, and this is where I landed. The folks around here are actually pretty used to seeing cyclists now. Lots of the Calgary commuters ride the trails in Kananaskis on the weekends. The old-timers still have a tough time with it. But they give me a wide berth. I guess it’s like passing a horse on the road.”

  “Sure,” said Nancy. “Except I doubt you’ll kick a headlight out if you get spooked.”

  “You never know,” said Brown, sitting on the edge of a desk. “So what was so important that you had to drive all the way down here on a Sunday?”

  Nancy considered this question herself. What was so important? She’d spent four hours on the road devising cockamamie stories about a cover-up of Henry Blackwater’s suicide, convincing herself it was the reason that Cole kept her at a distance now. But she couldn’t very well share this with Casey Brown. “Well,” she began, “I don’t know if it’s anything at all. I just want to look through your coverage on Henry Blackwater’s suicide.”

  “Like I said on the phone, I wasn’t here then. But it’s all on file. I’ll show you the way.”

  Casey led Nancy to the back of the office to a microfiche scanner and filing cabinets filled with reels of stories filed by date. “You said it was around the spring of 2002?”

  “Yeah, around then. I don’t know the exact date.”

  Brown flipped through the files. “Well, here you go. This is the first story. You should be able to easily scan through the files that follow.”

  “Thanks,” said Nancy, sitting down on a small stool to begin her research.

  “No trouble. Holler if you need anything.”

  Nancy Webber didn’t need to holler. It took her a little over an hour to scan everything the High River Tribune had written on the death of Henry Blackwater. In that time she learned little that she didn’t already know: Henry Blackwater had presumably used a branding iron to engage the trigger of a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, shooting himself under the chin. According to the medical examiner, he died instantly. The suicide had occurred in the middle of a boxing ring in the barn on the Blackwater Ranch in the southeastern side of the Porcupine Hills. The youngest of two sons — Cole — had discovered his father after hearing the shotgun blast. Walter Blackwater had been on the ranch at the time as well and had arrived at the barn shortly after Cole.

  There had been no RCMP investigation of the shooting, as the me had determined that the death was consistent with that of a suicide.

  There it was again, thought Nancy. That ambiguity. Consistent with that of a suicide.

  Nancy couldn’t get over that ambiguity. It kept coming up in relation to the death of Henry Blackwater.

  She rubbed her eyes. Too much time to think, she thought.

  She filed the fiche, found Casey Brown, and thanked him for his time.

  “Anytime,” he said, looking up from his computer and stretching. “You find what you were looking for?”

  “Afraid not,” she said, and headed out the door into the afternoon sunshine.

  Now what? Drive back to Edmonton and put this silliness behind you, she heard a voice say in her head. Give the man a break, she heard herself think. He’s obviously been through a lot. The last thing he needs is Nancy Webber poking around in his past. Let sleeping dogs lie, she repeated. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? That was always the problem with Cole Blackwater. He lied. But something else kept getting in the way.

  Nancy Webber was reasonably certain that what kept getting in the way right now was the nagging questions about how Henry Blackwater died.

  She started to walk back downtown and snatched her phone out of her pocket. She dialled directory assistance, found the number she was looking for, and called it.

  “Fort Macleod RCMP, how can I direct your call?”

  “Is Sergeant Reimer in today?”

  “Hold a moment.”

  “Reimer.”

  “Sergeant, it’s Nancy Webber calling from the Edmonton Journal.”

  “Tracked me down, did you? What can I do for you, Ms. Webber?”

  “Well, frankly, Sergeant, it’s a bit of a long shot, I know, but I’m looking for some information on a suspicious death and I really don’t know where to turn right now.”

  “Whose death?”

  “Well, you’re going to laugh when I tell you. Henry Blackwater.”

  Reimer didn’t laugh. “Is this a relation of Cole Blackwater?”

  “It’s his father.”

  Nancy heard the RCMP officer take a breath on the other end of the line.

  “Look,” Nancy said, “I know the whole thing in Oracle probably left you feeling a little sore. Cole has a way of doing that. I’m just looking into something for my own personal edification. This isn’t for a story. I’ve been digging into the archives of the local paper about the suicide of Cole’s father, and, well, there are some missing pieces.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the paper reports that the coroner says that the likely cause of death was suicide, but there was no RCMP investigation into the death. Just a medical examiner’s report. Nobody seems to have considered any other possibility.”

  The line was silent a moment. Then Reimer said, “Have you read the me’s report?”

  “No,” said Webber.

  “Neither have I, but I bet it would be a good place to start.”

  “Do you have access to it?”

  “It’s a different district.”

  “Can you get it though?” Nancy was almost at her car.

  “I’ll find a copy and give it a read. I owe you.”

  “That you do, Sergeant.”

  “Where should I send it?”

  “I’m in High River right now. Maybe I’ll come to you.”

  “Okay. How about first thing tomorrow?”

  “That sounds great,” Nancy said.

  Then Reimer asked, “What is this all about, Nancy?”

  Nancy Webber unlocked her car door. “I don’t really want to speak out of turn.”

  “You’ve got to be thinking something. You don’t drive from Edmonton to Fort Macleod on a Sunday just to visit the historic North West Mounted Police fort.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Webber.

  “So what is it?”

  “Off the record?”

  “You know that nothing is off the record,” said Reimer, repeating what she knew all too well about poli
ce and reporters.

  Nancy sighed. “Well, it’s probably nothing. Just my imagination, you know? But I think the circumstances of Henry Blackwater’s death are suspicious. Nobody seems to be a hundred percent certain that his death was a suicide. At least nobody who has put anything down in print. The newspaper reports say things like ‘likely’ and ‘consistent with.’ That’s just not good enough for me.”

  “That’s often the way suicides get filed. We say ‘consistent with’ when there may be some chance of accidental death. Do you think it may have been accidental, like a hunting accident?”

  Nancy cut her off. “Sergeant, I don’t think it was an accident. Anyway, why would anybody choose to report it as suicide rather than an accident? It’s usually the other way around.”

  “I don’t know. People are funny when it comes to suicide.”

  “Don’t I know it. But Henry Blackwater didn’t trip on a rock while hunting and shoot himself in the face. He was found in the centre of a boxing ring, his blood splattered across the bales of hay ten feet away, and Cole was the person who found him.”

  7

  Cassandra Petrel sat on the deck of her boat moored next to seining and trolling boats at Port Lostcoast on Parish Island. It was nine pm on the longest day of the year, and the sun still lingered in the western sky over the fractured archipelago. The day had been warm and sunny, but as the sun dipped it grew cooler, and Petrel had pulled on a wool sweater after finishing dinner. The Queen Charlotte Challenger was a forty-two-foot Whitby ketch that Petrel had bought at auction for just shy of eighty thousand dollars four years ago after selling her house in Victoria. It was the perfect boat to call home, with a comfortable galley, a spacious forward berth, and all the amenities she needed. The previous owner had taken meticulous care of the boat’s interior, and Cassandra loved the look and feel of the handcrafted wood finishing.

  Petrel had bought the boat after she had quit her teaching and research job at the university, opting to live full-time on British Columbia’s jagged coast. The politics of the university, the distaste that some of the more conservative members of faculty left in her mouth, and the looming proximity of her retirement had forced her hand. Did she want to sit on the sidelines for the remainder of her academic career and merely point out what was so blatantly obvious — that the ocean was dying? Or did she want to roll up her sleeves and lend a hand, however modest, to help fix the problem? The sleek, three-sailed vessel was now her home, her office, and her floating research station. And though she wasn’t yet confident enough to pilot it solo through the most rugged waters of the Johnstone Strait, she foresaw the day when she would be. Cassandra Petrel considered herself a fast learner.

  Gulls wheeled overhead, and the stillness of the evening was pierced only occasionally by the whine of a four-wheel drive truck or at v negotiating the steep dirt roads of the community or by the protests of a raven or gull in the harbour. She sipped a cup of tea, holding it in both hands, watching the sun’s final hour on the western sky as it painted the slopes of forested hills and the distant undulation of mountains on the big island.

  From where she sat she could see Archie Ravenwing’s battered grey Ford Ranger roll to a stop at the entrance to the docks. She put her cup to her lips and then stood to step down into the galley of the boat to put on a kettle. By the time she had returned, Ravenwing was making his way down the docks to her slip, hands in his pockets.

  “Evening, Archie,” she said, sitting back down.

  “Good evening, Cassandra.”

  “It’s a beautiful night. Care for a cup of tea?”

  “I’d love a cup of tea,” he said, taking the invitation to step aboard.

  “Longest day of the year,” she said, looking west.

  He turned, hands still in his pockets, to gaze at the spectacular sunset. His smile broadened. “We’ve been blessed,” he finally said.

  The kettle whistled and Cassandra rose and went into the galley of the boat, returning a few minutes later with a fresh pot of tea and a mug for Archie. She gestured at the wooden bench that lined the cockpit and invited him to sit.

  She poured them tea. The vapour from their cups danced into the night, and they both sat holding the heat of their mugs close to them.

  “How have things been up the inlet?” she asked, taking a tentative sip.

  He turned to look east, toward the darkening shapes of hills that rose and fell like the backs of bears bent over a salmon stream.

  “First Moon and I have been up there pretty much every day since the season opened. It’s okay. We’re making a fair catch, but it’s not like — well, it’s not like before. The pink run is very, very low. There’s a lot of sea lice.”

  They drank their tea.

  “In the three years since the government opened these waters for more salmon farming,” said Petrel, “we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of sea lice, both on adult fish and juvies. The adults can take it. The little ones can’t. This whole thing is going to collapse if we don’t get those farms off the migration route, period. Full stop.”

  Archie nodded. “I’ve been pleading that case to the Aquaculture Advisory Task Force for more than a year, but my days are limited there. I don’t know how much longer the chief will keep me on the team now that Greg is the councillor for Lostcoast.”

  Cassandra squinted at the setting sun. She recited what they both already knew: “I’m afraid that the sun is going down on an ecosystem that has been here since before your people, Archie. It’s a delicate balance. The salmon is at the very centre of the whole thing. Everything else depends on it. Other fish, bears, eagles, killer whales, even the forests. Everything feeds everything else. Sometimes I feel that we’re just yelling into the wind here. And Stoboltz has more farms planned. More open-net pens planned for all through the Broughton. And that can only mean more accidents, more Atlantic salmon escaping, destroying the habitat for native fish species. More disease. You keep, what, half a million, a million salmon all penned up together, and no amount of antibiotics is going to keep them from passing disease on to the wild salmon that swim past them. Not to mention that we’re eating all that crap,” she said, her voice growing frustrated.

  “Cassandra, I think it’s worse than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I think something is going on up at Jeopardy Rock. Something bad.”

  Cassandra looked at Archie over her mug of tea.

  “First Moon and I were up there the other day, guiding some tourists, showing them around, and we stopped in at the salmon farm, you know, to show folks what it was doing to the environment. Show them the scale. The old dfo station that’s there, you know, the research station? Well, Stoboltz has taken it over to use as some sort of regional base for its operations. They’ve got a dozen farms within a day’s motoring of that site, so I guess it makes sense. But I think there’s more to it than that. I just don’t know what.”

  “I think I do. At least, I can guess,” said Petrel.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to tell you something that I don’t want you repeating, Archie. Not to Grace. Not to Darren. It’s just a nagging suspicion that I’ve got, and I think you may have found one of the missing pieces. I think that Stoboltz is doing genetic engineering on Atlantic salmon, or at least they’re doing the research.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think they are trying to breed a more disease-resistant fish. Or fish that can somehow resist the impact that sea lice have on them. Maybe ones that can survive some of the superbugs that might lead to massive die-offs.”

  “On the face of it, not such a bad idea,” said Ravenwing grimly.

  “No, not on the face of it. The whole question of genetic engineering and food isn’t really my area of knowledge. I know lots of people don’t like the idea of tampering with the food chain, but what worries me is the impact it might have on wild salmon. Imagine this.” She set down her teacup on the bench beside her and held her hands o
ut in front of her. “You build a super species of Atlantic salmon, one that can resist certain diseases, and then they escape into the wild population, which is what happens all the time, and it could be disastrous. It could be absolutely devastating to the entire food chain.”

  “What makes you think that’s what they’re doing?”

  “Nothing concrete. Nothing at all, really. Just history.”

  “What history?”

  “Let’s just say that I have a history with someone at Stoboltz. From my university days. If I know this person like I think I do, whatever he is supposed to be doing for the company is almost certainly going to devolve into genetic engineering and tampering with the ecosystem in a most disastrous way.”

  “Sounds like a bad dude,” said Archie.

  “I don’t think he intends to be bad. He even comes off as being sincere. I just don’t think he can help himself. He actually believes what he’s doing is right, you know? But his view of the world is just so fundamentally different from yours or mine, Archie. And there is no love lost between him and the environmentalists.”

  They watched the last of the colour fade from the western sky while the sun sank on another solstice. The days would seem long for a few more weeks into July, but there was no denying that the crest of the season of light would now slip into the past. Soon the myth of summer would start to unravel, and autumn was always closer than anybody in the remote village cared to admit.

  “What should we do?” asked Ravenwing.

  “We need to find out what Stoboltz is up to. We need to find out what is happening at Jeopardy Rock.”

  8

  The wind battered the community of Port Lostcoast. It barrelled down the Queen Charlotte Strait as if fleeing the far north, paying little regard to the broken islands that lay in its path. It whipped the waters of George Sound and Salmon Channel into a convoluted frenzy of eight-foot swells and deep troughs punctuated by breaking waves whose spray felt like ice. The sky above was clear, but the temperature had plunged, and the mourners who filed from the Big House clutched their coats around themselves to ward off the needled chill. Drummers and singers led the group, which marched in solemn union toward the sea.