“Don’t we suspect this guy is connected to Archie’s death somehow?”
“I think Dan Campbell killed him,” said Cole, looking at Darren. “But I think Thurlow is somehow tied up in it. I just don’t know how.”
“And we’re just going to walk right up there and say hi, and ask him to show us the joint?”
“Yup. He invited us. I bet that’s his boat there,” said Cole pointing at a newer-looking speedboat. “Heck, Darren, it’s two against one. We can take him if he pulls anything.”
“Guess so,” he said. “You’re a bit of a mess, though.”
“Think I might scare him?”
Darren just shrugged.
“Lead on,” said Cole, pointing to the research station with his chin. “I’m so scary to look at, he better see you first or he’ll soil his pants.” Cole laughed.
Darren trudged up the hill, hands in the deep pockets of his orange float coat. The silence of the woods was broken by the croaking of the occasional raven. The lightly used path was festooned with pine needles and hedged with thick tangles of salal. The cool air held the tang of fish and salt water. The forest was sprayed with a light gossamer sheen of mist. Cole became acutely aware of his surroundings, his senses heightened with adrenalin. They made the top of the rocks in a few minutes, both men breathing hard, the wound on Cole’s face pulsing.
“Think this place has got a doorbell?” Cole joked.
“Don’t know,” said Darren.
“Come on, lighten up, Darren. This will be fun. Take a look around here for a way in,” said Cole, “and I’ll see where this pathway leads.” Cole disappeared around the back of the building.
“If you say so,” said Darren, fidgeting with his pockets. He looked back and forth across the windows.
“Found a door here,” said Cole from the back of the building. “It’s open.”
“Great….”
Darren turned the corner to see the door close in front of him. He took his left hand from his pocket to open the door, his right hand still buried in his coat. He opened the door and stepped through.
Cole was waiting for him on the other side. Blackwater swung from behind the door, the heavy flashlight coming down hard on the back of Darren’s head. Darren stumbled forward, his hands splayed before him, the hatchet he held in his right pocket clattering across the concrete floor and out of reach. Cole stepped in and kicked him in the ribs, and First Moon rolled onto his side. “Stop,” he coughed. “Enough!”
Cole reared back with his right foot and began to swing it toward the man’s face.
“Please, please, I got kids.”
Cole skidded to a halt, almost tripping over the prone man. Cole was sweating. His hands trembled. He held the flashlight so tightly that his knuckles were white.
Darren lay on the floor and coughed. He curled into the fetal position, tucking his knees into his chest, his hand holding the place on the back of his head where Cole had hit him. He began to cry. Not gentle tears, but great sobs that came hard and fast. Cole looked down at him. His hand relaxed. He drew a breath. He felt a wave of nausea sweep over him and he forced himself to breathe so he wouldn’t vomit.
Cole stepped back from Darren and looked around the room. Upon entering he’d had time enough only to confirm that he was alone. Now he took in the details of the space. He had stepped directly into the laboratory. There were two dozen cement ponds in the room, each ten feet long, their walls rising two and a half feet off the floor. Cole walked to where Darren First Moon’s hatchet lay and picked it up, using the sleeve of his coat to protect any record of fingerprints. He cast a disgusted backwards glance at Darren as he did, and saw the sobbing man still curled on the floor.
Each pen contained salmon at various stages of development, many of them encrusted with sea lice.
Cole continued to walk around the room. Near the windows that overlooked the eastern slopes of Tribune Channel were aquariums packed with sea lice.
On the southern wall was a door. Cole checked to see if it was locked. It was. He stepped back and with his booted foot kicked it at handle-height, and it splintered into a hundred pieces, the wooden jam collapsing as it did. Cole looked into the room. It was a makeshift office that included tables with hundreds upon hundreds of vials. Cole could only imagine what was contained there.
He walked back and crouched before the trembling body of Darren First Moon. He still held the hatchet and heavy flashlight in his hand. He poked Darren with the light.
“Darren, get a hold of yourself.”
Darren tried to draw a deep breath but could not.
“Darren, where’s Thurlow?”
Darren’s eyes seemed to come into focus.
“Darren, where’s Thurlow?”
First Moon sucked in a breath and let it out. His eyes zeroed in on Cole’s.
“Where is he?”
“He’s gone to Port Lostcoast.”
30
The radio crackled in the harbour master’s cabin. Rupert Wright stood up from his desk and walked to the table on which it sat and listened carefully.
“Port Lostcoast … Blackwater … read me?”
“I read you four by two, party radioing Port Lostcoast.”
“… trouble … Can you reach … Ravenwing?”
“Party radioing Port Lostcoast, I read you four by two … loud but not very clear. Say again?”
“Grace Ravenwing … trouble … Warn her.…”
“Party radioing Port Lostcoast. I am hearing Grace Ravenwing is in trouble and needs to be warned. Am I reading you correctly?”
“Correct.…”
“Can I tell her the nature of the threat, over?”
“Dr. Thurlow … on his way.…”
“Are you saying Dr. Thurlow is on his way to Port Lostcoast and Grace Ravenwing has reason to be concerned?”
“Yes!”
“Should I alert the authorities? Is it that serious?”
“Yes!”
“Five by five,” said the harbour master. “I’ll alert the RCMP and will try to find Grace Ravenwing. Port Lostcoast out.”
Cole put down the mic and looked at Darren behind the wheel of the Rising Moon. “You had better pray to God that Grace Ravenwing and Nancy Webber are fine. If Thurlow harms one hair on either of their heads, I’m going to take it out on you,” said Cole, his eyes boring into Darren First Moon.
The boat skipped over the light chop of Tribune Channel, full throttle, heading for the bigger waters of Knight Inlet. The wind had picked up since that morning, pushing the swell to three feet.
“Can I raise the RCMP on this thing?” Cole had his hand on the radio again.
“Should be able to. They monitor channel fourteen.”
Cole turned the dial and pressed the button.
“RCMP dispatch, this is Cole Blackwater on the Rising Moon, do you copy?” He waited a moment. “RCMP, this is the Rising Moon, do you copy?”
“This is Alert Bay. We copy four by four,” came a voice over the radio. “What is the nature of your message?”
“This is an emergency. I have reason to believe that two women in Port Lostcoast on Parish Island are in danger.”
“What are their names?”
“Nancy Webber and Grace Ravenwing. They are staying at Archie Ravenwing’s home, the bluff house. I don’t think the place has an address….”
“Hold a minute, Rising Moon.”
Cole watched the forest whir past as Darren guided the boat around the turn at McNichol Pass into Knight Inlet.
“Rising Moon, we have a boat on the way to Port Lostcoast. Detective Sergeant Alan Bates is heading there on the Ravenwing missing person’s file. Your information has been forwarded to them. They’re on the way.”
“A Dr. Darvin Thurlow is either in Lostcoast now, or on his way, and is likely trying to get his hands on information that connects him to the murder of Archie Ravenwing,” said Cole, shielding the mic with his hand.
“I’ll pass that on
, Rising Moon. Alert Bay out.”
Cole put down the microphone. Now all he could do was sit tight and pray.
Darvin Thurlow sat quietly at the galley table, his long, lean hands folded before him, his legs crossed. The tiny room was dark, the sound of the ocean resonating in his ears. He breathed slowly, taking air in through his nose and letting it out through his mouth, the way he had learned to do in a meditation class many years before. He felt a sense of abiding peace. He felt certain that nothing could go wrong for him today.
It hadn’t always been like that for Darvin Thurlow. His time at u vic had been unfulfilling. The school was a haven for ideologically driven zealots masquerading as scientists. Saving the salmon, stopping sewage from being diffused in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, protecting spotted owls — Darvin Thurlow had no beef with conservation. His father had been a farmer whose livelihood depended on sound stewardship of a resource. Darvin Thurlow believed that for the greater good to prevail, some sacrifices had to be made.
It was almost by accident that Thurlow stumbled upon work that developed the resistance among farmed Atlantic salmon to sea lice. It was thanks to another researcher’s efforts that he came to appreciate how he might counter this breakthrough with one of his own. Humanity would not prevail, might not even survive, if it clung to outdated modes of feeding itself. There were too many people now. Scale had become the dominant issue in food production. Sacrifices had to be made for the greater good of humanity. And so while other researchers at the university sought ways of protecting wild salmon from decline at the hands of a fingernailsized parasite, Dr. Darvin Thurlow fostered other ambitions.
Thurlow heard boots on the dock and drew a breath, letting it slip soundlessly from his mouth in the darkened room. He sat still in the darkened galley.
Three years ago he found a perfect partner willing to finance his inquiry and not ask too many questions, as long as what he learned helped build more salmon farms along the remote bc coast, feed more people, and create more profit. Thurlow could care less about profit. The approval he sought had nothing to do with money. How far might he go? There really were no limits. He was on the verge of unleashing a pestilence on the world that people would talk about for a generation, and in the end, he would be thanked. A decade-long confrontation would end, and humanity would triumph. And like his father, who had spent his life finding ways of growing more apples on a small farm in the bc interior, Darvin Thurlow would finally succeed in winning the sanction he had sought all his life.
But there were loose ends.
The boots stopped and he felt the boat dip as someone stepped onto it. He closed his eyes and steadied himself.
The door from the companionway opened and light flooded in, but he remained in shadow. The woman entered the room and went into the tiny galley only a few feet from where he was sitting. She lit the stove and poured water in a kettle for tea.
“Hello, Cassandra,” he said from the darkness.
She screamed and dropped the kettle on the floor. It clattered across the polished wood and spilled its contents.
He was on her in a second, his hands locked on her arms, forcing her into the seat opposite from where he had been sitting, pushing her against the wall and quickly tying her arms to her side with a length of rope. She tried to scream again, but he put his hand on her chin and snapped her jaw shut.
“Don’t make this worse than it needs to be, Cassandra,” he hissed in her ear.
She looked at him, her eyes wild, her hair falling in errant strands over her face.
“I’ve got a roll of duct tape here, which I will use to tape your mouth if you even think of screaming again,” he said slowly, quietly. “Got it?”
Cassandra Petrel nodded.
“Good,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Now, let’s have tea, shall we?”
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” yelled Darren, his eyes forward, the Rising Moon going top speed toward Parish Island and Port Lostcoast.
Cole yelled back, “Look, I’m not a cop, but I’ve got to tell you that not only do you have the right to silence, I highly recommend it.”
“I just want you to know —”
“Darren, I’m going to hit you on the head with this flashlight again if you don’t shut up.”
First Moon looked into the distance, his face a knot of worry. The adrenalin rush that had propelled Cole for the last hour was nearly used up, and he felt weak and dizzy. He sat hunched forward in the chair as the world whipped by.
“Why the axe?” Cole finally yelled at Darren.
“What?”
“Why did you have the axe with you?”
Darren stared ahead. He could see Parish Island hove in view. Another ten minutes and they would be there.
“Darren, why?”
“For Thurlow.”
Grace Ravenwing jumped from the chair at her father’s desk when she heard the pounding on the door. She tripped over a stack of papers as she ran to the door and peered through the glass. Nancy was right behind her.
“It’s Rupert Wright.”
“Who?”
“The harbour master.” She opened the door.
“Grace,” he said, a little out of breath. “You okay?”
“Fine, why?”
“I got a radio call from your friend, Blackwater —”
“Cole Blackwater,” said Nancy.
“I got a radio call from him. He said that Dr. Thurlow, you know, the scientist from Jeopardy Rock, was on his way here. He said to warn you.”
“Thurlow is coming here?”
“That’s what Cole said.”
“Well, he isn’t here now,” said Grace, looking around.
“Did you call the RCMP?” asked Nancy.
“Placed the call before coming here. They have a boat about fifteen minutes away. What’s going on?”
“Can you come in, sit down? We’ll fill you in,” said Grace.
“I should get back to the docks. The RCMP will need some direction.”
“We’ll stay here,” said Grace.
“Lock your door,” he said, running back down the path.
“I don’t think it has a lock,” said Grace, looking at Nancy. Then she asked, “You think he’s coming here? Why?”
Nancy looked around the house. “Maybe he wants to get his hands on that brown envelope. It’s pretty incriminating.”
“He’s got to know it’s just a copy of electronic government files. The deep-throat guy has the originals. Thurlow couldn’t hope to accomplish anything by coming here to get them.”
Nancy shook her head. “He’s a smart man. I think you’re right. He knows he has nothing to gain by doing that.”
“Then what?”
Nancy was silent. Then she opened her eyes wide. “Grace, who — else did Archie confide in?”
“I think we should shed a little light on what you think you know about sea lice, Cassandra. What do you say?”
Thurlow opened the kerosene lantern that hung over Cassandra Petrel’s tiny dining table. He took a package of matches from his pocket and struck one. He carefully lit the wick. “I’ve always loved the light these old lamps put out, don’t you? It’s so, I don’t know, nostalgic.”
He sat down across from Cassandra. Her face was composed, but there was fear in her eyes. Thurlow had tightly bound her arms with rope. A piece of heavy duct tape hung loosely from her cheek across the side of her face. Her mouth was free, but Thurlow could tape it shut in a second.
“So, you and Archie figured out that I was preparing a little evolutionary surprise for the salmon. It was only a matter of time, you know, before the sea lice did it themselves. I was only helping them along. They’re such active little creatures.”
“What do you want, Darvin?” said Petrel.
“Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra,” he said, shaking his head. “You were always the greatest pain in the ass to me. Always the one who was pandering to the environmentalists. Always the one who was talking to the press.
The great Dr. Cassandra Petrel, the caring, personable scientist, the face of scientific reason to the public. But it was such a load of bullshit, Cassandra. It was just you inflating your own ego. I was happy when you finally left. When you decided that the university had become too confining for your personal vendetta against businesses who are just trying to feed hungry people. But then …” Thurlow shook his head. “But then you had to go and stick your nose into my work again.”
“Darvin,” she said, watching his face in the dim light of the lantern. “I don’t know what you think I know, but I can assure you, if I’ve figured it out, lots of other people will, too.”
“It’s not so much what you know, Cassandra, as what you’ll be willing to say. When this whole thing becomes public.” He shook his head. “Which seems likely now. Cassandra Petrel, friend of the environment, will once again triumph over the evil Dr. Thurlow, proponent of big agri-business. I’m tired of it, Cassandra. That’s not going to be the story this time.”
She looked at him. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, — over her eyebrow and into her eye. “So now what?” she said.
He smiled. “Lights out.”
Darren First Moon kept the boat at full throttle as he approached the breakwater. Cole was standing now, his fingers curled tightly over the windshield, his eyes focused on the bluff where Archie Ravenwing’s house stood. He wasn’t certain what he hoped to see, but he looked nevertheless.
“Hold on!” said Darren as he powered back and turned the wheel to cut into the breakwater. Cole bent his knees but kept his face turned toward town. Movement caught his eye where the dirt road from the bluff met the street where the general store and The Strait sat squat against the harbour. He saw two figures running. Toward the dock.
“That’s Nancy and Grace!” he shouted and pointed. He could see both women running hard along the dock. “Move it!” he yelled, and Darren throttled up, ploughing a dangerous wake toward the moored boats. They still had five hundred metres to travel to reach the docks, and Cole could see Nancy and Grace or — bearing straight for the end of the pier, running hard away from, maybe toward, something unseen.
Grace yelled, “Last boat on the centre pier!”
The Darkening Archipelago Page 31
