The Glacier Gallows

by Stephen Legault

  COLE USED AN old coil of rope that he had strung from one of the barn’s ancient rafters to hoist the heavy bag into place. He had climbed one of the wooden ladders fastened to the barn walls, the rope in his hands, and then shimmied along the creaking wood to loop the rope in place. Now it groaned as he pulled on it to suspend the hundred-pound leather bag above the wooden slats of the barn floor. It had taken Cole more than an hour to muscle the bales of hay out of the center of the barn to make a space there. Now they were stacked up around the perimeter like mute spectators.

  When the bag was suspended from the rafter, he stood adjacent to the double doors of the barn and blew a coating of hay dust off the metal box that was a main switch for the structure’s electricity. He wasn’t certain that Walter hadn’t disconnected the power to safeguard against fire. He opened the box and punched the switch, and with a metallic snap, the lights burst to life. There were four of them suspended fifteen feet above the floor, their hoods festooned with spider’s webs, but the bulbs were still bright and harsh. Cole looked at the space in the center of the barn. He and Walter had torn the boxing ring out and burned it more than two years ago. But its outline was still plain on the heavy wooden floor. This was the demarcation of Cole’s rage. This was where it began.

  Cole peeled his shirt off. His body was slick with perspiration. He picked up a pair of ancient leather boxing gloves and pulled them on. It felt like he’d had them on the day before, though it had been twenty years. He laced them up, using his teeth to pull them tight.

  He approached the heavy bag as if it were a living opponent, his eyes low, his hair wet and dangling in heavy curls over his eyes. The first blow made a sharp crack, and a covey of doves burst from the rafters and flew out into the dark night. Cole threw another punch and then another.

  The heavy bag became a faceless man behind the tangled conspiracy to send Brian Marriott to the grave and Cole Blackwater to the gallows. Cole punched until he could no longer feel his hands.

  TWENTY-NINE

  HEART BUTTE, MONTANA. AUGUST 2.

  “IT’S GOING TO TAKE SOME time to determine how long this body has been on site.” FBI Special Agent McCallum leaned against a black GMC Yukon.

  “I think we can be pretty certain that we’re dealing with the missing guide here, right?” asked Perry. He, Walter, McCallum, and a member of the Blackfeet Tribal Police stood next to the truck. A hundred yards away, Chip Prescott’s trailer was ringed in yellow crime-scene tape.

  “We can’t say that right now, Mr. Gilbert.”

  A helicopter hovered overhead, and on the ground a dozen agents from the local tribal police, the FBI, and the Glacier County Sheriff’s Office combed the site. An ambulance from the medical examiner’s office in Great Falls was backed up next to the trailer, and what was left of the man found behind the trailer was being delicately loaded onboard.

  “It’s going to take the ME a week to piece this together. Maybe longer,” continued McCallum as they watched men in white coveralls load the body. “We’ll likely look to our forensic entomologist to determine time of death. I don’t think this gets Mr. Blackwater off the hook.”

  “Are you kidding me?” snapped Walter. “You’ve got a man there who was supposed to be a guide on a trip my brother was leading. He’s dead. My guess is you’re going to find a bullet hole in what’s left of his head. Likely the same caliber as the hole in Brian Marriott’s head. If you’re lucky, you might even recover ballistics from him, or from a tree behind where he was executed. You’ve got Brian, found at the bottom of a cliff, and you’ve got a third body that you claim was an accidental death, but that is starting to sound more and more ridiculous. On top of that, your only witness is dead in a Cascade County Detention Center. And you want to pin all of this on Cole? You think that a man with no record, with no history of violence other than the occasional bar fight, suddenly decided to plan and then carry out all of this?”

  “Walter, this isn’t helping,” Perry said quietly.

  “What isn’t helping is that the FBI and the RCMP have a theory about this crime that doesn’t fit reality. It’s cognitive dissonance, plain and simple. You, Special Agent McCallum, refuse to consider any other possibilities other than your own notion that Cole is responsible.”

  “Are you done, Mr. Blackwater?” asked McCallum.

  Perry watched Walter turn and walk away from the group, then said, “There’s one more thing. When we checked in on Chip up at the ranch house, the owner told us that Prescott had paid his August rent in cash. Dropped it off when the old man wasn’t around.”

  “Cash is pretty hard to trace,” said McCallum.

  “Likely the reason that cash was used,” said Perry. “Whoever killed Chip is likely still around. The killer paid the August rent to keep the landlord from driving down here looking for it.”

  McCallum scratched his chin. “We’ll look into it.”

  Perry turned and followed Walter back to the car. Perry had to get in first, shuffling over the center console after entering through the front passenger door. When they were inside, Perry started the vehicle and they sat for a moment.

  “You think they’re going to try to pin this on my brother too?”

  “I don’t know, Walter. If this is in fact our missing guide, I’m pretty sure the ME will come back and show that he was killed a couple of days before the hike began. Cole was in this area. He was in East Glacier at the time. He doesn’t have a very tight alibi. In fact, he was driving around out here one of those days. The FBI could draw a straight line to this trailer.”

  Walter shook his head. “It’s all purely circumstantial.” He closed his eyes. “When we were in the trailer, did you notice anything odd?”

  “No. Just a trailer.”

  “I’ve been on a lot of backcountry trips. I’ve never been a guide, but I know how to put a pack together. This guy was ready to go. He had his gear all laid out. He wasn’t planning on skipping town. He was set to go.”

  “So?”

  “So if you were looking for a way to get a guy onto the hike who could be the inside man, what better way? Pick a guy like our cadaver back there, who lives in the middle of nowhere, who won’t be missed for several days or weeks, and kill him. Plant your man in a location you know he will be noticed by Derek McGrath. You watch McGrath for several days and learn his habits. Not hard to do in a place like East Glacier. Derek learns that one of his guides has gone AWOL and there is Blake Foreman, ready to take over at a moment’s notice.”

  “One thing I want to find out is who sent the email from Chip Prescott’s account to Derek McGrath saying that he was sick and he wouldn’t be in for work,” said Perry. “There was no computer in the trailer. If anybody has Internet out here, it’s satellite. Chip may have had a cell phone, but I didn’t see one. He would have had to drive into East Glacier to access email. Or go next door to his landlord’s and call from his phone. Easier than making the hour trip to East Glacier, that’s for sure.”

  “You think that whoever killed Chip sent it from his own Yahoo! account? Can’t the FBI trace an IP address?” asked Walter.

  Perry tapped the steering wheel. “They can, but it might be a dummy email account. I don’t know what good it will do us.”

  “I still think it’s worth running down. Shooting Brian created a forensic trail for the FBI to follow, from the gunshot residue on Cole’s shirt to the pistol he supposedly bought in Browning.

  “It all comes down to motive. We learn what the motive was, and we’ll trace Blake Foreman right back to whoever he worked for. This was a premeditated murder. Nobody heard a shot that night. That means someone brought along a silencer. Even if one of the hikers was a gun nut and had a pistol in his bag in case of bears or cougars or whatever, you don’t bring a silencer on a backpacking trip. The only reason you have one of those is to kill someone quietly. I think we should get back to Alberta.”

  Perry put the car in gear. Both men felt suddenly anxious.

  Walter w
as tapping his fingers on the dashboard. “I just hope that if Cole and Nancy are having any luck learning what Marriott was into, they’re doing it without tripping the same wire that landed Brian in a body bag.”

  WALTER MADE CALLS as they drove north across the Blackfeet Reservation and through customs at Chief Mountain. They had to tell the story about why the driver’s door was dented, but Walter knew the Canada Border Services Agency officer, and they shared a laugh.

  They wove their way up the eastern side of Waterton Lakes National Park, the aspen-cloaked hillsides acid green in the August heat. “So I’ve reached two of the three guiding outfits that Blake Foreman gave as references to Derek McGrath,” said Walter. “McGrath was so desperate for a third man on the trip that he took Foreman’s word that he’d been employed as a guide before. Turns out he hadn’t. None of these companies had ever heard of this guy.”

  Perry added, “I’ve been in touch with the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum in New York. They haven’t had a Blake Foreman in their ranks that matches our age profile. I’m going to have to pass this along to McCallum at the FBI and see what he can make of it. I’m also going to ask him if he got a random hit off Foreman’s—or whatever his name is—fingerprints. If the guy was in the military or had a criminal record, they should have gotten a match by now. If it’s an alias, there won’t be anything. He won’t have a criminal record or file his taxes in Canada or the US, which is what I can get if I call in a few favors,” concluded Perry.

  “Who are you, Blake Foreman?” said Walter as he watched the light fade along the eastern slope.

  THIRTY

  EAST GLACIER, MONTANA. JULY 5.

  BRIAN MARRIOTT STOOD UP WHEN Cole Blackwater stepped into the café. Cole scanned the tables at the back of the Two Medicine Grill and then saw him at the counter. In the tight space, the two men shook hands and then did an awkward half hug that made them both conscious of the other patrons’ eyes on them. They both sat at the counter. Brian had a cup of coffee in front of him and a menu. A young woman with long red hair pinched back with a hair clip handed Cole a menu and poured him a cup of coffee. He added cream from a carton.

  “Have you been in town long?” asked Brian.

  “A couple of days. I had some things I needed to pick up, and I spent yesterday just driving a rental car around, looking at what all the fuss about fracking is about.”

  Brian nodded. “I’ve met with Derek from East Glacier Guiding and we’re all set. The only thing left to do is meet our guests.”

  They ordered breakfast and talked shop while they watched the cook manage the grill. “How is Joe Firstlight?” asked Cole.

  “You can ask him yourself. He’ll be here in a few hours. But he’s fine. I think he’s pretty frustrated. Every move he makes to try and convince the Blackfeet Tribal Council that fracking is going to poison their water—and that wind power is clean and economical—gets kneecapped. He told me last week that High Country Energy has offered to build a new library along with a gymnasium on the reservation. These guys aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they are buying support.”

  Their breakfasts came and they started eating. Brian said, “When we used to square off against each other, did you ever want to, well, you know … kill me?”

  Cole laughed and almost choked on his food. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Sure, but never seriously. Is there something wrong?”

  “No. It’s just that … it’s nothing. Listen, when we get back from this little outing, I want to bring you in on something that I’m working on. It’s got to do with the tar sands.”

  “What is it?”

  Brian looked around. “I don’t want to get into it right now. You asked if I’d followed the money on this fracking debacle and I have followed some, on something big that’s going on in the tar sands. I need you to look over some files.”

  “You don’t have them here?”

  “No. They’re at home. Safe.”

  Cole smirked. “You’re starting to sound like me.”

  “Not sure that’s such a bad thing, Cole. You know, when I was with the Petroleum Resources Group, we used to talk about how we could take you out, metaphorically speaking.”

  “Yeah, we used to talk the same way about you. In the end, I took myself out. Couldn’t keep my pecker in my pants and told a little white lie that became a black hole for my career. It got both Nancy and me fired.”

  “Well, that saved me a lot of heartache for a few years, but in the end, you were right. I was wrong. I think the thing that separates us now is just a question of how, not necessarily why—how to create the change that will make things better, not why bother.”

  Cole said, “What do you say, partner? Shall we go for a hike?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  CALGARY, ALBERTA. AUGUST 10.

  COLE SAT IN THE PASSENGER seat while Walter drove. Nancy sat behind him, and Dorothy Blackwater was next to her. The sun broke over the eastern horizon; the foothills outside Longview bloomed gold in the day’s early light. In the dells, a fine mist sat low to the earth, and overhead a few threads of clouds formed and reformed like ephemeral cotton candy. Cole sighed deeply. This might be his last sunrise as a free man. Nancy put her hand on his shoulder, and he reached up and held it.

  PERRY GILBERT MET them at the law courts. He was dressed in a three-piece suit with a conservative tie. Cole wore a dark suit with an open collar. “We’ve got about an hour,” said Perry, looking at his watch. “Do you want to get a coffee?”

  “I don’t think I can. I haven’t been able to eat this morning. Any last-minute information?” Cole asked.

  Perry reached into his briefcase and pulled out a file. He put the briefcase down and opened the file. “I got this last night. I should have forwarded it, but it was pretty late. They have confirmed that the body was that of Chip Prescott. The time of death has been pegged to a twenty-four-hour window around the third of July.”

  “Three days before the hike,” said Walter.

  “And within the time Cole was in East Glacier.”

  Cole looked down.

  “Cause of death—and here you were bang on, Walter—single gunshot wound to the head. In and out. No ballistics on site, but the ME says the size of the hole in the head is consistent with the weapon the FBI say Cole procured in Browning. It’s not conclusive. Any heavy-caliber weapon could have made that wound.”

  “Are they going to try and pin this on me?” asked Cole, still looking at the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know, Cole. Not today. But I don’t know what might happen down the road. Altogether, though, it adds to their argument that you should be tried in Montana.”

  Cole looked at Nancy, then at Walter, and finally at his mother. “I’m really sorry about this. I’m really sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about, darling.” Dorothy took Cole’s hand.

  “We better get inside.” Nancy put a hand on Cole’s shoulder. “I just saw the Global TV van pull up around the corner. I think things are going to get crazy out here.”

  HALF AN HOUR before the scheduled hearing, there were three TV vans outside the courthouse and a dozen reporters crowded the lobby, waiting for admittance to the court. Cole sat with his family and lawyer in an isolated corner of the law courts building, avoiding the reporters and cloaked in his own dark thoughts. Nancy held his hand.

  Cole closed his eyes and saw Brian Marriott’s broken visage. His murder had left a vacuum that sucked the world into the empty space. Just as nature abhors a void, so too does society. People rush to fill it: they point fingers and assign motive in an effort to stanch the suctioning of other lives into that emptiness. Cole was at the center of that empty space, and the world rushed to use his life to fill the dark void that was Brian Marriott’s murder. He felt Nancy’s grip tighten on his hands. He looked up.

  The lawyer from the federal solicitor general’s office walked across the lobby of the law courts. “Mr. Gilbert? Can we have a word?” Per
ry stood up. He looked back at Cole, then went to confer with opposing counsel.

  Cole watched as the government lawyer spoke for a few minutes and then Perry asked a series of questions. Cole felt sweat forming where his curls sat on his forehead.

  Finally, the conversation ended, and the government lawyer reached out to shake Perry’s hand. Perry hesitated a moment, a look of frustration on his face, but he shook the man’s hand and watched him walk to the door. Cole felt a moment of confusion twist in his head. He watched Perry turn and start back toward them, a smile spreading across his face.

  A GAGGLE OF reporters huddled around Perry Gilbert and Cole Blackwater. Nancy, Walter, and Dorothy stood a few feet away, each still reeling from the turn of events. Two Calgary police officers flanked the group, but instead of watching Cole, they were watching the growing throng of reporters.

  Perry spoke to the reporters. “The US federal district attorney has dropped the extradition request against my client. There will be no charges laid. He’s a free man. He had no involvement whatsoever in the death of his friend and colleague Brian Marriott.”

  The press spit questions at the pair. Perry held up his hands in a plea for calm. He pointed to the Calgary Herald reporter. “What explanation did the solicitor general’s office give for the extradition request being dropped?” asked the reporter. He sounded disappointed.

  “All they told us was that new evidence has come to light that exonerates Mr. Blackwater and has led both the RCMP and the FBI in a new direction in the investigation.”

  “Did they explain what the new evidence is?” asked a woman who wrote for the Calgary Sun.