Whiskey Creek

by Dave Hugelschaffer

  “Yes.” He moves to the sink, washes his hands. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name.”

  “You can call me Joe.” He dries his hands, tosses the paper towel into the trash and steps casually to the side, blocking the door. “I’ll need you to take a ride with me.”

  I tense, a prickle running up my neck. “You need to step aside, Joe.”

  “You’re missing your plane. I thought I’d give you a ride.”

  There’s an awkward moment when I wonder if he’ll move out of my way, then he turns and walks out of the washroom. I follow him out of the Lodge, more comfortable now that he’s in front of me, curious who he is and what he wants. He walks to a black Suburban with tinted windows, turns to face me. “If it makes you more comfortable, you can drive.”

  “Not until I know who you are.”

  He looks around the parking lot. No one else is visible.

  “It’s about operation Kitten,” he says quietly.

  “You’re with the RCMP?”

  “I’ll explain in the truck.”

  He opens the driver side door, walks around the front of the truck and climbs into the passenger seat, waits patiently. Glancing around the parking lot, I take a seat behind the steering wheel, close the door, drive away from the Lodge. At the highway, I turn toward the airport, not because I plan on boarding a plane, but because it’s the only long stretch of road.

  “Start talking, Joe.”

  “It’s a bit ironic. In my business, that’s usually my line.”

  “What exactly is your business?”

  “Surveillance. I work for Special ‘O.’ We’ve been watching you.”

  “What?” I look over at him. He’s watching me now.

  “Here’s the thing, Porter,” he says, tenting his fingers together. “Ever since you’ve been involved in operation Kitten you haven’t exactly been playing by the rules. This has been made clear to you on several occasions yet you persist in your — how shall I say — unorthodox methods. Even after you’ve been told to back off, you remain embroiled in the investigation. Frankly, we can’t have you running around saying the things you are saying without some corroboration.”

  “Wouldn’t corroboration indicate a working relationship?”

  “I’m not talking about sanctioning anything you do. I’m talking about determining how much truth there is to your claims and, if evidence is obtained, protecting admissibility.”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “I can’t reveal the details of our operation.”

  “Can you corroborate my discovery of the testicles?”

  Joe hesitates. “Unfortunately, no. That was pre-surveillance.”

  They must have started early today. When I returned from the store with the fishing lures, there were several new fishermen on the dock, although I hadn’t paid much attention to them. I ask Joe if they heard my conversation with Simon Cardinal on his boat but he stops answering my questions, directs me to an isolated rental fishing lodge along the lakeshore. The lodge is nothing more than a cluster of faded clapboard cabins. Only one seems to be in use, in front of which are two older model trucks. Inside I find Waldren and MacFarlane, both in civilian clothes, seated at a table, scrutinizing paperwork and surrounded by coffee cups.

  Waldren gives me a wistful half smile as we enter. MacFarlane motions me over.

  “Grab some caffeine, Cassel, and take a seat.”

  I fill a cup, join the Mounties at the table. MacFarlane and Waldren look exhausted, with bags under their eyes and sagging jowls. They must have been up all night. MacFarlane shuffles together the paper on the table, slides it into a folder, out of sight.

  “Okay,” he says, giving me a hard look, “I’m going to lay this out as simply as I can. As Joe here told you on the drive over, we’ve had you under surveillance. We probably should have started earlier, but we had no idea you would be so bloody determined.”

  “That’s one word for it,” says Waldren, waggling a toothpick between his lips.

  “Anyway, we were treated to your performance on Simon Cardinal’s boat just recently.”

  “It was a performance, wasn’t it?” says Waldren, raising an eyebrow.

  “Of course,” I say, a bit defensively.

  “Good,” says Waldren. “I’d hate to have to take you down.”

  MacFarlane raises a hand. “Enough,” he tells Waldren, then gives me a critical look, eyebrows raised. “I’m not going to get into what I think of your methods Porter, you already know my feelings on that subject, but it appears that you are now in a unique position to provide a certain value to the investigation. That is if you want to be a team player.”

  He sits back and watches me.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “We want you to continue in the role in which you presented yourself to Simon Cardinal. We need you to get him to incriminate himself on record.”

  “Don’t you have that already, since you were watching me?”

  “I wish it were that easy,” says Joe. “When you were talking to Cardinal, we could only monitor the conversation for your safety, but we couldn’t record anything. We can only record if an RCMP member or agent is involved. Now that Cardinal has incriminated himself verbally, we can move to one-party consent under Part Six of the Criminal Code.”

  “So you need me to be an agent?”

  Waldren cringes. MacFarlane nods. “In addition to incriminating himself while being recorded, we need you to work on getting him to reveal who hired him. We’re also very interested in any possible involvement in the death of Rufus Hallendry or Bernice Mercredi.”

  “How would this work?”

  “You contact Cardinal, tell him you need a private place for a conversation. We’ll watch him the whole time. Special ‘I,’ our surveillance technical specialists, will set up for the meet. Remote microphones, cameras, telescopes. Then you just play your part.”

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Don’t worry,” says Joe. “We’ll have you covered.”

  WE SPEND THE next few hours working out the details. It’s best if we pick the location, to maximize the effectiveness of the set-up, but there aren’t a lot of options in a small remote community like Fort Chipewyan. Joe would prefer a building or small park, but we settle on Simon Cardinal’s new boat. It seems most believable that I tell him we need to go fishing. I’m given use of a satellite phone, which I use to make the call.

  “Simon, this is Porter Cassel.”

  “Don’t call me on the phone.”

  “Listen, dipshit, we need to go fishing. Can you manage that?”

  “Yeah, we can do that. When?”

  “Tomorrow, early. How about six o’clock?”

  “All right. You’d better have good news.”

  “We’re going fishing. Just be ready.”

  I hand the phone back to Joe, who explains that during the night, while Special “O” watches Cardinal, Special “I” will wire up the boat, placing microphones in several locations. As insurance in case of equipment failure, I’m given a remote microphone, planted in a pair of sunglasses. I try them on. They look exactly like ordinary sunglasses. I feel a bit like James Bond. I’m also given a lovely orange baseball cap, which I’m to put on if I’m in trouble. A team will be waiting nearby, posing as fishermen in a boat. In addition, observers with long range telescopes will be watching every move. For a guy used to operating on his own, it’s a bit overwhelming. We do some role playing, cover a few “what if ” scenarios. Then they cut me loose. Joe drives me back to the Lodge.

  “What about the Forest Service?” I say, looking at the decal on my truck.

  “Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of.”

  I test this out right away by driving to the IA base and calling Middel on the radio, requesting a fire patrol with the IA crew and their helicopter. Middel’s reply is subdued but he acknowledges. The crew aren’t surprised to see me — plans change quickly in the fire busine
ss.

  “Where are we going?” says Rolly.

  “South side of the lake.”

  We can’t fly far enough over open water with our single-engine aircraft to legally cross Lake Athabasca, so we follow the lakeshore around to the Williams Point area, where we search for campers among sand dunes that look imported from Saudi Arabia. We find one group and land the helicopter. It’s a family and although they’re greatly impressed with the helicopter, they haven’t seen Collette Whiteknife.

  We spend another hour flying, cover a lot of ground.

  Collette Whiteknife is nowhere to be found.

  12

  •

  I DRIVE BACK to town, troubled by a gnawing apprehension that Collette Whiteknife is in danger. Cork is clearly a part of what has been happening in this little town, and his snide self-satisfied jab at me in the store only strengthens my suspicion that he is exerting some sort of control over Collette. I wonder if he tried to exercise control over Bernice Mercredi, and it didn’t work, so he drowned her. The RCMP seem to believe the rape story, and it’s not a stretch to imagine Cork going after Hallendry and mutilating him. If Cork did murder Hallendry, which the circumstantial evidence suggests, any witnesses or confidants are in a vulnerable position. That he had no qualms about attacking an investigator suggests that he’s a particularly dangerous individual. It occurs to me that Special “O” is busy watching Simon Cardinal tonight, and therefore not watching me, and I drive past his house.

  The lights are off and the driveway is empty.

  I circle the block, thinking. I could conduct my own surveillance again on Cork’s house, but I doubt Collette will be returning anytime soon, and Cork likely won’t be repeating the drama of the previous night. His house is invitingly dark and I toy with the idea of having a look inside, to see if there’s anything to suggest where Collette went, or to support my statements to the RCMP. It would be best if anything incriminating inside the house was actually found by the RCMP but, unfortunately, everything they have on Cork is either far too circumstantial, such as the paint scrape on the tree miles from the fire, or has come from me — and I’ve been thoroughly discredited. Not the stuff of search warrants. If there is anything critical to the investigation in that house, I’ll have to be the one to find it.

  I slip on my work gloves, park a few blocks away and take a circuitous route along the alley of sagging fence boards, arrive again at Cork’s garage, which is still unlocked, and slip inside. The boat is gone, suggesting Cork is on the lake, hopefully for another hour or two. The filtered light coming through the dusty windows allows a more thorough inspection than last night.

  Junk and more junk.

  A wooden shelf is filled with cans of rusty washers and bolts. Cobwebbed leg-hold traps. Coils of snare wire. Tangled fishing nets. A wire, strung just below the ceiling and pulled taut, is crusted with bits of dried blackened flesh. In a corner under a pile of boxes is an old snowmobile with no hood and a ripped seat. I open a few boxes but find nothing you wouldn’t expect in a garage in a remote bush community. I slip out of the garage and walk confidently up to the house, knock on the door. If you’re seen entering a house, it should at least look like you’re supposed to be there. No answer. The door is unlocked. I go inside.

  “Hello,” I holler. “Is anyone home?”

  Silence.

  I scan the living room to make sure no one is sleeping on the couch, then wipe my boots and walk through the kitchen to the back of the house. In Collette’s room, the bed has not been made, blankets in a tangle, and I try to ignore the warm flush of guilt that blossoms in my chest. I will face Christina Telson later, tell her what happened and live with the consequences. Now, I have business to attend to and check under the bed, under the mattress, look for a diary or anything that might offer a clue about Collette’s involvement and where she might have gone. There are no mementos of her younger days and I wonder again what happened with her parents that she would be living with her uncle. A quick pass through her dresser and closet reveals nothing of use. I move to Cork’s bedroom, which is messier and has an unpleasant smell. Shotgun shells litter his nightstand. Porno magazines are scattered under the bed. A dresser drawer holds a small stash of cash — a few hundred dollars in folded bills. Nothing provides any clue about his involvement or Collette’s location. The bathroom medicine cabinet reveals anti-fungal, Advil and birth control pills. At least she took precautions. I wander through the living room, check under end tables by the couch. Kitchen cupboards are full of the usual kitchen things. The fridge smells like rotting onions. I make one more pass through the house, open a small broom closet. A ball of plastic shopping bags and an ancient vacuum cleaner. I’m about to give up when I notice a fold of blue fabric behind the vacuum cleaner, reach in and pull it out.

  It’s a small duffel bag. It’s not covered with dust like everything else in the closet and I tug open the zipper, find a wad of women’s clothing, a toothbrush and deodorant. This is someone’s overnight bag and my pulse quickens. If it were Collette’s it would be in her room, not stuffed into a closet. I’m suddenly nervous, sweat prickling up my back, and peer out a few windows, through the gaps between the towels hung as drapes and the window frames. No one in sight. In the kitchen, I find a local phone book, use Cork’s phone. It’s clumsy, dialling while wearing work gloves, but I’m determined not to leave fingerprints.

  Helen Mercredi answers on the third ring.

  “Mrs. Mercredi, it’s Porter Cassel. I need to ask you a question.”

  “Okay,” she says, sounding concerned.

  “You said you dropped Bernice off at the airport with her bag.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What does that bag look like?”

  “The bag? I don’t know — I think it was a blue one. Sort of two-tone.”

  “What was inside?”

  “Just the usual stuff — clothes, toothbrush. Why? What’s going on?”

  “We just need to know what it looks like, in case we find it.”

  I thank her, hang the phone back in the cradle, look at the blue two-tone bag on the floor beside me. The RCMP need to find this, but they need to find it where it was, so I carefully reposition the bag in the closet, behind the vacuum cleaner, and slip out of the house.

  DAYLIGHT IS FAILING as I park in front of the cabin the RCMP are using as their remote command post. It takes a moment before anyone answers my knock. When the door opens, MacFarlane gazes woozily at me, hair wild and matted.

  “Cassel,” he says, yawning. “You’re interrupting my one hour of sleep today.”

  He motions me inside, fills a coffee cup, stares at me blearily.

  “I’ve found a lead on Bernice Mercredi.”

  “I thought you were laying low until tomorrow morning.”

  “I had a hunch I had to follow.”

  “Really,” he says, squinting hard. “I’m shocked.”

  “There’s a connection between her and Rodney Whiteknife.”

  “This the guy you call Cork?”

  “He intercepted her at the airport, on her way out of town.”

  “And you know this how?”

  This is the tricky part. I’m not sure we have time to play games.

  “Have you found her overnight bag?” I ask.

  MacFarlane frowns, waking up. “No — but something tells me you did.”

  “It’s at Rodney Whiteknife’s place.”

  “Dare I ask how you came to know this?”

  “It might be better if you didn’t.”

  There’s a pause as MacFarlane digests this. I’m hoping he’s invested enough in my role with Simon Cardinal not to take exception to the obvious truth about how I came to know about the location of Bernice Mercredri’s bag. He sets down his coffee cup, rubs his hands over his face, massaging his eyes, then looks at me.

  “Has the bag been compromised?”

  “It’s in the position I found it.”

  He thinks about this some more
.

  “This is a significant development, Cassel.”

  “That’s why I looked for it. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay.” He nods, seems to come to a decision. “We can’t go in based on your find, or it would never hold up in court, but here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to review this with the team, work on an angle to develop probable cause and secure a search warrant. That could take a day or two. Until then, we’ll bring in some more resources, put eyes on the house. If that bag moves, we’ll know. But you gotta stay away from there.”

  “I can do that. Any news on the whereabouts of Collette Whiteknife?”

  “The boys we thought were camping with her have been located.”

  “Was she with them?”

  “No. Collette Whiteknife is officially missing.”

  I DON’T GET a lot of sleep that night, worrying alternately about Collette Whiteknife and the meet scheduled for the morning with Simon Cardinal. I toss and turn, twist the blanket into knots, give up trying to sleep about four in the morning and make a pot of coffee in the cook shack. At five o’clock I head to the cabin by the lake, as planned, for final confirmation that everything is a go. It is. Joe, my undercover handler, goes through the script once more, confirms I have everything memorized, hands me the special sunglasses and hat.

  “Just act natural,” he says. “Don’t look for the surveillance.”

  Then I’m sent on my way.

  I drive to the public wharf, walk down to the water, feeling conspicuous. The rising sun is still low on the horizon, the air cool and smelling of damp rock. Fog is layered over the water, concealing the humped islands at the edge of the bay. Simon’s boat rocks gently, rubbing against the plastic bumpers on the dock. The metal railing is cool and damp in my hand as I climb aboard. Simon emerges from the cabin, in jeans and his trademark buckskin coat.

  “Untie those ropes,” he says, pointing at the dock.

  I untie the mooring lines. Simon cranks up the motor, loud in the early morning stillness, and we putter out of the docking area and into the fog of the bay. The boat surges, bow rising until it reaches cruising speed, and levels. The fog concerns me but begins to break up soon after we pass a shrouded island. We skim rapidly over the water, wind whipping, and in no time are miles from land. The shore, partially shrouded in fog, looks from this distance like narrow skips of scraped paint. Isolated by the vast expanse of surrounding water, I wonder how surveillance is possible, and if anyone will see my distress signal if the need arises.