“Did you say Professor Alistair McAllen?” Bernadette asked. She had just been researching McAllen’s role as the head of Clearwater Technologies.
“Yeah, the professor has lived here for years and commutes to the university, where he teaches chemistry. Quiet guy—until now, is he of interest to you as well?” Constable Chris said.
“I’m not sure. The professor came up as heading a company the dead guy on the beach worked for. Now it looks like we have more players and fewer answers. How soon until you get some DNA samples on your dead guy?” Bernadette asked. She was looking at her computer screen again, going back to the Clearwater Technologies website.
“I’ll have the lead investigator on this scene forward this to you, as well as the rest of the identities as we get them,” Constable Chris said.
“So, I take it you’re not the lead on this case, Constable?” Bernadette asked.
“Nope, just happens to be my island, my detachment, but not my party,” he said with a laugh. They both knew the shit he was going to get for making this call.
“Well Constable Chris Chris-tak-os,” Bernadette said slowly in hopes she would get it right, “thank you for stepping up and getting this information so early. This really helps us with our case. If you are ever up here, I owe you a beer.”
“I’ll tell you what, where you are in Fort Mac it’s damn cold, and your mosquitoes are hell in the summer. Drop down here, enjoy some island time, especially in the summer when the salmon are running. Salmon and beer is divine, Detective.”
Bernadette flushed at the offer. It almost sounded like an offer for a date. She smiled into the phone and said, “Thank you for the offer, Constable. Your island is now high on my list of places to have salmon and beer. I’ll let you know how this investigation goes down . . . unofficially. And thanks again for your help.” She hung up and gathered her notes for her meeting.
The tar pond deaths had just developed another angle. Drugs could now be a part of it. She wondered if the chemistry professor and his company were the front for a meth lab—it wasn’t that remote a possibility. Having two dead Asian’s, who might be members of a west coast gang would add a new dimension to this investigation.
She had also just flirted with a Constable Christakos on the West Coast. She was going to check him out on Facebook later to see what he looked like, and if he was single. So far, the Greek guy sounded cute.
Bernadette surveyed the group of detectives and RCMP constables in the conference room. She never took the lead in the discussions but would relay information as necessary. The RCMP, and this she had learned early, was a male-dominated, testosterone-driven force of easily bruised male egos. To step on them would be at her peril.
She was excellent at her job—and her excellence extended to her navigation of the male RCMP psyche. Much of her intuition she had developed growing up on the reservation, where males dominated as well. Her grandmother had taught her that there was more intelligence in patience than in trying to attain the upper hand.
Bernadette waited for the chief of detectives, Riley Barnstead, to begin the meeting. Barnstead was a postcard Mountie: tall and athletic with chiseled good looks detailed with a trim moustache. He was in his mid-forties and spoke with a commanding voice. He was a good detective, but sometimes his reasoning and intuition were faulty. To make up for this, he often spoke in a resounding, almost radio announcer-like voice, hoping the resonance would make him more believable.
To counteract his bullshit, Bernadette would drop easily findable facts in his way. Like a child picking up candy on the way to the gingerbread house, Barnstead would find his way to the doorstep of Bernadette’s well-drawn conclusions.
This time, unexpectedly, Chief Detective Barnstead asked Bernadette if there were any new developments in the tar pond murders. She knew from him asking this that he had no ideas whatsoever.
She explained about the call from Constable Chris Christakos on Galiano Island and the correlation to their search for the person of interest Emmanuel Fuentes, who had worked with the victims. She provided a brief of the report that the constable in Galiano had given her—a gun battle and the house of a Professor Alistair McAllen.
“How is this Professor Alistair McAllen of Galiano Island of interest in this case?” The chief now had the luxury of lobbing questions at Bernadette’s findings. This was his strength.
“My research shows Professor McAllen is the CEO of Clearwater Technologies, the very same company our victims from the tar pond worked for, and if the DNA matches, then Mr. Fuentes as well,” Bernadette said. She replied in a nice, even tone, nothing too hurried. She never wanted to seem confrontational to the chief; playing nice always made her life so much easier.
“What do we know of Clearwater Technologies?” Chief Barnstead asked using his deep, commanding voice. He needed to keep the focus on himself as the leader of the meeting.
“I asked some officers at the Vancouver Police Department to do a check on Clearwater Technologies. They have a virtual office on Richards Street, where their telephones are answered and mail is delivered. The office was set up some six months ago, but no one from Clearwater ever showed up there, according to the people who ran the place,” Bernadette said.
After reading further into her notes, Bernadette added, “Synthetic Oil, which Clearwater worked for, was given to them as a substitute contractor by another company that couldn’t show . . . a Waterflow Technologies out of Houston.”
“Has anyone checked with Waterflow in Houston, on how they know the Clearwater people?” Barnstead asked.
“Yeah, I did,” Bernadette said. She was looking down over her notes. “Waterflow originally said they had contracts in both Alaska and Fort McMurray to solve water purity problems. They somehow got busy and had to subcontract, and Clearwater was recommended to them. They were vague about who recommended Clearwater.”
“You think they got bought off? Like maybe given a big fee to let in Clearwater?” Constable Tom Aulander asked. Tom had a knack for putting things together.
“Well, with the number of bodies we have, there seems to be a lot more than water purification going on here. Contractors usually don’t get murdered for doing a poor job. They usually get fired—at least up until now,” Bernadette said.
Tom then gave a report of the condition of the two bodies found in the tar pond. The disappearance of the suspect Emmanuel Fuentes and the coroner’s initial report that the cause of death was stab wounds to the thorax causing a mass of bleeding and suffocations.
Chief Barnstead took over the meeting again. “Okay, this is where we are. Callahan, get the Vancouver crime lab to process the DNA on our suspect in Galiano and see if we have a match. Let’s find out more about where this Professor McAllen comes into the picture. We need to make a statement to the media in about a half hour on these murders, as two of the victims were American citizens. I think that about wraps it up.” The chief stood up and scanned the room, and beamed “Good work,” and walked out of the room.
Bernadette sat looking at her notes. The rest of the detectives and constables were getting up and leaving. She realized that the chief had missed the obvious once again. What were the Clearwater contractors doing at Synthetic Oil and all of the other sites that they had been to?
If this was about drugs, why had they not found traces in Fuentes’s room or traces with the two young Americans in the tar pond? She needed to get a hold of Cynthia at Synthetic Oil and ask some more questions.
In Anchorage, Chief of Detectives Wilson was looking at his watch. It was 2:30 p.m. on a Friday, and he had wanted to be off early to watch his grandson’s hockey game—he was not happy. He had not had a good bowel movement in three days or a good sleep in four nights. When he was a younger man, he could eat like a horse, shit like a steer, and sleep like a log.
Now, sixty-plus years had caught up to the chief. His stomach gurgled. He looked down at it in hopes that the gurgling might be the prelude to a good bowel movement. False alarm—
he passed gas so hideous that it made his nose want to be elsewhere. He had heard rumors that his office had been nicknamed “the Gas Chamber.” Deep inside, he knew that the rumors were real. So was the smell.
He coughed, shifted in his seat, and went back to reading the report from Detective Mueller that he just received. The report pissed him off. He’d sent Detective Mueller to Prudhoe Bay to get him out of his hair and deal with a simple murder-suicide, just a couple Canadian kids bringing their quarrel to Prudhoe Bay. That would have been simple.
Instead, Detective Mueller filed a report of multiple murders by a suspect still at large, with a murder of a security guard thrown in. This was not good. He now had to have a press conference. The good people of Anchorage had sons, daughters, husbands, and wives up in Prudhoe Bay. He needed everyone calm; a killer on the loose in Prudhoe Bay was bad for business—everyone’s business.
As he thought about the press conference he had to give, he realized the angle he could use. The two murder victims were, after all, Canadian, not American, and of course not Alaskan. The security guard, well, he was a Californian. Okay, well a Californian is an American, but not an Alaskan, he thought. He would push that angle. These foreign elements brought their troubles with them to Alaska, and alas, they have been extinguished.
He wasn’t sure how that would play out, but he would mention that three had been murdered and the investigation was pending. There were various suspects, and they would have more to report soon. He decided against mentioning any company names, as he wanted to protect the oil companies, and also decided he would make the statement, answer no questions, and head out the back door for his grandson’s hockey game.
His stomach rumbled again, and he headed for the door. This time he was hoping he might have the real thing instead of a gas attack. As he walked down the hallway, all the detectives and police officers gave him room.
19
Byron Watched Chief Wilson Walk into the Anchorage Police Department media room flanked by police officers and several detectives. The media room was simple: the American and Alaska state flags behind the podium, a few pictures of past and present Alaska governors on the walls, and rows of the hardest seats the police could find for the reporters to sit on while they asked their questions. Someone had the bright idea to make it as uncomfortable as possible in the room to keep the interviews short. Sometimes it worked.
Chief Wilson looked pissed off and couldn’t hide it. He was 5 foot 7 and a hefty 260 pounds. His barrel chest led to a keg-sized waist, and somehow his pants held on for dear life. It seemed that every wrinkle in the world had come to rest on his face. His forehead was a mass of wrinkles that weighed down on his eyes and then draped down to two jowls that would have looked better on a bulldog.
The chief s various nicknames ranged from Bulldog to Wrinkles, and some journalists called him Stinky. But those names would be used in the safety of Fletchers Bar at the Captain Cook Hotel and never repeated in earshot of the chief or other police detectives—not if they wanted to be invited to media briefings ever again.
Byron sat in the front row, wedged in amongst the TV, radio, and other newspapers reporters. The room was packed. This was the big story for the weekend. Every TV station had their cameras rolling, and on his left a pushy little reporter from Haines Valley News was elbowing his recorder in Byron’s face.
On Byron’s right was the very pretty TV reporter from the leading Anchorage news station. She was a petite redhead with flashing blue eyes that could stare an interviewee down as a cobra would a mouse. People were mere putty in her hands when she thrust her mike in front of them. Byron hated her but continued to sleep with her. They used each other for ego support, and stole stories from each other without shame.
The chief of detectives brought his full frame to the microphone and raised his eyebrows above it. His forehead broke into a frown. One wrinkle followed another as they collided into his receding hairline. He adjusted the microphone and it let out a squeal of feedback. Then he tapped it hard a few times. Just to annoy everyone.
“Good afternoon,” he finally said. His voice was just above a growl. “I will be brief. In the past twenty-four hours, we have had three homicides in Prudhoe Bay. We have identified the victims as a Miss Constance Lafontaine and a Mr. Marc Lafontaine, who were brother and sister, and from Canada. We also have identified a Jason Cummings, of Bakersfield, California.”
The chief adjusted the microphone again, got it to let out another screech of feedback, smiled to himself, and continued his address. “At this time, the perpetrator of the crime is unknown; however, we have numerous detectives and officers on the scene following various leads. As we have more information, we will make it known. As of now, we have no further comments.”
The chief closed his notebook, looked left and right, and made his hasty exit from the room. The pretty redhead rocketed out of her chair with a series of “What about . . . , just one statement . . . could you clarify . . . but to no avail. Her words bounced off a chief hell bent on getting out of the room.
The reporters sat in silence. They had nothing to fill air time or columns with. They would have to do commentary, no interviews, and their editors and production managers would hate it. They nervously stared at one another. This was going to be a black Friday for news reporters.
Byron could not be happier. “No comment” was what he was looking for. He had the story, he had the connections. He had an exclusive, a reporter’s dream. He smiled in a knowing what-an-asshole kind of way at the exiting chief and excused his way past the pack of reporters. He gave a special smile to the redhead. She was seething like a redheaded cobra, her hair flaring out.
Byron had a phone call to make. He had watched a Canadian Broadcast Corporation news report just before coming to the press conference. The broadcast was from Fort McMurray, where Chief of Detectives Riley Barnstead, with the RCMP, had made a statement about the deaths in the tar ponds.
The Canadians were more factual. They had named the two victims: Alisha Sylvester and Kevin Buckner, both from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and American citizens. They had named the company they worked for, Clearwater Technologies, and had stated that it was owned by Professor Alastair McAllen, who was now a person of interest, whereabouts unknown.
Byron had had his holy shit moment when he heard the mention of Clearwater Technologies, the same name that Della had given him. Five murders linked to one company all in the space of twenty-four hours across the space of thousands of miles. In news, Byron had learned, there are no coincidences—only dots to be connected. His job was to draw lines from one dot to the next.
From the moment Byron had spoken with Della and until the press conference, he had been on his computer. What he had turned up on Clearwater Technologies was vague. He wondered how they could have received a contract based on the information available on the web. There had been no reference to any other work they had done, nor did they show an organizational chart. There had been only one name— Professor Alistair McAllen, CEO.
While researching Professor McAllen, he had come across the term polywater. From what he could tell, it was harmful to the oil industry. Delving deeper into McAllen’s history, he had found the lawsuit that McAllen had brought against the oil companies down in Baytown, Texas, many years back. He and his wife had claimed their two sons died from leukemia, a cancer they had argued was caused by the refineries’ oil byproducts.
That’s when Byron had his second holy shit moment. The connection of the dots was McAllen—the deaths all lead back to him. Somehow, the people who had died were involved in sabotaging the oil fields. They had to be. He could feel it. The dots were linking up and snapping the story into place.
He hurried out of the police station to his car, a Toyota Solara two- door convertible that he hoped would be his ride in California; it was great in Alaska for about four months of the year. The rest of the time, he got stuck in snow or froze his ass off. But he looked good in it.
He slammed th
e door, looked around to check if any other reporters were coming out of the police headquarters, and made his phone call. It was 3:00 p.m. Anchorage time. He was not sure what time it was in Fort McMurray, but he was hoping Barnstead was still there.
He asked for Barnstead first, but the chief had left for the day. The polite receptionist asked if he would like to speak to one of the detectives on the case. Byron agreed. He needed a quote, a comment, anything to tie the murders in Alaska and Canada to Clearwater. He was greeted by a less-pleasant-sounding Detective Callahan.
“How may I help you?” she asked. She had been informed by the receptionist that a reporter from the Anchorage Daily Mirror was on the line. She was curious as to why a reporter from Alaska would be calling.
“Well, Detective Callahan,” Byron began, “perhaps we can help each other.” He loved saying lines like that to the police. He knew they would be put off by it, but it made him feel all warm inside.
“Did you know,” he said “that we have had three murders in Prudhoe Bay at an oil company work camp in the past twenty-four hours, and two of those murdered were employed by Clearwater Technologies?”
There was silence on the phone. “Are you still there, Detective?” Byron asked.
“Yes . . . yes I am. You have confirmation of this?” Bernadette finally asked. “Does the Anchorage Police have anyone in custody?” She tapped her pen, waiting for the response.
“The suspect or suspects are still at large, but somehow, two Canadians and two Americans, who worked for the same company, died, under suspicious circumstances, and within hours of each other. Does that not seem odd to you, Detective?” Byron was now fishing in big waters and going for the kill.
Bernadette didn’t answer Byron’s last question, so he decided to drop his little bomb of information. “Did you know that Professor Alistair McAllen, who is the CEO of Clearwater Technologies, has invented a product called polywater and has gone on record as saying this invention would be detrimental to oil companies?”
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