The Cardinal Divide (19 page)

Cole held it out, and the doctor gently turned it over. “We'll need to have this
X
-rayed.” He scribbled something on a form. “Why didn't you come in last night?”

“I was unconscious, I think.”

The doctor frowned. “That's not good, Mr. Blackwater.”

“You don't have to tell me.”

“Someone should have brought you in. No friends in the bar with you?”

“Just the bartender. He says he woke me every hour throughout the night.”

The doctor nodded, opened a cabinet, and removed a suture set. “Not too squeamish, are you?”

“I've had my share of stitches, Doc,” said Cole. He felt macho until the first suture was inserted into the cut, driving a hot nail of pain into his eye. “Christ almighty,” he grumbled. “I think one of those will be enough.”

The doctor smiled. “We're going to need about a dozen of these to make sure you don't end up scaring small children and pets.”

“Can you at least give me a caffeine drip?” Cole begged. “This is a little much to take without so much as a coffee.”

The doctor smiled and completed the job. Then he directed Cole to Imaging. “The results will only take a minute or two. If it's broken, you'll be sent back here to have it immobilized.”

Cole did as he was told and half an hour later was in the Toyota headed downtown. His hand, badly bruised but not broken, was wrapped with a tensor bandage to prevent further injury, and the black stitches beneath his eye looked like a caterpillar had lodged on his face. Now it was almost noon and he still hadn't had a cup of coffee. He was hungover, bruised, aching, beaten, and grumpy as a buckshot bear.

He drove to the highway and made a beeline for Tim Hortons. It was lunch hour as he walked stiffly across the lot to the double doors and into the line up with construction workers, bank tellers, and a couple of yummy mummies with small children. People waited for soup and sandwiches, cups of coffee, and doughnuts, and Cole overheard the name Mike Barnes more than once. He kept his ears open to pick up on the gossip. By the time he reached the front of the line and ordered his coffee and sandwich, he'd also heard Dale van Stempvort's name mentioned no less than half a dozen times.

The townsfolk of Oracle had connected the dots between van Stempvort's reputation, his comments in the newspaper the day before, and the murder of Mike Barnes as easily as Cole had. Cole Blackwater predicted a lynching. Keeping his eye open for anyone who might look as though they could swing a chair, he ordered coffee and sustenance, eliciting a slightly fearful look from the girl behind the counter. He caught sight of himself in the doors as he left and understood why.

He retreated to his Toyota and burned his tongue on the first few sips of his day's first coffee. Dale van Stempvort could have arranged a meeting with Mike Barnes last night. He could have been on the mine property when Cole left, or Cole could have passed him on the road without recognizing his faded red Chevy
S
10 in the fading light. Maybe Dale van Stempvort hadn't scheduled himself in; maybe he waited for the Barnes to finish work and killed him when he left the office.

Cole rubbed the back of his aching head. He took a deeper draught of his coffee now that it was cooler.

Was van Stempvort capable of killing a man? That was a tough question to answer. Killers came in all shapes and sizes. He'd fought a number of boxers who'd seemed inclined to kill Cole had he given them the chance, but those young men had been punched in the head too many times, and some of them used boxing to vent their rage. The coffee ran through his veins and sped up his thoughts. What about Dale? He was a pretty angry dude, thought Cole. But despite his super-heated rhetoric, Dale didn't come across as a killer. Not for a mine. And not for the Cardinal Divide, as lovely as it was.

Cole was long overdue for his visit to the
RCMP
. He started the Toyota and turned stiffly to shoulder check as he backed out of the busy parking lot. He drove to Main Street where the
RCMP
detachment office was located. Like others of its kind in small towns all across Canada, it was a square brick building, landscaped with anonymous shrubs, and decorated with the maple leaf up a flagpole. Cole parked next to the only cruiser in the five-car lot and stepped out of his truck, carrying the dregs of his coffee. The sun-light made him squint and the swelling around his eye was tender where the sutures were threaded.

Steps led up to the main doors of the detachment. Cole entered into a cool reception area with a white linoleum floor. A bulletin board displayed posters of Canada's most wanted next to a small sitting area. Cole presented himself at the reception desk, as unpresentable as he was. The woman behind the glass was on the phone and motioned that she would be a moment. He stood, looking around the sparse sitting area at plastic plants, a small coffee table with last year's magazines on it, and three grey, threadbare boardroom chairs. Beyond that a door led to what Cole guessed were the inner offices of the detachment.

“Can I help you?”

Cole looked back to the woman. Her phone rang again.

“Busy morning,” he smiled.

She said nothing, and raised her eyebrows to hurry him along.

“Cole Blackwater to see Sergeant Reimer.”

The woman picked up her phone and gestured to Cole to take a seat beside the plastic fern.

He shuffled over, sipped his coffee, and chose to stand, reading the “Most Wanted” posters rather than back issues of
Time
magazine and
Maclean's
. A minute later the door by the reception desk opened and a constable walked briskly through.

She was maybe five-and-a-half feet tall with dark hair pulled back and twisted into a knot. The grey-blue long-sleeved shirt and black tie hugged Reimer's compact body, suggesting a rower or weightlifter. Cole's fleeting fantasy was interrupted by her businesslike voice: “Mr. Blackwater?”

“That's me.” Cole reminded himself that this woman led a murder investigation into the death of a man, and he was among the last to see Barnes alive. Even so, he liked the way her gun belt, loaded with service weapon, extra magazines, handcuffs, pepper spray, collapsible baton, and radio, hugged her hips. A number of female police walked Vancouver's downtown eastside beat, and Cole couldn't help but appreciate them as they performed their service to their community.

“I'm Sergeant Reimer,” she said. “Would you join me in the back?” It wasn't really a question.

Cole followed her through the door and down a hall into a sparse interview room. A second officer joined them as they arranged their chairs. “This is Constable Paulson. He'll be sitting in on our conversation. Have a seat,” said the Sergeant. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

Cole motioned to his Tim Hortons cup and sat down. “Kind of formal,” he said, taking a sip from his coffee to steady his nerves.

“Standard procedure,” said the Sergeant. “We don't do informal when investigating a murder.” She sat opposite him. “Looks like you had a rough night.”

Cole managed a smile. “Could say that.”

“What happened?”

“I got jumped at The Quarry, the bar at the Rim Rock.”

“Pressing charges?”

Cole considered it. “I don't think so. Just a little disagreement over a game of pool.”

“
OK
,” said Reimer, ending that conversation. “Tell me about your meeting with Mike Barnes yesterday.”

Cole took another swallow of his coffee, now almost cold. He wondered if he could interrupt to take Reimer up on her offer. He decided against it. “Well, I went to the mine under the pretence of interviewing Mike Barnes for a story for
Business Week
magazine.”

“What do you mean pretence?”

“Well, I wasn't really writing a story.”

Reimer jotted something in her notepad. “Go on.”

“I work for the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group. They've hired me to stop the mine from being built. So I invented this cover to interview Mike Barnes so I could learn how the company plans to push through their application for the new mine at Cardinal Divide. But Barnes had me figured out. And the strange thing is we had a really good chat anyway.”

Reimer made notes and didn't look at Cole. “So you impersonated a journalist?”

“I guess so,” he said. “Is that illegal?”

She allowed herself a slight smile. “I think we have a more serious crime to discuss.”

The seriousness of the conversation sobered Cole. He was in an interview room with an
RCMP
officer to discuss the murder of a man he had seen only the night before. He swallowed hard.

“What did you and Mr. Barnes talk about last night?”

Cole cleared his throat. “We talked about a lot of things. About the existing mill, its operations, its productivity. We talked about the market for coal, and the various problems with getting the product to market. We talked about labour, and about the union at the mine. Mike Barnes was very forthcoming with me.”

“Did he have any reason not to be?”

“Well, he could have just thrown me out when he learned who I was. That's what I would have done. Mike Barnes struck me as a very bright man. I frankly couldn't figure out what he was doing running a mine in a backwater place like Oracle.”

Reimer looked up from her notebook.

“Sorry, didn't mean to offend you,” he said honestly.

“I'm not from Oracle, Mr. Blackwater.”

Cole put his coffee down and folded his hands before him.

“
OK
, let's move on. What time did you arrive at the mine?”

“About quarter to five.”

“Did you talk with anybody when you arrived?”

“I signed in with security. The fellow there told me that he might be on rounds when I left, so I should sign myself out.”

“Anybody else?”

“I talked with Hank Henderson, the Assistant Mine Manager.
He was just leaving. He didn't seem too impressed with Mike Barnes,” Cole added.

Reimer made more notes. “How do you mean?”

“Just seemed not to like Barnes is all. Called him ‘college boy.' Not really how you'd expect the Assistant Mine Manager to refer to his boss. Called him ‘his eminence' too. Struck me as petty.”

Reimer made another note in her pad. “And what time did you leave?”

“I think it was about 6:20 when I left the grounds. I signed out at the gate and jotted the time down there. Barnes told me he had another meeting.”

“Was anybody waiting to see him when you left?”

“I didn't see anybody.”

“Not in his office, not down in the main reception?”

“Like I said, the building was empty as far as I could see, but it's not like I was looking into other offices.”

“Did you see the security guard when you left the mine site?”

“No. I signed myself out.”

“And then where did you go?”

“I drove back to town. To my hotel.”

“Did you see anybody on the road as you drove back?”

Cole counted the trucks in his mind. “I must have passed a dozen or more trucks.”

“Anybody you might recognize?”

Cole shook his head and winced. It felt like his brain was sloshing around.

“Are you
OK
, Mr. Blackwater?”

“I'm sure I'll live.”

“After leaving the mine you drove back to your hotel. Is that when the alleged assault on you occurred?”

“No, that was later in the evening. Closer to midnight. I did some work in my room first, called my daughter in Vancouver, had a shower. Then I went to the bar. And as you can see, the assault isn't alleged.” He held up his bruised hand and pointed to the stitches under his eye.

Reimer ignored the remark. “Can you remember the make and models of any of the vehicles you passed on your way back from the mine last night, Mr. Blackwater?”

Cole rubbed his eyes, which stung, and thought. “Some big
SUV
types. I think a Ford Expedition. A couple of Ford
F
150s. A Dodge Ram. A few smaller trucks.”

“Can you remember any of the smaller trucks?”

“No, it was getting dark by then.”

“Do you remember if one of the trucks was a Chevy?”

“I got a telephone call as I was getting closer to town, so my mind was on that call, not on the types of trucks that passed. I really can't recall.”

“A Chevy
S
10?”

Cole was silent for a moment, then said, “Why do you ask?”

“Tell me about the injury on your hand. It looks like you gave as good as you got,” said Reimer.

“I used to do some boxing,” said Cole, still thinking about the types of trucks on the road.

“I assume there were witnesses to the fight?”

“About forty or fifty.”

Reimer made some notes.

Cole shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “How was Mike Barnes killed?” His voice sounded suddenly very small in the empty interview room.

Reimer looked up from her notes. “I'm not at liberty to say just yet.”

“Well, you're asking me about my hand. Do you think that I beat him to death after my meeting with him?”

The Sergeant levelled her gaze at Blackwater. “As I said, I'm not at liberty to say right now. But I told you, you're not a suspect.”

“If I am a suspect, I think I should know. I'd want to talk to a lawyer.”

“You're not a suspect,” she repeated. “Someone saw Mike Barnes alive after you left the mine.”

“Who?”

“I can't say.”

“How was he killed?”

“Mr. Blackwater, I am the one conducting the interview. Or are you playing reporter again?”