The Cardinal Divide (24 page)

“Looks painful,” he echoed.

“Oh, it is,” she said, inviting sympathy.

I'm outta here, Cole thought to himself, and said, “I must be off.”

“See you again,” Deborah said with a wink.

Not likely, he thought, but smiled and, yes, he winked back.

Outside the motel office the morning air was cool, but Cole felt flushed, warm from his encounter with Deborah Cody. Good gravy, but that woman was brazen. Not only was she an incontestable flirt, but she was the wife of baseball-bat-wielding George Cody. What was Mike Barnes thinking? Messing with a woman like that could get a man killed.

He unlocked the door of his Toyota and climbed in. When the engine growled Cole inserted a
CD
, turned the volume up to ear-drum-piercing levels, put the truck in gear, and drove out of the parking lot, singing along to the Eagles:
Well I'm running down the road trying to loosen my load, got a world of trouble on my mind
.

But just before he drove away he saw Nancy Webber emerge from her motel room. And here he thought he'd made a clean get away. No such luck. Surely she had seen him leave, could hear the
rattle of his slowly disintegrating Toyota as it lurched from the parking lot. He didn't care. He just kept singing to beat the band.

But even music couldn't push Nancy from his mind. All of our ghosts come back to haunt us, thought Cole Blackwater. Every mistake we've ever made, no matter how great or small, lurks somewhere in the darkness waiting to return and claim its due. Well, his ghosts had certainly caught up with him this week. Whatever. It was all in the rearview mirror now.

He bought a coffee at Tim Hortons for the road and managed to get in and out without incident. That was a good sign, he thought. Cole pointed his truck west, toward the mountains, and headed for the highway. He and Thoreau agreed that “Eastward I go only by force, but westward I go free.” Cole Blackwater always loved the feeling of driving toward the mountains.

A memory surfaced. When he was a kid his family drove into High River for groceries in the red Dodge pickup truck that his father had owned since the end of the war. When they needed more than the tiny foothill town offered they rose early, finished the morning chores before sunrise, and drove for three hours to Calgary. There they loaded the truck with supplies: socks and underwear for the boys, groceries, a few pieces of equipment and spare parts that the old man couldn't find in High River. Their chores done, the old man made the obligatory trip to Prize Fight, his alma mater, a boxing club in the rundown section of the city, south of downtown.

The old man talked with his cronies, threw a few jabs at a heavy bag, and picked up whatever was needed to continue Walter and Cole's training. The boys sat ringside and watched the fighters train. The low ceiling, the heat, the pervasive odour of sweating bodies, and the iron smell of blood got under a person's skin; this is where Cole had returned when he was seventeen to further his amateur boxing career.

Late that afternoon they left the city and drove home in the last light of evening. Cole loved sitting on the wide bench seat between Walter and their mother. He leaned his head on her shoulder and fought sleep to watch the mountains rise steadily on the horizon.

They drove down Highway 2 as far as High River and then turned west. Orange evening light as thick as honey spilled across
the fields. The blue mountains of the Fisher, Opal, and Highwood Ranges rose up on the horizon jagged as bent saws, their tops white with snow late into June. When the blacktop disappeared after High River and they rumbled across the gravel, Cole, and sometimes even Walter, fell asleep.

Then Cole heard through the dew of slumber the voices of his parents talking quietly about how Calgary was getting too big for its britches, drunk on oil wealth, and how the price of a pair of shoes was murder. The cab of the truck always smelled of whiskey on the way home, after the old man stopped by a social club near Prize Fight to hoist a few and pick up a bottle for the return trip. But the close quarters of the Dodge's big seat and the proximity of their mother quieted his father's rage, or at least kept it at bay. The old man was always happy, at least for a few days, after a visit to his old club. But that never lasted long, Cole remembered.

Cole hit the highway. As he left town he felt the anticipated guilt well up within him. He knew this would happen, so he was prepared for it, as prepared as he had been to counter Peggy McSorlie's arguments that morning.

He slipped the town limits just after nine, and saluted the “Entering Oracle” sign from his rearview mirror. A clear blue sky sat atop the forested foothills, and to the west the dark, craggy line of mountains leaned up against Jasper National Park. His stereo was on full blast:
It's just another Tequila Sunrise, starin' slowly 'cross the sky. He said goodbye
. Cole tossed back his coffee and dropped the cup on the floor with the rest of the detritus of his life.

He'd be home by midnight, wake up tomorrow in his own bed, see Sarah on the weekend. His heart lightened. My Lord, how he loved his little girl. They'd go out for a big breakfast on Saturday and then go to Stanley Park, or maybe to the north shore mountains for the day and walk the trails up into the canyons and over the craggy hills, draped with cedar and spruce and ferns.

He would put this mess behind him. Yes, it was time for a clean start. Let the ghosts of the past haunt him no more. He pounded the steering wheel in time with the music. He crooned,
She wasn't just another woman, and I couldn't keep from coming on, it had been so long.

Come Monday morning, Blackwater Strategy would be reborn with a clean slate. On Monday morning he'd develop a new business
plan. He was good at planning. It was time to apply those skills to his own interests for a change. By Friday he'd have another client lined up and ready to go. The past would be in the past, where it belonged.

It occurred to him to let the
RCMP
detachment know he was skipping town before he got out of cell range, so he rolled the window up, muted the stereo, and found the phone on the passenger seat. He dialled the number, keeping one eye on the road, and got through to Sergeant Reimer.

“It's Cole Blackwater, Sergeant.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Blackwater?”

“I'm heading back to Vancouver today. I just called to let you know.”

There was a long silence on the phone that made Cole uneasy.

“We would have preferred that you remain in Oracle, Mr. Blackwater.”

“I've got to head home to my family, Sergeant,” he lied.

Another long silence.

“We may need you for a further statement.”

Now Cole was silent. “I thought you'd found your man.”

“We have, but we're still compiling our case against him. Some of the forensics have yet to come back from Edmonton.”

Cole thought about that for a moment. “I'm sorry? What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. Some of the items that we've sent off to Edmonton for analysis haven't been returned to us, so we are still in the process of building our case. We may need you to make another statement.”

“But you arrested Dale van Stempvort.”

“Yes, we did. He's in custody, awaiting arraignment this afternoon.”

“On what grounds did you arrest him if you haven't got your evidence back?”

“We have established motive and opportunity, and we need only finalize our work on method to have an open and shut case.”

Cole switched the phone from his right hand to his left hand and geared down.

“How can you arrest a man for murder if you don't know how he did it?”

“Mr. Blackwater, the
RCMP
have considerably more experience in criminal investigation than you. You're going to have to accept that we know what we are doing. We have the killer of Mike Barnes in custody.”

“Tell that to David Milgard.”

Reimer ignored him. “I suggest that you phone the Vancouver police when you arrive in the city to let them know your whereabouts. You are an important witness to this criminal investigation. Is that clear?”

“Clear enough,” he said, repressing the growing urge to tell the sergeant to go take a flying leap. “But what's not clear is that you have a case against Dale van Stempvort.”

“I think we've talked long enough, Mr. Blackwater,” said Sergeant Reimer. “Good-bye.”

Cole dropped the cell on the seat next to him, slowed, and pulled the Toyota into a rest stop next to the highway at the top of a hill. The rugged peaks of Jasper National Park thrust up toward the morning sun.

Cole turned the ignition off.

He sat, observing the mountains. Banks of clouds ripped their bellies on the front range peaks and spilled rain, snow, or hail into one valley, while the next was bathed in sun.

Cars whizzed past on the highway. A tractor trailer shook the Toyota with its afterdraft.

The
RCMP
sought an open and shut case, but it didn't seem like they had it yet.

Cole Blackwater was prepared to accept that Dale van Stempvort was a killer, but not without proof. What had Reimer said? They had motive and opportunity, but not means? Sounded like dime-store detective talk. Motive had been established, Cole assumed, when Dale, via the
Red Deer Advocate
, had publicly declared that he would do anything to stop the mine. Opportunity, Cole reasoned, was established by the Mounties when Dale couldn't produce a sufficient alibi for his whereabouts. Cows made poor witnesses. His truck had been seen in the vicinity, Reimer said. Or at least a truck matching Dale's truck's description, an aging Chevy
S
10. How many of those were in the Oracle region? Peggy McSorlie had asked the
same question.

Means. Reimer said she was waiting on forensic evidence to establish means. Hadn't Cole heard that Mike Barnes was bludgeoned? His skull cracked open. Cole shuddered at the thought of that handsome head split down the middle, blood and brains spilling out. That would make one hell of a mess. There were lots of big, heavy things lying around a mine mill that could do such damage, reasoned Cole. A length of drill steel. A drill bit. A pipe wrench. What
else
could do such damage?

A baseball bat?

Cole watched a dark cloud pass over the mountains, scudding toward the dark green foothills. Behind it trailed the opaque shadow of rain, dousing the woods in a brief but much-needed shower.

Cole shook his head. By this afternoon the lab would send confirmation of the murder weapon with while Dale van Stempvort's fingerprints all over it, and that would be the end of the story.

He went to start the truck, but dropped his hand. What if, in their haste to satisfy the Chamber of Commerce, the dead man's family, and the mining company, the
RCMP
arrested the wrong man? It happened all the time, didn't it?

Cole didn't want to believe that an innocent man would be put behind bars simply because of his politics.

And now that he let himself think about it, Cole knew it didn't make sense for Dale van Stempvort, after that piece in the paper fingered him as a loose cannon, to make an appointment with Mike Barnes, drive out to the mine, and club the man over the head. Dale came across as a passionate man, but not violent. Cole flexed his fist and observed the bruised knuckles on his right hand. Now Cole Blackwater, he mused, there's a man with a streak of violence in him. He looked at his hand, watched the knuckles turn white as he clenched, and turn blue and red as he opened the fingers.

No doubt where that violent streak came from; he smiled thinly. He made a fist again and threw a soft jab toward the windshield. He cut the air so crisp and quick that his coat made a snapping sound. No doubt where he had picked up the habit of sorting out his troubles with his fists.

But if Dale didn't kill Mike Barnes, who did?

Leave that to the
RCMP
. He shook his head again and threw
another jab, this time a little harder.

He could still throw a decent punch, he mused. That night in the bar he had done well. He'd cleaned that first dude's clock, and the second one too, with the knee to the solar plexus. He wished now, looking at his hand, that he'd held back a little with the punch to the ear. But he had let his guard down, had forgotten his father's cardinal rule.

His father had learned about letting
his
guard down, too.

In the end it was George Cody's baseball bat, and not Cole's skill as a fighter, that had saved him.

It didn't surprise Cole that George Cody stashed some Spalding muscle behind a bar that catered to roughnecks and miners. Especially in a town where the only police backup was a 120-pound woman. No, the baseball bat didn't seem out of place.

Where had George been? It sure had been handy of him to show up in the nick of time.

Life's events hung on a delicate hinge of timing, mused Cole. Timing was everything, wasn't it? In his old man's life, for sure. And thus in his own.

On June 6, 1944, Henry Blackwater was determined to be the first man up Juno beach. He wanted to be the first man in his company to kill Jerry. But, as luck would have it, his life was spared, and an anger that spanned generations was born.

For three years Henry Blackwater was stationed in England, and during that time he won himself a reputation as the meanest son-of-a-bitch in his whole division. Maybe in the whole Canadian army. He didn't start out that way. He was of average build, weighed maybe 170 pounds, and stood just shy of six feet; he wasn't a physical menace. One night in a pub some boys from a Limey machine gun squad poked fun at the Canadians, called them a bunch of country hicks and poor cousins. The fun turned sour when one of the Brits got in Henry Blackwater's face and wouldn't let up. Henry knocked four of his teeth out with one punch. The whole pub got into it and the constabulatory was called out. By the end of it, Henry was in the klink along with half a dozen other Canadian lads, while the Limeys got sent home with a stern warning.