The Cardinal Divide (26 page)

It was Nancy. “Four o'clock at the Legion Hall.”

“
OK
.” And the line went dead.

Of course she had every reason to hate his guts. But she had a particular way of expressing it that left nothing to chance.

He paid his bill and walked out into the spring sunshine. The town looked as it had just a few days earlier. A neatly laid out Main Street: false fronts, red brick buildings. Trees in planters. In the summer there would be flowers hanging from the lampposts in baskets. Except now, the Cardinal Divide that ran between the part of the community that resisted the dominant industrial paradigm and the part that embraced it had split open, as visibly, he imagined, as the fracture in Mike Barnes' head.

He had a couple of hours to kill before meeting Nancy. He could drive out to the McSorlie ranch and stow his gear, but that meant an hour of driving back and forth, and he had had enough of back and forth for one day. Instead he strolled down Main Street toward the cop shop. Sergeant Reimer might be happy to know he was back in town.

There was no media presence as he approached the
RCMP
detachment. Inside he asked to see Sergeant Reimer.

A few minutes passed before the doors to the back office opened and Sergeant Reimer appeared, along with a man dressed in Docker pants and a cheap polo shirt. Cole heard the word “defence” used a couple of times before the young man left by the front door.

“Didn't expect to see you again so soon, Mr. Blackwater.”

“I just can't enough of this place.”

Reimer smiled.

“I'm not heading back to Vancouver.”

“Changed your mind, did you?”

“Something like that. I decided to stay and try and help my client stop the mine, despite this unfortunate event.”

“I assume when you say client, you're not referring to Dale van Stempvort.”

“As I told you, Dale was never my client.”

“Well, you're free to stay in Oracle as long as you like, and as long as your presence here doesn't interfere with our continued investigation.”

Cole smiled. “Thanks. Nice to be made welcome.”

The sergeant turned to go. “Sergeant,” said Cole. She stopped and looked at him. “Any word on the results of the tests on the murder weapon?”

Reimer's smile faded. She turned and closed the door behind her.

Cole left through the front door. The young man wearing a polo shirt paced the parking lot while he spoke on his telephone. Cole waited for the man to hang up. It took some time. When he finally hung up, he shook his head and exhaled with vigour.

“Tough day?” called Cole.

The young man looked up, suspicious. “It's just fine, thanks.”

“Doesn't look like it. Fight with the wife?”

“Boss.”

“Tough. Who do you work for?”

“I'm with Legal Aid. I've got one hell of a case on my hands.” Cole smiled and walked toward the man. “I'm Cole Blackwater,” he said, and extended his hand.

The young man shook it. His grip was firm and Cole winced. “Sorry,” he said.

“It's
OK
, force of habit. I got in a fight last night and bashed up my hand pretty good.”

Like Cole, the lawyer wore a few extra pounds around the middle. He was five ten with a youthful, almost boyish, face with a conservative haircut, and soft, white skin.

“What's your name?” asked Cole.

“Perry Gilbert. I'm out of the Legal Aid office in Red Deer.”

“And you're on Dale van Stempvort's case?”

“That's right. Who are you again?”

“I'm Cole Blackwater. I was hired by Peggy McSorlie and the
ESC
o
G
to help develop a plan to stop the mine at Cardinal Divide.”

“Lots of luck. Especially now,” he said, and looked genuinely sad.

“It's not over 'til it's over.”

“I'd say this one is over.”

“Not very optimistic for a defence attorney. How long have you been at this?”

“Three years,” said Gilbert.

“How many cases have you handled?”

“Fifty, maybe sixty.”

“How many murders?”

“This is my first,” he said. “But I've got lots of help.”

Cole looked around.

“In Red Deer,” added Gilbert.

“Right. The phone call.”

Gilbert shrugged.

“Did Dale van Stempvort tell you he killed Mike Barnes?”

“Look, I don't think I should be talking with you about this.”

Now it was Cole's turn to shrug. “Suit yourself. But your client's already been convicted by this town, and I just thought you'd like to compare notes.”

Gilbert looked down at his shoes. He kicked a stone across the parking lot and it hit the tire of an
RCMP
cruiser. “Guess that couldn't hurt.”

“Let's take a walk,” suggested Cole.

They strolled off Main Street and into the older residential neighbourhood adjacent to downtown, turning up Fifth Street to-ward Andy's bar. Cole asked, “What do you think of this Sergeant Reimer? The one who's leading the investigation?”

Gilbert shrugged. “Seems competent enough. She's just the local Horseman. They sent a team in from Edmonton yesterday. You know, a detective and a scene-of-crime team. They only stayed the day. Figured it was cut and dried. They headed back to Edmonton with the forensics.”

“And now it's in Reimer's hands?”

“Looks like.”

Cole shook his head.

“What?”

“Just feels wrong to me. To leave the whole thing up to a bunch of backwoods cops.”

“They all get trained in the same place.”

“Yeah, but when was the last time anybody in this detachment had to handle this sort of case?”

“Maybe never. But they move around a lot.”

Cole looked at Gilbert. “You have faith in them?”

“I didn't say that.”

They walked along the quiet streets of town. Gilbert changed the direction of the conversation. “So the first time you met my client was on Tuesday?”

“That's right, at Peggy McSorlie's ranch.”

“And the following morning you and he argued about the newspaper quote that appeared in the
Red Deer Advocate
, the one the
RCMP
suggest establishes motive?”

“That's right, he drove me around and we argued about the wisdom of saying such a stupid thing to a newspaper reporter.” Cole snarled the word “stupid.” “At the time I never imagined the
RCMP
would use it as grounds to put the man in jail.”

“So what you're telling me,” said Gilbert, “is that Mr. van Stempvort didn't call the reporter but the reporter called him?”

“That's what I'm telling you,” said Cole.

“And that means that someone else who was in that meeting on Tuesday called the reporter to tip him off?”

Cole was getting frustrated. “That's what I said.”

“I'm just getting up to speed on this case, Mr. Blackwater,” said Gilbert. “I'm trying to understand all the angles.”

Cole nodded.

“You think that the environmental organization you represent has a mole?”

“Look, I don't represent them. I'm a strategy consultant, and the answer to your question is yes, I think someone inside the organization leaked information.”

Perry Gilbert walked at a brisk pace. Cole figured Gilbert was an athlete in high school, whose law degree and career as a
PD
kept him off the track or court.

“Whoever tipped off the reporter,” said Cole, “probably tipped off Mike Barnes. Barnes had a lot to say. He knew I was working for
ESC
o
G
and he still wanted to talk. Maybe Barnes planted the mole himself.”

Gilbert thought about this. “Maybe he learned about you some other way?”

“Maybe so. Why?”

“Well, I'm only guessing, and really, but was Dale van Stempvort set up?”

Cole stopped walking, waited until Gilbert stopped too. “How do you figure?”

He shrugged with one shoulder: “I don't know. I'm just guessing.”

“Well, guess out loud.”

“Somebody infiltrates
ESC
o
G
. They'd have to do it a while ago, right, because the environmentalists won't let just anybody come to their top secret strategy meeting, right?”

“Right,” said Cole, thinking hard.

“So the infiltrator calls the reporter from the
Red Deer Advocate
after the meeting and suggests that Dale van Stempvort is the leader of the group. The reporter, knowing that Mr. van Stempvort is a hothead, calls him up for a quote, and gets a doozy.”

Cole listened and nodded.

“The next day the quote appears in the newspaper. Months of tension boil to the surface as environmentalists are pitted against the mining company in a battle for Cardinal Divide.” Gilbert ran his hand across the space in front of him as if outlining a newspaper headline.

“You've been watching too many movies,” said Cole.

Gilbert was on a roll. “Maybe. So the newspaper story runs and everybody now looks at Dale van Stempvort. He becomes a known commodity. Wing nut, eco-terrorist. And that's when our man ...”

“Or woman,” Cole said.

“Or woman,” added Gilbert, “decides to make his or her move.”

“So she calls up Barnes and asks for a meeting that night and drives out to the mine and clubs him on the head with a piece of drill steel,” said Cole.

“Knowing full well that with the temperatures running hot, the heat will come down on Dale van Stempvort. Maybe he calls up Mr. van Stempvort and invites him to a meeting at the mine that night so that his vehicle is seen at the scene of the crime.”

“Now you're sounding a little thin,” said Cole.

Gilbert shrugged again. He turned and began to walk. “Look,” he said “it's not really my job to find out who killed Mike Barnes ...”

“Me neither!” said Cole.

“My job
is
to defend Mr. van Stempvort, and I've got to consider what else might have happened that night.”

“Fair enough,” said Cole. “And my job is to save the Cardinal Divide.”

“That's right, which you can't do if Dale van Stempvort is convicted. So we had better come up with some other possibilities for who caused the untimely demise of Mike Barnes.”

“Can't argue there,” said Cole. “And on that note, I should tell you about another little piece of information I came across.”

Cole told him about Deborah Cody's affair with Mike Barnes, what Cole believed was a scrap of paper with damning evidence
on it, the confrontation between the couple, George's absence from the bar on Tuesday night, and Deborah's bruised hand.

“This is starting to sound like a Dick Tracy comic,” said Perry Gilbert with a grin.

Cole smiled weakly. “I don't do hats,” he said.

It was after four when Cole and Perry Gilbert walked back to Main Street. Cole's head hurt and the stitches in his cheek itched and if Nancy Webber slapped him again, he'd have to slap her back. The lawyer said he would keep Cole in the loop. Perry Gilbert's cooperation provided Cole with access to helpful information. Gilbert had some plausible theories about how Mike Barnes had really been killed. What was more, he actually believed Dale van Stempvort was innocent, which was more than could be said for Cole Blackwater, at least at first blush.

And now? Was Dale innocent? Cole mulled this question over as he walked to the Legion. He was certainly leaning that way, otherwise he wouldn't be here. But why had van Stempvort fallen into the trap so easily? He didn't strike Cole as a scared rabbit. Who had set the trap?

Cole walked up the front steps of the Legion Hall.

Oracle's Legion was like a hundred Canadian Legion Halls. Administrative offices and meeting rooms were upstairs as well as a large assembly room where, once or twice a year, the community's vets assembled to remember fallen comrades. Cole had been in the High River Legion Hall almost as often as he'd been in Prize Fight, at least until he was a teenager and able to choose where he spent his time.

The social club downstairs served beer and light snacks to vets and the public alike. That's where Cole found Nancy. Seated at a table in a dark corner of the room, past the pool table and toward the emergency exit (which Cole noted) Nancy sipped coffee from a porcelain cup. As Cole scanned the room, alarm bells went off left, right, and centre. A table of three men drank beer and smoked cigarettes and eyed him suspiciously as he walked past, as did two vets playing pool. Now Cole knew why Nancy chose the venue.

He sat down at the table across from her. She wore a black leather jacket and blue jeans which fit her very well. A classic white
button-down shirt completed her ensemble. Her black hair hung loose and fell over the shoulders of the leather coat. He smelled a familiar fragrance. He damned himself for being so weak and pushed the arousal from his mind.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” he said cordially.

She stared at him. “I haven't agreed to anything.”

“Let me tell you what I know,” he said, trying to start off on the right foot.

Cole ordered draft beer and he began. First he told her about his meeting with Barnes, and about the fight in the bar. She sat expressionless.

He told her about George and Deborah Cody, and Deborah's affair with Mike Barnes. He told her about the mole within
ESC
o
G
and the suspicion that whoever leaked information to the media might have set up Dale van Stempvort, or worked with someone who set Dale up to take the fall for the murder. He didn't mention Perry Gilbert. No need for Cole to divulge all his sources. That was all he had right now. It was thin. But it was his.