The Cardinal Divide (27 page)

Throughout his explanation, Nancy sat and stared at him, drank the last of her coffee, and looked sour. Her beauty had become overshadowed as bitterness had seeped into her every pore. Cole looked at this woman who had once been so lovely, and was sad.

“I don't know what I ever saw in you, Cole,” she finally said. Cole was startled to hear her express his own thoughts. He was silent. “I can't imagine why I ever trusted you. I was young and stupid and ambitious and thought that you, somehow, were part of the ladder I could climb to success. That's the way it is in Ottawa. I know that now. Snakes and Ladders. With greased rungs. In real life, you can fall off the board,” she said, and fingered the rim of the cup. “You were the greased rung for me, Cole. You were the one wrong move. You were the snake.”

“Then I guess we're even,” he finally said.

He saw it coming. She had to let go of the coffee cup to swing and he was ready for her. He blocked her hand with his arm and shoulder. None too gently. The sound of her smack against his own leather jacket was loud. The few heads in the Legion turned to look and conversations hushed.

“You're a bastard, Cole. You know that.” Despite his earlier notion that he might strike back, he had no desire to do so. He could
see tears in Nancy's eyes. If she knew that her eyes betrayed her, she didn't let on. She rubbed her hand on her leg, trying to dull the sting.

“Yes,” said Cole. “I know it. I've heard it enough to make me believe it.” Neither Cole nor Nancy returned the stares that the patrons directed their way, and conversations finally started again.

“You ruined my career, and you have the audacity to tell me that we're even.”

“I ruined my own career too. I guess that's what I meant.”

“Don't play cute with me, Blackwater.”

“
OK
, Nancy.” He looked her in the eyes. “I'm really just trying to say that I'm sorry.”

She was silent. The tears that had welled in the corner of her eyes now spilled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her sore hand.

“I really am sorry.”

“It's too late for that. You lied to me. You took advantage of our relationship and lied and I printed it, and the truth came out, and I got fired for it.”

“It was my fault,” he said. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

“I got fired from the best job in the business, Cole. I will never get to report from Ottawa again. Do you understand that? I can't go back. It doesn't work that way in my business. In your business, people can come and go. In mine, once you're gone, you're gone. For good. I had to move to fucking Saskatchewan to find a job as a reporter. Do you know what goes on in Saskatchewan? Not a fucking thing. Nothing happens. I was the senior parliamentary reporter for
The Globe and Mail
one day, and the next day I'm covering agricultural fair visits by the deputy agricultural minister in one of the least populated places on the planet.” She shook her head, the tracks of her tears obvious across her face. She wore no make-up to smudge.

“What do you want me to say, Nancy?”

“There is nothing you can say.”

“I know it was my fault. I know I was the one who made the mistake. It was my lie.”

“But I printed it, is that what you're going to say?”

He was thinking it. She printed it, and her editor didn't check it. But he simply shook his head.

“I've paid for this mistake, Nancy. Big time paid. I lost my wife.”

“Don't give me that shit. You lost your wife long before we started fucking.”

“I lost my little girl. I lost my job. My dream job. I had to leave Ottawa too. It's not been easy for me in Vancouver.”

“Am I supposed to shed tears for you, Cole?”

“I don't want your sympathy,” he said, his temper on the rise.

“Good.”

“What I want,” he said, breathing out through clenched teeth, “is your cooperation. And for you to stop hitting me.”

Nancy smiled. It was the first time he'd seen her smile since before his moment of indiscretion more than four years ago. It changed her face. The bitterness drained, if only for a moment, and once again she was impossibly beautiful. It lasted only a moment.

They sat in silence.

“Truce?” he said.

“For what purpose?”

“To get to the bottom of who really killed Mike Barnes.”

She shook her head. “Dale van Stempvort killed Mike Barnes.”

“Maybe so. But I'd like to know for sure before he's condemned to prison for the rest of his life, and before the Cardinal Divide is handed over to the coal miners because of it.”

“Is that what this is about? You trying to save some wilderness for the grizzly bears?”

“What did you think it was about, Nancy. It's what I do. It's what I've always done.”

“I thought that maybe it was about people this time, not just about some God-forsaken valley with a few grizzly bears in it.”

“It's about both. It's about Dale and about the
ESC
o
G
and about this stupid town, and about the Cardinal Divide. It's about Mike Barnes, and his family. It's about lies and deception,” he said.

“And redemption?”

“I don't believe in redemption,” he said. “There's no such thing.”

She watched him.

“Deep background only,” she said, finally.

“Yes, deep background only.”

“If my editors knew I was talking to you, I'd be writing for the
Red Deer Advocate
before the week was out.”

“Funny you should say that,” said Cole Blackwater.

The drive back to Peggy McSorlie's ranch was longer than he remembered. The road wove in and out of the woods, across meadows and a few clearcuts, and past natural gas wells. He had a lot of time to think.

Nancy agreed to talk with the
Red Deer Advocate
reporter who started the whole mess to discover his source within
ESC
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G
.

Cole reasoned that if they knew who tipped him off, they might be able to determine if Dale was being framed. Nancy thought it was a longshot, but saw no harm in a simple conversation between peers.

She also agreed to talk with Deborah and George Cody. Cole warned her that one, or maybe both of them, might have split Mike Barnes' skull open with a baseball bat. Nancy thought that talking with them as part of a background story on the man's life in Oracle was a good place to start.

Cole's job was to attempt to find out the mole's identity from inside
ESC
o
G
. They agreed to talk the next day.

“I'm not doing this for your cause, Blackwater,” Nancy said as they rose from the table at the Legion. “And I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for a story. That's all this is to me,” she said.

What she meant was, that's all
you
are to me. A path to a story. Cole figured that's all he had ever been. But he didn't really want to believe it, given the years they had spent together sneaking around a city that didn't tolerate sneaking.

He was weary from the day, and drove carefully along the gravel road toward the McSorlie place. There were so many loose ends and dead ends and fatal ends that Cole could hardly keep them straight. He wasn't even certain what he was trying do to. He had better figure that out first before he set off on some wild goose chase.

His conversation with the lawyer from Legal Aid nagged at him. Perry Gilbert said that they ought to try and figure out who might have tipped the
Red Deer Advocate
reporter. Was the mole working individually, or with someone else in the community? And
if so, was that person, or those people, trying to frame Dale van Stempvort for murder, or merely drive a wedge into the community for some other purpose? To make sure the mine was dug.

Then he thought about Jim Jones. Was it only two days ago that he and Jones had talked? When Jones speculated that the mine was merely a paper tiger? Cole thought about that, and how Mike Barnes had said it was dangerous for Oracle to depend on the mine so heavily for its economic future. Dangerous was not a word to be used lightly by an educated man like Barnes. He had written his dissertation on the social and economic implications for communities like Oracle when a company decides to pull up stakes. Mike Barnes knew what it was like to work for projects that shut down.

College boy, thought Cole Blackwater. Mike Barnes certainly was that.

Cole rubbed his head. Where had he heard that before?

Cole Blackwater opened his eyes, awakened by the invigorating smells and sounds of bacon frying, bread toasting, eggs sizzling, and coffee perking. He looked at his cell-phone for the time, and groaned. It was 6:10
AM
. That's life on a ranch. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, pulled his jeans on, and buttoned his shirt.

Gord McSorlie sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. Peggy McSorlie stood at the stove. She offered Cole coffee, for which he was deeply grateful.

“How'd you sleep?” Peggy asked.

“Like a baby.”

She smiled. “I'm sorry to hear that. You were up every two hours?”

“I didn't hear any crying,” said Gord between sips of coffee. His eyes didn't move from the paper in front of him.

“It is a stupid saying, isn't it?” said Cole, adding cream to his cup. “But I sure did need that good sleep.”

“It's the country air,” said Peggy, and handed her husband a plate of food.

“This looks great,” Gord said, and kissed her on the cheek as she served him.

“Are you hungry, Cole?”

“I'll start with coffee and work my way up,” he said, and raised his cup in a toast to Peggy.

A few minutes later the McSorlie boys appeared and in a whirlwind downed their breakfast, kissed their mother and headed out the door with backpacks across their shoulders, walked to the end of the drive to await a ride that would take them to a basketball tournament in Red Deer. Cole watched them go, and thought about Sarah.

Breakfast finished and the dishes cleared, Gord headed to the barn to begin his day's work. Peggy and Cole sat across the long, wooden table in the large, open kitchen and lingered over another cup of coffee.

Fully caffeinated, Cole said, “So, now what?”

“I guess we get back to work,” said Peggy. “Where do we start?”

“Let's review what we know.”

“About the mine, or about the murder?” she asked, and took a sharp breath when she said “murder.”

“Both,” said Cole. “One is so mixed up with the other that I don't think we can untangle them.”

“You first, Cole.”

Cole started. He told her everything he knew. Peggy alternately looked down at her coffee or straight at Cole as he dumped the information out in a tangled mess for them to sort through. George and Deborah Cody, her affair with Barnes, his absence, and her bruises. He recounted his conversation with Perry Gilbert and his theory that the mole inside
ESC
o
G
might have set Dale up, or worked with someone who did. He told her what Jim Jones uncovered in his review of the yet unseen draft of the Environmental Assessment.

He told her everything, except, of course, about Nancy. Peggy didn't need to know about her. Not yet.

“I still can't believe that someone is spying on us,” she said when he was done.

“What else could account for the call Dale got from a reporter that night after our meeting?”

Peggy shook her head, more in disappointment than in disbelief. “Who could it be?”

“Is there a new person in the group? Or someone who is overly enthusiastic or just plain suspicious?”

Peggy thought for a moment. “I don't know, Cole. I'll have to give that some consideration. It would be too easy to blurt out names. That's what got Dale into this trouble.”

Cole nodded in agreement.

“Is there someone in the community who could be behind this?” Cole asked.

“Are you asking me to say who I think wanted Mike Barnes dead, or who I think wanted to make our group look like crazies?”

“I don't know. Both.”

“Mike Barnes seemed like a nice enough man. None of us had a lot of affection for him, but nobody I know, including Dale, wanted the man dead. Maybe on the first plane back to Toronto, but not in a coffin,” Peggy grimaced at the thought. “Who would want to make us look foolish? Well, that list is pretty long, Cole.”

“Can we come up with a short list?”

“Any number of business owners, including George and Deborah Cody. Their business caters mostly to people in town who work
for the mine as contractors or short-term workers, though I bet they'd do as well if tourism took off and Oracle became a gateway to Jasper, as we propose. Most of the businesses on Main Street are for the mine and against our efforts. The Chamber of Commerce. The local union. The Downtown Improvement Association. You name it, Cole. We're up against serious odds.”

Cole jotted notes in a pocket notebook, hoping to keep it all straight.

“What about people at the mine itself?”

“Well, Mike Barnes didn't wish us any luck, but he was always cordial. Which is more than I can say for others there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mike Barnes sat beside me at a public meeting once. We disagreed on most things, but we did so with respect. Other people in the room jeered and cat-called during our presentation. As I recall the assistant mine manager was there too. Hank Henderson. Not the friendliest apple in the barrel. He scowled at us through the whole meeting. Scowled at Mike Barnes, too.”

“College boy!” That's where he'd heard it.