The Cardinal Divide (40 page)

“Thank you so very much. This has been very helpful,” said Cole.

“Will Mr. Henderson get what's owed to him?” asked the neighbour.

“Oh, yes, he'll get what's coming to him,” said Cole, walking down the path to his truck.

He pulled into the Tim Hortons parking lot when his cellphone rang. He snatched it up from the jumble of papers on the passenger seat.

“Blackwater.”

“It's Jim Jones.”

“Hiya Jim. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“No trouble. Sorry it took so long.”

“Did you find out who got advance copies of the report?”

“It took a little doing. I'm pretty deep in I-owe-you debt right now, but Jeremy Moon at Wild Rose Consulting gave me the list. It includes a bunch of government types in Edmonton which I'm guessing you don't really care about.”

Cole locked the Toyota and walked into the doughnut shop for
a coffee boost. “That's right. Just folks in this neck of the woods, really.”

“Well, there's me, Mike Barnes, Hank Henderson, and somebody named Frans Lester at the mining company's head office in Toronto. He's one of their planners. A copy of the report was sent to the mayor of Oracle, but apparently she was out of town and hasn't even signed for it yet.”

“I haven't met her,” said Cole, standing in line. There was one person in front of him.

“And a fella named David Smith called and requested a copy, and received it last Monday by courier. I guess he's the head of the Chamber of Commerce. Powerful dude in Oracle. Wants to run for office or something.”

Cole stood stock still.

“May I help you, sir?” said a young woman from behind the counter. Cole was silent. He didn't see the young woman. Instead his eyes visualized the information that Jim Jones had just presented him.

“May I help you?” she said again, her voice growing annoyed.

“You there, Cole?”

“Coffee, double cream, no sugar.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, Jim. Just ordering a coffee.”

“Do I sound like a drive through to you, Cole?” chuckled Jim Jones.

“I'm at Tim Hortons. Did you say last Monday?”

“Yeah, last Monday. He should have got it by about 4
PM
, according to my man at Wild Rose. I guess he wasn't on the original list, and was pretty pissed. Called up and demanded a copy. I guess he figures that as head of the Chamber, he was owed one. Was talking about how he was going to be the next
MP
, and that he sure as hell would remember who was who when he got to Ottawa. Wild Rose sent him a copy after
OK
ing it with the mine.”

Cole was served his coffee. He fumbled, phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, to fish some change out of his pocket. He spilled some receipts, the cap from a ball point pen, and change on the floor and had to stoop, awkwardly, to collect them and present the change to the counter girl.

He took his coffee and stepped into the parking lot.

“Do you need anything else, Cole?”

“Not right now, Jim. That's really helpful information. Thanks.”

Cole snapped the phone shut and jammed it into his pocket.

It was pretty clear where he would stop next. He sipped his coffee as he walked down the street, checked the time on his cell and found that it was almost four. My God, he thought, time sure flies when you're having fun. He didn't feel any closer to singling out a suspect.

George Cody had motive, means, and opportunity, but nothing conclusive pointed to him as the killer. The tarp in the back of his Pinto could be there to protect the seats and hatch from spilled beer when he was hauling bottles, or any number of things. Cole wondered if Nancy had turned anything up on George's past. If the man had a history of violence, then that might be something else altogether.

Hank Henderson had a clear motive: to stop Mike Barnes from shutting down the mine, and ascending to what must be in Henderson's mind his rightful place at the head of the operation. But surely Henderson must know that the company would send another flack to wind down operations, and that offing Barnes was only a temporary solution. Cole imagined that a man so possessed by anger and jealousy might conveniently overlook that sort of fact while in a murderous rage. Henderson's late arrival home on the night of the murder certainly established opportunity. A plethora of potential murder weapons in the man's office left no wiggle room for the establishment of means.

But there was a sticky loose end in all of this that festered in Cole Blackwater's mind. It was just too convenient that Dale van Stempvort had opened his mouth, inserted foot, and established such a clear motive to frame himself for the murder. Though it didn't make complete sense to Cole, he still believed that the mole was somehow tangled up in the murder of Mike Barnes. And the feeling that something from that morning held the key to both the mole and the murder still niggled in the back of his mind.

It niggled as he walked up the steps to the Chamber of Commerce offices.

“Is David Smith around?” he asked the woman at the reception desk. He didn't recognize her.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but we're old friends.”

“Who should I say is calling?”

“Cole Blackwater.”

“Hold on a minute, Mr. Blackwater.” She picked up the phone, punched a number, and told Smith that Cole Blackwater was there to see him. She listened a moment, then said, “Go on back. Do you know the way?”

“Sure do.” He smiled and dropped his coffee cup into a trash can.

David Smith didn't rise when Cole entered his office. He sat with his back to the door, at work on his computer when Cole stepped in. “Still playing reporter, Mr. Blackwater?” he asked with an audible sneer.

“Still playing politician?”

“That's the difference between you and me, Mr. Blackwater,” said Smith, turning around in his chair to face Cole. “I'm an upand-comer, and you're a has-been. I learned everything I needed to know about you with just one little phone call. And I know you've been poking your nose into my business around these parts.”

Cole shrugged. Although he appeared blasé on the outside, a fire kindled on the inside. He wanted to know, more than almost anything, who that phone call was directed to. “I haven't really been looking to learn anything about
you
. I have been poking around your town, though.”

“Oh, and what have you learned?”

Cole helped himself to a seat. “Lots of interesting things. I've learned that Dale van Stempvort was set up.”

“Dale van Stempvort is a lunatic and a killer,” Smith insisted. “He's going to find life in a maximum security facility very difficult indeed.”

“I bet that makes you plenty happy.”

“Why shouldn't it? A man kills another man in cold blood. He should go to jail. That's the rule of law in this country. Maybe you bleeding-heart liberals think that he should be embraced by his community and spend some rejuvenating time on a tranquil gulf island to realign his what-have-you's, but here in Alberta, a
man kills someone, he gets put away. If I had my way he'd hang. In fact, when I'm a Member of Parliament, I'll be pushing for a return to the noose.”

“Might make for good politics here in Alberta, but good luck getting a government elected on that platform.”

“I don't need political advice from a washed-up hack such as yourself, Blackwater,” Smith said, smiling. “Save it for the environmentalists. They must have scraped the bottom of the barrel to hire you.”

Cole had heard it all before. But still it rattled him.

“So how did you feel when you figured out that the mine was going to close, Smith?” Cole prodded.

Cole watched David Smith for any change in his expression. He had read that behavioural scientists using video recordings of subjects could slow the frames of the film down and see nearly imperceptible changes that projected emotions in a person's face. They could tell when a person was lying, or when, say, a couple having a seemingly innocent conversation actually hated each other's guts. These scientists got so good at this work that after a while they were able to do it without the video recordings and slow motion. Cole Blackwater didn't have that expertise. But he thought he saw a slight change in David Smith's ruddy face, despite a clear attempt to maintain equanimity. “That's just one of the options for the mine's future. I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. I've talked with people in Toronto about it.”

“But Mike Barnes was brought in with the sole purpose of wrapping up operations.”

“Well, that was Mike's take on things, but it wasn't the only option.”

“So you spoke to Mike about this?”

“We had words.”

“When?”

“Oh, I learned about the possible closure some time ago. Mike and I had a long talk about it one night. Long talk. We didn't see eye to eye on the matter, but that's the way it goes. I'd say that the closure option is less than likely at this time. Mike Barnes was a fool. I knew that the day he arrived in this town. He was Bay Street and this is Main Street. He didn't know the first thing about how we do things here. And it cost him.”

“That's not what you told me last week. You said he was a go-getter.”

“And you said you were a reporter.”

Cole remained implacable. “You think Barnes' being Bay Street got him killed?”

“I think that a man like Hank Henderson, for example, wouldn't have let anyone sneak up behind him and club him on the back of the head, that's what I think. But that's all said and done, isn't it? And I think the mine will stay in operation for some time to come.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, I think the mining company has seen the error of their ways. They should never have sent Mike Barnes to do what he was here to do. It was the wrong approach to dealing with this mine. It was wrong for the mine. Wrong for the company. Wrong for the town.”

“And wrong for you. For your political career.”

“My job as Chamber president is to make sure this town flourishes. When I become
MP
, it will still be my job to safeguard the future of this town.”

Cole watched the man carefully. His face was flushed, but no more so than Cole's. He sat back in his chair, trying to look relaxed. Cole imagined him sitting behind one of the looming mahogany desks in a Centre Block office on Parliament Hill. The image wasn't hard to conjure. David Smith looked every bit a Member of Parliament. Even a Cabinet Minister.

“Tough on crime, subsidies for the mining industry, to hell with regulations,” said Cole, “That will be your campaign platform?”

“Something like that,” grinned Smith. “Let's face it, in this riding, I don't have to worry about running against the Liberals or the
NDP
. All I have to worry about is winning the nomination battle. That's a ground game.”

“Sell nominations. Turn out your vote.”

“We speak the same language after all,” said Smith.

“But if the mine closed, there would be a lot of people out of work in this town, wouldn't there? The economy of Oracle, and other towns in this area would hit the skids. That can't be allowed to happen, can it?”

David Smith laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. It didn't take a boxer to know that David Smith was a heavyweight. He was big and not so much overweight as stout. Cole figured he weighed a solid 230 pounds, and while he might not be all muscle, he sure wasn't all blubber either. A wide grin came to David Smith's face. “So you're no longer masquerading as a reporter. Now you're a
PI
, is that it?”

“I'm just trying to save the Cardinal Divide is all.”

“Well you can thank Dale van Stempvort for its destruction. He's turned the whole town against the environmentalists. Nobody's going to listen to their whining now.”

“Dale van Stempvort didn't kill Mike Barnes.”

“And you think I did?”

Cole was silent. He regarded the man opposite the desk, so effusive, so confident. “I'm not saying that,” he finally said. “But I think that you set Dale up to say something stupid to that reporter. I think that you had one of your stooges from the Chamber of Commerce get inside the
ESC
o
G
and snitch on their goings on, and I think you got some Neanderthals from the mine to use me as a punching bag on the night Mike Barnes was killed.”

Cole wasn't sure about the Neanderthals part. Hank Henderson could have easily set that up too. But he was on a roll.

Smith broke into laughter. “I'll admit that you don't look nearly as pretty as you did when you first waltzed into this office last week,” he said, catching his breath, “but if I had wanted to give you a beating, I would have done it myself, son. That's how we do things around here. No, I didn't get those boys to lay some lumber to you. You'll have to go looking for another perpetrator for that one. And as for your conspiracy theory about a ferret in amongst the fish-kissers, you should probably know that Dale van Stempvort doesn't need anybody's assistance to put his foot in his mouth. That man was born with it there. He's been saying cockamamie things to the press for as long as he's been in this town. Looks like now he's finally fallen off the deep end and actually done something really awful.”

Cole stood up. “I'm going to be doing some digging, Mr. Smith. You better hope I don't find whatever it is you're hiding behind that politician's smile.” He turned to leave. Before he could step through the door, David Smith stopped him.

“Hold it there, pal. Hold it. You just better think twice about who you're threatening. You better think about it long and hard. I run this town. This town is mine. And no washed-up pecker-head like you is going to march in here and tell me what's what. I've been calling the shots here for a long time. I'm going to be calling them long after you leave. And if you don't watch yourself, watch that mouth of yours, and keep that busted-up nose of yours out of trouble, you're going to find yourself in way, way over your head.”