The Darkening Archipelago (41 page)

“I have no idea. The RCMP will have to get that piece of the puzzle. But you stay clear of him. I mean it.”

“We'll be fine. Look, Cole —”

“Nancy, I don't want to talk about it now. Darren says if we're going to get to Jeopardy Rock and back today, we'd better get going. You need to get ready to file a story on this.”

“You still want me to write it?”

“Of course. And make sure you talk with Bright about the connection between the leaked memos and the First Nations Opportunity Fund.”

“Who else should I talk to?”

“Don't tip the minister's office off. God, I wish we knew who the deep throat was. Maybe you could track him down. Otherwise, I think the best we can do is interview some of the enviros working on the salmon file.”

“What about Greg?”

“You do that and he'll call the event off. He's in with Lance Grey and Stoboltz.”

“So what if they call the event off? Isn't that what we want?”

“I don't know. I don't know what we want. Can you put Grace on?”

“Sure, Cole,” she said, and then added, “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Grace picked up the phone. “Cole, are you all right?”

“Never better,” he laughed. “Listen,” he said, “you need to call Carrie Bright. Tell her everything we know about the funny business linking Stoboltz, the sea lice engineering, and the First Nations Opportunity Fund. Get her to come to Port Lost-coast for the announcement.”

“And do what?”

“Upend the apple cart. I don't know. We'll think of something today.”

“Okay, Cole….” Grace sounded skeptical.

“Look,” he said, “the way I see it, Lance Grey knows we're onto this whole thing. He knows we have a bunch of the pieces. He knew Archie did. But the minister has said, ‘Let's go to that nice little port town, you know, out in the islands, to make this announcement.'” Cole mimicked the minister's voice. “And Lance hasn't been able to come up with a good enough excuse not to, so he's going to string this along as best he can and hope like hell he can protect his own ass.” Cole was in his bull-in-a-china-shop mode.

“What if the minister is in on this, too?”

“I can't see it.”

“Okay, I'll call Carrie and set this up.”

“And Grace, I told Nancy to go ahead and file.”

“Yeah….”

“I still think that if we're going to bag these guys, she ought to get the story, don't you think?”

“I guess it's just sinking in that there is going to be a story on my father being murdered.”

“I know. I'm sorry, look, I've got to go. Darren is jumping up and up — down. The
Rising Moon
sails with the rising sun!” Cole hung and turned to Darren. “Okay, let's hit it.”

Grace hung up the phone and turned to Nancy, who was in the kitchen making coffee. “Guess you'll want a quote.”

Nancy put two cups on the counter. “I know that this is awkward.” “It's okay. The story needs to get told. So let's have some breakfast and then do this right.”

Nancy smiled. “Okay.”

They ate breakfast at the table as they watched the sun paint the eastern horizon crimson red. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Grace singsonged.

“Is that really true?”

“Who knows? Around here we listen to the marine forecast.” “Shall we start?” asked Nancy.

“Let me get some of my papers and stuff together. That way we'll have everything at our fingertips.”

Grace went into Archie's office and began to collect her own notes, the brown envelope of materials that had travelled from Victoria to Port Lostcoast to Vancouver and back in the last month. As she rummaged through the files on Archie's desk, making sure she didn't overlook anything germane to the story, she came across the will. She sat down on the chair. She hadn't opened it after Archie had disappeared, refusing to believe that her father wasn't coming back. But now she knew he was gone. Grace unfolded the papers and scanned them. She made it as far — as page three, then stopped reading, turned, and looked out the window at the red eastern sky.

Cole sat next to Darren in the cabin of the
Rising Moon
, wrapped in a heavy overcoat with an orange life jacket and a musty woollen blanket over his shoulders. The boat skipped lightly over the water as they powered eastward. They made the wide waters of the channel near Tribune in good time, and were rewarded with an extraordinary view of the Coast Mountains backlit by the rising sun. Cole turned in his seat and saw the constellation of islands at the mouth of the inlet light up, and, behind them, the mountains of the north end of Vancouver Island glowing in the day's first light. He took a deep breath of the salty air and let the events of yesterday drain from his aching body.

Darren was silent. He stared straight ahead as the
Rising
Moon
cut swiftly across the calm waters, bearing for Tribune Channel.

Cole considered his decision to make for Jeopardy Rock, knowing that Dan Campbell was walking around Port Lostcoast a free man. He yelled to Darren, “Do you think we made the right decision leaving, what with Dan and his friends at large in Lostcoast?” Darren continued to look straight ahead, but yelled, “You mean, are the girls okay?”

“Yeah. What if Dan tries to get at something from Archie's records?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Something that might tie him to Archie's death.”

“I thought you said there wasn't any connection between Dan and the salmon farms.”

“I'm just guessing. I don't know.”

“I don't think there is,” said Darren. Then he said, “You think he killed Archie?”

“Seems like our best bet right now. You think we should go back?”

“I think Nancy and Grace are fine,” Darren said, still focusing on the water ahead.

Cole pulled the blanket tighter. He drew a deep breath and tried to piece together what could have transpired between Archie and Dan that would move the man to commit murder. It wouldn't have taken much, Cole thought, given Dan's volatility.

For years Archie and Dan had been beating each other up in the media. When conservation groups began working to protect the mid-coast of British Columbia's ancient rainforest from clear-cutting, Archie Ravenwing was a freshman band councillor and had worked to secure the support of his people for the proposed agreements. Dan Campbell had lobbied strenuously against it, siding with logging companies in their fight against First Nations and environmentalists.

When many of those same environmentalists waged a bitter battle to ban the hunting of grizzly bears across the province, Archie had been their champion on the coast. He made the economic argument that a portion of his living was made taking American tourists up Knight Inlet to view grizzly bears feeding on spawning salmon each fall. Dan Campbell's main business was outfitting and guiding similarly rich Americans in the pursuit of grizzly trophies.

That the two men had lived side by side in the town for a decade was a wonder to Cole. What could have pushed Campbell over the edge? Salmon farming?

Cole guessed that Campbell's support of salmon farming was ideologically driven. He didn't seem to be directly linked to the practice. Like many men of Campbell's stripe, Cole figured that he simply supported industry of all kinds, believing one of two things: either God had given man dominion over all of earth's creatures, and thus the right to gobble them up; or nature simply knew no bounds, and the supposed decline in wild salmon was part of a natural cycle that would correct itself in time, as it always did.

Cole found himself wishing he knew more about Campbell's involvement in the Aquaculture Advisory Task Force. What role had he played? And what was his connection to Greg White Eagle, Darvin Thurlow, and Lance Grey? Cole exhaled heavily. In none of the packages of information he'd seen so far did there seem to be any connection. Was Archie Ravenwing's murder completely unrelated? Had Dan simply had enough of Archie Ravenwing's proselytizing and followed him out to Jeopardy Rock that morning? Confronted him? Killed him? How?

Maybe the answer would become evident when they reached the former dfo station and got a look at the lay of the land.

There were so many unanswered questions. What had Campbell done with the boat? Cole closed his eyes to visualize the day unfolding. He pictured the
Inlet Dancer
making its way toward Jeopardy Rock. Then he imagined the
Queen Mary Two
do the same. Maybe Dan had landed at the dfo station and snuck up on Archie when Archie himself was sneaking around, clubbed him on the head with the fish club he had used on Cole the previous evening, and dragged his body back to the
Inlet Dancer
.

Dan had seemed pretty handy with that club. Cole felt his cheek. He'd need to go for x-rays. But Cole had gotten the better of him, hadn't he? That wouldn't have happened a year ago, thought Cole. The last eight months of nearly nightly workouts had helped. His reflexes were much sharper, his fists faster. His punch much more solid. But there was something else. Something that hadn't been there a year ago. Something that hadn't been there before his last trip to the ranch after the Oracle debacle. The anger that had lain dormant after his father's suicide had exploded to the surface while in Alberta, drawn from him like a poisoned magma, but never fully purged from his system.

That anger had fuelled him, burned in him, and had eaten at him as a poison does. And now he couldn't ignore it. Nancy Webber knew. She knew the truth about his father's death. Would she write about it? Cole shook his head, which he immediately regretted. Who cared if she did? He had no reputation left to protect. But he felt a wave of sickness and knew intuitively that more was at stake than his ego. Nancy Webber was at stake. His anger the previous evening had been in part fuelled by the flood of memories around his father's last act of anger and futility. It had also been fed by the bitter sense of loss he felt knowing finally that Nancy Webber
really was
in it just for the story.

Time would tell, he guessed. Bylines didn't lie.

Cole opened his eyes and watched the water pass by, watched the shores of distant islands draw near and recede. If Dan had killed Archie at Jeopardy Rock, how had Archie's boat ended up at Protection Point? Twenty miles or more away? Could Dan have towed the boat that far, and then abandoned it to make it appear as though Archie had been lost at sea? The
Queen Mary Two
was a big enough boat to have towed the
Inlet Dancer
, but not very fast. Cole guessed — and it was complete guesswork, being such a landlubber — that it would have taken the better part of a day to make that passage pulling the
Inlet Dancer
.

And that didn't explain the severed rope on the
stern
cleat of the
Inlet Dancer
. It seemed more likely that she had been the one doing the towing.

Had Archie given Dan a tow? The
Queen Mary
was too stout. At best the
Inlet Dancer
might have been able to pull her a few hundred yards, maybe a mile, into a sheltered cove. Had Archie let Dan onto his boat only to be killed by him? That was possible. Cole contemplated this thought. The code of the sea suggested, as far as Cole could surmise, that if someone was in distress, another mariner would come to his or her aid. No questions asked. Cole had even heard of a case where a Greenpeace boat, in distress, had been rescued by the whaling ships it was trying to stop.

If that was the case, Dan might have sought Archie's assistance with a distress call in the storm, and when Archie had towed him into a sheltered spot along Protection Point, come aboard, offering his gratitude, maybe even going so far as to propose amends. Then he could have clubbed him to death on the deck of the
Inlet Dancer
, thus producing the blood Cole had found on the
Dancer
's deck.

And then what? Cut the rope? Why? Why not just untie it? Cole couldn't square that circle.

Cole tried to imagine Archie inviting Dan Campbell onto the
Inlet Dancer
. Would he have been suspicious? Likely not. Archie Ravenwing could be a pompous prick, but he was generous and open hearted. He wouldn't have suspected Dan of murderous intent. Not unless something had transpired between the two in the last few days, and even then, Archie wouldn't have left a man to face his fate at sea.

Cole watched as the peaks of the Coast Range hove into view. A spectacular jagged pair of mountains rose above the fjord. All of this beauty, thought Cole, all of this majesty. Archie had spent his life on these waters, marvelling at these mountains, and his eyes would never again see their grace. Cole looked at Darren piloting the boat, playing the wheel lightly in his knotted hands. Maybe Darren would take over where Archie left off, fishing these waters and plying his trade as a guide to tourists.

Traffic was light on the water this morning. The
Rising Moon
had passed only half a dozen other boats, none of which Cole had really noticed. They passed another — a powerboat bearing out of the channel at high speed — as they prepared to make the turn. Darren First Moon watched it race past. Cole saw him look at his watch, and then look up again.