The Cardinal Divide (18 page)

Cole turned on the faucet and cupped water in his left hand and rinsed his mouth out. There was no blood in the water: a good sign. What had been so distracting that he had failed to make his customary and precautionary scan of the bar? The meeting. The meeting with Mike Barnes.

“I guess you handled yourself pretty good up until that point,” said George. He turned and walked to the bed where he picked up the ice pack, dumped the ice into the sink, and threw the bag into the trash.

“I used to do a little boxing,” said Cole. He poured water into the sink, gently rinsed his hands first, then splashed his face. The cool water revived him. “But I've never fought anybody who used a chair before. That's a pro-wrestling trick,” he quipped.

“Did you know those guys?” asked George as he tidied the room.

“Never seen them before in my life. You?”

“Nope. But I got their names before I tossed them out, so if you want to press charges, you can. I'll back you up.”

“We'll see,” said Cole. The gravity of the situation began to set in. “Did you call the cops?” asked Cole.

“I did, but they said it would be a few hours before they could get a car over because they were tied up with something. Said if you weren't dead you didn't rate. Whatever that meant.”

Cole walked to the bedroom and sat on the foot of the bed. Even that much movement hurt.

“I've got to go,” said George, and grabbed his jacket from the chair by the desk.

“George,” Cole said weakly.

“Yeah, Cole.”

“Thanks.” Cole looked at him. A big lad, George was a good man to have at your back when things got hairy.

“No problem. I'm sorry things got so out of hand in my joint.”

“Things are pretty out of hand period,” said Cole, and looked down at his swollen fist.

George smiled thinly, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He closed the door behind him.

Cole leaned back onto the bed and considered just how out of hand things were. Two days on the job and what was supposed to be a simple strategy to stop a mine had turned into a mess. In the two days since he had arrived in Oracle the whole campaign had unravelled. He was supposed to be helping the locals protect grizzly bears, harlequin ducks, and wolves. But his hasty and ill-conceived cover as a reporter, developed to ferret information from less willing sources, had been blown. The Eastern Slopes Conservation Group had a mole who was leaking information to the media and likely to the mine proponents. And Dale van Stempvort, a first-class malcontent, who most of the town of Oracle believed was responsible for blowing up natural gas wells, had spilled the beans about the group's plans to a reporter who had been tipped off by the infiltrator. When Cole confronted Mike Barnes, the manager of both the existing Buffalo Anthracite and the proposed McLeod River Mine, he had been bested by a man who was clearly no small-town hick. Now someone – maybe the spy, maybe someone else altogether – had set three thugs onto him last night in the bar. If George hadn't shown up when he did, who knows how far the goons might have gone? Whoever did that knew where he was staying and was aware of his habits of the last couple of days. Somebody had been watching him very carefully.

Cole picked himself off the bed. He needed to shower, to change out of his blood-stained clothing, and to swallow some Advil. Then he had to find a cup of coffee. He stepped into the bathroom and pulled his
T
-shirt off. His back ached from the blow it had sustained.

He was about to drop his pants when the phone rang. He stepped to the side of the bed and snatched up the receiver.

“Blackwater,” he growled.

“Cole, it's Peggy.”

“Hi Peggy,” he said, his tone lightening. “Did you try to call earlier?”

“Yes, that was me. Your phone just rang and rang. Were you out?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Listen, Cole.” Her voice was rushed and breathless. “We have a problem.”

She's not kidding, thought Cole. “Has Dale shot his mouth off again to the media?”

“That's not it, Cole.” Her voice trailed off.

“What is it, Peggy?”

Peggy McSorlie drew her breath in sharply and said: “Mike Barnes is dead.”

“Holy fuck,” spat Cole Blackwater, beyond caring about his choice of words. He sat down heavily, too close to the edge of the bed, and nearly slipped to the floor. He grabbed at the tangled sheets to steady himself and pulled the phone off the stand. It crashed to the floor for the second time that morning, and he dropped heavily to his knees to find the pieces.

“Are you still there?” asked Peggy.

“Still here.” His mind raced. Had Barnes driven his
SUV
off the road late last night and crashed into a tree?

“How?” he finally asked.

“Cole, he was murdered.”

Cole let the phone slide down the side of his face. It came to rest on his lap. Peggy still spoke, but he couldn't make out what she said. Instead he heard Mike Barnes' voice in his head. He could see him, sitting comfortably across the coffee table in his office, his shirt tailored, his shoes polished. He saw himself shake Barnes' hand and watched as the young man turned back to his office to prepare for his next meeting.

And now Barnes was dead.

“Cole, are you there?” he heard the tinny voice in the phone ask.

He lifted the receiver again. “I'm here, Peggy.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“No, sorry, I was lost for a minute.”

“I said that we should get caught up on this as soon as possible. I think this is going to have an impact on our work.”

“You think?” Cole said sarcastically.

Now it was Peggy's turn to be quiet.

“I'm sorry,” said Cole. “I'm just a little overwhelmed. This news about Barnes comes as quite a shock. I was just with the man twelve hours ago. And I had a bit of a run in myself last night.” Cole described the fight and how George Cody came to his rescue and sat with him through the night.

“Jeepers, Cole, you should go to the hospital to make sure you're
OK
.”

“I'm
OK
, but I will swing by for some stitches this morning so I don't have to play Scarface this Halloween,” he grinned.

“We should expect calls from the
RCMP
, don't you think?” asked Peggy.

“I know
I
should. In fact, I'll probably save them the trouble and give them a call before I get breakfast.”

There was a long silence.

“Cole, you don't think Dale had anything to do with this, do you?”

“I don't know, Peggy. I want to believe that he didn't, but I don't know.”

“I've known him for ten years, Cole. He's crazy but he's not a killer.”

“I want to believe you, Peggy. But I'm not the one who will be making that judgement. He really stepped in a pile of it this time, if you ask me.”

“It was a harmless comment, Cole.”

“It wasn't harmless, Peggy, and you know it. Lets not play naive. He said he'd be willing to do anything to stop the mine. That's far from harmless for a man with Dale's history.”

“Come on now Cole, you know that quote was out of context. He would do anything
legal
to stop the mine. And you know as well as I do that Dale has never been convicted of anything, he's never even been in jail. It's all just rumours and hearsay, likely the product of the same people who tried to crack your skull last night. There's a lot riding on the development of the McLeod River Mine.”

Cole was silent. How far down this rabbit hole did he want to go? He was in unknown territory. Finally he said, “I'm not the one who will be making that judgement.”

“Well.” She sighed deeply, “Let's keep in touch today,
OK
?”

“
OK
. Thanks for the call, Peggy.”

“No problem, I guess,” she said softly.

Cole sat on the bed and held the receiver. A sliver of light poked through the heavy curtains. A Leonard Cohen song came to mind:
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
For Mike Barnes there was no longer any light and that made Cole sad, unexpectedly and overwhelmingly so. Though Barnes was the man responsible for the imminent destruction of the Cardinal Divide, Cole Blackwater had not considered him the enemy once they had met face to face. They had become human beings to one another.

Mike Barnes was reasonable and straightforward, likeable: a fellow human. Flesh. Blood. Bone. Memory. Gone.

Cole stared at the crack of light. In all the years he'd worked to stop ventures like logging of old growth forests, drilling of oil and gas wells in the wilderness, and mining in places like the Cardinal Divide, he had never wished his opponent dead. Sure, he'd made jokes that his life would be a lot easier if so-and-so got run over by a cement mixer, but he didn't really mean anything by that. Now a man he had worked to oppose was dead, and Cole Blackwater was one of the last people to see him alive.

Murdered, no less. Cole watched the sliver of light grow sharper as the sun moved higher. Murder: how many people could even consider such a barbaric act? Cole wondered. He closed his eyes against the thought. It would be a lie to say that he had never considered it as a solution to some of his own problems. But it had never been about work. And Cole knew all too well that acting on such an impulse was another matter all together.

Cole sat on the floor, his back to the bedraggled bed, his fist, face, back, and head aching, and looked at the seam of light in the heavy drapes over the motel room windows. He couldn't get much closer to the floor unless he fell over, he thought. A pretty fair metaphor for his life. Now what? he wondered. Pick himself up, dust himself off, as the Peter Tosh song implored? Start all over again? He steadied himself with his left hand and was preparing
to do just that when the phone rang.

He looked at it a moment. Seemed as though everything bad that had happened in his life had started with the jangling of a telephone. That's how this folly had begun, less than a week before. He reached for it and picked up the receiver.

“Blackwater.”

“Mr. Blackwater, this is Staff Sergeant Reimer from the Oracle
RCMP
. I wonder if you might have a moment to come into the detachment this morning. We have some questions we'd like to ask you concerning the death or Mr. Mike Barnes.”

Beaten to the punch again.

Cole closed his eyes as he listened to the Staff Sergeant request his presence at the
RCMP
detachment. “I can. It will be about an hour or so. There are a few things I need to deal with first.”

“Come as soon as you are able, please,” she said politely, but firmly enough to leave no doubt in his mind that his presence was not optional.

“Do I need a lawyer?” he asked.

“You're welcome to have counsel present, but you're not under suspicion in the death of Mike Barnes, if that's what you're asking. You were likely the last person to see him alive, and that makes you an important witness in his murder.”

“I'll be there shortly,” Cole said, and hung up. He stood hesitantly and made his way back to the bathroom. Not more than ten minutes had elapsed since he had started to undress, but in that time his world had altered perceptibly. Ten minutes ago his biggest problem was that he had been beaten unconscious by thugs, likely hired by someone who didn't want him to do his job. Now he was, at the very least, a witness to the last hours of a man's life. Even worse, the suggestion of murder had unlocked a memory he had buried so deeply it had remained hidden for three years.

He reached into the shower and turned the water to hot. While he waited for the cold water to exit the pipes he stripped off his pants, then stepped into the shower. The hot water relieved his aching back. He stood and absorbed the heat. The water massaged his neck and shoulders and cascaded down his bulky frame. The cuts on his face stung, but the pain helped push that unpleasant, unwanted memory from his mind. Standing with his left hand pressed against the tiled shower wall, the water coursed over him and he let it wash away the past, if only for a moment. Finally he lifted his head to wash his face beneath the shower. Fresh blood ran down his body and turned the water in the shower stall to the colour of faded roses.

As he drove from the Rim Rock Hotel toward Main Street, he contemplated: stitches or coffee? His need for caffeine was definitely greater, but the stitches would have to come first. The cut beneath this eye had opened in the shower and bled into a hunk of toilet paper that Cole pressed to his face. It probably wasn't the first time someone in this town asked for an extra large double
double while bleeding on the counter at Tim Hortons. Just the same, he made his way to the hospital and found the emergency room blessedly empty. He was given a gauze pad for the cut, ushered into a small room that smelled of disinfectant, and told to sit on the tissue paper-covered bench to wait for the doctor. He wished he'd picked up the
Red Deer Advocate
to read local coverage of the murder. Instead he stood and perused the charts and posters on the wall.

A knock at the door was followed by the doctor in black pants and a black turtleneck. He introduced himself with an extended hand. Without thinking Cole shook it and winced in pain.

“Oops, sorry about that,” the doctor said. “Have a seat.” He pulled on a pair of gloves and poked at the cut beneath Cole's eye.

“What happened here?”

“Bar fight.”

“How's the bar look?”

“Funny,” said Cole, grimacing.

“I try.”

The doctor looked at his head. “You're lucky. This could have been much worse. Let's have a look at the hand.”