The Cardinal Divide (36 page)

“Can I get in on it?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

“No way,” he said. “For all I know it has nothing to do whatsoever with the death of Mike Barnes. It's just a hunch. Plus I've got to protect my client. There might still be something left to save when this is all over with.”

Nancy shrugged.

“And we've got to follow up on a couple of things. First, were Mike Barnes' keys found on him when he was killed? And what about that blasted Day-Timer?”

“Reimer says nothing has turned up about the appointment book. I asked about it today. She says they have searched the mill, the admin building, Dale's truck, Dale's ranch, and even Mike Barnes' place, but nothing.”

Cole steadied himself against the wall. “It's got to be around somewhere.”

“Cole, it could have been thrown out of a car window into the woods and eaten by a bear.”

“Bears have better taste than that,” he quipped.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I'll look into the keys,” she said. “And I'm going to try and find out more about George Cody's past. See if he has any history of violence.”

Cole stood against the dresser. “This is just like old times,” he said.

Nancy's face soured. “No it isn't, Cole. It had better not be. Because if this is just like old times, you're about to fuck me over, and if you do, you and Mike Barnes are going to have a lot in common, got it?”

“Calm down. I just meant, you know, you and me working together.”

“There was never a you and me working together. There was you working to jerk off your own ego, and there was me, getting bent over and fucked because of it.”

“You liked it.”

She grabbed the empty wine bottle and threw it at him. Maybe because he had drunk most of its contents, he was able to step aside quickly enough that it grazed his shoulder and bounced off the wall and hit the dresser behind him. “You take that back, you shithead.”

“I'm sorry. I was only joking.”

“It's not funny. I lost my job. My career. I'll never be able to work the Hill again.”

“Sorry.” He let his head hang down, but didn't take his eyes off of her lest she throw something else.

“And I loved you, you asshole.”

He was silent.

“You broke my Goddamn heart. You shattered me. Losing my job was bad enough. But I lost you, you fucker. It nearly killed me.”

For the first time Cole Blackwater became aware that he wasn't alone in the world. It had never really occurred to him that she had loved him. He always felt that to her he was just entertainment,
the sort of thing you do when you're bored and you want to live a little closer to the edge of things.

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

“Yeah, well so am I. Now get the fuck out,” she said, and turned her back on him.

He knew he should head straight back to Peggy McSorlie's ranch, but he went to the bar instead. He inspected every face in the joint deliberately as he entered. So intent was he on watching his back that he didn't see George Cody behind the bar until George greeted him.

“Howdy stranger!” he said cheerfully when Cole leaned against the counter.

Cole turned quickly, startled. “Hi George.”

George peered at him “Your face is healing up. You're no uglier now than you were when you first got here. Though it looks like you cut yourself pretty good shaving this morning.”

“Close shave of another kind.”

“You like to mix it up, don't you?”

“Keeps me from being too big of a horse's patoot.”

George laughed. “Around here that's called a horse's ass.”

“Where I come from too, but I promised my daughter I'd clean up my language. Its hard, but I'm trying.”

“Very noble.”

“Thanks. Can I get a Jameson? Rocks.”

George poured. “Didn't make any promises about the booze though, huh?”

“You my counsellor now?” said Cole testily.

“None of my business,” said George, holding his hands up. “Just giving you a hard time.”

Cole took a hearty pull on the Jameson. It burned a little after the wine, but it felt warm in his belly. “Forget it. I'm just in a foul mood.”

“I thought you had headed home. Deborah told me you checked out.”

“I did. I was. But I changed my mind. Unfinished business.”

“Oh?” George drew beer for the waitress.

“Don't like the way things turned out with the mine and with Mike Barnes and with Dale van Stempvort.” Cole finished his whiskey, put the glass on the bar, and tapped it lightly. George looked at him and poured another measure.

“Don't like it at all,” said Cole, and pulled on his fifth drink of the night.

“And what don't you like?”

“None of it. First, Dale van Stempvort is an idiot, but he's no killer. Second, Mike Barnes was a prick, but he didn't deserve to get his brains splattered all over the b – ” Cole checked himself. “All over the place. Third, the Buffalo Anthracite Mine has had its day, and something new is needed around here, but that isn't going to happen if Dale gets framed for Mike Barnes' murder.” Cole spoke quietly and quickly, and looked at his hands wrapped around the tumbler of Irish whiskey.

George leaned on the bar, resting his elbows there. His head was low, but his eyes were on Cole. “You've got some strong opinions.”

“Sure do. Always have.”

“Seems to get you in trouble.”

“Nothing I can't handle.”

“Seem to remember you not being able to handle the chair the other night.”

“
OK
, so the chair was a surprise. I was out of practice. I'm back now.”

“So you stuck around Oracle to solve the mystery of Mike Barnes' murder.”

“That's right.”

“Got any suspects?”

“I got a few.”

“Care to share?”

Cole sipped his drink. He felt both foggy and razor-sharp at the same time. His peripheral vision had vanished and all that remained was straight ahead. Dead straight ahead. “Two types of people,” he said. “People who didn't like what Mike Barnes was up to at the mine, and people who didn't like what Mike Barnes got up to when he wasn't at the mine.”

“That sounds like a lot of people.”

“Yep. Whole town pretty much.”

“You narrowing it down?”

“Yep.” He sipped his drink.

George poured a couple of beers and mixed a rum and coke. He came back and resumed his place across from Cole. “So you've narrowed it down.”

“Yep,” Cole said again. “Two people.”

“That's pretty narrow.”

“Pretty narrow,” Cole agreed.

“You going to tell me who those two people are?” George spoke evenly.

Cole sipped his drink. He set it down and looked at his hands. He used to have fast hands as a boxer. How fast were they tonight? “Nope,” he finally said. After five drinks, slow as molasses at Christmas.

“Suit yourself. But I've read a lot of mystery books, and I got a pretty good eye for this sort of thing.”

Cole shrugged. The adrenaline born from being so close to one of his murder suspects was now wearing off. He finished his drink. When George served him this sixth, he said, “I even got a magnifying glass somewhere around here, and one of them silly hats, if you want it, Sherlock.” Cole smiled as George laughed. Funny, he thought. Very funny.

He drove himself back to Peggy's place. George wanted to call him a cab, but it was a half-hour drive, and would cost him half a day's wage, so he drove slowly with the window down and the music turned way up. When he pulled into the yard he felt a bump and thought maybe he'd run over a piece of wood, or if he were lucky, a cat, but didn't bother to check. He stepped heavily out of the truck, almost fell, and staggered across the yard.

He walked to the barn, figured he was drunk enough to find a saddle blanket or two and fall asleep in the hay. Better than crash through the unfamiliar house, wake everybody up, and explain how he drove home snot-hanging, toilet-hugging drunk. That wouldn't go over big.

But when he opened the barn door, sleep was the last thing on his mind. The swarm of hay-scented air hit him like a leather glove in the face and he reeled in the thick aroma. He took two steps and tripped on a loose floorboard and fell heavily to the ground. He lay on the floor, feeling a trickle of fresh blood seeping from his face. He felt so tired. So tired.

A golden cloak of evening light draped itself over the gentle folds of Alberta's Porcupine Hills. Summer insects buzzed and droned. The delicate light slanted across the rolling hills and caught the myriad insects in their evening dance, like so many dust motes.

The hills rose and fell, rose and fell, sparse clumps of aspen trees tucked in among them. On their flanks, grasses grew thickly, making the Porcupine Hills some of Canada's finest ranch country. In the distance, the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains towered like the fortified ramparts of an ancient castle. Free of snow in early June, they formed a blue-grey wall of limestone rising three thousand feet above the gently rolling plains that broke like shattered waves at their feet.

The slopes of the Porcupine Hills were pocked with the black and brown forms of free-range cattle grazing their way downslope toward evening pasture. Where once buffalo roamed, now domestic breeds took sustenance on the rich nutrients of rough fescue.

At the base of one hill, a ranch was laid out among a few spreading cottonwood trees that lined a tiny creek. The trees gave meagre shelter from the harsh summer sun, the biting winter winds, and the nearly constant howl of the Chinook that blew year round.

The ranch house was a rambling, single-story affair with a wide porch and shuttered windows and a small kitchen garden on the creek side of the building. First built in 1895, it was added to when the market for cattle would permit and when war did not pull the homestead's men overseas. A chicken coop, pig pen, tack shed, and drive shed were scattered around the ranch house. Half a dozen derelict automobiles and a ramshackle assortment of barrels littered the near pasture and interrupted the picturesque ranch image.

Light shone from the kitchen of the ranch house, but no shadows passed across its windows.

The barn, set back against hills that rose toward the west, leaked light though its weathered boards. The broad doors stood open and the incandescence spilt across the ranch yard.

The sound of a man's voice rose above the hum of the evening. A dog barked. Feet shuffled on canvas. The heavy sound of bodies colliding went out like a dull call into the night.

Inside the barn the walls were piled high with hay, the bales stacked ten or twelve high around the outside of the barn. But at its centre there were no bales. Where in other barns there might be cattle feed or farm machinery a boxing ring stood. No crude arrangement of hemp ropes strung between crates or chairs, this
ring was complete with a raised canvas floor and cloth-covered ropes strung tightly between corner poles fixed firmly in place in the barn floor. Four overhead lights hanging from the barn ceiling filled the ring with a harsh white light and cast tall shadows of three bodies onto the straw-lined walls.

Two boys circled each other in the ring. One of the boys is nearly a man, fifteen or sixteen years old. The other is younger, not more than thirteen. They each wear heavy gloves and trunks, and sweat streaks their bodies. Farm boys both, they wear the broad shoulders and lean, muscled arms of those accustomed to pitching bales of hay onto the bed of a tractor. They circle each other while a man, also in gloves, call to them.

“That's it, boys, that's it. Keep light on those feet,” he says.

The border collie circles the ring, herding the boys, barking.

“Watch for the opening, Walt, watch for the opening. That's it. Now step in,” shouts the man.

The older boy feints and then steps in with a quick right hand jab, and the younger boy is knocked back. The older boy steps out and the two continue to circle each other.

Stockier than the younger boy, Walter is 5'11'', heavy across the chest, with short-cropped dark hair and a heavy, brooding brow. But he smiles as he circles the ring, and winks at his brother as they trade jabs.

Walter dances sideways as the younger boy throws a left and then a right that glances off the older boy's shoulder.

“He saw that coming, Cole. He saw that coming! You can't tell him you're going to hit him!” The man's voice is hoarse. The smell of liquor is thick on him. He steps sideways, heavily, watching the boys. “You've got to set him up.” Henry Blackwater wears his faded boot-cut Wrangler jeans and a white undershirt, sweat stains spreading from under his arms across his chest. His hair is grey and cut short, and his face hard and cut deeply with lines. A broad man who has not lost any of his youthful muscle, he lurches around the ring, yelling.

The boys continue to circle. “Watch him now, Walter. Watch him. Wait for him.”

Leaner than his brother, Cole is not skinny. His arms, long and corded with muscles, give him an immense reach. His arms dangle to his mid thighs when at his sides. His chest and back, though not
broad like his older brother's, are nevertheless strong from evenings and weekends spent working on the western ranch.

“Watch him now, Walter,” shouts Henry Blackwater. The older boy feints as Cole throws a left jab. Before Cole can throw the right, Walter hits him with a wide left and Cole stumbles backward.

“Jesus Christ,” grumbles the man. “Jee-sus Christ.” He paces around the ring, holding onto the ropes for stability. “Cole, what the hell are you doing? Don't you pay attention, boy? Don't you listen? You've got to move quick if you want to hit him. You can't wind up like you're in one of those Goddamn cowboy movies. You can't tell him you're going to hit him!”