The Glacier Gallows (10 page)

“Have your colleagues lost their way?”

“Sadly, I think that the current government has put them in a box and they are struggling to find a solution that is politically expedient.”

“It sounds to me like there is a split in the environmental movement,” said one reporter.

“I think the environmental movement has a Judas in its midst,” said Charles. “I just hope that he is stopped before too many others are persuaded to become advocates for dirty oil.”

“ARE YOU CALLING
to threaten me too?” Brian Marriott asked. He was in his office. It was 6:00
PM
on Friday night, and he hadn't stopped giving interviews and responding to angry accusations since he left the Château Laurier at noon.

“You're getting the gears, are you?” asked Cole.

“You could say that. Three of the four other groups at today's presser are already starting to walk back from our strategy.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don't know. Keep talking with them, I guess.”

“I saw Charles Wendell on
Power and Politics
. I never thought that guy would look reasonable. Somehow, you've accomplished the impossible.”

“What's that?”

“Made the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement look mainstream.”

“Cole, did you call just to stomp on me or do you have a suggestion?”

“You're just going to have to ride this out, Brian. That's all you can do. Try and convince the others to stick with it, and keep finding ways to make your point heard. Don't make it personal. Wendell is an egomaniac. I know. I used to be one too.”

“I simply can't believe that Cole Blackwater is giving me advice on how to handle a hostile media. Oh, how times have changed.”

“I don't know. To listen to Wendell, times haven't. You've just infiltrated the environmental movement like some kind of Trojan horse.” Brian was silent. “Come on, Marriott, I'm just ribbing you. Lighten up. This will all blow over in a couple of days, or a week, and people will see that you're talking sense. Nobody really believes that we can shut down a multibillion-dollar industry like the tar sands over-night. There has to be someone offering a long-term solution amid all the emotional rhetoric.”

“Now I know things really
have
changed. Cole Blackwater says I'm the one to offer a solution to the rhetoric. I don't know if this is going to blow over. I guess we'll wait and see.”

“Have a good weekend. Go skiing in the Gatineaus. Unplug. I'm heading to the Cambie to have a beer with my cronies. You should do the same.”

“Not sure if I have any cronies left, but it's good advice.”

They hung up, and Brian checked his email. There were dozens of angry messages and a few supportive notes from his colleagues inside and outside the environmental community. One message with an exclamation mark caught his eye. The email address was a numeric Gmail account. The message read:
You know what happened to Judas, don't you?

BROWNING, MONTANA. JULY 12.

TO COLE'S SURPRISE, SPECIAL AGENT
McCallum called him the next morning to tell him that he was free to return to Canada. He could pick his passport up at the Bureau of Indian Affairs office after 10:00
AM
and there was a bus scheduled to run between Browning, Montana, and Lethbridge, Alberta, at noon. McCallum's instructions were very clear. Cole was to report to the
RCMP
any movements that he made and he was not to leave Alberta. Cole's pointing out that he lived in British Columbia fell on deaf ears. “You're a material witness in an open murder investigation. It's either Alberta or Montana. You choose.”

“What about my gear?”

“When the investigation is over, it will be returned to you.”

THE LONG RIDE
from Browning to Lethbridge gave Cole plenty of time to think. As Cole watched the landscape of the Great Plains slip by, the uplands rising and falling, his fellow passengers argued, drank from liquor bottles thinly concealed by paper bags, or snored. The intensity of the last two days seemed to wash off as the bus made its way north. It was true that Cole's relationship with Brian had been rocky, but in the last year Cole had come to respect Brian's courage. Brian appeared to have turned his back on a lucrative job as a lobbyist for the petroleum industry and in doing so made many enemies.

Now Cole wondered if one of those enemies had followed him to Glacier National Park. Cole also considered which of Brian's adversaries might have dispatched someone—maybe Blake Foreman—to kill him.

The bus crossed the border and there was only a minor delay as Cole submitted himself for questioning. The
FBI
and
RCMP
notations on his file raised eyebrows from the Canada Border Services agent, but soon they were speeding toward Lethbridge.

Cole thought about Blake Foreman. Surely the
FBI
would investigate who this person was. It seemed strange that Foreman had suddenly appeared to fill a position as a guide on the fateful trip just days before the expedition began. Cole shook his head, agitated by and frustrated with the entire episode. He wanted it to be over. He wanted to go home to his daughter and see Nancy and bury once more the anger and the fear that these last few days had dredged to the surface.

COLE CAUGHT A
backpackers' shuttle from Lethbridge to Waterton Lakes National Park. He craned his neck as they entered the park to try and see the far end of Waterton Lake itself and the high plateau where his group had been camped. When the shuttle dropped him off in the center of the small rustic town, he walked the short distance to the shoreline and sat on a bench. He watched whitecaps form on the long body of water that extended from the United States into Canada. He closed his eyes and felt a deep sadness well up inside him. How could he be doing this again?

He would have to call Brian Marriott's widow. They had only met once, and that was in the bad old days when he and Brian were bitter rivals. He had heard through the grapevine that Brian and his wife had separated during the last year, though Brian had only alluded to it. Cole thought she might like to hear from someone who had been with Brian before he died.

At 5:00
PM
Cole stood outside the Waterton Lakes National Park warden office. His brother looked tired when Cole saw him, but Walter immediately smiled and the two men shook hands. “How are you, Cole?”

“Well, I seem to be a suspect in a murder investigation. I just spent the last day being raked over the coals by the
FBI
and the
RCMP
, and I don't even have a change of underwear. But other than that, I'm okay. You?”

“Well, I have a change of underwear, so I guess I'm top shelf. Let's head to the ranch. We can get you some new skivvies in Claresholm and Mom will cook up half a cow.”

“Is there beer in the fridge?”

“There's a six-pack in the cooler behind the seat.” Walter pointed to his Ford F-150. “None for the driver until we're on gravel, though.”

“Thank God
you're
driving, then.”

It was 7:00
PM
when they reached the slow rise that started west of Claresholm, Alberta, known as the Porcupine Hills. They followed Highway 520 west, both men cradling cans of Big Rock between their legs. Slowly the earth tilted upward, the open prairie giving way to meadows and groves of aspens. They turned off the main gravel road and soon the Blackwater Ranch appeared, tucked into a dell below one of the more steeply pitched of the ancient hills. In the past, Cole had always felt that the ranch's pastoral beauty came at a cost. Now Cole checked himself. The terrible knot that had lived in his stomach for two decades and had tightened into a fist after the tragic events surrounding his father's suicide did not reappear. He felt a wave of relief.

“It's getting better.” Cole sipped his beer.

“What is?”

“Coming home. I don't feel like I'll explode whenever I think of him.”

“Then you've finally started to beat the old man.”

“I just hope everybody else can see it, Walt.”

“We can, Cole. We can.”

Their mother greeted them at the back door. Cole stood on the stoop and let her muss his curls, then bent and embraced her. “How was your hike?” She beamed at him.

“We should talk after supper,” said Cole. He kissed her on the cheek and went to his old room. The bed was turned down, and Cole opened the window farther. The room smelled like horses and hay. He showered and changed into a pair of jeans and a Cinch shirt he'd bought at the Super Save in town.

“You look like a cowboy,” said Walter when they sat down on the front porch while their mother prepared dinner.

“Got an old pair of boots around here somewhere?” Cole asked.

“What are you going to tell Mom?”

“I don't know.” Cole tipped another can of beer back.

“Might as well tell her everything. She'll hear about it from the folks at her Wednesday bridge club anyway.”

“Those old biddies have Internet, don't they?”

“Half of them have iPhones.”

“Alright,” Cole said, standing up.

HE HAD THREE
phone calls to make after dinner. Though he wanted to talk with Sarah and Nancy, he called Brian Marriott's widow first. “It's Cole Blackwater calling,” he said when a young man answered the phone. “May I speak with your mother, please?”

“Hold on.”

A moment passed before she picked up the phone. “Hello?” She sounded exhausted.

“It's Cole Blackwater calling, Jane. You might recall—”

“I know who you are.”

“I just wanted to call and pass on my condolences.” There was a long silence. “Jane, are you still there?”

“You've got a lot of nerve calling me.”

“Well, I—”

“The
RCMP
has been by. Three times. They keep asking about your relationship with Brian.”

“Jane, I don't know what happened to Brian.”

“They keep asking if anybody
else
had reason to want Brian dead.”

“I had nothing to do with—”

The phone line went dead.

“NANCY, I THINK
I'm in trouble.” He sat in his brother's den. The room had once been his father's, but Walter had claimed it when he took over the Blackwater Ranch. Much of his father's memorabilia remained: the mounted elk-head trophy, the old Sharps single-shot rifle that had been his grandfather's, the licence plates dating back to the 1940s.

“What do you need?” asked Nancy.

“I need you. And I think I need a lawyer.”

“HI, DADDY. I
miss you! How was your hike?”

Cole pressed the phone into the side of his head so hard that it made a red mark. “Sarah, listen, I have to tell you something.”

NANCY WEBBER CAUGHT
the first flight from Vancouver to Calgary the next morning and by noon was at the Blackwater Ranch. Cole hadn't seen her in two weeks, and when she stepped out of her rental car, he was dumbstruck by how beautiful she was.

“Hi ya, Curly.” Nancy embraced him.

“Hi, Nancy.”

She held on to his thick frame a few moments and then looked at him. “Are you okay?”

“Better now that you're here.”

“Come on, buy a girl a cup of cowboy coffee and tell her what's going on.”

“Mom has an espresso maker. She'll make you a cappuccino.”

“I like Alberta more and more.”

They went inside, and Nancy hugged Dorothy Blackwater. Then Walter came in from the barn, and they all had coffee. After they were done, Cole, Nancy, and Walter went outside, walked to the barn, and leaned on a rail fence. They looked up at the eastern slope of the Porcupine Hills.

“I found Perry Gilbert,” said Nancy.

“That was fast.” Cole held a blade of timothy between his teeth.

“Wasn't hard. And I'm a reporter. I know how to find people. He works for a law firm in Calgary. I've got his number. You really think you're going to need it?”

“What do you think, Walter?”

“Us po-dunks in the Park Service have been cut out of this investigation. Maybe they just don't want
me
involved. I don't know one way or another. Talking with this Gilbert fellow couldn't hurt.”

“I think they're coming for me,” said Cole, shaking his head.

“IT'S GOOD TO
hear from you, Cole,” said Perry Gilbert. “What's it been?”

“A little over two years,” said Cole.

“Seems like longer.”

“Tell me about it. So, you work for a big firm now? What happened to being a public defender?”

“I discovered money can buy things.” Gilbert laughed.

“You guys are all the same.”

“I got tired of being told which cases I had to take. Now I can choose.”

“Well, I seem to have got myself in a bit of bind, and I wonder if you might choose to help
me.
”

“Tell me what's going on.”

Cole explained the matter to the lawyer. He finished and asked, “What do you think?”

“What a nightmare,” said Gilbert. “The jurisdictional question alone is going to be a complete mess. Who's lead investigator for the
RCMP
?”

“That's the funny thing. It's Reimer. Remember her?”

“Of course.”

“She's Inspector Reimer now. She leads the Major Crimes Unit in Southern Alberta. What do you think I should do?”

“Don't talk with them again unless you have a lawyer present. If you want, I can help you out. Even give you a little discount for old times' sake. If they call and ask you to come in, agree, and then call me immediately. Here's my home number and my Blackberry. Got it, Cole?”