The Glacier Gallows (9 page)

“That was an accident,” said Talbot. “He must have lost his balance in that gully and fallen.”

“He was a mountain guide. I don't understand how he could slip and fall like that,” objected Winters.

“It happens all the time,” responded Talbot. “I know a guide who tripped and fell down the stairs. Broke his neck.”

“It just seems too coincidental.” Cole drank the rest of his beer and stood up to get another can. He had filled his sink with ice and put the beer in it to keep it cold. “This guy happens to be at the Two Medicine Grill when Derek needs a guide. Brian gets killed and then this guy goes off to look for what? The killer? After the rest of his party comes back, he falls and cracks his head open. Who was in his party this morning when we split up and went to look for Brian?”

“I was,” said Winters. “And so was Mike, from the governor's office. Derek radioed Blake, and that's when we learned that Brian was dead.When Derek came and found us, he sent us back, and he and Blake talked for a while. Blake stayed behind to see if he could find some evidence that someone else was up there with us.”

“The fact that he's dead makes me think that he found it.” Cole took another long pull on his beer.

They were silent for a moment, then Talbot asked, “You think Blake killed Brian and then tried to run?”

“It's possible. Or maybe Blake helped kill Brian and whoever he worked with tracked him down and killed him. I doubt he could have done this alone.” Cole was tapping his can of beer with his fingers.

“What do you mean?” asked Talbot.

“I think that if Foreman was the one, he likely had some external motivation. I mean, this guy didn't know Brian. Not unless Brian was keeping their relationship a secret from everybody.”

“You think someone hired Blake Foreman to kill Brian?” asked Talbot.

“I think that if Foreman did have something to do with it, he likely paid for it with his own life.”

“Right now, anything is possible,” said Winters.

“Have any of you heard if the
FBI
found a gun?” asked Cole.

“Brian was shot?” asked Winters.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him. And my brother was there, remember? I overheard him say something on his radio. I think he was shot and then pushed over the edge to make it look like an accident.”

“I can tell you one thing,” said Talbot. “They were pretty interested in
you
.” He looked at Cole.

“I know. Maybe it's because I knew Brian for so long.”

“That plus they were pretty interested in the discussion you and Brian had yesterday at lunch.”

“They called it a fight,” said Winters.

“We had a disagreement!”

“They asked if you had quarreled a lot,” said Joe. “They told me you had a history.”

“We haven't always seen eye to eye.”

“Well, they think you have—what did they call it?” Joe looked at the ceiling, searching his mind for the word.

“Motive.” Peter Talbot finished the statement.

THE NEXT MORNING
Cole was brought to the federal building in Browning. The
FBI
had taken over the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and converted several rooms into makeshift interrogation suites. Special Agent McCallum and
RCMP
Inspector Reimer met him at security. “Nice to see international cooperation works so well,” quipped Cole.

McCallum asked if he wanted coffee and he declined. “Am I under arrest?” Cole asked.

“Should you be?” asked McCallum.

“No.”

“Then you're not.”

McCallum started by asking if Cole knew what Brian had been working on before he died.

“Brian told me he was into something heavy. He was working on a couple of files, tar sands in Alberta, fracking down here on the reservation. He said he was following the money, and that he had found something really damning.”

“Did he say who the damning information was about?” asked Agent McCallum.

“No.”

“Did he have any evidence?”

“Yes. He said that he had put it on ice. I take that to mean that he had it safe.”

“We've been through his house and office,” said Reimer. “We haven't found anything. We've got a tech going through his computer.”

“Let's talk about
your
relationship with the deceased,” said McCallum.

“You seem to think that because Brian and I didn't get along all the time, I somehow had motive to want him dead. If that were the case, I'd have a motive to kill a lot of people, Special Agent.” Cole regretted saying it even as the words escaped his mouth.

“You and Mr. Marriott argued the day before he was murdered, Mr. Blackwater. You have a well-publicized history of disputes with Mr. Marriott and you have a history of violence.”

“What are you talking about, a history of violence?”

“There are mentions of half a dozen altercations on your record, including one between you and two police officers in Vancouver last year.”

Cole sat in the metal chair and felt his heartbeat in his throat. His stomach felt nauseous. “I've never been charged with anything.”

“That's true,” said Reimer. “The fact remains that you solve your problems with your fists.” She flipped through a file on the table. Cole could see it was his police record. “You have a problem, Mr. Blackwater, with violent behavior.”

“I've seen someone about it. A doctor named Grady. In Vancouver. You can call him.”

“We may do that, Cole. Right now, we have a few more questions for you.”

“I should have a lawyer.”

“That's your prerogative. We can assign one to you, or you can call one of your choosing.”

Cole tried to think if he knew a lawyer other than his best friend, Denman Scott. The only person he knew was Perry Gilbert, who had represented Dale van Stempvort in the Mike Barnes affair in Oracle more than two years ago. He didn't even know if Gilbert was still practicing. He knew it was a mistake, but he said it anyway. “Ask your questions. I just want to get home.”

“Yesterday morning, what time did you get up?” asked McCallum.

“I answered this same question yesterday, Agent McCallum. About 5:00
AM
.”

“Was this your usual habit?”

“When I'm in the backcountry. I sleep better these days. I usually get up around six or six thirty at home.” Cole watched McCallum jot some notes.

“And when you got up, was there anybody else awake?”

“Not that I could see.”

“What did you do?”

“I made coffee . . . Look, I told you all of this yesterday.”

“Tell us again, Mr. Blackwater.”

“I made coffee. I went for a walk. I watched the sun come up.”

“Where did you walk?”

“East. There's a height of land that overlooks the prairies. I could see Chief Mountain. Listen, Agent McCallum—”

“It's Special Agent.”

“Listen,
Agent
McCallum: I didn't kill Brian Marriott. When I got back from my walk, I had breakfast with the others, and that's when we began to wonder where Brian was. I went to wake him up and he wasn't there.”

“So you were the one who checked Mr. Marriott's tent when he didn't show up for breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing. He wasn't there.”

“Did you happen to notice anything unusual about his tent?”

“Like what? A confession note from the killer?”

Reimer broke in. “Cole, I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation. Brian Marriott has been murdered. Blake Foreman is also dead, and the circumstances that surround his demise are suspicious—”

“Don't tell me when I'm not taking something seriously, Inspector. Besides Rick Turcotte, I was the only person in this group who could count Brian Marriott as a friend.”

“And you were the
only
one who could count him as an enemy,” said McCallum.

“Disagreeing about something
doesn't
make that person an enemy,
Special
Agent.”

“A strong enough disagreement can provide a motive for murder.”

Cole shook his head.

“Who found the body?” asked Reimer.

“One of the other guides. Tad. I don't think I ever got his last name.”

“Tad is short for Thaddeus. Thaddeus Jamison Thomas.” McCallum read his notes. “And after the body was found, you accompanied Derek McGrath down the cliff to look at the body?”

“I did. And we met my brother, Walter, there.”

“Did you touch Mr. Marriott?”

“No.”

“What did you observe?”

“He was a mess. The back of his head was crushed. There was a lot of blood, and some . . . brains.”

“Any other physical trauma?”

“The front of his head had a hole about this big.” Cole held his forefinger and thumb about three inches apart. “It was obvious that he was dead.”

“What time would you say you returned from your walk that morning?” Reimer changed direction.

Cole figured they were trying to trip him up. “Just before seven.”

“The medical examiner's preliminary assessment puts time of death between 3:00
AM
and 6:00
AM
,” Reimer said. “The cold at night at that elevation makes it tough to pinpoint.”

“I didn't see him when I left the camp at five.”

“You didn't wake him up and ask him to go for a walk?” asked Reimer.

“No.”

“What do you know about Blake Foreman?” McCallum asked.

“Very little. He seemed like a good guy, got on well with the other two guides. They didn't really mix with the guests much, except over meals, and then still not much.”

“What do you think happened to him?” asked Reimer.

“I was told that he fell,” answered Cole.

“That's what it looks like.” McCallum regarded Cole coolly. “The
ME
tells us that his death is consistent with an accident.”

“Consistent with an accident? When he was found, what sort of shape was he in?”

“We can't tell you the details, but it would appear as though he fell from a small ledge of rock and crushed his head.”

“Front or back?”

McCallum looked at Reimer and then said, “Back. We've recovered his pack. Do you know what he had in it?”

“Yeah, more or less. I was there when he, Tad, and Derek packed their bags for the search. He had a big first-aid kit, binoculars, and his Nikon camera tucked down along the outside of the back.”

McCallum said, “We've looked at the photos on the camera—there's nothing that helps.”

“Where is his stuff?” asked Cole.

“It's in evidence until this situation is cleared up. We'll likely take it to our offices in Shelby.” McCallum folded his hands in front of him and changed tack again. “When you first saw Mr. Marriott, what did you think?”

Cole watched the man's eyes carefully. “I thought that it was a fucking waste.”

“You didn't feel relief?”

Cole stood up. “You people are really something. A man is dead, a man who was my friend. No, not my best friend, but someone I've known for a decade and worked with for the last half year, and you have the balls to ask me if I felt relief. You are really something.”

“We have more questions, Mr. Blackwater.”

“Great. If you want to ask them, then you're going to have to wait for me to get a lawyer. This bullshit interrogation is over.”

OTTAWA, ONTARIO. FEBRUARY 17.

IT TOOK FOUR DAYS TO
put together a response to the announcement by the minister. On Monday at 11:00
AM
, a group of environmentalists hosted their own press conference at the Château Laurier hotel. Brian Marriott was among them. It was something he could not have imagined doing just a few years earlier.

“We're here to outline what we expect from a national energy strategy,” said Jessica Winters, dressed in a neat business suit and stylish glasses. The press conference continued and Brian was asked to speak. “We have a bold proposal to make today. In Alberta's tar sands, we use four units of energy, such as natural gas, to extract five units of bitumen energy from the ground. The end product is the dirtiest oil on Earth. It contributes greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and poisons people downstream. We can do better.” Brian laid out a four-point plan for using renewable energy to fuel future tar-sands development and to funnel some of the profits into renewable-energy development.

The inevitable question came from Tara Sinclair from the
Globe and Mail
: “How does this proposed strategy sit with the rest of the environmental community? This seems at odds with those who want the tar sands shut down.”

Brian looked at the others and then cleared his throat. “Shutting down the tar sands isn't going to happen. We need a strategy that acknowledges that the tar sands are both the source of huge amounts of pollution and an economic driver for this country. We can't ignore that. Instead, let's use this reality to fuel a transition to renewable energy. Let's use genuine alternatives like wind and solar to clean up the refining process. If some of our colleagues don't like it, that's their prerogative. We consider this proposal reasonable, economically practical, and pragmatic.”

CHARLES WENDELL LEFT
the news conference and stepped into a circle of cameras outside the meeting room. His hair was combed and he wore what looked like his father's sports coat and a pair of clean jeans for the occasion.

“Mr. Wendell, what do you think of your colleagues' proposals?”

“I think it's fair to say that while I respect them, they don't speak for the entirety of Canada's environmental movement. The world is nearing a tipping point when it comes to climate change. Giving the tar sands a ticket to emit even more carbon into the atmosphere isn't going to save us. It's going to make life on Earth even harder.”