The Vanishing Track (41 page)
The End of the LineIt's the winter of 1884, and five hundred Canadian Pacific Rail workers have halted their push through the Rockies at Holt City, an isolated shantytown in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The men are tired and cold, and patience is as scarce as the rationed food. Then, Deek Penner, a CPR section boss, is brutally murdered at the end of the track. His body is found frozen on the banks of the Bow River.
Durrant Wallace, a veteran of the celebrated March West by the North West Mounted Police a decade earlier, is returned to active duty to investigate the murder. Durrant lost his leg in a gun battle with whiskey traders three years previous, and he struggles with being a Mounted Police officer who cannot ride. When Durrant arrives, Holt City is ripe with possible suspects: illegal whiskey smugglers, spies for rival railways, explosives dealers and a mysterious Member of Parliament who insists on getting his meddling fingers into everybody else's business. Durrant must use his cunning and determination to discover to identify the killer before he finds his next victim and derails the great Canadian national dream in the process.
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The River KillersDanny Swanson, Department of Fisheries and Oceans employee and ex-fisherman, isn't exactly upset when he's reassigned from a desk job in Ottawa to an at-sea job on the West Coast. His superiors think they're punishing him for his indiscretions, but Danny is pleased to be back on the Pacific, reconnecting with his old fishing buddies. Revisiting his past life, though, is trolling up some old memories, including a troubling incident from ten years ago, when Danny and his crew pulled up a deformed fish. It was young Billy who decided to bring the odd creature to the DFO in Vancouver for examination. Billy and the fish were never seen again. Now, Danny's buddy is on his mind when he stumbles across a photo of the fish in the DFO databases, and suddenly, Danny can't let Billy's disappearance get swept under the rug.
With the help of RCMP Sergeant Louise Karavchuk, Danny starts hauling old histories to the surface and delving into what he starts to believe may be a massive conspiracy. Who can Danny trust in his search for the truth? The organized, well-dressed officials of the DFO? Or his somewhat rowdy and rough-around-the-edges fishing buddies from the past?
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Copyright © 2012 Stephen Legault
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwiseâwithout the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Legault, Stephen, 1971â
The vanishing track [electronic resource] / Stephen Legault.
(A Cole Blackwater mystery)
Electronic monograph.
Originally published by TouchWood Editions in 2012 in paperback with ISBN 978-1-927129-03-6.
ISBN 978-1-927129-04-3 (HTML).âISBN 978-1-927129-05-0 (PDF)
I. Title. II. Series: Legault, Stephen, 1971â . Cole Blackwater mystery.
PS8623.E46633V36 2012 C813'.6 C2011-907337-4
Editor: Frances Thorsen
Proofreader: Lenore Hietkamp
Design: Pete Kohut
Cover image: Noah Strycker,
istockphoto.com
Author photo: Dan Anthon
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for our publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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