The Cardinal Divide (30 page)

Cole drove up to the gate. He checked in with
JP
, the night watchman who was on duty the night Barnes was killed. Cole knew the way. He drove slowly through the compound. The mine site had twenty-five or thirty buildings. It struck Cole that the giant compound was a mammoth-sized machine designed to digest, process, and ship coal. The machine needed fuel. If it wasn't fed, it died.

Cole parked next to an old blue Dodge Caravan and stepped out of his truck. His body ached and he stretched, felt his stomach press into his shirt in a way that made him stand up straighter and suck it in. He really should deal with that.

“Cole?” It was Perry Gilbert. “What took you so long? We've already started.”

Cole hurried over at a half run. He stepped through the door that Gilbert held open for him and waited to let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the room.

“The
RCMP
think Mike Barnes entered the mill through this door the night he was killed,” said Gilbert. “They figure he was attracted to the mill by some kind of disturbance. Something was broken, or the door was left open, or maybe he saw an unfamiliar vehicle.”

Gilbert handed Cole an orange hard hat with built-in ear protection. He put one on himself.

As Cole's eyes slowly adjusted to the light, he studied the cracks and markings on the floor for some sign of Barnes' passing, but saw nothing. A cement pad outside the door had been recently poured, but like the floor inside, revealed no clue.

The two men stood in a large room with a high ceiling that held fluorescent lights, several of which were burned out. It was devoid of furniture, but cluttered with mining equipment. A five-foot wide corridor exited at an awkward angle from the door and led to a set of double doors that Cole guessed opened to the main mill. Skids loaded with drill bits and drill steel, hoses and fasteners, and even a few drills stood against the walls of the room. It smelled of oil and metal. Industrial noise from the mill rumbled through the walls and Cole felt a slight vibration in the floor.

“This room used to be kept clear of equipment, but in the last year the mine has been closing down buildings and these spaces have been pressed into service as storage,” said Perry Gilbert. He
led Cole through the maze toward the double doors. Cole stumbled over something and almost fell face forward.

“Watch yourself,” said Perry helpfully.

Cole looked down. A coil of hose had fallen off a skid of similar hoses. He pushed it aside with his foot.

“The
RCMP
think Mike Barnes got as far as these doors. They think that Dale waited for him on the other side and conked him on the head with a drill bit when he walked through. A big, heavy drill bit.”

Perry opened the doors. The noise grew oppressive. Cole flipped his ear protection down. This dampened the roar of the mill, but blocked out Perry's voice.

The room was vast. Large loading bay doors at one end allowed massive trucks to enter and exit with equipment and machinery. An overhead conveyor belt came into the room twenty feet off the ground and ended in a huge machine that Cole guessed separated ore from the overburden of limestone. From there the coal was fed into the coking ovens, and waste rock was crushed for tailings, or to be used for other purposes. The coking ovens occupied more than half the space, and from fifty metres away Cole could tell that they where white hot.

Light spilled through the giant bay doors and through widows high above the floor, letting long, slanting rays into the otherwise dim room. The white light caught on the backs of a million dust motes, giving the air and the light the appearance of water, shifting and moving through the room. The space was utterly devoid of colour in the muted light.

Inside the door were randomly arranged skids of bits and drill steel. A uniformed
RCMP
officer in a hard hat with ear protection wore a scowl. A taped-off area twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide encompassed some of the skids of drill bits stacked three or four high on the pallets. Cole didn't notice them at first, given the scale of the room. It was only after he stubbed his toe on one that he looked down and noticed them. A wide path lead between the pallets. On the floor inside the tape lay a few drill bits the size of a man's head, and a pallet that had been knocked to the ground.

Cole bent down to examine the area inside the tape.

The concrete floor wore oil stains and dust. Where the dust
had been recently disturbed, he could see the ghostly outline of what he knew to be Mike Barnes body. It wasn't as obvious as a chalk outline, but it was clear enough. Mike Barnes had met his untimely demise here. The place was a few feet inside the doors from the outer room, in a straight walking line into the mill. Cole examined the floor. He felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up to see the
RCMP
officer standing there. He stood.

The officer leaned close and Cole removed the ear protection from his left ear.

“Don't touch the floor inside the tape, please,” the constable yelled over the din of the room.

Cole gave the thumbs up and squatted back down to look at the floor. It told a jumbled story at best. Perry Gilbert squatted beside Cole. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shone the beam onto the floor. It was light enough to see, but the flashlight allowed Gilbert to direct Cole's gaze.

Seven oversized drill bits lay on the floor. It looked like they had been knocked off the pallet that leaned at a forty-five degree angle against a neighbouring stack of bits. From where Cole and Perry squatted, they could not see any sign of blood on them, but Cole assumed that those that had blood had been sent to Edmonton for forensics testing.

The bits were randomly scattered in a wide half circle. Inside that circle was an area that had recently been disturbed. This area was off to the side of the clear area that provided passage between the outer room and the mill itself. Perry moved the light into that disturbed area, that place where Mike Barnes body had been found, to examine it more closely. There was blood, but not much. Droplets, really, and in one place a small dark stain, maybe where Barnes' head hit the floor after he had been clubbed.

There were no obvious footprints in this area. There was too much traffic. Cole examined the floor around the taped off area. There he saw many footprints and tire tracks too. Cole saw a forklift at work in the mill and assumed it was used to move these pallets of bits and steel out into the yard for use in the mine. How were the pallets removed from the smaller room, Cole wondered? Was there some kind of power-assist lifter around? He looked but could not see anything.

Perry shone the light across the other pallets of drill bits, getting as close as he could to them, and examined them carefully. He pointed to a few bits where tiny red dots of blood were visible.

Perry stood stiffly. He turned his back on the mill and put the taped off area between him and the double doors that led to the outer room. Cole stood, body creaking, and moved beside him. Wordlessly, using the flashlight as a pointer, Perry retraced the last seconds of Mike Barnes. He waved the light at the double doors, then swept it down along the floor, bouncing the light to indicate footfalls. And then the attack: Perry jigged the beam to indicate the violent act, and then shone it on the floor to show where Mike Barnes had died.

Cole watched. His eyes swept across the scene. He had never investigated anything more felonious than falsified pollution reports by an oil and gas company. But something wasn't right. Did Gilbert see it too?

Cole tugged on his sleeve, and motioned with his head toward the doors. Perry nodded and the two men made their way between the pallets of drill bits toward the outer room. The doors closed behind them, the sound dulled, and both men gratefully took off their ear protection.

“Let's go outside to talk,” shouted Perry and Cole gave him the thumbs up.

They stepped into the late afternoon sunshine like breathless men breaking the surface of a lake.

Cole took off his hard hat and leaned back against the wall, grabbing his ear lobes, first the right and then the left, and tugging at them to stop the ringing in his ears. “Can you imagine that, every single day?”

Perry rubbed his eyes and leaned against the front of his van. “No way. I'd go crazy.”

“How could a man hear himself think in there?” asked Cole.

“I don't think thinking is high up on the job description,” said Perry. “It's pretty mindless work, loading coal onto conveyor belts all day.”

“So tell me how the
RCMP
figure it again.”

Perry shifted his weight from his right leg to his left and rubbed his hand over his face. “They think that Dale must have made an appointment with Mike Barnes sometime early in the
day, right after the
Red Deer Advocate
story ran. They figure he drove out to the mine after five, possibly aware that he could get through the gatehouse unseen after hours. They think he might have cased the joint to see if the security guard came and went at regular hours.”

“Does he?”

“Don't know. Don't know. We'll have to find out. Anyway, they figure that he got onto the property unseen and went up to Barnes' office around eight or so. What happened then is a mystery. But sometime after ten and before midnight, Mike Barnes left his office and for some reason went across the yard to the mill.”

Cole looked across the dusty yard to the three-story brick building that was the mine's office. It was a hundred yards or so, the length of a football field. “Why?”

“Don't know. Maybe Barnes saw someone who didn't belong. Remember, the mill only operates on a day shift right now. Anybody wandering around here after six or so would seem suspicious. I'm told the mill shift ends around then.”

Cole stared across the yard.

“So let's just say that he met with someone that evening,” said Cole, “and he came out after the meeting and saw this person prowling around the mill. He walks across the yard thinking he'll deal with it faster than trying to find the security guard. Maybe he followed the murderer into the room full of drill steel and what have you. Maybe he thought the prowler was there to do damage to the mill. He wanted to catch him red-handed. So he followed him through the big double doors into the mill.”

“And
whappo
.”

“Right,
whappo
. Someone clubs him on the head with a twenty-pound drill bit, and it's lights out.”

“Lights out.”

“That's what I said.”

Cole still stared across the yard. “Let's walk.”

Perry shrugged. “
OK
.”

They set off across the dusty yard toward the mine offices.

“You said lights out,” said Cole.

“So?”

“Made me wonder if they turn the lights out in the mill at night is all.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Maybe none, but maybe a lot.”

“What's eating you?”

“It just doesn't make sense to me,” said Cole. They walked up the steps of the mine office and turned around. The mill loomed across the yard. It was five stories tall at least, with windows halfway up, and several sets of massive doors to allow for the transfer of ore or machinery. The door beside which their vehicles were parked seemed very small and very far away.

“Where did Mike Barnes park, I wonder?” asked Cole.

“Right here, I imagine,” said Gilbert, pointing to the stall labelled “Mine Manager” in front of the building. “Whose truck is that parked there now?”

“That's Hank Henderson's.” Cole remembered seeing Henderson climb into it after their meeting on these very steps the night he had visited Barnes. The night Barnes had been killed.

“Hasn't wasted any time taking over, has he?”

“I'm told he feels he's been passed over for the job on a couple of occasions.”

“Wonder how strongly he felt about it?” asked Gilbert, looking around.

“You should ask him,” said Cole. “He's very friendly.”

“So do you think that Mike Barnes could have seen someone at that door at ten o'clock?”

“I don't think I could see anybody there now,” said Cole, squinting. “At ten it's nearly full dark. I can't see how.”

Both men were silent.

“I don't think Mike Barnes was killed in the mill,” Cole said finally. “It just doesn't make sense.”

“If not in the mill, then where?”

“I don't know. But even if someone did lure Barnes to the mill with lights or something, I can't see how he could have been surprised by that person when he came through those double doors.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's nothing to hide behind. The bits only come up to my thigh. Unless the place was pitch black, it would be hard for someone to get the drop on him, don't you think?”

“What if the assailant was standing on top of the pallet?”

“You'd have to be a gymnast to balance like that. Those bits roll all over the place.”

They walked down the steps and started back across the yard.

“So how did the body end up in the mill then?” asked Perry.

Cole was silent. He looked at the building, and turned around as he walked, scanning the yard, the office, and the other buildings. “I have no idea. But whoever killed Mike Barnes likely dragged his body to the mill from somewhere else, intending to dispose of it here. I think he probably went in through this door,” said Cole, and pointed to the door in front of them. “And when he dragged the body into the mill itself, knocked over some of the drill bits.”

“But why leave the body? If you were hoping to get rid of him and go through all the trouble of dragging it from wherever you clubbed him, why dump it at the last minute?”