Deadline (32 page)

“Well, I’m coming where you’re to, Aunt Peg,” he said. “Coming in at eleven tonight on WestJet. Any chance I can stay with you for a day or two?”

Jack slept deeply from the moment he buckled his seatbelt until the moment the plane started its descent into Fort McMurray, when the flight attendant gently woke him to ask him to put his seat into an upright position for landing.

Jack started in fear at the man, and actually squealed in fright. He stared around him, wild-eyed and disoriented for a moment. The steward had a bushy black moustache.

“Are you all right, sir?” he asked.

Jack tried to calm himself. “Yes. I’m okay. You just startled me.”

The moustache made Jack think of Castonguay and he felt a stab of terror, without knowing why. Then he remembered why, and the events of the night before came back to him in a rush.

“Holy Christ,” he said aloud, and his seatmate looked at him with concern.

Jack perspired with fear as the plane descended to Fort McMurray.

A
SHTON CALLED
S
OPHIE
at 7 a.m., when she was in the shower. Sophie called back as soon as she got the message. Ashton said she had news for her and would drop by at 8:30. When she opened the door at 8:34, Sophie was surprised that Flanagan was with the policewoman. She invited them in and poured them both coffee. The officers sat on the couch and Sophie swivelled slowly on the computer chair. Ashton handed her a folded document..

“This is a warrant,” she said. “It gives us the authority to take Ed’s computer, to search it for information that might help in our investigation.”

Sophie frowned. “I don’t know if you’ll find anything on it that will help you with your investigation. And you won’t be able to get access to it without the password.”

Ashton looked at Sophie and spoke sharply. “We have a computer forensic investigator at the department who’s pretty good at cracking passwords. Or you could tell us what it is.”

“But I don’t know it,” she said.

“I think you do,” said Ashton. “Jack told me that he saw you boot it up when he was here.”

Sophie looked away.

“Sophie,” said Ashton. “Why did you tell me you didn’t have the password?”

“I’m sorry. I was afraid of what you might find on it, nothing to do with the attack on Ed, but other things.”

“What kind of things?” asked Flanagan.

“I don’t know,” said Sophie. “It just seemed easier this way. I don’t know everything’s that’s on there. There might be stuff, personal things. And I didn’t see how it would help you find whoever attacked Ed.”

“Do you know who attacked Ed, or why?” asked Ashton.

Sophie shook her head.

“Then how do you know what will help us find whoever did it?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“What’s the password?” asked Ashton.

“Gaspesie,” she said.

Flanagan spelled it out and wrote it down.

“Did you install the web cam?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Did you run the wire into the bedroom and hook up a web cam there?”

Sophie blinked at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Flanagan got up and walked over to the computer. He pointed to the USB wire that ran to the wall.

“Come on,” he said.

He walked into the bedroom with Sophie and Ashton following him.

“It’s in the bookcase,” he said, and started removing the books, until he found the one that wouldn’t move.

He got to his knees and pulled out a flashlight and a pocket knife.

“There it is,” he said, and pointed to a pinhead-sized lens sticking out of the binding of the book.

Sophie’s mouth dropped open. Ashton was watching her reaction very closely.

“What is it?” said Sophie.

“It’s a little tiny camera, hooked to your computer,” said Flanagan. He poked at it with the head of his knife, then photographed it with his digital camera.

Sophie gaped. “Oh my God,” she said. “I had no idea that was there.”

“Is that right?” said Ashton. “How do I know you’re telling us the truth?”

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God. I had no idea.”

Ashton stepped toward her. “Who did you have over on Thursday night? Jack said you had a guest, a male guest, and that’s why you wouldn’t let him in.”

“I did have a guest,” said Sophie, stepping back. “But I’m sure it had nothing to do with your investigation,” she said.

“We like to make those kinds of decisions,” said Flanagan. “Your boyfriend might spend the rest of his life on his back, and you don’t seem to want to help us find out who did that to him.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sophie. Her lip started to quiver and she turned away from Ashton, trying to hide her tears. She stood looking out the window, her shoulders shaking.

“We need to know who was here,” said Ashton, her voice hard.

Sophie turned back to her. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “But it had nothing to do with this.”

“You need to tell us,” said Flanagan. “If it had nothing to do with what happened to Ed, then we won’t do anything about it. But we need to know.”

“He’s married,” said Sophie, and looked pleadingly at the two of them, seeking understanding.

“So?” said Ashton. “We don’t care about that.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, no matter what.”

Ashton was stern. “Sophie, this is not good. We don’t want to have to go up to the Hill, and start interviewing your colleagues and friends, asking them who you’re fucking. I bet you don’t want us to do that, do you?”

“Oh God,” said Sophie. “Let me talk to him. Give me the day. Let me tell him that I’m going to tell you, give him a chance to tell his wife.”

Jack had breakfast with his Aunt Peggy and Uncle Vern in their mobile home on the outskirts of Fort McMurray.

Vern was a pipefitter who spent twenty-five years working at the pulp mill in Grand Falls, until they shut the damned thing down. The severance and pension weren’t enough to live on, and there were suddenly two thousand other people looking for jobs there, so he went to a recruitment session put on by Syncrude, where they told them about Fort McMurray’s rinks and churches and a bunch of stuff Vern didn’t care about. Afterwards, in a one-on-one session, they told him they’d give him $125,000 for a one-year contract, plus four flights home. He signed the next day and flew out and started fitting pipes on a massive new project Syncrude was building, digging up millions of tonnes of bitumen-impregnated sand, and processing it in a massive upgrader.

Vern found the work more interesting than maintaining the old pulp machines in Grand Falls, but he missed Peggy and didn’t like spending his nights in a work camp with a bunch of other fellows, some of whom he didn’t like or trust. So he hitched a ride to Edmonton and bought the motor home and asked the human resources department if he could use one of his tickets home to fly Peggy out. She got a job quick enough, at a coffee shop downtown, and they found a tidy trailer park, full of other couples like themselves.

They told Jack about this as they had breakfast, and told him he was welcome to stay as long as he liked.

“B’y, you wouldn’t be the first fellow from home to camp out on that couch,” said Vern. “Some mornings I don’t know who I’m gonna find out here, ’cept he’s a bayman with a job but no place to stay. Seems like half the young fellas from home are here, with a pocket full of money and no place to lay their heads. And the ones that aren’t here are in Red Deer, or Grand Prairie.”

“Fort McNewfie,” said Peggy.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Jack. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, really, but I hope it will only take me a few days to do my research.”

“What’s it about, b’y?” asked Vern.

Jack had thought about what he would say. “I’m working on a story that might be connected to federal politics, but I don’t know if it is or not. A girl, a prostitute named Rena Redcloud, was murdered here two years ago. I’m going to poke around, see what I find.”

“Redcloud,” said Vern. “There’s a Redcloud works on the project with me. Mike. Nice fellow. Cree, is he? No. Dene. From Fort McKay. Young fellow. Always on time and that. Always ready to work.”

“Sure, he must be related to the girl,” said Peggy.

“I imagine I should talk to him,” said Jack. “But do me a favour, Uncle Vern. Don’t mention my project to him until I do a bit of research.”

“What project?” said Vern.

They all got in Vern’s company truck – a white extended-cab Dodge with a buggy whip antennae sticking up from the cab, with an orange flag on top. As they drove to town, they joined a stream of similar vehicles.

“Why do all the trucks have the antennas?” asked Jack.

“That’s so the big Jesus trucks can see them,” said Vern. “The sand trucks are so big they can crush a pickup like this and the driver won’t even notice.”

They dropped him off at the town library, and he sat down to go through the electronic archives of
Fort McMurray Today
.

The first mention of Rena Redcloud was a picture of her – published July 18, 2002 – dancing in a powwow in Fort McKay, a Dene community north of Fort McMurray. She was fourteen then, one of a group of teenage girls in buckskin dancing in front of a group of men beating a big drum with sticks. One of the drummers was Dennis Redcloud, who Jack guessed was her father.

The next item was the death notice for her mother, Sara Redcloud (nee Augustine), who died after bravely fighting cancer in 2004. Rena had an older brother, Mike, and a younger sister, Karen.

The next item was a story about a prostitution bust, in 2006. Rena was one of a number of women who had been arrested after the RCMP launched an operation to put an end to street prostitution in Fort McMurray. The paper quoted Sgt. Earl Gushue saying, “Operation Clean Sweep is aimed at finding the women working as prostitutes and trying to get them off the streets. It’s unfortunate that the only way we are able to do that is by arresting them and charging them, but we’ve worked with the Fort McMurray office of Alberta Social Services to try to divert at-risk women into a program designed to get them off the street.”

Apparently the program didn’t work for Rena Redcloud, because she was mentioned in two court briefs a year later, the first a prostitution conviction, the second a conviction for theft, resisting arrest and possession of cocaine.

The next item was a story about her death.

August 14, 2008

Fort MacKay Woman Killed in Motel

Chinese Oil Executive Arrested

By Todd Prosper

A Chinese oil executive was charged early Tuesday morning with first-degree murder in the death of Rena Redcloud, 24, of Fort McKay.

Ling Cho Wi, of Beijing, China, was arrested at about 5 a.m. after police were called to investigate noise coming from a room at Great Western Motel, on Highway 18. They found the body of Redcloud and arrested Wi.

“Our officers were called to the scene and quickly ascertained that a homicide had taken place,” said RCMP spokesman Wayne Rogers. “They apprehended the suspect, secured the crime scene and the officers from our Major Crimes Unit began their investigation.”

Wi is a representative of SinoGaz, a Chinese oil company. He came to Fort McMurray to lead a team negotiating the acquisition of a 120-hectare oil sands development from Tallahassee, Fla.-based PanPetroDev.

In December, Wi told Fort McMurray Today that his company expected to eventually hire about 4,000 Canadians who would work side by side with Chinese workers to establish a large oil sands extraction operation.

“SinoGaz wants to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with Fort McMurray,” he said. “We’re excited by the opportunity here.”

Redcloud had been arrested for prostitution several times, and was convicted last year for prostitution, theft and cocaine possession.

Her father, Dennis Redcloud, told Fort McMurray Today that his daughter will be sadly missed.

“We are very sad,” he said in a telephone interview. “We have lost our daughter.”

Redcloud said he blamed drugs and alcohol for the death of his daughter.