“Gee, thanks a bunch,” and she swung two bags in my direction. I arranged them as best I could, then sat up and took a good look at her. She had pulled out a compact and was patting her hair into place. I couldn’t help asking, “You go to Winnipeg to shop? It seems a bit bizarre, coming from Vancouver.”
“Oh, I don’t live in Vancouver. Ellesworth.” She snapped the compact shut and took in my blank stare. “Above Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. And I got to tell you anyway, Vancouver’s not so hot. I’d rather shop in Winnipeg any day. Sorry if that offends you.” She didn’t sound sorry.
“I’m not from Vancouver. Ottawa, actually.”
A shadow of loathing crossed her face, and she shifted to the other side of her seat. “Really.”
“But I used to live in Vancouver when I was a kid,” I said quickly. “And I went to university in Winnipeg.” She relaxed a bit and moved back toward the centre of her seat. Apparently, with that pedigree whatever I had wasn’t contagious. I finished up lamely, “So I’m not really an Ottawa person, if you know what I mean.”
“Where I come from we don’t have much good to say about Ottawa, if you know what I mean.”
I did, so I let a second pass before changing the topic. “So, what brought you to Winnipeg?”
“Oh, my mum. Jeez, I wish she’d move west where I could keep an eye on her, but you know how old people are. ‘Winnipeg’s been good to me my whole life,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to abandon it now.’ Like Winnipeg cares. Well, that’s fine for her, but my George has to work, and he can’t do that in Winnipeg.”
“But he can in Ellesworth?” “Logging. He runs a feller operation on the blocks above Campbell River. On a good day on flat terrain he can take down four hundred trees. Makes a good living.” She reflexively held out her hand and examined the two chunks of diamond-encrusted gold on her fingers. Together they must have weighed more than a fork. The funny thing was, she wasn’t doing it to impress me. It was as though she was trying to remind herself that these were the benefits of all their hard work.
“You must worry about him. It’s a dangerous job.” She shrugged and switched on a smile. “What can you do? It’s not so bad really.”
“And with the way things are going —” I was stopped by her frank, appraising, and not very friendly look.
“You people in Ottawa think we’re all stupid, don’t you? Well for your information, there isn’t a man working out in that forest who doesn’t know what’s going on. What do you think they talk about over beer? They know we can’t keep cutting like that and still have a forest for my son to work in, but what are you supposed to do? Get out? So somebody else can make the money instead of you? We worked hard to set ourselves up, and every year we got to upgrade equipment and cut more trees just to make ends meet. The forest will be gone no matter what we do, so we might as well make the money out of it. Anyway, you know whose fault it really is?”
At this point she directed her index finger at me and gave me a good, sharp poke in the arm. It hurt, particularly with those acrylic nails. “The government. That’s who. They let in those foreign companies who strip the land, don’t reforest, then send the logs to their own countries for processing. Those are our jobs. If the government would keep their nose out of it,” she poked me again, “we’d run the industry like it should be run.”
I was tempted to remind her that forestry was within the provincial jurisdiction so she was poking the wrong person, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered to her. Government is government and they’re all bad. I rubbed my arm and mumbled something about getting the point, then the lights dimmed and the movie started: Free Willy 3. I wondered how she felt about that.
As we approached Vancouver, the sun was sitting low over Vancouver Island across the Strait of Georgia. Vancouver’s airport spreads across a marshy island in the Fraser River delta, and as we neared the city the plane came in low over the river, following it out to its mouth. Beneath us, tug boats, seiners, and log booms moved sluggishly along the channel while yachts and pleasure craft darted between them. From above, the Fraser looked like nothing more than a vast aquatic highway.
Then suddenly the land dropped away and we shot out over open water, banking sharply to make our final descent. As the plane tilted, the clean line of demarcation — where the muddy Fraser hits the clear, cold waters of the Strait of Georgia — was visible below. The mass of flowing water created a solid, murky wall that ran several miles out, and fishing boats dotted either side of the line.
As we taxied into the airport I wished Angela luck with her mother, grabbed my briefcase and my carry-on bag, and slipped out of the seat before we’d come to a stop. It was going to take her at least half an hour to gather up the fruits of her labour.
For me, Vancouver equals pain, but even so I can’t help but be seduced by the overpowering beauty: the city cradled by snowy mountains against a shimmering sea. I stood for a moment, breathing in the damp, salty air, remembering, and not remembering. When I was ready to move, I crossed to the rental lot, where I picked up my government-rate car: basically, a tin can powered by a blender engine, set on wheels the size of Oreo cookies. If this case involved a high-speed chase I was already dead. I consulted the map, just to refresh my memory, and headed into the city.
As I crossed the north arm of the river, I caught the scent of fresh-cut cedar, pungent and aromatic, escaping from a sawmill below. For a moment I was displaced, no longer in a car speeding toward the city but standing in a moist, dark glade dwarfed by towering trees. Then the car cleared the rise of the bridge and my eyes were assaulted by straight lines and concrete grey. I sighed, jammed my foot on the gas, and descended into the urban sprawl.
For once, someone in Travel had done their job. Instead of booking me into a downtown hotel, which would be more expensive and mired in traffic, they had put me in a high-rise hotel at the corner of 12th and Cambie. While it was slightly off the beaten path, it gave me straight-line access to Southern without having to go downtown. I made a mental note to send an e-mail to the travel clerk and thank her.
When I’d settled in my room, I pulled the salmon file from my briefcase and flipped through it until I found Edwards’s number. It was late, but from his CV he looked like a keener. He answered on the second ring.
“Edwards.” His voice was a resonant low bass, distinctive and beautiful.
I gave him my name, but when I got to the part about why I was here — to investigate Madden Riesler — he cut me off. Explosively.
“Bullshit! After a year and half? Come on.” “I understand your — “ “You’re not here to investigate Madden. You could-n’t get rid of me, so now you’re going to conduct a nice little investigation that will clear him and screw me. Guess it pays to have friends in high places, huh? Well you know what? Sorry to say, you’re too late. I’ve already gone to a reporter, and believe me, I used the word cover-up when referring to your department.”
Bummer. That meant dealing with the press, my media-incompetent management, and the complaint itself. This was getting complicated, and I didn’t like that. If I was going to tie it up fast I needed Edwards on my side, so I decided to go for the truth.
“Look Dr. Edwards, I’ll level with you. I don’t know why it took so long for us to investigate your complaint, but I intend to find out, and the best place for me to start is with the complaint itself.”
“If you really believe that, then you’re a patsy. Madden Riesler is not going to be investigated.”
A patsy? I didn’t like that word usage one little bit. “I’m not afraid of Riesler or anybody else. If there’s a cover-up I’ll find it and expose it, but first I need information. If we could just — “
“Get your own bloody information. That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it?” And the phone went dead.
His lack of cooperation