Free The Darkening Archipelago by Stephen Legault Page B

was doing research at one of their farming operations, where the old dfo labs are up at Jeopardy Rock. He thought they were doing genetic engineering or something, breeding super salmon. I guess I didn’t take him seriously enough. But you know how he was. He really rubbed people the wrong way when he thought he was right and everybody else was wrong.”
    â€œYour dad could be pretty persistent.”
    â€œYeah, well, I guess I know where I get it from. But the thing is, Cole, he was really rattling people’s cages lately. Since he lost the election to Greg, he was impossible to get along with. Always fighting with someone. If it wasn’t Greg, it was Darren. If it wasn’t Darren, it was one of the rednecks from the bar. That bigot Dan Campbell. And Lance Grey, and the minister, too. He seemed to be on their cases constantly. People would cross the street when they saw him coming. They just didn’t want to deal with him. Even Darren First Moon and he were at each other’s throats.”
    â€œSeems like he was really upset about something. You don’t know anything more about what he was onto at the dfo station? Maybe there’s something I can help with, you know….”
    â€œNo idea.” Grace shook her head. “But you’re welcome to have a look through his papers and his computer, Cole. Maybe you can figure it out. I really don’t know much. He just shut everybody out, at least when he wasn’t picking a fight. He still talked with Cassandra, but not often. He was off on his own most of the time.”
    â€œThat doesn’t really seem like Archie’s style, does it?”
    â€œHe was always a bit prickly, but the way he was provoking people the last few months was a bit much, even for him.”
    Cole found himself very curious about Archie’s preoccupation.
    â€œCole,” said Grace thoughtfully. “There’s something else.”
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked, distracted by his own ruminations.
    â€œWell, it seems pretty strange, timing wise.”
    Cole looked at her, listening.
    â€œThe day before he went up Knight Inlet and didn’t come back, he dug his will out of a file and left it on his desk.”
    Cole felt a shiver clamber up his vertebrae.
    Grace shook her head. “I didn’t even know he had a will. He sure never talked about it. But when he didn’t come back, I went to his office to see if there was anything that might be helpful to the Coast Guard and I found it on top of his usual clutter. What do you think about that?”
    Cole broke eye contact with Grace. “I don’t know,” he lied, looking out the window at Knight Inlet. But it seemed obvious; for whatever reason, Archie Ravenwing believed that his life might soon end.

6
    What usually got Nancy Webber into trouble was too much thinking, too much reflection. Her first impression was most often correct, her first impulse the one she should follow. But given sufficient time to brood, she could find a hundred reasons to second-guess her intuition and jump to all manner of erroneous conclusions.
    The drive from Edmonton to High River takes about four hours if Calgary’s main highway, Deerfoot Trail, isn’t backed up with commuter traffic. Intuition told her to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie. Cole Blackwater was a dog that should just be left to doze through his life — as he did so well, Nancy thought. Before clearing Edmonton’s city limits, she had twice almost turned around. But the longer she drove the more she second-guessed her intuition, and by Airdrie, hundreds of kilometres south of Edmonton, she had convinced herself of a massive cover-up of Henry Blackwater’s death, and also that she was the one to get to the bottom of it.
    That morning the lack of traffic on the Deerfoot allowed Nancy Webber to sail down to High River at a nice prairie coast of one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. She arrived