Kathy Reichs - Bones Are Forever

So. To score diamonds, you locate a pipe rising from a really old craton. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. The buggers are incredibly hard to find.

That’s where Chuck Fipke and Stu Blusson came in. Both knew that the Slave craton, which underlies the Northwest Territories from Great Slave Lake in the south to Coronation Gulf on the Arctic Ocean, is one of the oldest rock formations on earth. And they developed an effective technique to explore it.

Fipke understood the significance of indicator minerals, the traveling companions of diamonds. Those in kimberlite include calcium carbonate, olivine, garnet, phlogopite, pyroxene, serpentine, upper mantle rock, and a variety of trace minerals. Fipke focused on the trifecta of chromite, ilmenite, and high-chrome, low-calcium G10 garnets.

Blusson understood the significance of glacial movement during the last ice age. He reasoned that, after eroding a kimberlite pipe, a retreating glacier would leave a debris path containing diamond indicator minerals. Track the path to its source, he argued, and you’ll find the pipe.

Fipke and Blusson spent a decade scouring the tundra, mapping, surveying, coring, and collecting when temperatures were bearable, analyzing samples in their lab when the weather was too harsh. Everyone in the mining world thought they were nuts.

One day, on his own with a bush pilot, Fipke flew over Lac de Gras, source of the Coppermine River. Spotting an esker, a winding ridge of gravel and sand left by meltwater from a retreating glacier, he ordered the pilot to land on a peninsula called Pointe de Misère.

The esker protected a small lake with a sandy shore containing a dark striation. There he collected sample bag G71, the last in his mammoth, decade-long exploration.

Pointe de Misère was at the Glacial Divide. From where Fipke stood, ice had flowed east to Hudson Bay, north to the northern islands, south into central Canada, and west into the Mackenzie River and Blackwater Lake. He’d sampled the entire expanse stretching west, over two hundred thousand square miles.

Back in the lab, Fipke tried to make sense of the pattern that his samples were producing. Sample by sample, using large, detailed maps, he plotted the results. With scanning electron microscopy, he examined bag after bag.

His conclusion: the indicator trail began at Blackwater Lake, spread east, and two hundred miles northeast of Yellowknife, stopped near Lac de Gras.

He checked the contents of sample bag G71. It contained over 1,500 chrome diopsides and 6,000 pyrope garnets.

Fipke had found his pipe. Or pipes.

He began staking like mad.

More sampling. More analysis. Confirmation.

Fipke named the site Point Lake, partly for geography, partly to confuse the competition. There was another Point Lake northwest of his find.

Next step was to pinpoint the exact location of the diamonds. And that cost money.

With the existence of kimberlite pipes confirmed, Fipke and Blusson were at last able to obtain big-money backers. In 1990 Dia Met, a company founded by Fipke in 1984, and BHP, an Australian mining conglomerate, signed a joint-venture agreement for the Northwest Territories Diamond Project. For 51 percent ownership, BHP would finance exploration in exchange for shares in any future property. Dia Met would hold 29 percent. Fipke and Blusson would retain 10 percent each.

In 1991 Dia Met and BHP announced the discovery of diamonds at Fipke’s Point Lake site. The news sparked the NWT diamond rush, the biggest staking frenzy since Klondike.

Lac de Gras in French. Ekati in the language of the local Dene people. Fat Lake in both.

In 1998 Ekati became Canada’s first diamond mine. The following year she produced one million carats. Today she does $400 million annually and coughs up 4 percent of the world’s rocks.

Fat Lake, indeed.

In 2003 the Diavik mine, owned by a joint-venture partnership between Harry Winston Diamond Corporation and Diavik Diamond Mines, Inc., a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group, began operation. The mine, Canada’s second largest, lies 186 miles north of Yellowknife. It consists of three kimberlite pipes on 7.7 square miles on a tiny chunk of real estate in Lac de Gras, locally called East Island. Diavik is a major supplier of the “Jeweler to the Stars.”

In 1997 kimberlite was discovered at Snap Lake, 137 miles northeast of Yellowknife. De Beers Canada bought the mining rights in the fall of 2000. In 2004 permits for construction and operation were granted.

Unlike most diamond-bearing kimberlite deposits that are pipes, the Snap Lake ore body is a two-and-a-half-meter-thick dyke that dips from the northwest shore down under the lake. Thus, Snap Lake is Canada’s first completely underground diamond mine.

Snap Lake mine officially opened in 2008. According to De Beers’s website, by the end of 2010, $1.5 billion had been spent on construction and operation. Of that total, $1.077 billion had gone to NWT-based contractors and suppliers, including $676 million with aboriginal businesses or joint ventures.

The article on Snap Lake concluded with a statement emphasizing De Beers’s commitment to sustainable development in local communities, and pointing out that the Snap Lake mine had signed impact-benefit agreements with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, the Tlicho Government, the North Slave Métis Alliance, and the Lutsel K’e and Kache Dene First Nation.

Between the lines, I got a whiff of the aboriginal-versus-mining hostility to which Ollie had alluded.

I was trying Katy for the gazillionth time, now genuinely concerned about Birdie, when a loud knock rattled my door. I crossed to it and squinted through the peephole.

Ryan.

Something was wrong.

“CASTAIN’S DEAD.”

Ryan strode past me and began pacing my room.

“What?”

“Someone shot him.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Where?”

“Three rounds to the chest. Christ. Does it matter?”

“No.” Having to track a moving target wasn’t helping my comprehension. “I meant where was Castain when it happened?”

“Banging his girlfriend.”

“Stop pacing.”

Ryan never slowed.

“Do they have the shooter?”

“No.”

“But he was under surveillance.”

Ryan snorted loudly. “Rainwater’s idea of a tail was to ping-pong a car between Snook, Unka, and Castain.”

“Jesus.”

“Claims he doesn’t have enough manpower to maintain surveillance in three locations.”

“That may be legit.”

“Why the fuck didn’t he say so? You and I could have taken Snook. Or Sergeant Shithead could have sat on her.”

I ignored that. “So no one’s watching the house on Ragged Ass?”

“You know the annual homicide count in Yellowknife?”

I didn’t.

“Every chump with a badge will want a piece of this one.”

“Is Unka a suspect?” I asked.

“One among many.”

“Where is he?”

“In the wind.”

“What about Scar?”

“Ditto.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly. I’m heading to the scene.”

I grabbed my jacket, and we raced to the Camry.

* * *

Ryan smoked. Didn’t ask if I minded. Just lit up.

I rode with my window down, shivering and breathing as shallowly as possible without getting dizzy.

Castain’s girlfriend was a stripper named Merilee Twiller. Mercifully, she lived not far from the Explorer.

Ollie’s directions took us to Sunnyvale Court, a horseshoe of tiny bungalows on tiny lots. While a few were reasonably well maintained, most were in disrepair, and several were boarded up and abandoned. I guessed it had been a while since the court had lived up to its name.