NELLIE SNOOK.

Neither Ollie nor anyone at G Division had uncovered the link.

The whole way back to Yellowknife, I’d been trying to wrap my mind about that. “Snook’s name never popped when they ran checks on Ruben?”

“No reason it would.”

“Fewer than twenty thousand people live in this town.” I wasn’t believing this. “Wouldn’t it be common knowledge that Snook and Ruben are half sisters?”

“Apparently not.”

Ryan parked in a strip of dirt fronting a bright blue shack. We got out of the Camry and crossed to it.

“And not one single person they questioned had a clue?”

“Tyne told you. Folks keep to themselves up here.”

Antlers, snowshoes, and an oddly shaped paddle hung above the shack’s door. A sign had been nailed to the siding beside it. No Sniveling.

Ryan pointed to the sign and raised his brows.

“I’m not sniveling.” I wasn’t. I was venting.

Ryan pointed to another sign. Hot Beer. Lousy Food. Bad Service. Welcome. Have a nice day. Then he opened the door. Bells jangled us in.

To our left was a stuffed moose head doing duty as a hat and coat rack. Opposite Bullwinkle was a combo bar, fry kitchen, cashier’s station. A woman in a black Mao cap, plaid shirt, and jeans was scraping the griddle with a spatula. The rest of le bistro was taken up by wooden tables and high-back chairs, some plain, others carved.

On hearing the bells, Mao turned. “Got reservations?” Her vocal chords had seen a whole lot of smoke.

Ryan and I looked at each other, surprised. It was three in the afternoon. The place was empty.

“Gotcha!” Mao laughed, showing gaps once occupied by molars. Then she swung the spatula to indicate we could sit wherever.

We chose a graffiti-scarred table next to a window shaded by venetian blinds. Through the slats, I could see trees and blue picnic tables. The adjacent wall was layered with photos and business cards, many faded to illegibility.

“Good thing I’m not the ‘I told you so’ type.” I continued pressing my point. “Because I’d be saying it.”

“We’ll see.”

When Mao appeared at our table, Ryan and I both ordered fish and chips. Rainwater had sent us to Bullock’s saying everything on the menu came straight from the lake.

“Let’s hope we’re not too late.” When Mao was back at the griddle, I rolled on. “Again.”

“Rainwater said no one’s entered or left the house since Snook got back from the store.”

“Ollie asked him to talk to her?”

“About ten minutes ago. But if she refuses, he can’t go inside.”

Mao brought our drinks. Diet Coke for me. Moosehead for Ryan. I hoped his choice didn’t offend our buddy on the wall.

Ollie arrived as Mao was delivering our food. His face was tense, his cheeks flushed with asymmetrical raspberry splotches. I knew the look. The hunt was on, and he was loving it.

Turned out Ollie and Mao knew each other. Her name was Mary.

“What you cooking today, sweetheart?” He gave her his trademark jaw-hitch maneuver.

“Cod, trout, and pike.”

“What’s good?”

“Everything.”

“Pike.”

“Excellent choice.”

Ollie waited until Mary was out of earshot, then spoke to me. “Nice. Very few have the poise to carry off the hamburger-chin look.”

“I used to model for Chanel.”

“Really?”

“No. Who’s Zeb Chalker?”

Big grin. “Bola’ed you over, I hear.”

My look suggested I wasn’t amused.

“Chalker’s MED.”

I tipped both palms in question.

“Municipal Enforcement Division. They’ve got maybe six constables, a couple of supervisors, some patrol cars and snowmobiles. Do mostly traffic, animal, and crowd control. And, of course, koi ponds.”

“Hilarious. What about Scarborough?”

“He’s in town, all right. Staying with one of his greaseball pals.”

“Unka and Castain know he’s here?”

Ollie’s eyes rolled to Ryan. “Both claimed to be unacquainted with the gentleman.”

“They denied Scar was trying to cut in to their action?” I asked.

“They didn’t admit to having any action. Hadn’t a clue the meaning of my questions. They’re honest citizens trying to make a buck leading outdoor adventures for tourists. Castain offered to take me bird-watching.”

Mary arrived with Ollie’s root beer. Left.

“So you got nothing,” Ryan summed up.

“I learned that neither Unka nor Castain cares for me.”

“Indeed.”

“Both called me unpleasant names. Unka was more creative.”

“You had to kick them?”

“We know where to find them.”

“Someone’s working a tail?”

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Scarborough, too?”

“Hadn’t thought—”

“For God’s sake.” Already it had been a very long day. I was not up to their testosterone wrangling. “Knock it off.”

Ryan and I cleaned our plates. Then we sat in awkward silence until Mary delivered Ollie’s pike. While he ate, I provided further details of our visit with Horace Tyne.

“We ran the half sister,” he said when I’d finished. “Snook’s her married name. She was born Nellie France in Fort Resolution.”

“Where’s that?”

“The south shore of Great Slave Lake. Where the pavement ends.”

“Literally?”

“Yes.”

“So people in Yellowknife might actually be unaware of Snook’s connection to Ruben.”

“It’s possible, though Chalker should know.” Ollie dipped a french fry in mayo and ate it.

“Rainwater’s with Snook now?”

“He’ll try making nice. If that fails, he’ll ask for a warrant. What’s your take on Tyne?”

“The guy’s a sleaze. But an environmentally conscious sleaze.”

“Friends of the Tundra.” Ollie dipped and popped another fry. “Never heard of it.”

“I was surprised to learn that diamond mining is big business here.”

“You haven’t noticed the banners on every lamppost?” Ollie made a marquis gesture with one hand. “Yellowknife, Diamond Capital of North America. There’s a big-ass rock on the official city logo.”

“You ever hear of this guy Fipke?”

“You’re kidding.” Ollie regarded me with the same incredulity Tyne had displayed. “Chuck Fipke’s a legend.”

“Fine. I’ll get a book.”

“Copies in every souvenir shop in town. Or google Fipke.”

“Is Tyne right about the caribou herds?”

“Some locals, mostly aboriginals, claim that diamond mining is disrupting the migration routes. It’s a hot issue up here. When De Beers proposed opening Snap Lake, some of the chiefs banded together. Set the project back years. Environmental-impact studies and all. Now De Beers wants to bring another operation online. I forget the name.”

“Gahcho Kué.”

“That’s it.” Ollie bunched and tossed his napkin. “You should talk to Rainwater. He knows more about the mining controversy than I do.”

I was draining my Diet Coke when Ollie’s phone rang. The conversation lasted under a minute. I got little from his end. Except that he was irked.

“Snook stonewalled.” Jamming the cell back onto his belt. “Rainwater’s going to ask a judge to cut paper.”

“Now what?”

“Now we wait for someone to screw up.”

Three hours in my room produced an unplanned nap, a message from Katy saying she had news too important for e-mail, and voluminous information on Chuck Fipke and geological exploration.

Before booting my laptop, I knew that diamonds are carbon transformed by extreme heat and pressure into the hardest, clearest mineral on earth. That because of their rigid tetrahedral molecular structure—a triangular pyramid with four faces—a diamond can be cut only by another diamond or a laser.

I knew that the sparkly little rocks are pricey as hell. And that they create an eyeful of bling.

That was about it.

Every thirty minutes I’d interrupt my research to phone Katy. Each time her phone would roll to voice mail. Uneasy, I’d dive back onto the Internet.

In between dialing, I learned the following.

It takes forty-four to fifty kilobars of pressure at a minimum of a thousand degrees Celsius to change carbon into diamond. I understood the temperature but wasn’t sure the exact nature of a kilobar.

The appropriate combo of heating and crushing existed a few billion years ago at depths of eighty to a hundred and twenty-five miles in rock formations called cratons, dense old slabs of continental plate.

Later, underground volcanoes sent magma—or molten rock—minerals, rock fragments, and occasionally diamonds bubbling up through the cratons. The mixture expanded and cooled along the way to form either carrot-shaped pipes to the surface, or wide flat underground structures called dikes. It then solidified into rock called kimberlite.

Most diamondiferous kimberlites are associated with cratons from the Archean era, an early part of the Precambrian, when the earth was much hotter than today. Much hotter. Many kimberlite pipes lie underneath shallow lakes formed in inactive volcanic craters called calderas.

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.