Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  The priest walked him to the door and opened it. Ellie Gruber stood in the hallway with Wanda Manydeeds.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Father,” Mrs. Gruber said, “but she said it was urgent.”

  Wanda Manydeed’s dark eyes shot past the priest to where Cork stood at his back. “What’s he doing here?”

  “It’s all right,” Father Tom Griffin assured her. “We were just finishing.”

  In all the years Cork had known Wanda Manydeeds, he’d seldom seen those hard chestnut eyes clear of suspicion. Wanda looked at the world with chronic distrust. It was as if she’d been born without innocence, and although she had suffered much in her life, she’d never suffered from a mistake caused by naïveté.

  “Going to discuss a joint service for Russell Blackwater?”

  “That’s right.” The priest spoke for them both.

  “Too bad Russell didn’t have the forewarning his father did. You both could have been there to expedite his passage over. But come to think of it, he did. He knew the Windigo had called his name. He just didn’t believe it.”

  Wanda Manydeeds finally addressed Cork. “Word is you heard the Windigo, too.”

  “I did.” He smiled coldly. “The difference is I’m ready for the son of a bitch.” He nodded to them both in parting. “ ’Night.”

  30

  THE GEESE WEREN’T THERE. Cork looked across the dark, empty water and listened in vain. The grain lay in the snow by the bucket, untouched. He figured they were gone for good.

  In the cabin, there was a message on his answering machine. Molly. “Call me,” she said.

  He kicked the heat up and reminded himself that tomorrow he’d get the window fixed. His ribs felt like hell, but his stitched hand seemed okay. He opened a can of Hormel chili, heated it up, grated a little cheese over it, ate the chili with saltines. After he’d cleared the dishes, he made a pot of coffee and sat down at the old table Sam Winter Moon had made from birch. He set Jo’s folder in front of him. For a long time he simply sipped his coffee and stared at the blood-crusted, unopened folder. He wanted to believe that what the photographs captured didn’t matter now. Old infidelity. But it did. The pictures chronicled more than Jo’s unfaithfulness. They were a testament to the ridiculous nature of the trust people placed in one another. Marriage was only one example. There were others. Elections. The ministry. Medicine. The bottom line was that people who leaned too heavily on someone else were setting themselves up for a terrible fall, and they had no one to blame in the end but themselves for the hurt they suffered. Cork had learned the hard way. And he vowed it would not happen again.

  He considered the closed folder. He wasn’t sure that studying what it contained would do any good. But he didn’t have any other ideas.

  The first photograph wasn’t so hard. A distance shot. It framed the bow of Parrant’s sailboat tied up to the dock. The name “Thor’s Hammer” was clear on the side. Beyond the dock was the long dark of the backyard. And beyond that the whole rear of Parrant’s house rising up and filling the photo. There was firelight in the living room, the soft glow visible through the sliding doors of the upper deck, and two slivers of light lower down where the hot tub was, illuminating what appeared to be a single large white shape. Cork put the photograph on the table to his left.

  The next photo was an enlargement of the first, centered on the hot tub. Two candles burned on the rim of the tub, and in their soft light the large white shape clearly defined itself as two naked bodies pressed together. The faces weren’t yet clear. The dark-haired male arching from behind could have been almost anybody. But to someone who knew what to look for, the woman bent forward was plainly Jo. She’d worn her hair longer then and crimped.

  Despite his resolve to look carefully at all the photographs, Cork turned away. He fished around in his pocket for his cigarettes, and as he lit up, he saw that his hands were shaking. His stomach was like a ball of wet clay, and he realized he was breathing fast. He got up, walked away from the table, and leaned back against the kitchen counter. The draft through the cardboard chilled the back of his neck.

  What had he hoped to see? What could those photographs possibly tell him about the deaths, about whether Paul LeBeau had really gone into hiding, and Joe John, too, and what, if anything, they had to do with all of this? The photos couldn’t tell him any more than he already knew—that Jo didn’t love him and hadn’t for longer than he cared to consider. It was a sobering realization, but not one that particularly advanced his understanding of the recent events in Aurora. Jo, like Cork and so many others, had simply been captured by Lytton’s lens in a selfish, potentially damaging act.

  Cork tapped the ash of his cigarette into the sink and found himself wondering about Lytton. Had the man enjoyed the show? Had he taken the film back to his isolated cabin, developed it, and got some kicks from seeing Jo fucked like a dog?

  He threw his cigarette in the sink, stomped to the table, and slapped the folder closed. He wanted to burn the damn thing. Schanno had probably been right. The best place for such trash was an ash heap.

  In the dead of night from a dead sleep, Cork snapped wide awake, threw off the covers, and began to pace the room. The air was chilly, but he felt strangely warm and excited. He barely noticed the cold floorboards under his bare feet. He stopped at the bedroom window and stared outside. In the snowy darkness, the world was reduced to black and white.

  He knew. Son of a bitch, he knew.

  It was like this sometimes. Sometimes a thing was right in front of him, so simple. Yet it wasn’t until he closed his eyes and shut down his thinking that what was simple became clear.

  The key was the folder itself.

  Cork went into the other room, flipped on the light, and looked at the manila folder that had Jo’s name on it. Like most office folders, it had several additional creases just to the right of the center fold. The creases were there so that the folder could be accordioned outward as the contents increased. In Jo’s case, although the folder was old, the additional creases had never been used. His own folder in the white file cabinet in Schanno’s office had been like that as well. But Cork would have sworn the folder on Sandy Parrant had been different. The creases were worn as if the folder had been enlarged to contain a great deal more than the photographs of the indiscretions around the hot tub. At one time there had been something else in the file.

  What was it that had been removed? And who had removed it? Sigurd Nelson, the coroner, before he delivered the small silver key to Wally Schanno? Schanno himself? Or was it possible Sandy Parrant had somehow managed to get to the folder and remove the worst of what it contained?

  His feet were getting cold, but he didn’t want to break his thinking and he went on pacing the room.

  Was there a way to find out what had been in Parrant’s file? Was there a way around the blundering of Schanno?

  He looked down at the old folder with Jo’s name. There hadn’t been a file for her next to his in the white filing cabinet. Yet here was what such a file might have held. If there had been a folder, Cork figured it hadn’t been this one. The bloody folder didn’t have a typed label as all the others had, only Lytton’s own handwritten labeling. Had Jo’s been pulled? If so and if it was Lytton who’d taken it, why had he transferred the photographs to another folder? It didn’t make sense.

  And then again, maybe it did.

  Lytton probably did all his own film developing. If he wanted to produce photographs of Jo and Parrant that would hurt and humiliate Cork, he didn’t need to pull them from the file cabinet in his rented Aurora U-Store shed. He had the negatives. All he had to do was make prints. And put them in something, any old thing. An old folder lying around. And if that was true, then where were the negatives? Cork wondered how thoroughly Lytton’s place had been gone through. Was it possible all the negatives were still hidden there somewhere?

  His feet were going numb from the cold. He decided that in the morning he would go to Harlan Lytton’s place an
d have a look. These days things had a way of happening around him. Although events seemed chaotic, Cork was beginning to suspect they weren’t at all. Sam Winter Moon used to say that sometimes the only way a man learns the true spirit of a rock is to stub his toe on it.

  Cork turned out the lights and headed back to bed.

  Even if he didn’t find what he was looking for in the morning, he had a strong sense that something would find him.

  31

  WELL BEFORE DAWN, Jo left the bed where she’d barely slept a wink, dressed, and, in the cold black when the rest of Aurora still slept, drove to the home of Sandy Parrant.

  She took a key from her purse, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside.

  The house was deathly quiet. She made her way to the living room and stood a moment sunk in the thick white carpet. Sandy’s place was perfectly decorated in shades of white and was always kept in perfect order. Even though Rose was an excellent housekeeper, the rooms of the house on Gooseberry Lane usually carried evidence of the lives they contained, especially the thoughtless disarray of children. Sandy’s home always felt a little unreal to Jo, deliciously extravagant, like an excellent hotel.

  Dawn was showing itself through the big sliding glass panes that overlooked the lake; a rat-gray light crawled the face of the eastern sky.

  Jo walked down the long hallway to Sandy’s bedroom and pushed open the door. Sandy lay on his side in his big bed, the covers over him barely disturbed.

  Jo envied him his peaceful sleep. She felt tired and afraid and dreaded what she was there for. She crossed silently to his bed and studied him in the dim, gray light. He was handsome, with a strong, resolute line to his jaw, a head of red-blond hair thick as a lion’s mane. When they were open, his eyes were alert and intelligent, but often Sandy hid their shrewdness behind a beguiling smile. There was an irresistible recklessness about him. Also a ruthlessness of purpose once he’d set his mind on something, and that was appealing, too, in a disturbing sort of way. In his lovemaking, he’d been adventurous and attentive. Although they’d made love dozens of times, she never felt he took it for granted. She was infatuated; there was no doubt about it. But she’d never let herself use the word “love” even in her thinking. Sandy Parrant was a man headed somewhere else, and Jo knew she was a woman bound by circumstance to Aurora.

  She removed her gloves and touched the satin shoulder of his pajamas. He stirred. She sat carefully on the bed, ran her hand along his fine jawline, swept her palm lightly over the heavy stubble there. She’d never slept with him, never awakened beside him, never seen his hair tousled from sleep or smelled the stale breath of morning slip from his lips. For some reason, he seemed more real to her in that vulnerable moment before waking, while his face was still slack and his eyelids trembled with dreaming, and she felt something break inside her. Before she knew it, she was crying.

  “What is it?” Sandy was instantly awake. He sat up and reached for the light beside the bed.

  “No, don’t,” Jo said, stopping his hand.

  “Are you all right? What are you doing here?”

  She stood up and stepped away from the bed. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Terrible thoughts, it sounds like.”

  “Sandy, maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no future in it. We’ve both known from the beginning.”

  “No. We agreed not to talk about a future together. That’s different.”

  “Because we knew it couldn’t be,” she insisted. She walked to the window. The sky had turned an empty white, still sunless. “My life is here. My family is here. In a couple of weeks you’re gone for good.”

  “You can join me. After you take care of the divorce.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “It’s not as hard as you think.”

  “What is it you see in me?” She turned and faced him. “I’m not young. I have children.”

  “I see you beside me in the White House.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” Sandy threw aside the covers and stood up. He wore blue satin pajamas and with his red-brown hair a little ruffled looked like an exotic bird. “Jo, no one in Aurora would blame you for leaving Cork. He’s a man disgraced, falling apart. He hasn’t been a fit husband or father for a long time. You’ve said so yourself. And have you taken a good look at him lately?”

  “He’s been terribly hurt.”

  “You don’t have to defend him.”

  “It’s the children I’m worried about.”

  “My parents divorced and I survived. Your mother raised you alone and you turned out beautifully. Children are resilient.”

  The long night felt heavy on her. She sighed. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

  “It doesn’t, believe me.” He stepped toward her and took her hand. “Look, Jo, I have one more exhibit to offer in evidence. Something that might make everything easier for you. Come with me.”

  Sandy led her from the bedroom to his office. He switched on his desk lamp, opened a drawer, and took out a large photo, eight by ten.

  “I recently came into possession of this. I wasn’t sure if I should show you, but I think it’s for the best now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something Dad gave me. He was trying to be helpful.”

  Sandy handed it over. Jo took a good look. The photograph showed Cork naked, embracing another woman. They were outside somewhere. Near a small building by a lake.

  “Who is she?” Jo asked.

  “Molly Nurmi.”

  “Nurmi?” Jo was surprised and stung. Molly Nurmi? She was only a waitress. A woman with a reputation. A girl everyone knew had broken her father’s heart. Was that the kind of woman Cork wanted?

  “From what I gather, they’ve been at it quite a while. He’s playing you for a sucker, Jo. Acting the victim while he commits the crime.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Jo said. Anger climbed inside her like fire up a dry tree. It flared in her brain, brilliant and blinding. “Making me feel like some kind of coldhearted snake. And all the time he’s the snake.” She flung the photograph away. “God, he was good. He had me convinced.”

  “Jo, this is going to sound strange, I know,” Sandy said calmly. “But give him a break. He’s a man after all. You didn’t expect him to stay celibate forever.”

  “He’s not a man!” she hissed. “He’s a—a—worm.”

  “Jo—”

  “What!” she snapped.

  He looked at her appreciatively, undaunted by her anger. “Have I told you lately what a beautiful woman you are?”

  She felt suddenly free. From the shoulders of her weary conscience a great burden simply vanished. She felt weightless, rising into an atmosphere where every breath made her feel wonderfully ruthless and wild. She stepped to Sandy, put her arms around him, and kissed him long and hard.

  “Let’s go to my bedroom,” Sandy murmured.

  “Bedroom, hell,” Jo said, and she drew him down with her to the floor.

  An hour later she lay sprawled on Sandy’s bed, the covers pulled loosely over her. She’d made love ferociously and now she felt exhausted, ready to sleep.

  Sandy came in wearing his robe. “I called my housekeeper, told her to take the day off. We can sleep as long as we like.”

  He threw off the robe and crawled into bed, naked beside her.

  “Grand,” Jo said. She pushed herself against him and closed her eyes. In a moment she was deeply asleep, carrying with her into her dreaming the musky smell of the freshman Senator from Minnesota.

  32

  CORK WAS UP and out of Sam’s place early. The sun was still below the trees, the sky clear, a cold bright day at hand. He paused at Hardee’s to pick up a drive-through breakfast—a biscuit sandwich with sausage and egg, and a cup of steaming black coffee. Then he headed east out of Aurora, past the casino and, a mile farther,
the turnoff to Sandy Parrant’s. Three miles beyond that he took a right, moving away from the lake along County Road 16. The road wove through marshland and a long stretch of hayfield, then Cork could see the big stand of balsam, birch, and tamarack that marked Harlan Lytton’s land. He turned up the narrow lane, which was streaked with red-orange sunlight and shadows.

  It was dead quiet when he got out of the Bronco. He stood a moment, his breath clouding the air as he looked the cabin over. The shattered window had been boarded up. Across the doorway, Wally’s men had put the yellow-and-black tape warning “Crime Scene Do Not Cross.” Cork walked around the cabin. In back was a garage housing Lytton’s pickup and snowmobile. Just beyond that stood a large shed. Cork glanced into one of the dirty windows of the shed and could see it was where Lytton did his taxidermy work. Outside, a cord of split wood had been laid up neatly against one wall. The only other structure was an ancient outhouse, the boards gray, the nails loose, the whole thing leaning like a tired old drunk.

  A bird fluttered onto a branch of a birch at the edge of the clearing where the cabin and other buildings stood. It caught Cork’s eye mostly because of the flash of color on its breast. A robin. Middle of winter and there was a robin still about, apparently plump and healthy.

  Because of the stories of The People told him by his grandma Dilsey, Cork knew the robin was created in rather a sad way. A young man wandered from his tribe one spring to undergo giigwishimowin, the fasting that would bring him visions to guide him into manhood. After several days, the young man’s father came and urged his son to persist in the fasting. The young man obeyed. Several more days passed, and the father returned again to urge his son to continue the fast. Although the young man had seen all the visions he needed to prepare himself for his life as a man, he obeyed his father’s request. After a time, the father once more visited his son and found him painted red and lying at the foot of a tree, dying. The young man chastised his father for urging him to fast beyond his time. As the father watched, his son slowly rose upward, changing in the air with a flutter of feathers, and perched on a branch of the tree, having become a robin. To his father he said, “Whenever danger threatens any of the Anishinaabe, I will alert them with this call . . . nin-don-wan-chee-gay, I am warning.”