Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  Like an inchworm, she coiled and uncoiled herself, crawling along the deck toward the edge. She came to the end, a sudden drop-off with the ice three feet below. She brought her body around until she lay parallel with the edge of the deck, then she rolled off. The wind had blown the snow on the ice into uneven depths; where she hit there was almost nothing to cushion the blow on her head. For the second time that night, she was stunned to the point of seeing lights. Her head felt thick and burning as if full of some scorching liquid. Vital seconds passed, a fact she was aware of even through the haze that clouded her thinking. On her side, her injured shoulder taking the brunt of the struggle, she began to move away from the sauna toward a pine tree backed by a small thicket just beyond the shoreline a dozen yards away. She dug at the ice, propelling herself with the side of her boot. Her jacket was a down-filled nylon shell, and the slick material helped her slide easily over the ice, the only piece of luck she’d had all night.

  Five feet. Ten. She struggled against fainting. Goddamn it, no! She fed her pain to her anger. She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t give Sandy the satisfaction. The pine and the thicket seemed an enormous distance away. If she couldn’t make it there, she’d find another way. Desperately she scanned the area around her, looking for a drift against the shore that might be deep enough to burrow into, to cover herself with snow. Could he find her then? Could he follow a worm’s trail in the night? She was wearing dark clothing, a mistake she regretted now as bitterly as she regretted loving Sandy. She was too easy to see, especially in the unnatural brightness from the northern lights and the rising moon. Her best hope still was to make the thicket before Sandy came back.

  She breathed heavily, pushing hard, turning inches into feet, feet into yards. The tree was almost within her reach. She glanced back at the snow-draped thicket just beyond. If she could reach it, nestle in, he might never find her. She hoped he wouldn’t kill one of them unless he was sure he could kill them both.

  Ignoring the pounding in her head, the burning in her shoulder, she redoubled her efforts. A moment later she bumped into something hard. The trunk of the pine, she thought with relief. She looked back to gauge the distance left to the thicket and found that the pine tree had not stopped her. It was Sandy Parrant’s left leg.

  “I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn’t tried,” he said. “One of the things I’ve always found most attractive is your tenacity.” He took out his jackknife, knelt, and whispered, “You’re also one hell of a piece of ass.” He cut her ankles free and lifted her brusquely.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Our pigeon is roosting.”

  47

  CORK SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE facing the back door. He wore his coat and his stocking cap, but he’d taken off his gloves and they lay crumpled in front of him on the table. It was warm in the cabin, but that wasn’t why he’d removed his gloves.

  The back door swung open and Parrant brought Jo in. Cork looked at her bound wrists, the tape across her mouth, and the familiar revolver in Parrant’s hand.

  “Going to kill the whole county?” he asked.

  “If I have to.”

  “Starting with us,” Cork concluded.

  “That depends,” Sandy replied.

  “We both know it doesn’t.” He addressed Jo, “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “We have a lot of talking to do before I decide on anything,” Parrant said.

  “Bullshit. You’ve already decided.”

  Parrant put the revolver to Jo’s temple. “I want to know one thing. Does anyone else know about the negatives?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “You expect me to answer that? It would be like signing a death warrant.”

  “Not necessarily,” Parrant said. “Some people can be bought. Most people in fact. Or they can be scared easily enough. Who else knows?”

  “I lied,” Cork told him. “No one else knows.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Parrant rubbed at his nose, thinking. “Tell you what I’m going to do. From now on, every time I get an answer I don’t believe—” He put his arm around Jo to hold her and he pointed the barrel of the .38 at her foot. “—I’ll put a bullet through one of Jo’s extremities.”

  “You’d really do that?”

  “Maybe. Maybe I’m lying. But think about it. What have I got to lose? A man who aspires to the White House ought to be able to be ruthless if the situation demands. So, what do you think? Will I really do it?”

  Parrant’s eyes were quite clear and unblinking as a snake’s. “Let’s begin again,” he said. “Did you tell anyone else about the negatives?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to anyone else about your suspicions of me?”

  “No.”

  The sound of the gunshot made Cork jerk as if he’d been struck by the bullet. Jo tried to yank free, almost separating from Parrant as she screamed into the duct tape. From under the table, where it had lain cradled on his lap, Cork swung the Winchester. The safety was off, a cartridge chambered. For the briefest instant he had a shot at Parrant. Not a clear shot, however, for Parrant was struggling to pull Jo back. Cork hesitated. That was all Sandy Parrant needed.

  “Drop it!” he shouted at Cork, jamming the revolver into the back of Jo’s head. “She’s not hit. But I’ll kill her, I swear to God.”

  Cork saw that although Jo stood tottering, she was unharmed. He lowered the rifle to the floor.

  “Brinkmanship, O’Connor,” Parrant explained with a galling note of triumph. “A game I’m rather good at. John Kennedy was a fucking amateur.” Parrant resettled his grasp on Jo, wrapped his arm around her, and once again aimed the gun at her foot. “Next time, I promise you, I won’t miss. Once more, did you tell anyone about the negatives?”

  “Schanno.”

  “When?”

  “I saw him today. We discussed GameTech.”

  “Schanno.” Parrant considered this and didn’t appear too upset. “I’ve got things on him. I can get to him.”

  “I think you underestimate the man,” Cork said.

  “No one else knows about the negatives?”

  “No one.”

  “Did you discuss your suspicions about me with anyone?”

  “The priest.”

  “Tom Griffin? In confession?”

  “I haven’t made a confession in years.”

  Parrant took a deep breath and thought that one over.

  “He’s free to talk,” Cork reminded him. “Maybe he already has. You may end up having to kill all of Aurora, Sandy.”

  “But he doesn’t know about the negatives?”

  “Like I said, no one besides Schanno knows.”

  Parrant glanced down as if preparing to fire at Jo’s foot. “I think you’re lying.”

  “How can I prove I’m not?” Cork asked quickly. “Look, I’ve already put two men’s lives in danger. What will satisfy you?”

  Parrant reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a jackknife. He carefully extended the blade and moved it toward Jo’s back.

  “Christ no, Sandy!” Cork half rose from his chair.

  Parrant cut Jo’s wrists free. “Take the tape off,” he told her.

  She obeyed and let the pieces from her wrists and mouth drop to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she told Cork.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Over there beside him,” Sandy said. He shoved her toward Cork, then bent and picked up the loose pieces of tape and put them in his pocket. He took out the roll of duct tape and tossed it to Cork. “Tape her wrists,” he ordered.

  Jo looked confused, then understood. “Fingerprints. You want Cork’s fingerprints on the tape.”

  “So it looks like I bound and killed you,” Cork finished.

  “You’d have to be distraught,” Jo went on. “But distraught over what?”

  Parrant reached inside his coat and brought out folded photographs. He tossed them onto the table. “Pick them up,” he
instructed Cork.

  Cork lifted the pictures. They were photos of Molly and him embracing by the sauna. They’d been taken at night with a night vision lens from somewhere out on the water. Harlan Lytton’s handiwork for sure.

  “These are the ones he showed you?” Cork asked Jo.

  “Yes.”

  “And now they’re covered with your fingerprints, too,” Parrant said with satisfaction.

  “My gun, my fingerprints on the tape and the pictures.” Cork nodded as if he admired the thoroughness. “We argue over my dead lover. I freak, kill Jo, and then what, Sandy? I commit suicide? Or do I just disappear like Joe John LeBeau?”

  “Just tape her,” Parrant said.

  “What do we do, Cork?” Jo asked.

  “You do what I say,” Parrant threatened.

  “Or what?” Cork asked. “You’re going to kill us anyway.”

  The tea kettle on Molly’s stove suddenly jumped and skittered across the burner. Startled, Parrant swung the revolver that way and let off a round that buried itself in the wall. “What the hell?”

  “Windigo,” Cork said. “You know what a Windigo is, don’t you, Sandy?”

  “A fucking fairy tale.”

  “It wasn’t a fairy tale made that pot jump around,” Cork said.

  The wind rose outside. The windowpane over the sink rattled. From the dark of the night surrounding the cabin came a long low howl that was not the wind but was wrapped within it. And buried somewhere within the howling was the name of Sandy Parrant.

  “The Windigo’s calling you, Sandy. Do you know what that means?”

  Parrant eyed the window angrily. “It means there’s a joker out there who’s going to die with you.”

  “Can’t kill the Windigo with that gun,” Cork told him. “The Windigo called the names of Russell Blackwater and Harlan Lytton, too. Blackwater knew it and carried a gun and it didn’t matter.”

  “I don’t believe that crap.”

  “Sam Winter Moon once told me there’s more in these woods than a man can ever see. More than he can ever hope to understand.”

  “Shut up!”

  Parrant pointed the revolver at Jo’s heart as if to fire, to finally end it all. But the light in the kitchen went out suddenly. Cork pushed Jo to the side and threw himself in the other direction. Parrant fired wildly. In the blindness after the loss of the light, Cork spread his arms wide and charged the place where Parrant had been standing. He caught the man in his arms and they tumbled down. Cork heard the scrape of the .38 as it slid loose across the floorboards.

  Parrant squirmed from Cork’s grasp and was back on his feet instantly, kicking hard at Cork’s ribs. Cork rolled away and brought himself up. Parrant was at him, throwing punches out of the dark, landing blow after blow to his torso. Cork stumbled back, retreating across the kitchen until he was pinned against the sink. Hunched and grunting, he tried vainly to protect himself as Parrant hammered at his sides and head.

  A shattering of crockery and Parrant stopped abruptly. Moonlight streamed through the window over the sink. Parrant, in milky white, staggered back, holding his head. Cork tried to move, to attack, but the pain in his ribs paralyzed him.

  Jo’s hand was on his arm and her voice urged him, “Cork, quick!” She pushed him through the kitchen door and into the cold night. Tugging, she pulled him toward the sanctuary of the woods.

  They’d barely reached the first of the trees when the crack of Cork’s revolver came from the cabin. Jo ran hard, weaving among the trees and thickets, fighting her way desperately through the deep snow and drifts. She ran until she was nearly breathless, then she risked a glance back. Cork was nowhere to be seen. She stopped and turned, frantically searching among the trees for any sign of him. A black form separated itself from a nearby tree trunk and stepped toward her. Jo almost screamed. Then she recognized the old man Henry Meloux.

  “Here,” Meloux whispered, and pointed toward a cedar with its branches bent low under the weight of snow.

  “Cork—” Jo tried to explain.

  The old man ignored her. “In there quick,” and he held aside a cedar bough showing a hollow in the snow, a little sanctuary. He urged her in, surprising her with his strength. “The man is almost here,” he whispered.

  In less than a minute, Sandy approached through the trees, the beam of a flashlight scanning the snow in front of him as he came. Jo realized he was following her tracks. In a few more seconds he would be at the place where Meloux had met her and the tracks would lead him to their hiding place. Meloux’s face showed no fear, only an intense concentration.

  Cork’s cry from the direction of the cabin brought Parrant to a sharp stop. He turned and began a hard run back.

  “Cork!” she whispered, afraid.

  “I will find him,” Meloux said. “Stay here.”

  “Like hell I will.”

  The old man’s strong hand restrained her. “You have children. Think of them.”

  Meloux was gone in an instant, leaving Jo alone in the safe hollow under the cedar boughs.

  48

  ADOZEN YARDS INTO THE WOODS, Cork knew he couldn’t keep up with Jo. Adrenaline couldn’t mask all his pain, couldn’t undo the shortness of breath that was the legacy of tobacco. As Jo had moved farther ahead, Cork looked for a place to hide. He spotted a humping of snow-covered vines, and with all the strength he could muster, he’d leaped the thicket. The deep snow on the far side cushioned his landing and he crawled to cover only seconds before Parrant rushed by pursuing Jo.

  He had no idea how far ahead Jo had been able to run, but he wanted to give her the best chance he could to make it safely away. He crawled from the safety of the thicket. When the beam of the flashlight was forty or fifty yards beyond him, he let out a cry. He’d meant it to be a cry of challenge, but the stabbing in his ribs turned it to a howl of pain. Still, it did the trick. Parrant turned for him and Cork ran for his life.

  He skirted the cabin, not even trying to make it inside to find the rifle. It would be too great a gamble fumbling around, hoping to find the Winchester before Parrant reached him. He made instead for the vast, unbroken wilderness of the Superior National Forest a mile northeast.

  He ran numbly through drifts above his knees. Awkwardly he vaulted a fallen log and came down in a snag of branches on the other side. His foot became entangled. While he worked himself free, he checked the woods behind him. Nothing. No movement. Only sound. Above him the wind raced through the tops of the pines, its passage marked by the scrape and groan of branches. From farther east came a deeper sound, a throaty grumble that Cork recognized as the tumble of fast water in a stream. Half Mile Spring. The flow gushed out of high ground and rushed down a deep ravine to the lake. As its name implied, the spring didn’t have a long run from its source to its ending, and even in the coldest winter the water never froze.

  He became aware of something else, the smell of wood smoke in the wind. Meloux’s cabin! The place wasn’t far beyond the spring. Cork tried to think if Meloux owned a firearm. The old man had been a hunter once, a great one it was said, but did he own a working firearm?

  Cork knew he should be moving again. Two things held him there at the log. He wanted to be certain Parrant was still following him. If Parrant was after him, it meant that Jo had a good chance of getting away. The other thing was the simple fact that he couldn’t move. The adrenaline had washed out of him, and what had seeped in to take its place was searing pain. The beating his ribs had sustained was too much. He couldn’t straighten up, could barely take a breath. Even the slightest movement drove a spike of pain right through his chest.

  He’d left his gloves on Molly’s kitchen table. His hands, vulnerable to the bitter, single-digit temperature of the night, ached from the cold. He tried to blow on them for warmth, but the stabbing of his ribs gave him almost no breath for it.

  The flashlight beam shot like an arrow through the trees. Cork tried to rise but grabbed at his ribs and doubled over with a moan. The flash
light swung his way. He crouched behind the log as the light played past him. He thought about the ravine at his back. Even if he could escape Parrant somehow, the deep, rugged walls of the ravine and the rush of Half Mile Spring would stop him. His best hope would be to turn to the lake, cut across the ice, and make for Meloux’s cabin. But first he would have to elude Parrant, a possibility that became less likely with each step Parrant took.

  The .38 fired unexpectedly. Cork jerked although nothing hit near him. Parrant shot another round. Cork risked a glance over the log. The light swung back and forth, scanning the woods to the left. What had he fired at? Jo? Christ, no! Cork braced himself to rise, to call out, to draw Parrant’s fire, but a hand on his shoulder restrained him.

  Meloux crouched beside him. He beckoned to Cork and began to crawl on all fours toward the ravine. Cork followed his example, snow up to his chin. After a short distance, the old man rose and loped ahead, graceful despite his age. Cork did the same, although much less gracefully and a good deal slower.

  He glanced back once. The beam of the flashlight had vanished.

  Jo cursed the old man. Cursed him because he’d made her afraid.

  In Molly Nurmi’s kitchen, she had been angry. She’d been trapped in something she didn’t see any way out of and she’d been blind with rage. Rage at Sandy for what he was, what he’d been able to hide from her so well, and rage at herself for her stupidity and blindness. The sanctuary the old man offered her had changed things. She wasn’t backed into a corner anymore. She had hope. But something unexpected had accompanied the hope. Fear. Fear so overpowering it made her tremble violently as if she were bitterly cold. She’d never been so afraid. She knew what it was now to be paralyzed by cowardice, because she didn’t think she could move.

  She’d done as Meloux had suggested. She’d thought about the children. What would happen if both Cork and she were killed? She tried to remember exactly the language of their will. She wanted Rose to be the children’s guardian. She’d made that clear. Of course, it didn’t necessarily mean the court had to comply, but there was no one to contest that request. No close relatives left alive. Jo realized more clearly than she ever had how alone they all were in the world. God, they should have held together. They should have found a way.