Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  “I already have in a way. I’m staying there now while my furnace gets fixed.”

  She faced him, and all the freshness that had colored her face when she first came in was gone. “Next you’ll tell me you’re sleeping with her.”

  “I want to put my life back together. For better or worse, Jo’s part of that.”

  Molly’s eyes narrowed on him for a moment, then she pulled away and went to the cupboard. She grabbed a mug, and swung back toward him. “What do you expect from me? A blessing? Or maybe you think if things don’t work out, I’ll just throw the door open and you can waltz back in here. Well, you can’t, Cork.” She tugged at the lid of a canister that held tea. The lid flew off and hit the floor with a tinny clatter. She just stood for a moment, staring at the lid on the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Molly.”

  She shoved the canister back on the countertop. “To hell with the tea.” She reached up into the cupboard and took down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  “You don’t drink,” Cork told her.

  “I do on special occasions.” She poured liquor into the mug and drank it down. “What are you waiting for? You’ve said what you had to.”

  “I’m just wondering what you ever saw in me anyway. I’m a decade older than you, getting heavy, going bald. I smoke.”

  “Whatever I thought I saw, I guess I was wrong. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”

  The tea kettle began to whistle. Molly made no move to take it off the flame. Cork left. Outside he could still hear the cry of the tea kettle growing thinner and thinner as he walked away.

  After Cork had gone, Molly went down to the sauna. In the changing room she took off her clothes and laid them neatly folded on the wooden bench. She stepped into the sauna itself, sat down in the darkened room, and let the heat draw out of her the anger and the hurt.

  She’d almost told him she loved him. So many times, she’d been on the edge of letting the words spill out, but her past had kept her cautious. And now she was glad, very glad, she hadn’t. Let him go back to a woman who didn’t care. Molly didn’t care either. What ran down her cheeks and tasted of salt wasn’t tears but good cleansing sweat. It poured from every part of her body. When she finally stood and ran outside, she trailed steam like a thing that had been through fire. As she dropped into the hole she’d cleared of ice, the bitterly cold water of the lake squeezed her hard, wrung her out, and left her wonderfully empty.

  20

  AFTER CHURCH, Jenny and Anne went with Cork to Sam’s Place. While he retrieved his dark suit, the girls spread out the corn for Romeo and Juliet.

  “What’s that for?” Anne asked when they got back into the Bronco.

  “It’s what I dress in to say nice things about a bad man.”

  “Are you going with Mom to the memorial service for Judge Parrant?”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t even like him,” Jenny pointed out.

  “I like him better now,” Cork said.

  Jenny smiled, then actually laughed.

  At home, Cork put on his suit. While he was slipping on his tie, Anne knocked and came in. She sat on his bed and ran her hands over the bearskin. “Where’d this come from?”

  “It belonged to Sam Winter Moon. He left it to me.”

  “Is it a bearskin?”

  “Bingo.” Cork leaned near the dresser mirror, took the two ends of his tie in hand and worked on a Windsor knot.

  “Why’d he leave it to you?”

  “He knew it would mean a lot to me.”

  “What does it mean to you?”

  Cork finished the knot. He sat beside Anne, took the bearskin, and laid it across both their laps. The skin was large and spilled onto the floor.

  “It came from the biggest black bear I ever saw. Biggest Sam ever saw, too, and he’d seen plenty. We hunted it together when I was about your sister’s age.”

  “You shot it?”

  “Sam did.”

  “Poor bear,” Anne said.

  Cork nodded his agreement. “He was a magnificent animal.”

  “Why’d Sam shoot him?”

  “To save my life.”

  “The bear was after you?” Anne looked up at him, eager for the story.

  “In the beginning, we were after the bear.”

  “What happened?”

  “We followed him all day, into the Quetico-Superior Wilderness. That’s what the Boundary Waters used to be called. We were in a part of the forest not even Sam knew.” Cork rubbed the fur of the great skin and remembered. “We camped by a stream and talked late into the night. Next morning we were up early and tracking the bear again. By then Sam had decided not to kill it, but we both wanted to see it. Just to see such a creature.”

  “You knew it was big?”

  “Oh, yes. And smart. We didn’t know how smart. We tracked it to rocky ground, to an area full of boulders. After a while it became clear that we’d lost the trail. There wasn’t anything to do but turn back. We were both disappointed. Sam, especially, because he prided himself on his ability to track, but the bear had got the best of him.”

  “If you lost his trail, how’d you kill him?”

  “I’m coming to that part. In the late afternoon we came to a clearing, an old logged-over area full of sumac with a huge brush pile in the middle. We’d passed by before when we were tracking the bear, but this time Sam looked at the clearing and it was like he smelled something. He told me to wait and he disappeared into the sumac.”

  Anne’s eyes were huge, staring up into his face. “Then what?”

  “I waited like Sam said. I waited a long time. I began to get worried. Then I saw the sumac rustling, and I thought Sam was coming back. But it wasn’t Sam.”

  “It was the bear,” Anne jumped in.

  “A monster of a bear,” Cork said. “It had circled and come back around behind us. I don’t know if Sam scared it, or if it had planned to attack, but there it was, charging at me out of the sumac. I was so scared I didn’t even think to run. I just stood watching it come at me. When it was as close to me as you are right now, it stood up on its hind legs. Black bears are usually small, but this one towered over me. These claws you see here were ready to rip me apart. I was petrified. Absolutely frozen with fear.”

  Cork paused, fingering the long, sharp claws that were still the color of pearls.

  “What happened?” Anne demanded.

  “Sam shot him. I didn’t even hear the shots, I was so scared. At first nothing happened. The bear just wavered a little. Then it staggered back and fell. Sam came running out of the sumac. The bear tried again to get up, to defend itself, but it was hopeless. Sam looked sad. He spoke to the bear, said something in Ojibwe that I didn’t understand, then he finished it.”

  Anne was quiet a moment, petting the soft, black fur. “It’s sad about the bear,” she said. “But I’m glad he didn’t kill you.”

  “Me, too, honey.” Cork hugged her.

  “Lucky for you Sam was a pretty good shot.”

  “For you, too, or you wouldn’t even be here.” He laughed. “Will you help me roll it back up? I think it’s time to put it away again.”

  As they rolled up the skin, Anne said, “I miss Sam.”

  Cork said, “I miss him, too.”

  The memorial service for Judge Robert Parrant was held at Reedemer Presbyterian Church. Although the judge hadn’t been a man much loved, the church was crowded. The people who packed the pews were powerful—politically and financially. The state caucus was well represented. The Honorable Jim Galsworthy, whom Sandy would replace in the Senate, was there. The governor himself sent a telegram, which Sandy read, praising the life work of Robert Parrant. It was bullshit, Cork knew, but the sombre congregation nodded their collective agreement.

  There was a gathering at Sandy Parrant’s home afterward. Cork, who’d insisted on driving Jo to the church, insisted on driving her to Parrant’s as well.

  “Why are you going?” she asked. “You didn’t
even like Bob.”

  “Nobody liked the judge. Don’t pretend you did.”

  “He was a business associate,” she said. “I have to go to these things.”

  “Whither thou goest.” Cork smiled.

  Jo didn’t appear at all amused. “Father Tom talked to me today after church.”

  “Oh?” Cork tried to sound surprised.

  “Cork, I really don’t see any point in discussing our marriage anymore. With Father Tom or anybody else. I’m trying very hard to make a good end of it. So far it’s been amicable, all things considered.”

  “Amicable is a good beginning.”

  “This isn’t a beginning.”

  “The last couple of days things have felt nice. Almost normal again.”

  “Don’t set yourself up for a fall.” She looked at him with genuine concern. “Don’t fool yourself, Cork. Our marriage is over. It really and truly is.”

  Outside town, Cork turned onto the long, wooded drive that led to Sandy Parrant’s place. Parrant lived in a house like none Cork ever would. Surrounded by ten acres of hardwood forest, mostly maple, it stood on a quarter mile of the best shoreline Iron Lake had to offer. It was built on three levels, a little like books stacked slightly askew, and had so much window glass that, were it not for the wall of trees sequestering it, even Sandy Parrant’s pissing might not have been a private act. The long asphalt drive through the woods had been cleanly plowed, but a strong wind was blowing out of the northwest. Loose snow swirled across the road and danced up the banks of plowed snow. High clouds had closed overhead, and dark was coming on quickly in that late December afternoon. The house was already full of lights.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked.

  “I heard,” he replied. But he stubbornly held to the priest’s advice: Nothing is hopeless.

  The inside of Parrant’s house was done in cold white—walls, rug, furniture—as if it were winter inside as well as out. A Christmas tree tastefully decorated with a modest number of white bulbs and red lights stood near the fireplace. Two red stockings hung from the mantel. Sandy Parrant wasn’t married, and Cork wondered who the second stocking was for.

  There were hors d’oeuvres and punch and coffee on a long table, and two caterers keeping a close eye. When Cork’s father had died, and again when his mother passed away, neighbors had come with food that filled the house on Gooseberry Lane with the smell of things freshly baked. It hadn’t made the grief go away, but Cork remembered how it made him understand that his parents had been loved by a lot of folks besides him, and it made him feel good for his mother and father and for the lives they led. He didn’t feel that way at the catered gathering for Judge Robert Parrant. There was something calculated and distant about the carefully arranged platters of cold hors d’oeuvres. But he had to admit they were tasty.

  Jo left him as soon as they stepped inside. Cork watched her huddle first with Parrant and several state politicos, then with Parrant and a number of local businessmen. She wore a simple black dress and a single strand of pearls. Her blonde hair was short and finely shaped. She looked beautiful. She stood among the men, not just holding her own, but being asked for advice. She was successful and she wore that success well.

  As Cork watched, Sandy Parrant touched her shoulder in a familiar way, leaned to her, and whispered. It wasn’t anything, really, but it disturbed him. They looked like a couple, good together.

  “How about some fresh air?” Wally Schanno stepped up next to Cork, a cup of coffee in his huge right hand. He was dressed stiffly in a black suit and starched white shirt and dark blue tie. With his tall frame and hollow cheeks and stern gray eyes, he looked like a Bible-thumping minister bent on converting a world of sinners.

  Cork asked, “Will Arletta be okay?”

  “She’s with friends,” Schanno said.

  Outside on the deck of the house, Cork lit up a Lucky Strike. The deck was a two-level affair. The top level was quite large and had boxes along the railings that held flowers in the summer. The lower level was almost entirely taken up by a redwood hot tub. Cork had heard about that particular hot tub. For a bachelor like Parrant, what Cork had heard was understandable.

  The backyard terraced down to the lake, where there was a dock, empty now, and a large boathouse. Beyond that the flat white of the frozen Iron Lake stretched toward the evening sky. West beyond the bare trees of the Parrants’ woods, the lights of Aurora sparkled along the shoreline, ending at the tip of North Point. As Cork leaned against the railing of the deck, the wind moved through the bare limbs of the trees with a sound like rushing water. The deck was protected and Cork hardly felt the wind at all.

  “I don’t think about dying too much,” Schanno said, looking away from Cork toward the lake. “Not if I can help it. But, you know, all I’ve been thinking today is that when I die, I want someone to feel sad about it.” Schanno sipped his coffee. “Find out anything from Wanda Manydeeds?”

  “She knows more than she’s telling. They’re afraid of something, Darla and her. Maybe Joe John and Paul, too, and that’s why they’re hiding.”

  Schanno leaned against the railing and shook his head. “I still think it’s a domestic dispute, Cork. They’re Ojibwe. I don’t blame ’em one bit for not wanting the law to get involved.”

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Cork said. “Somebody broke into Sam’s Place.”

  Schanno abruptly straightened up. “Burglary?”

  “They tore the place up, but nothing seemed to have been taken. Another thing, I think somebody’s been in the house on Gooseberry Lane, too.”

  “Maybe I should send a man over to dust for prints.”

  “I don’t think dusting would turn up anything useful. And I don’t want to scare my family.”

  “What were they after, Cork?”

  “If I knew that, I might know who they are.”

  Schanno sipped his coffee. Cork smoked his cigarette. The wind shifted a little and began to move snow across the deck. Cork was feeling chilled.

  “Maybe there’s something I ought to tell you,” Schanno said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I had a visit from the ATF recently. Couple of agents stopped by my office. They’re interested in the Minnesota Civilian Brigade.”

  “I covered the same territory with the FBI when I was sheriff. They didn’t seem too concerned.”

  “The ATF is. Seems that somebody’s been pumping money into the group. The brigade’s better organized than it was before. The ATF’s afraid they may be arming themselves pretty heavily.”

  “Where’s the money coming from?”

  “That’s what the agents wanted to know.” Schanno looked at Cork with a curious expression. “You know, Cork, strange things have been going on around here, starting with the judge’s death. You were alone in the judge’s house a long time before me and my men got there.”

  “I was there awhile. Why?”

  “I’m just wondering if maybe somebody thinks you took something. I’m wondering if they think you’ve got something that belonged to the judge.”

  “Are you wondering if I took something, Wally?”

  “I didn’t say that. But maybe somebody—maybe the brigade, for example—thinks you did. And if what they think you took has anything to do with the judge being dead—” Schanno turned his hard gray eyes on Cork.

  The door onto the deck opened, and Arletta Schanno stepped out.

  “How do you do,” she said politely to Cork, as if he were a stranger.

  “Arletta.” Cork smiled back.

  “Wally, dear, I think we should go home soon. The children.”

  “The children are all right,” Schanno said without a hint of annoyance. “They’re not home.”

  Arletta gave him a distressed look. “Maybe I should call.”

  “No.” Schanno put his arm around her and drew her close to keep her warm. “No, it’s time we left anyway.” He glanced at Cork. “I’m thinking this is a thing you ne
ed to stay way clear of. For your family’s sake, you understand? But if you hear anything about Joe John or the boy, you let me know.”

  Cork nodded. “You look lovely, Arletta. ’Night.”

  He stayed on the deck awhile, finishing his cigarette. He was just about to head back in when Jo came out.

  “Cork, Rose is on the telephone for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. She wants to talk to you.”

  He took the call in the kitchen, where the caterers were working on trays of food.

  “What is it, Rose?”

  She spoke in a hush. “Harlan Lytton called. He wants you to call him as soon as you can.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. But he sounded scary, Cork. And he didn’t sound sober.”

  “Thanks, Rose. Is everything okay there? The kids?”

  “Fine. Everything here’s fine. I’ve made sure the doors are locked.”

  “Good. I’ll call Harlan. And, Rose?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  Lytton answered right away, as if he’d been watching the phone and waiting to pounce.

  “O’Connor. It’s about time. Listen, I got something you want to see.”

  Lytton had a raspy voice. Drunk, it was like splinters.

  “What is it?” Cork asked.

  “Not over the phone. Get your ass out here.”

  “It’s late, Harlan. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “O’Connor, you fuck, get over here. What I got to show you, you’ll want to see.”

  “All right, Harlan. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Jo and Sandy Parrant were standing together in the living room talking quietly.

  “I’ve got to go,” Cork told her.

  “Everything’s okay at home?” Jo asked.

  “Everything’s fine. I’m going out to see Harlan Lytton.”

  “Lytton?” Parrant said. “Why on earth do you want to see him?”

  “He says he’s got something to show me. I can take you home first, Jo.”

  “I’m not ready yet,” she said.

  “I’ll see she gets home,” Parrant assured Cork.