Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork shook his hand. “Nice memorial for your father.”

  “He was a good man,” Parrant said. “He deserved it.”

  Sure, Cork thought. And monkeys fly out my butt.

  21

  THE WIND HAD TURNED FIERCE, a bitter southern wind. It made the trees sway and the loose snow rise up, so that occasionally the road was lost in brief ground blizzards. On his way to Lytton’s, Cork heard the forecast. More snow. Plunging temperatures.

  He parked on the road. Lytton hadn’t yet plowed himself out, and the lane leading to his cabin was heavily drifted over. Cork had stopped by the house on Gooseberry Lane to change his clothes and to strap on his belt and holster and his .38. He doublechecked the cylinder, snapped it back in place, and got out of the Bronco. What Lytton had in mind, he couldn’t even guess at, but things were strange in Aurora these days, and he didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

  Even in the shelter of the woods, the branches of the trees whipped about wildly. The trunks of the birch and tamarack moaned as they twisted and strained. The wind slapped his face. Little crystals of ice hit him like needles and made his eyes water. The sound of the wind through the trees swallowed every other noise. In the lane, Cork felt vulnerable. But the woods were full of bogs, and he didn’t want to leave the certainty of the solid ground. He unbuttoned his coat and reached in to be sure he could get to his revolver quickly. He watched the woods carefully as he crept toward Lytton’s cabin.

  Three-quarters of the way in, the clear crack of a high powered rifle from the direction of Lytton’s place made Cork hit the snow and roll. He scrambled off the open lane and hunkered down under the low branches of a small tamarack and waited.

  He breathed hard and thought fast. Would Lytton really try to kill him because of the dog? Was that what this was about? Lytton was a mean son of a bitch and torn up over the death of the Ripper, but was he so stupid—or so confused by grief—that he’d lead a man into an ambush he’d advertised so broadly? Maybe it was exactly what a man would do when he lost what he most loved.

  Cork risked a peek around the base of the tree. The ground all around was a tangle of brush and vine clumps. Nothing moved.

  A minute had passed. Cork replayed the sound of the shot in his head. It had come from the direction of Lytton’s cabin. That didn’t mean that Lytton had fired it, or that Cork was the target. He’d been an easy mark on the road, and Lytton was a good shot.

  He crouched and stumbled forward to the next tree. He made for the next tree, leaping brush and vines in an open run. Only moments before, he’d been freezing, but as he knelt behind a slender birch and strained to listen, sweat trickled down his temples. He heard nothing but the incessant rush of the wind and the creak and moan of the living woods. Carefully he stepped back out onto the lane and crept toward the cabin.

  The lights were on, the cabin door ajar. Cork could see that the front window had been shattered. Wind tore at the curtain inside. He crouched behind the cover of a fallen tree as someone stepped into the doorway. Against the light inside, only the dark outline of the figure and a long rifle barrel were clear. The figure slumped a moment against the doorjamb as if exhausted or maybe wounded, then gathered itself and started around the cabin toward the woods in back.

  Cork readied his revolver and hollered into the wind. “Stop! Police!”

  The figure turned, scanned the woods, and wildly fired. The tree trunk high above Cork splintered and flakes of bark showered down. The figure turned and ran for the deep woods. Cork sighted, but held off pulling the trigger.

  “Stop, goddamn it!”

  The warning shot Cork fired into the air didn’t make any difference. In a moment the figure was lost in the darkness and the far woods. Cork dashed to the open door of the cabin. Lytton lay on the floor, facedown. His back was a bleeding mess. Cork knelt beside him and found a weak pulse in Lytton’s neck. He grabbed the phone that hung on the wall and called the sheriff’s office.

  Lytton’s eyes were open when Cork came back to him. A pool of blood had oozed from beneath him and was slowly spreading across the bare cabin floor. Cork knelt beside him and leaned close to his ear.

  “Harlan, this is Cork O’Connor. Hang on. An ambulance is on the way. Harlan, can you hear me?”

  Lytton’s eye’s were yellow-brown, the color of new pine wood. He had a mole on his left cheek that somehow Cork had never noticed before. His ear was small with a long lobe. He smelled raw, smelled of the thick unpleasant odor of blood. Cork felt again at Lytton’s neck. This time he found no pulse. He considered pumping Lytton’s chest, trying to push his heart back into a rhythm. But the man had a hole in him big as a fist, and Cork was pretty certain anything he tried would be useless.

  In the stillness he shared with the dead man, Cork heard the sound of a snowmobile far out in the woods. As he listened, the snowmobile grew distant and then could be heard no more.

  He sat beside Lytton, enormously tired. He was no stranger to brutal death. Both as sheriff and as a cop on Chicago’s south side, he’d seen his share of dying. Murder, accident, overdose—it happened in many ways, but the end was the same. Something sad and confusing left behind. Only the shape of life, only the empty outline.

  He stood up. There was nothing more he could do. The ooze of Lytton’s blood had stained his pant leg. The sole of his right boot put a bloody print on the floor. Contaminating the scene. But what was done was done. He wondered what it was Lytton had wanted to show him, wondered if it had anything to do with the man’s death. From where he stood, he looked the cabin over. It was small, but efficient. Bunk, table, stove, refrigerator, sink, all in the one room. Lytton wasn’t a good housekeeper. A clutter of dirty dishes sat in the sink. The stove was like an erupted volcano with streams of old cooking hardened on the top and sides. Clothes lay wadded on and around the bunk where they’d been carelessly tossed. However, the cabin walls were different. They were carefully decorated with framed photographs, landscapes of the North Woods. The rapids of a small stream, a deer bent to its feeding in an empty meadow, a pond at sunset. Cork was surprised. In the home of Harlan Lytton, he’d expected to see something harsher hanging, something on the order of stuffed animals or mounted heads.

  The north end of the cabin had been walled off with plywood into a small second room. Cork took his handkerchief and wiped the blood from his boot, then crossed to the door and opened it. Inside, he pulled a cord to turn on an overhead bulb. It was a darkroom. There was a sink and trays for developing, an enlarger, shelves full of chemical containers and camera equipment. The equipment was sophisticated. Lots of complicated lenses. A few prints hung from a line. Cork took a close look. Winter photos—black and white—of delicate ice formations on the rocks of a small stream. They were surprisingly good. He found other prints sitting on a counter, some in black and white, others in color. They were lovely, and that surprised the hell out of him. He would never have thought it of Harlan Lytton. He opened the drawers under the cabinet. Miscellaneous supplies. A drawer with strips of negatives. Cork lifted a couple of the strips. Wildlife shots. He opened the largest of the drawers, but it was completely empty.

  Back in the other room, he wandered the cabin a bit, looking over everything for anything. He checked the small bathroom. There, as everywhere else, Harlan was careless in his cleaning. Cork could hear sirens down on the road approaching Lytton’s lane. When he turned back and took a good look at the dead man from another angle, he saw the corner of a manila folder sticking out from under the body. He knelt beside Lytton, trying to avoid the blood. There was something written on the raised corner of the file folder.

  The sirens had gone silent, which probably meant they’d reached the lane and were trying to figure how to get to the cabin through the deep snow. He lifted Lytton’s body carefully and took the folder off the floor. It was soaked in blood. The scrawl of the handwriting was quite clear, however. In black pen on the label was written Jo O’Connor.

  Cork’s hands cradled th
e bloody folder. He opened it. Inside were several black-and-white photographs. They appeared to have been taken at night with some type of night vision lens. In the first photograph Cork clearly recognized the home of Sandy Parrant. It was a view from the lake and showed the dock and boathouse, the long backyard, the house on three levels, the decks. There were two white forms near the hot tub.

  Cork could hear the bump and scrape of a plow clearing the lane for the sheriff’s cars.

  The second photograph was an enlargement of the first with the details enhanced. The enlargement centered on the hot tub. The white forms were two people, clearly naked.

  The plow stopped. Cork could hear car doors slamming shut outside the cabin and men shouting to one another.

  In the third photograph, a further enlargement with the details grainy but distinct, Cork could see that the two people were making love. The woman was bent slightly forward, leaning on the hot tub for support. The man held her hips, his pelvis shoved against her buttocks, entering her from behind.

  Sandy Parrant’s grainy face was lifted toward heaven. Jo’s eyes were closed, but her mouth was open in what looked to be a little moan of ecstasy.

  Cork closed the folder and slid it under his coat a moment before Wally Schanno and his men came through the door.

  22

  “AND YOU DON’T HAVE ANY IDEA what it was he wanted to show you,” Schanno said, repeating what Cork had already told him.

  “If I knew that, Wally, I wouldn’t have come all the way out here. He died without saying a word.”

  Schanno looked down at the dead man, then at Cork. “If the Ripper was alive, the Ripper would’ve warned him.”

  “No,” Cork said. “The Ripper would’ve torn the killer apart.”

  “Lytton’s bad luck,” Schanno said.

  “Yeah,” Cork agreed. “Lytton’s luck.”

  “I’m going to have to take your firearm,” Schanno said.

  “I understand.”

  “And those clothes. They’ve got blood all over them.” Schanno glanced around and his eyes settled on a young rookie, Jack Wozniak. “Jack, I want you to follow Cork home. Get the clothes he’s wearing and bring them back to the office.” He eyed Cork again, shook his head in a frustrated way, and said, “I don’t want you doing anything else on your own, okay?”

  “If I’d known it was going to turn out this way, I’d have invited you.” Cork started toward the open door.

  “I’ll want to talk to you some more tomorrow,” Schanno called after him. “You’ll be home?”

  Home? Cork thought about it. No, he wouldn’t be home. He wouldn’t be home ever again. “I’ll be around,” he said.

  It was almost midnight when he reached the house on Gooseberry Lane. The back door was locked and all was quiet inside. Cork told Wozniak to wait in the kitchen and asked if he wanted some coffee and cookies. Wozniak said no thanks to the coffee, but he did accept one of Rose’s chocolate chip cookies. Cork went upstairs to change. He cleared the bottom drawer of his dresser and put the folder there. The manila was stiff and black with dried blood. He took off his clothes and hung them carefully on hangers. After putting on a robe, he walked the bloody clothing downstairs.

  “I’m sorry about this, Cork,” the deputy said, looking genuinely guilty about the whole thing.

  “Standard procedure. Let it go. Good night, Jack.”

  Cork checked Jo’s room. She wasn’t there. He took a shower, put on clean boxer shorts and a clean T-shirt, and went to bed. The wind shook the windows and made the house creak and groan. In a few minutes, he heard the sound of Stevie’s footie pajamas shuffling down the hallway. It was only a soft shooshing, but it was a sound that could bring Cork up in an instant even from the deepest sleep. In a minute, Stevie was at his bedside.

  “What’s up, buddy?” Cork asked.

  Stevie clutched his stuffed doll named Peter and stared at his father in the dark. The windowpane shuddered. Stevie glanced toward it and said a single word, whispered in terror. “Monthterth.”

  “Monsters.” Cork nodded gravely. He pushed himself up. “Come on. Let’s go have a look.”

  Stevie pointed to the closet and Cork searched there. Stevie indicated the ultimate blackness beneath his bed and Cork knelt and demanded all monsters come out now. Nothing came, but Stevie grasped his father as if he’d seen a ghost and pointed to the window.

  “Outthide,” he said.

  Together they pressed their noses to the frigid glass. Around the house swirled a white rush—loose snow and wind—and the great elm in the backyard waved its branches as if dreadfully alive. What Cork saw was the awesome power of nature, but for Stevie it was simply the confirmation of his nightmares.

  “Only the wind, Steve,” Cork explained gently. “It’s noisy but it’s only wind.”

  “Monthterth,” Stevie insisted with a defiant certainty of some terror to come.

  Cork guided him back to bed. “Would you like me to lie down with you awhile?”

  In that instant, Stevie’s fear vanished. Cork knew it wasn’t manipulation, only a son’s naive trust in his father’s stature. What were monsters, after all, to a man who could touch the ceiling?

  Cork lay down beside him. Stevie made himself into a little ball, his breath breaking warm and sweet against Cork’s face. In only a minute he was breathing steadily again, sleeping.

  It was time for Cork to return to the bed in the guest room. But he lingered beside this son who trusted him, lay awake knowing there were monsters in the wind outside, that his son’s fear was not unjustified, and that Stevie would have to face them alone someday. There were people out there so cruel they would wound him for the pleasure of it, dreadful circumstances no man in his worst imaginings could conjure, disappointments so overwhelming they would crush his dreams like eggshells. For a child like Stevie, a child of special graces, there would be such pain that Cork nearly wept in anticipation of it. Against those monsters, a father was powerless. But against the simple terrors of the night, he would do his best.

  He heard Jo come in the front door and a moment later the sound of her feet on the stairs. He slid from Stevie’s bed and stepped into the hallway. Jo came up the stairs, her hands behind her neck, undoing her pearls. She looked tired.

  “Still awake?” she asked. “I thought everybody would be asleep.”

  “Sandy bring you home?”

  “Yes.”

  She got the pearls off and tried to move by him toward her bedroom, but Cork blocked her way.

  “You stayed a long time,” he said.

  “We were working on business.”

  “You’ve been working on business a lot with Sandy.”

  “I’m his attorney, Cork.”

  “Is that all you are?”

  Jo stepped back. “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought it was me,” Cork said. He shook his head stupidly. “All along I thought it was my fault. Christ, how blind can a man be?”

  Jo watched him closely but said nothing.

  “Do you love him?”

  Jo didn’t answer.

  “Are you planning on marrying him as soon as I’m out of the picture?” His voice rose as if Jo’s silence was only because she couldn’t hear him. “Are you?”

  In Anne’s room, the bed creaked. “Not here,” Jo said.

  Cork turned and walked angrily to the guest room. Jo followed and closed the door.

  “Well?” Cork said.

  Jo stayed by the door, her hands behind her back, gripping the knob.

  “You lied to me,” Cork accused.

  “No. I just didn’t tell you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I didn’t want you to know. Sandy’s in a vulnerable position. He’s a very public figure. And I’m still technically a married woman.”

  “But that’s not your fault, is it? Lord knows, you’ve done everything you can to hurry this along.”

  “Cork—”

  “How long?”


  “What do you mean?”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  She sighed, closed her eyes. “A while.”

  “A long while,” Cork corrected her.

  “Cork, I didn’t like not telling you. But how could I? It would’ve been all over Aurora, and Sandy’s standing could have been terribly damaged.”

  “ ‘Sandy’s standing’? ” Cork looked at her, his eyes wide with a kind of horror. “Who are you, Jo? I don’t even know you anymore.”

  “I didn’t do it to hurt you. It just happened, Cork.”

  Everything in him felt drawn taut, ready to snap. He could feel his right temple twitching as if there were something under his skin trying to break out.

  “When?” he asked. “When did it just happen? After I was out of your bed? Out of the house? When?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “After you were out of the house.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  Cork went to the dresser and pulled out the folder stained with Lytton’s blood. He held it out to Jo.

  She drew back in revulsion. “What’s that?”

  “Take it. Open it.” He thrust it at her.

  She put the pearls on his bed, gingerly took the folder in her hands, and carefully opened it. She studied the photographs. Cork watched her face go pale as her pearls.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Where did these come from?”

  “Does it matter? Look at the lower corner of each of them. There’s a time-date stamp. Those pictures were taken the summer after Sam Winter Moon died. I wasn’t out then, Jo. Or I guess I was and just didn’t know it, huh?”

  She looked ill, drained of all her color. “What difference does it make now, Cork?”

  He turned away and went to the window. He watched the elm tree in the yard writhe in the wind like a creature in pain.

  “What did I do to deserve this, Jo?”

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Cork,” she said. Her voice was flat and cold and hard, like frozen ground. “Everything doesn’t happen because of you. Some things just happen.”