Iron Lake

by William Kent Krueger

  “I’m serious.”

  “Okay. Let’s sit down.” He nodded toward the two chairs at the small kitchen table. He saw that Jenny had made a fruit bowl as a centerpiece. Cork had always kept the salt and pepper shakers there. He liked the colorful touch of the fruit. “I’ll level with you,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I’m concerned about Stevie and Anne. Things are rough enough for them with me gone. They look to you for a lot.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I know they’re not your responsibility. But I need your help, Jenny. I need you to stay with your mom, to work to keep things together as much as you can. It’s probably not a fair thing to ask, but I’m asking.”

  Her eyes were no longer afraid, but they seemed full of hurt. And their hurt pained him deeply.

  “Things won’t ever be like they used to, will they?” Jenny searched his face for the truth.

  “No.” He looked at his hands. Big hands. How useless a man’s hands were, he thought, when it came to fixing the important things.

  “ ‘Things fall apart,’ ” she said in a small voice. “ ‘The center will not hold.’ ”

  He gave her a questioning look.

  “Yeats,” she explained. “W.B.”

  “ ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,’ ” he replied. “Dumpty, H.”

  Although a tear crawled down one cheek like a small snail, she smiled. “By the way,” she said, taking care of the tear with a swipe of her finger, “there’s a message on your answering machine.”

  “You listened?”

  She gave him an innocent little shrug.

  “What did it say?”

  “You can have your gun back.”

  He dropped Jenny off at home, then stopped by the sheriff’s office to retrieve his revolver. While he was there, he used the pay phone to call the casino.

  “I’d like to speak with Russell Blackwater, please. Tell him it’s Corcoran O’Connor.” He waited a full minute before Blackwater came on the line.

  “What do you want, O’Connor?” Blackwater’s tone wasn’t civil at all.

  “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Something of concern to us both.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The Windigo,” Cork said.

  Russell Blackwater’s office was decorated with Native American art. On the walls were hung a series of idealized paintings by William Westsky, a Shinnob out of Canada, showing pristine forests and lakes with the faint faces of The People woven into the clouds, watching the land below like good overseers. On Blackwater’s desk stood a dark wood sculpture depicting a member of the Grand Medicine Society lifting the pipe in the Pipe Dance of Peace. The desk was big, dark red wood. The surface wore a lustrous shine and the Midewiwin was reflected perfectly below himself, as if offering the pipe to the underworld. Running the length of the back wall of the office was a tinted window overlooking the gambling floor. Blackwater was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the action. He wore an expensive gray suit, white shirt, blue tie.

  “Busy night,” Cork observed.

  “A good night,” Blackwater said.

  “For those who win.”

  “The People win,” Blackwater said, turning fully to Cork. “What do you want, O’Connor?”

  Cork sat down in a big, brown leather chair. He settled back and crossed his legs. “Harlan Lytton was killed last night.”

  “I know. Can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “Did you also know that Henry Meloux heard the Windigo call Lytton’s name?”

  Blackwater shrugged as if it made no difference one way or the other. “Meloux’s an old man. The things old men hear and see can’t always be trusted.”

  “Henry was here the night the judge was killed.”

  “So?”

  “He came to warn you. He heard the Windigo call your name, too.”

  Blackwater looked unconcerned. “I’m a modern Shinnob. Tell me the legislature is monkeying with the gambling laws and I’ll be nervous. But I’m not afraid of an old myth.”

  Cork stared pointedly at Blackwater, then shook his head in a disappointed way. “I never thought I’d see you looking so much like a businessman, Russell. I remember you wearing deerskin during the Trail of Tears march on Washington.”

  “I’m still marching,” Blackwater insisted. “The clothes don’t make any difference.”

  “I was at Sandy Parrant’s house the other day. After the judge’s memorial service. Didn’t see you there.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “But I understand Sandy Parrant was at the funeral of your father. What do you make of that? You work with these people. You’re making these people rich. You show them respect, but do they reciprocate? As I understand it, Sandy Parrant went out of his way to make sure a lot of people would feel comfortable being at his father’s memorial service. But he didn’t extend the courtesy to you, did he?”

  “Like an invitation?” Blackwater said with sarcasm.

  “Whatever.”

  “What makes you think I’d want to go?”

  “I don’t know,” Cork said. He fingered the sculpture of the Midewiwin on Blackwater’s desk, ran his hand casually down the sleek, polished wood. “An invitation at least would be nice. The white man and the red man in enterprise together. You know, hunting the new buffalo like brothers.”

  Although Russell Blackwater held very still, Cork saw the tendons in his neck go taut. His eyes changed, too, in the way they regarded Cork, watching him closely. His voice was hard, the words tense and spoken carefully.

  “Before this casino was built, unemployment on the reservation was seventy percent. Nearly a quarter of our families were below poverty level. Two years ago one Anishinaabe student graduated from Aurora High School. Ten others dropped out. This year four will graduate and no one’s dropped out. We have a free health clinic on the drawing board that will be staffed by The People. We’ll have a real school soon. We’ve started looking at a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation program to be run by us, not by the Public Health Service.” He sat up rigidly with his fingers digging into the padded arms of his chair. “That’s what I wanted from this enterprise, not an invitation to white men’s homes.”

  Cork nodded and held up his hands in surrender. “Okay by me. Just making a comment. By the way, why don’t you unbutton your coat? Looks a little uncomfortable to me.”

  “My coat’s fine.”

  “You always carry a piece these days?”

  Blackwater tugged at his suit coat, straightening the way it fell over his chest and the shoulder holster he was wearing. “When I’m working. It’s licensed.”

  “Not thinking of shooting an old myth, are you?” Cork got up and headed for the door. “By the way, the sheriff’s probably going to want to know where you were when Lytton was shot.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I intend to tell him to ask. ’Night, Russell.”

  26

  THE JUDGE’S ESTATE occupied the whole tip of North Point. The property was shaped roughly like a fingernail, and along the shoreline grew a wall of tall pines. Cork guided the Bronco off the ice through a gap between the boathouse and the trees and parked where the vehicle couldn’t be seen. He got out and waded up the steep slope of the grounds toward the house. In the stillness he could hear the steady whine of a snowmobile cutting across the ice, heading back toward Aurora from one of the many ice huts on the lake. He looked back, but the darkness and the gentle snowfall kept him from seeing anything.

  The patio doors were locked, but Cork was surprised to discover that a small pane in the mullioned window of the kitchen door had been broken and the door was unlocked. Carefully he pushed it open. From inside came a startling clatter. He stepped hurriedly into the kitchen and found that he’d knocked over a brown paper bag full of empty aluminum cans that appeared to have been saved for recycling.

  The kitchen smelled of garbage so
uring somewhere out of sight. In the living room, the curtains were open, letting in a pale white light from the snow outside. The house was absolutely still and very cool.

  He had only a vague idea of what he was looking for. The judge hadn’t been a tremendously charismatic or beloved man, but he had nonetheless been a powerful political figure in the Iron Range. Power had many sources besides charisma. Money was one. Although Robert Parrant had been a wealthy man, Cork figured it would have taken a hell of a lot more than even the judge had to maintain his hold on a population as independent as that of the Iron Range. Power also came from leverage. The bloody folder with the judge’s doodling all over the cover, the folder that held such graphic evidence of Jo’s infidelity, that was one kind of leverage, and was certainly in keeping with the character of the judge. It was entirely possible that the judge’s death had something to do with that kind of leverage.

  Cork crept down the short hallway to the study. The curtains were closed and the room quite dark. He made his way to the desk and fumbled to turn on the lamp. When the light came on, he heard a discreet cough behind him. He turned quickly and found himself staring across the room at Wally Schanno, who stood in front of a wall lined with bookshelves.

  “Evening, Cork,” Schanno said. In one hand he held a flashlight. In the other was a gun pointed directly at Cork. Stacks of books pulled from the shelves lay on the floor at Schanno’s feet.

  “Library closed?” Cork asked.

  Schanno glanced down at the books, but didn’t smile.

  Cork jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “Window’s broken. Wasn’t me.”

  “I know,” Schanno said.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “It’s been a tough week. Not much surprises me now.”

  “What are you doing here, Wally?”

  “Police quarantine. I’m allowed here. The real question is what are you doing here?”

  Cork glanced around the room. “Lights off. Bookshelves ransacked. And you even have a thermos of coffee. What’s going on, Wally?”

  Schanno narrowed his eyes severely. “I look at things on the surface and what I see is you, Cork. The judge is dead and there you are. Lytton’s killed and there you are again. On the surface, looks like I ought to suspect you like hell.”

  “Do you really think I killed those men?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think. A man can always be wrong in his thinking. I try to look at the facts.” He holstered his gun. “I sent Ed out this afternoon to check on your story about Henry Meloux and that—what did you call it?”

  “Windigo.”

  “Yeah, that. Old Meloux told Ed he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about.”

  Cork relaxed against the judge’s big desk. “That doesn’t surprise me. Ed’s white.”

  “The old man lied?”

  “Sure. If you were crazy enough to indict me, he’d tell the truth. In the meantime, there’s no reason. He knows you’d just look at him like he was goofy.”

  “Or like maybe he had something to do with killing Lytton,” Schanno suggested.

  “I’d consider a lot of other people before I’d consider him,” Cork replied.

  Schanno took a deep breath, then reached down toward the floor for his steel thermos and poured himself some hot coffee. “You told me a lot of stories without much of anything to back them up. The break-in at your place. The condition of the judge’s body. Somebody shooting at you out at Lytton’s.”

  “They weren’t stories, Wally.”

  Schanno took a sip of his coffee, drawing his throat tight against the heat. “You’re a hard man to disbelieve.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “I came here the night after the judge died to look things over for myself, see if I could find anything we missed. I surprised somebody coming in the side door. Don’t know who. They got away. I’ve been here a lot since then, checking to make sure things stay secure, and still looking for anything that might support your claim about the judge’s body being moved.”

  Cork looked down at the books pulled from the shelves. “Find anything there?”

  Schanno set his coffee on an empty shelf and walked to the big desk. The mess of the judge’s death hadn’t been cleaned away. The Minnesota map on the wall was still splattered with blood and bits of what once been a complex—and devious—brain. Traces of blood streaked the wall toward a pooling on the floor. It had all gone brown now, clotted over. Schanno stepped carefully. He slid open and then shut drawer after drawer in frustration.

  “I’m just about down to checking the cobwebs in the corners. Nothing, Cork. Not a goll darn thing anywhere. If someone moved the judge, they did a pretty good job of covering up after themselves and covering up the reason why.” He arched his back, stretching in a tired way. “I got my hands so full at the moment, I can’t sleep at all. I’ve posted Cy Borkmann over to Harlan Lytton’s cabin nights to make sure nothing’s disturbed there. He’s pissed about that. Arletta’s staying with her sister. She’s got it in her head I’ve deserted her and taken the kids somewhere. Hell Hanover’s on my ass. Says I’m just another example of incompetent, interfering law enforcement. It strikes me that man just doesn’t like cops. Cork, I know there’s something going on in Aurora. I just can’t get a handle on what it is.” Wally Schanno looked straight at him with his honest gray eyes that were sunk deep with exhaustion. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

  Cork heard the sound of a snowmobile again, closer this time, cutting along the ice around North Point. It sounded small and distant, like a pesky mosquito. He thought about the folder with Jo’s name on it, the one that had first belonged to the judge, and didn’t know how to tell a man—Schanno or anybody else—what was in it. He couldn’t even be sure there was any significance in the folder having been in the judge’s hands at one time. Finally, he said, “Pretty much the same reason you are, Wally. To see about the judge’s body being moved.”

  “You’re sure that’s it?”

  “As sure as I am of anything.”

  Schanno grunted unhappily. “You’d best leave this to me. I’m the one on the payroll.”

  Cork left the study and headed down the hallway with Schanno following. At the staircase, Schanno halted and said, “Better go out the front. Sounds like you already made a mess of the kitchen back there. Close the door on your way out. Me, I’ve got to take a good long piss.”

  Cork took in the empty house, where the feel of death was as real as any of the furnishings. “Be careful, Wally,” he cautioned.

  “Nothing to it. I been pissing all my life.” Schanno managed a grin.

  Cork stepped out the front door. The snow was falling harder, and he could barely see beyond the hedges that edged the front of the estate. Slowly he made his way around the house down the slope of the grounds to the Bronco, but he didn’t get in right away. The air was still, the snow tumbling straight down in huge beautiful flakes. He lit a cigarette and turned his face upward so that the snow settled cold on his forehead and cheeks and melted there.

  He smoked and thought about truth.

  He’d learned early not to invest a lot of emotion in thinking about the truth in a crime. As a cop, he’d gathered evidence that had been used to guess at the truth, but in the end responsibility for assembling the pieces and nailing truth to the wall was in the hands of others—lawyers, judges, and juries. Truth became a democratic process, the will of twelve. He’d been burned when he cared too deeply. As a result, he’d trained himself to remain a little distant in his emotional involvement on a case. In the end, the outcome was out of his hands, and to allow himself to believe too strongly in the absoluteness of a thing he couldn’t control was useless. He felt different now. Desperate in a way. This time he had to hold the truth in his own hands like a beating heart.

  In the stillness, two gunshots came from the house, two clear pops like kernels of corn. Cork threw down his cigarette, reached int
o the glove box of his Bronco, and drew out the revolver he’d picked up earlier at the sheriff’s office. He started around the boathouse and up the backyard at a dead run, stumbling in the deep snow. When he reached the door to the kitchen, he stopped. It was wide open. He hesitated before plunging into the dark of the house and he listened.

  Deep inside, someone swore painfully.

  “Wally?” he called.

  “Damn it, Cork!” Schanno hollered.

  Cork ran in, knocking cans across the kitchen floor.

  Schanno sat at the bottom of the stairs holding his right thigh with both hands. Cork could see the dark blood welling up, spilling between Schanno’s fingers.

  “Bastard sneaked up,” Schanno said through clenched teeth.

  “I’ll call you in.” Cork turned quickly to the phone on the stand beside the banister.

  “No! Go after him! I’ll call myself in. Go on before he’s away clean.”

  Cork hesitated a moment.

  “Go on, damn you, I’m not dying!”

  Cork dashed back out the kitchen door. Tracks in the snow led toward the row of pine trees that lined the northern shore of the estate. Before he could follow, the rough cough of a snowmobile engine trying to turn over came from beyond the trees. Cork ran for the Bronco. As he opened the door, he heard the engine of the snowmobile leap into a steady whine. He didn’t have much time. If the snowmobile headed north across the lake toward national forest land, he’d probably lose it. It would have too great a headstart and once it hit the trails in the woods, he wouldn’t be able to follow anyway.

  But he was lucky. Just as he turned the key in the Bronco, the dark shape of the little machine shot past on the ice behind the boathouse, heading toward Aurora.

  The snowmobile was running with its headlights on, but Cork drove the Bronco dark. The snowmobile headed straight for town with Cork less than fifty yards behind and gaining. If his luck held, he could close the gap completely before the driver of the snowmobile was even aware he was being followed.