Iron Lake (21 page)

“A
ND 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.”

She moved behind him toward the bed. He heard the soft rustle of her dress. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see her at all.

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said. “Don’t get your hopes up. Didn’t I say that? But you wouldn’t listen. You didn’t want to hear. It’s over between us, Cork.”

“And Sandy Parrant is the reason.”

There was a long stillness, then Jo said, “I suppose.”

“Get out.”

“Cork—”

“Just get out.”

He heard the door open, heard her leave, heard the sound down the hallway of her own door closing. He turned and saw that she’d put the folder on the bed and taken her pearls.

For a long time he stood at the window listening to the howl of the wind outside. If it was true, as Henry Meloux said, that he’d heard the Windigo call his name, he understood why now. Because it felt exactly as if his heart had just been torn out of him and devoured.

J
O LAY AWAKE IN THE BLACK OF FOUR A.M.
remembering a moment before it all fell apart. She and Cork out at Russell Blackwater’s trailer in the hours before the shootings at Burke’s Landing. She recalled them holding one another and feeling a terrible numbness where caring should have been. She’d blamed it on the circumstances, the weight of what each of them carried that night, the responsibilities. But it wasn’t that. They were holding something dying, maybe already dead, but they were too scared to admit it.

She wondered why the tragedy at Burke’s Landing hadn’t brought them together. Adversity was supposed to do that, wasn’t it? Instead, everything got worse. Cork wasn’t just distant. Something in him seemed to have died along with the other deaths that drizzly morning. Nothing mattered. Not his job, his family, her. He called out in the night sometimes, sat bolt upright and grabbed at the air. What was it he was reaching for? The past? Was he trying to pull the dead men back? Trying to pull them all back?

She never knew. He wouldn’t talk about it.

Near dawn she heard Cork moving about. She put on her robe, went downstairs to the living room, and sat tensely on the sofa to wait for him. When he came down, she stood up, and clutched the robe around her throat as if she were freezing.

“Cork?” she said.

The living room was dark. He seemed startled by her presence.

“What?” he grumbled.

“Could we talk?”

“I’m on my way out.”

“We need to talk.”

“What’s there to talk about? You made everything clear.”

“I don’t want us to finish things all bitter and angry.”

“What am I supposed to do? Shake your hand and thank you kindly for leaving me for another man?”

“Could we just talk for a while?”

“You said yesterday you didn’t want to talk about our marriage anymore. So what’s changed?”

“You’re hurt. I didn’t want that.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“I know you might not believe this, but I care about you.”

Cork was a solid darkness within the dark of the living room. Jo could see that he held the gym bag he’d used to bring his clothing from Sam’s Place. And he held his rolled-up bearskin.

“Could we talk in my office? Please?”

Cork didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave. Jo took that as a good sign and led the way. In her office, she closed the door behind them, then switched on the lamp on her desk. They both blinked a moment at the light.

“You look tired,” she said

“I didn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

“You know what I did, Jo? I lay awake putting it all together, all the signs, signals. I could see it now, in neon. But, you know, what I couldn’t put together was where it began.”

“I don’t think you need to know the details. I don’t think that would do anybody any good.”

“You wanted to talk. This is what I want to talk about.”

Jo leaned against the oak desk thankful for the support of the solid wood. “It was after the shooting at Burke’s Landing. When Sandy and I were down in St. Paul together working to negotiate a settlement before any more blood was spilled. Things were intense. It just happened.”

“Just happened.” Cork shook his head.

“We were drifting already, Cork, don’t deny it. There were days we’d come home and not say more than a dozen words to one another, and then it was to talk about money or the kids’ school things or the most recent rumor making the rounds in Aurora. I don’t know, maybe we thought we knew each other so well we didn’t have to talk. If that was it, we were wrong. Because every night it felt as if I was going to bed with a stranger.”

“Even when we made love?”

“By then we were just having sex, Cork. I don’t even know when we stopped making love.”

Cork set his gym bag down and put the bearskin on top of it. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door. “And along comes Sandy Parrant with his good looks and his money and just sweeps you off your feet.”

“It wasn’t his money or his looks. I needed someone, Cork. We’re not all as strong and self-contained as you are.”

“Oh, yeah, I was real strong after Burke’s Landing. Hell, I couldn’t even muster the energy to fight the recall petition. I could have used a little support then.”

“I tried to reach out, Cork, but you were like something made of ice. It was like everything in you had frozen over. There wasn’t any warmth toward me or the kids. Stevie was afraid to go near you, for Christ sake.”

“And that’s why you asked me to leave. It didn’t have anything to do with Sandy Parrant,” he said with bitter sarcasm.

Jo looked down. “You’re right. It probably had a lot to do with Sandy.”

“Christ, Jo, do you know how long I’ve felt like shit, felt like everything was all my fault?”

“I know, Cork, I know. The truth is,” she confessed, “I let you believe it because it made things easier for me.”

There was a knock at the door. Rose poked her head in and smiled. “I’m about to start breakfast. Anyone interested?” She glanced down and saw Cork’s gym bag and the bearskin, then she looked sadly at the two of them.

“I won’t be staying, Rose,” Cork told her. “Thanks anyway.”

Jenny pushed in behind her, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Dad, I want to feed the geese.” She yawned. “Can you take me to school? We can stop by Sam’s Place on the way.” She looked carefully at the three adults, then at Cork’s things on the floor. She seemed wide awake suddenly. “You’re going back?”

“Yeah. But I’ll give you a ride so you can feed the geese.”

“No, thanks,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.” She turned and shoved past Rose out the door.

Rose eyed them both again, gave her head a faint shake of disapproval, and stepped out.

“I’m sorry,” Jo said.

“Who isn’t?” Cork picked up his gym bag, hefted the bearskin, and left.

A dirty van waited outside Sam’s Place, the engine running. On the side, barely readable through the crust of grit, was printed “Winterbauer Plumbing and Heating.” Art Winterbauer stepped out. He held coffee in a big paper cup from Jeannie’s Donuts, and there was a splotch of white cream filling on his upper lip.

“I promised you first thing, Cork. And first thing, here I am. Freeze your butt over the weekend?” He was a short man with a square body and square face. He wore a hat with flaps that hung down the side like the ears of a basset hound. Sliding his van door open, he pulled out a heavy toolbox. He carried his coffee in one hand, his toolbox in the other.

“I took your advice. Stayed somewhere else.” Cork unlocked the door.

Winterbauer stepped in and saw the mess. “Christ, what happened in here?”

“You know where everything is,” Cork replied without answering.

“Yeah,” Winterbauer said, looking at the destruction around him. “But is it still there?”

“I’ll be outside if you need me,” Cork told him, and left.

He dug into the grain sack and took the bucket of dried corn out to the lake. A light snow was falling. The flakes settled on the gray open water and disappeared. At first he didn’t see Romeo and Juliet. Then he spotted them huddled under a safety station at the edge of the ice. They seemed oddly subdued, quiet and motionless, and didn’t appear to be in any hurry to feed.

A maroon Taurus station wagon pulled up beside Winterbauer’s van. Helmuth Hanover, editor of the
Aurora Sentinel
stepped out, spotted Cork, and started toward him. Hanover was a tall, slender man in his mid-forties. A veteran of Vietnam, he’d left the lower part of his right leg on a rice paddy dike, courtesy of a claymore mine. He had a prosthetic appendage and walked with a slight limp. He’d begun to bald young, a characteristic he’d chosen to exaggerate by shaving his head clean. With his narrow face, blue unkind eyes, and that shaved head like a cleaned bone, he had an intimidating austerity about him, not unlike a sharply honed knife. Although his byline read “Helm Hanover,” he was unaffectionately known as Hell Hanover by anyone who’d been the target of his editorials. And Cork had. During the spearfishing business, Hanover had flayed Cork alive.

Helm exercised a good deal of wisdom and restraint in publishing the
Sentinel,
which was a small town paper devoted to small town news—commissioner’s meetings, church bazaars, births, obituaries. He crammed as many names in a story as he possibly could and he was sure to spell them all correctly. In reporting the local news, he generally kept things about as controversial as cottage cheese. But in his editorials and the Letters to the Editor section, he allowed a lot of latitude. Consequently, the
Sentinel
was frequently a voice for all the crackpot philosophies at liberty in Tamarack County. He’d printed odes to the Posse Comitatus, elegies to the Branch Davidians, proclamations of supremacy from the Minnesota Civilian Brigade—all with a nod toward the First Amendment. His own editorials generally carried a sharp, bitter edge, and more often than not, the target of his criticism was government. In any form. Helm Hanover had no use for the distant, inept interference of the federal government, particularly. Cork suspected a lot of this was a deep, burning anger that went all the way back to the flesh and bone Hell had left in Vietnam.

“Morning, Cork,” Hanover said. He nodded stiffly in greeting.

“Helm,” Cork said. “I don’t suppose you’re out here hoping for a burger and a shake.”

“I’ve just come from the sheriff’s office. I’d like to ask you a few questions.” Hanover took a small notebook and pencil from the pocket of the down vest he wore. “About last night.”

The geese were slowly making their way to shore, black ripples following in the gray water. Cork watched the geese. He didn’t want to look at Hell Hanover. The man always made him angry.

“What exactly did the sheriff tell you?” Cork asked.

“I’d like it to be in your own words,” Hanover said.

“My words, Wally’s words, what difference does it make? You’ve got the facts.”

Cork set the empty bucket in the snow. Hanover glanced in as if there might be something worth writing about inside it.

“The sheriff said Lytton called you. He wanted to show you something. What was it he wanted to show you?”

“If he hadn’t been killed, I might know.”

“You haven’t got any idea? When he called, he didn’t say anything?”

“He only said to come out.”

“Why did you feel compelled to go?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Anything to do with killing his dog?”

Cork glanced over and found Hanover’s hard, unkind eyes watching him closely, his sharp pencil poised above his notebook. “Who told you about the dog?”

“Might’ve been the same person who told me about the Windigo. I heard the Windigo called his name. Is that true?”

Cork looked Hanover in the eye. “You’re a newspaperman, Helm. You deal in facts. The Windigo is a myth.”

“It wasn’t a myth that killed Harlan Lytton.”

“My point exactly.”

“Did you see the assailant?”

“Just a silhouette.”

“Can you describe him?”