Iron Lake (22 page)

“Why do you say ‘him,’ Helm? There’s nothing sexist about murder. Women kill, too.”

“Can you describe the assailant?” Hanover corrected.

“You can get my description from the sheriff.” Cork bent and lifted the bucket. The geese seemed reluctant to come to shore with Hanover there. Cork turned back toward Sam’s Place. Hanover limped after him.

“Funny thing about that dog,” Hanover said at his back. “If you hadn’t shot him, he might’ve warned Lytton.”

Cork stopped. “What are you getting at, Helm?”

Hanover shrugged innocently. “I’m not getting at anything, Cork. I’m just asking questions. It’s my job.”

“But it’s not mine to answer them. You want to know anything about Lytton’s death, talk to Wally Schanno. He’s paid for it.”

Hanover wrote in his notebook; Cork went on ahead. Hanover caught up with him at the door to Sam’s Place.

“Just one more question. When the judge died, you were there. When Lytton died, you were there. If you were on the outside looking in, wouldn’t that strike you as a little funny?”

“See you around, Helm.” Cork eyed him pointedly until the newspaperman turned and limped back to his wagon. Hanover took out the notebook again and stood in the falling snow, writing. He glanced back at Cork, then slipped into the wagon and drove away.

Cork stood in the doorway. As much as he hated to, he had to agree with Hell. It was a little funny.

By the time Cork reached the old firehouse, the new snow had given a soft, fluffy covering to everything. Parrant’s white BMW sat in the parking lot. The windshield was still clear, and Cork figured Parrant hadn’t been there long.

Joyce Sandoval glanced up from her computer screen and eyed Cork over her half glasses. “I heard about last night,” she said. “It sounds awful.”

“I’d like to see Sandy.”

“Sure,” she said, and reached for the phone. “Just a moment.” She punched in three numbers. “Corcoran O’Connor is here to see you.” She listened a moment, then hung up. “He’ll be with you in a moment. Are you all right?”

“Fine, Joyce,” Cork replied, and turned abruptly away. He stood in front of a picture in the hallway, a framed aerial shot of Aurora. Yellow pins that indicated Great North holdings, covered the map like small pustules. The subdivision called Larkin Hills, the Aurora Mall, the Four Seasons Condominiums, the Aurora Office Park. The newest and most expensive of the holdings was also there. The Chippewa Grand Casino. Along the bottom of the enlarged photograph was the inked inscription, “Happy Birthday, Sandy. The Judge.”

“He’ll see you now,” Joyce said.

Parrant stepped out of his office just as Cork reached the top of the stairs. He eyed Cork steadily. “I’ve been expecting you. I talked with Jo this morning.”

“Talked? I didn’t think that was what you and Jo did together.”

Parrant was dressed for business. Blue suit, white shirt, red silk tie. The fragrance of a fine musk cologne scented the air around him.

“One of the things,” he replied calmly.

The door across the hall opened and Parrant’s secretary stepped out. “Mr. Parrant—” she began.

“Can it wait, Helen?” Parrant asked. “Cork and I were just about to have a conference in my office.”

“Oh, sure,” Helen said, and turned away.

“Why don’t we step inside to discuss this,” Parrant suggested.

Exposed beams ran across the ceiling of Sandy Parrant’s office. It had the same effect as a weight lifter showing his biceps. Strength on display. Parrant’s desk was very large, very dark, and very shiny. The papers on it were in small neat stacks.

Parrant went to a table near the window and picked up a silver pot. “Coffee?”

“I didn’t come on a social call.”

Parrant poured coffee into a white porcelain cup. “What are you here for, Cork? Want to take a swing at me?” He stirred in sugar and cream.

“I want to ask a question.”

“Only one?” Parrant carefully tasted his coffee.

“Do you intend to marry her?”

Parrant walked casually back to his desk and set the cup down. “I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

“She comes with baggage,” Cork said.

“Baggage? You mean the children.” He looked at Cork disdainfully. “I’d never refer to my children as baggage.”

“They’ll never be your kids. You may get my wife, but you’ll never get my kids.”

Parrant sat on the edge of his desk, his hands folded calmly in his lap. He had the air of a high school principal sadly disappointed in the behavior of a student.

“Would you use them like weapons, Cork? What kind of father are you that you have to fight me through your children?”

“I don’t have to fight through my children.”

“I don’t think you have it in you to fight any other way.”

Cork exploded and lunged at him. Parrant seemed to have anticipated the move and ducked so that he caught Cork full in the chest with the top of his shoulder. They tumbled back. Parrant came up with a hard punch to Cork’s ribs that felt like the butt end of a log, then he danced easily away.

“Intramural boxing champ at Harvard.” He grinned at Cork.

Cork charged again, wrapping up Parrant in his thick arms. They went down heavily, knocking the phone off Parrant’s desk and toppling his chair. Parrant hammered jabs at the place on Cork’s ribs where he’d landed the first jarring blow, the same area that had taken a beating a couple of days earlier at Sam’s Place. The pain made Cork let go. Parrant rolled away and bounded up, his hands fisted. Cork struggled up, too, just as Parrant’s office door opened and his secretary stepped in. She stood a moment looking at the two men.

“Oh,” she said when she understood. “I saw your line go on and I thought—”

“That’s all right, Helen,” Parrant said, dropping his hands. He straightened his red silk tie and brushed his blue suit. “We were just finishing our discussion. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

The woman nodded, glanced at Cork, and backed quickly out.

Parrant ran his hand through his hair and looked smooth as ever. He moved back to his desk, picked up the phone, and righted the fallen chair.

“Jo said you had photographs. Where’d you get them?”

Cork’s ribs hurt every time he took a breath, but he didn’t want Parrant to know. “Does it matter?”

“I’d like to know who’s so interested in my private life.”

“You’re a senator now. You haven’t got a private life.”

“What are you going to do with the photos?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Parrant sat down and eyed Cork with an unruffled air. “I’m sure you can’t hurt me, Cork. But if you try, I’ll squash you like a bug.”

“I’m shivering in my boots, Sandy.”

He turned to leave. As he reached for the door and opened it, Parrant said at his back, “I’m used to winning, Cork. It’s what I do best.”

Outside Cork got into the Bronco. He undid his shirt and looked at the place where his ribs hurt like hell. The skin was already a brooding purple from the beating he took at Sam’s Place. There seemed to be a yellow-green border developing around the bruise. He wondered if Parrant had broken anything. He reached into his shirt pocket for a Lucky Strike, and hauled out a crushed pack. He extracted a bent cigarette, straightened it out, and lit up. After that he sat for a while staring at the windshield that was blanketed with snow.

Eventually he opened the gym bag. He hadn’t looked at the pictures since the night before. There was no point in looking again. He knew that. No point except to feed the coldness inside him. In a strange way, that was exactly what he wanted now. He wanted to feed himself to the cold until the cold had consumed him and he didn’t care anymore.

He stared at the folder. Manila, old and beaten. Doodles on the outside. Although dried blood obscured some things, others were quite clear. Squares, circles, scribbles. A word here and there. Idle scrawl. But there was something about that scrawl. It was different from the writing on the label that said “Jo O’Connor.”

He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray and stepped from the Bronco. Folder in hand and moving gingerly because of his ribs, he hurried back into the building. He ignored Joyce Sandoval’s questioning glance and went straight to the aerial photo hanging on the wall. He studied the handwritten inscription on the matting. “Happy Birthday, Sandy. The Judge.” The late Judge Robert Parrant had written with a peculiarly grand flourish.

Cork looked at the folder. The doodled words on the bloody cover were in the same hand.

The folder hadn’t originally belonged to Harlan Lytton. It had belonged to another dead man first.

H
E
’
D ALWAYS LOVED WINTER
in the North Woods. The clean feel of a new snow. The icy air almost brittle in his nostrils. The way sound carried forever. He could hear Walleye barking a long way off as he parked his Bronco on the frozen lake, climbed the rocky slope of Crow’s Point, and made for Henry Meloux’s cabin. The world felt empty of everything except that sound.

Meloux stepped out as Cork approached. He was wiping his hands on a rag. Big snowflakes caught in his white hair as he stood waiting.

“Corcoran O’Connor,” the old man said with a smile.

Walleye, who was on a rope tied to a metal peg driven into the cabin wall, wagged his tail and nuzzled Cork’s crotch.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me, Henry,” Cork said.

“When you are my age, you will be surprised by little, too.” He looked at Cork with concern. “You are moving like a man my age.”

“A little accident,” Cork said. He gently touched his ribs.

“I have made bean soup,” the old man offered. “We’ll eat.” He untied the dog, turned, and led the way inside.

The cabin smelled of the soup, a thick, tantalizing aroma. Cork realized he hadn’t eaten at all that day, hadn’t even been hungry until he smelled the soup. From his coat pocket, he pulled an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes and gave them to the old man. Meloux seemed pleased.

“After we eat”—he nodded—“we can smoke together.”

Meloux filled two chipped bowls and brought them to the table. He brought bread in a basket and poured coffee from the blue speckled pot that had jumped by itself the day Molly had been there. Walleye sat patiently on his haunches, watching carefully for anything that might come his way. With the wooden ladle, the old man fished a bone the size of a child’s fist from the soup pot and put it on the floor. The dog waited until Meloux called him.

They ate without a word, but not in silence. The old man slurped from his spoon and lapped at the residue of soup along the edges of his lips. In the way of someone used to keeping company with himself, he occasionally mumbled toward his bowl. On the floor, Walleye gnawed greedily on the soup bone. When Meloux was finished, he took the pack of Lucky Strikes Cork had given him and drew out a cigarette. He offered the pack to Cork, then lit his own cigarette with a wooden kitchen match he struck on the underside of his chair. He settled back and seemed quite pleased.

“You make an old man feel pretty good, Corcoran O’Connor,” he said. “It is a long hard way here even without snow, but you visit me often now.” He gave Cork an ironic smile.

Cork leaned his forearms on the table and bent toward the old man. “Harlan Lytton is dead, Henry.”

The old man took a long, slow puff from his cigarette.

“You’re not surprised,” Cork said.

“Death is no surprise to an old man like me. Being able to take a regular crap, now, there is a surprise.”

“Why did you tell me about the Windigo calling his name? Did you think I could do something?”

“Once the Windigo has called a man’s name, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

Cork sat back, eyed the old man, and took a long shot in the dark. “But you told Russell Blackwater the Windigo had called his name.”

Something showed in the old man’s face, a glimmer of concern, but it passed quickly.

Cork knew he’d hit home and he pressed Meloux. “The night I took you into town you went to the casino, but not to gamble. You wanted to talk with Russell Blackwater. Did you hear the Windigo call his name? Is that why you walked into town in the middle of a blizzard? To warn him?”

The old man took the cigarette from his lips and looked at Cork appreciatively. “The whites were wrong to kick you out as sheriff.”

“Did he believe you?”

Meloux shrugged. “It makes no difference if he believes or not. He will still face the Windigo.”

“Why warn him and not Lytton?”

“Vernon Blackwater’s son is one of The People. Harlan Lytton was not.”

“That’s why you told me about Harlan? You thought I would warn him?”

“He was white and his heart was probably very black”—the old man shrugged—“but he was still a man. The Windigo, that is something else.”

“You know, Henry, if my grandmother hadn’t been one of The People, I’d probably wonder about all this Windigo business.”

“If your grandmother hadn’t been one of The People, you would probably not be so smart,” the old man said with a calm flourish of smoke.

Cork thanked Meloux for the soup and put on his coat to leave.

At the door the old man studied him hard. “This anger in your eyes, is it because you are hunting the Windigo?”

“I don’t know what it is I’m hunting, Henry.”

Meloux nodded thoughtfully, still looking keenly at Cork. “The Windigo was a man once. His heart was not always ice. What makes a man’s heart turn to ice? I would think about that, and I would think about how to fight the Windigo.”

“I thought you told me I wasn’t the one to fight the Windigo.”

Meloux shrugged. “I’m old. I’m not right as much as I used to be.”

“Often enough, Henry,” Cork replied.

From Meloux’s he started across the ice, heading back toward town. A mile to the east he could see the inlet where Molly’s sauna stood. He slowed and stopped, then turned in that direction. When she didn’t answer his knock, he let himself in with the key on the nail under the steps. The cabin was cool. Molly kept it that way. Lately, whenever they’d crawled into bed, the sheets were cold at first and for the first few minutes they simply held each other while the bedding warmed around them. Cork walked the quiet cabin, taking in the silent disarray of Molly’s life. The Sunday paper was folded on the coffee table near the big stone fireplace in the main room. On the floor beside a hand-sewn pillow sat an empty cup with a used tea bag in the saucer and next to it, lying facedown, a book called
The Tao of Loving.
A sweater lay thrown over the back of her rocking chair. He walked up the stairs. In the bathroom her cosmetics were scattered about the counter next to the sink. The lid was still off the Noxzema. Hairbrushes and combs stood together in a small clay pot she’d made herself in an art class at the community college. In the bedroom, the bed had been hastily made. Cork heard the sound of her old Saab coming down the lane. He headed downstairs and stepped into the kitchen as she came in the back door.

Molly glanced at him coldly and hung her coat. “What are you doing here?”

“I let myself in.”

She brushed past him and went to the refrigerator. She took out a carton of cherry yogurt and grabbed a spoon from the drawer. She wore the jeans and the taupe sweater she’d waitressed in all morning. There was a spot of mustard on her right sleeve.

“You look good,” he said.

“What did you expect? That I’d fall apart?” She gave him a brief appraisal. “You look like a bully just stole your lunch.”

“About yesterday,” he said cautiously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Molly pulled the lid off the yogurt and took a spoonful. “Why are you here?”

Cork shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and stared at the scarred wooden floor. “I need to talk to someone.”

“Find someone else.” She turned her back to him and walked to the table.

“There isn’t anyone else,” he said. “I’ve lived here almost my whole life and I’ve got no one to talk to.”

She slid a chair out with her foot and sat down heavily. “Try your wife.”

“She’s in love with someone else.”

“I could’ve told you that.”

Cork stared at her, bewildered.

“You know, Cork, for a smart man you’re pretty stupid sometimes.”

“You knew?”

“I suspected.”

Cork felt fuzzy and a little numb, as if something were blocking the flow of blood to his brain. “How?”

“A feeling from the things you told me.”

“Christ, I feel like such a fool.”

“You’re not the first.” She considered him a moment, then put down the yogurt. “Would you like some tea?”

“Do you still have that whiskey?”

“Ginseng’ll be better for you.” She went to the cupboard. “Who is he?”

“Sandy Parrant.”

“Is she planning on going with him to Washington?”

“She’d never do that,” Cork said. “She’d never take the kids away.”

Molly shrugged. “Love makes people do strange things. I ought to know.”

Cork turned around and stared out the window. Snow was still falling, still very lightly. It would have been lovely if he hadn’t felt so bad.

“I heard about Harlan Lytton,” Molly said. She moved to the stove for the kettle. “It didn’t sound pretty.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Any idea who killed him?”

“Not yet.” He watched her familiar movements, but she was a distant figure now, on the far side of a chasm he’d created. “I don’t think I’ll stay for the tea.”

“Cork,” she said quickly as he turned to the door. “I didn’t say anything about Jo because I didn’t want you to think I was trying to turn you against her. I didn’t want you to think I was just some sort of desperate husband-stealing bitch.”

“I would never think that about you. You were the best thing in my life, Molly.”

She fisted her hand on her hip and shot back, “Somehow I missed that part in our discussion yesterday.”

“Yesterday wasn’t about you. I hoped I could save my children from—I don’t know—the inevitable.”

“Children survive a lot, Cork. You and I both know that.”

“I guess we do.”

They fell quiet. Cork wanted to say he loved her. He wanted to ask her to forgive him. He wanted to lay his head against her breast and weep into her warm flesh and feel as connected to someone as he’d felt the night the grief passed through him when he hunted the big bear with Sam Winter Moon.

Molly crossed her arms and seemed to read his thoughts. “I told you there wasn’t a swinging door here, Cork. I meant it.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. You hurt me. You were ready to cut me out of your life like I was a rotten spot on an otherwise perfect apple.”

He looked at the floor. “I’ve got no apple now. Only applesauce.”

He glanced at her face. If there was a smile anywhere near, she hid it well.

“You’ve always made me laugh, Cork. That’s not what I want now.”

“What do you want?”

“To feel needed. To feel that you need me as much as you need air to breathe. I’m worth that.” She pointed toward the cold outside. “Go on. Take some time to think about it.”

He didn’t need any time. Already he couldn’t breathe. But he turned the knob anyway, because it was what Molly wanted, and he walked out the door.