Iron Lake (34 page)

“When I delivered the paper, I heard the shotgun go off.”

“And you went inside to check on the judge. But you found Father Tom and your Aunt Wanda instead.”

The boy nodded.

The priest broke in, “I brought him out here so I could explain to him carefully what he saw. Then I went to Darla’s to get her so she wouldn’t be worried. When you came and told us the sheriff wanted to speak to Paul about the judge, I thought it would be best to keep him out here awhile. We let out that Joe John was around, hoping to create a little smoke.”

“What about Harlan Lytton, Tom? Whose doing was that?”

The silence of the room reminded Cork of how it was to be underwater, making your way to the surface in a thick, unbreathable stillness. Everyone looked at everyone else and all of them looked unhappy he’d asked.

It was Paul, drawing himself up to his full height, who said, “I killed him. And I’d do it again.”

If he’d sounded like a boy before, the youthful sound was gone from his voice now. Cork looked at him and saw the hard face of a man.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Darla said, putting her arms around her son.

Paul shrugged away from her. “He killed my father and I killed him and I’d do it again without thinking twice.”

“Cork,” the priest interjected. “It wasn’t entirely his fault. I left him Lazarus in case he needed transportation. And Wanda—well, Wanda—”

“I left him my rifle,” she said evenly. “I didn’t think he’d use it that way. But I don’t blame him at all.”

Cork studied the young man, who didn’t flinch under his gaze. “And it was you on Lazarus at Lytton’s place yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was there to kill another man,” the boy said almost proudly.

“Paul!” His mother looked horrified.

“You don’t mean that,” St. Kawasaki told him.

“It’s the truth,” the boy said. “I thought we were supposed to be telling the truth.”

“No, Paul,” Darla pleaded.

“Let him tell it, Darla,” St. Kawasaki said. “He’s right. The truth is what we’re here for. We’ve come this far.”

“What man were you going to kill?” Cork asked young LeBeau.

“The last man who had a part in murdering my father,” Paul said.

“Who was that?”

“Mr. Parrant.”

“Mr. Parrant? You mean Sandy?”

“Yeah, him.”

Darla put her hands to her mouth. “No,” she whispered.

“Why do you think he had something to do with your father’s death, Paul?” Cork asked.

“Well.” Paul stopped a moment and seemed for the first time a little uncertain. He glanced at the priest and Wanda Manydeeds and his mother. “They said it.”

“What did you say?” Cork asked them generally.

It was Darla who finally spoke. “Sandy Parrant said Joe John showed up drunk for work at Great North the night he disappeared. He said they had words and he fired him. I believed it then. Because of the way Joe John had been. God help me, I believed it. But Joe John was murdered. He didn’t desert us. Sandy Parrant must have been lying.”

“And why would he lie except to cover up?” the priest finished.

Cork looked back at the boy. “How did you know he was at Harlan Lytton’s?”

“I went to his house yesterday,” Paul said. “I was on Lazarus. I had Aunt Wanda’s rifle. I was going to kill him.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Darla insisted. “My son’s not a killer.”

“We all are under the right circumstances, Darla,” Cork said. “Go on, Paul.”

“I came across the lake, through his woods. But he was just leaving. I saw his car heading down the drive.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“White.” Paul shrugged.

“Just white?”

“I saw it through the trees.”

“The man has a white vehicle of some kind,” St. Kawasaki said.

“A lot of people have white vehicles,” Cork pointed out. “Go on, Paul.”

“I tried to follow him, running Lazarus down in the ditch beside the road. When I saw him turn off onto County 16, I figured he must be headed for the Lytton place. It’s just about the only thing down that road. I caught the Glacier Trail. You know it cuts back of the Lytton property. So I got there ahead of him and hid in the trees. Only I didn’t see him. It was you I saw. I watched and waited and when you came out of that shed, I saw him hit you with a club or something. I thought he was going to kill you. I shot at him. But,” he added with a note of shame, “I missed.”

“He got away, and it was you I almost took a shot at,” Cork concluded. “I’m sorry, Paul.”

The young man shrugged and managed a slight grin. “S’okay.”

“You’re sure it was Parrant?”

“It had to be.”

“Did you see his face?”

“He was wearing a ski mask.”

“The white vehicle. Did you see it at Lytton’s?”

Paul shook his head, but said definitely, “It had to be him.”

“Had to be?” Cork let his voice go very hard. “Would you swear to that in court? Would you swear absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt it was Sandy Parrant who hit me?”

“Well—” Paul seemed confused by the sudden harshness in Cork’s voice. He looked at the floor a moment.

“Swear to it beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Cork pressed him.

“I guess I couldn’t,” Paul admitted.

“Cork, you’re saying you don’t think it was him?” Wanda asked, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d heard.

“We have no real proof of anything. Nothing that involves Parrant directly,” Cork replied. “It’s all pretty circumstantial at this point.”

“What about Vernon Blackwater’s confession?” Wanda demanded.

“Did he mention Parrant at all?”

“No, but the man had to know.”

“Isn’t it possible,” Cork offered, “that Joe John was drunk? Who knows why? And that Sandy did fire him and it had nothing to do with Joe John’s murder?”

“Cork—”

“Do you have any proof of anything that involves Sandy Parrant?” He waited. “I take it your silence means no. So, you’d condemn a man to death on the basis of speculation, is that it?”

“We didn’t condemn—” Wanda began.

“Your speculation put that rifle in Paul’s hands yesterday. For all we know, he might have ended up killing an innocent man.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Wanda said. “Do you?”

“What I know is that we can fool ourselves into believing almost anything.” Cork turned to Paul. “You killed Harlan Lytton. How did that feel?”

“If you want me to say I’m sorry, I won’t,” Paul told him stubbornly.

“That’s not what I asked. How did it feel to kill a man?”

“Cork, please don’t,” Darla pleaded.

“Let him answer,” the priest said.

Cork went on, “I saw the man on the floor of his cabin. His heart was shattered, blown apart, but he was still alive. He was still alive when you were in the cabin, too, wasn’t he?”

The boy’s face was stone.

Cork stood up and crossed to the boy. He leaned close. “He was alive. There was a hole in his chest and blood everywhere and you couldn’t believe he could still be alive, but he was, wasn’t he? Did he look at you? Did he try to talk to you? Was his voice all choked with the sound of him dying? How was it, Paul? How was it watching the man you killed die?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. His lips trembled. “I . . . He . . .”

“Did it feel good with the rifle in your hand and a man dying right there at your feet? Tell me how good it felt, Paul. Tell us all what a great feeling it was.”

A wounded look entered Paul LeBeau’s eyes. His face began to change. The hardness of the man melted like a wax mask, revealing the face of a child in great pain.

Cork pressed Paul harshly, “Go on. Tell us. Tell us all how good and honorable it felt.”

Tears appeared along his lower lids and in a moment began to trickle down his cheeks. “He looked at . . . me . . .”

Darla tried to put herself between Paul and Cork. “Don’t,” she begged.

Cork took Paul harshly by the shoulders and pulled him away from his mother. Darla grabbed for him, but the priest held her back. Cork made the boy look at him. “Did it make you feel like a man to see him die? Did it?”

The boy couldn’t speak. His voice was choked with sobbing. Finally he managed to say, “I’m sorry.”

“Look at me,” Cork ordered.

The boy raised his head.

“Once someone’s dead, being sorry doesn’t cut it. If you hit a man, you can apologize. If you destroy his property, you can pay him back. But if you take his life, there’s nothing you can ever do to make that right. Do you understand?”

“Paul—” Darla tried to break free of the priest, who held her tightly.

“Do you understand, Paul?”

The boy wept so much he couldn’t reply.

“You were ready to kill another man. A man who may be innocent. Could you live with that the rest of your life? Could you!”

The mission was filled with the sound of the boy’s weeping.

“Answer me!” Cork demanded.

“No,” the boy finally sobbed.

Cork, who’d kept Paul firmly at arm’s length, drew him close. He put his arms around him and held him tightly while the boy wept. “No,” Cork agreed gently. “And thank God for that.”

After a while, Paul pulled away and Cork let him return to his mother. The priest said quietly, “I guess that’s the truth of everything, Cork.”

“What are you going to do?” Wanda asked.

Cork looked them over and sighed heavily. “I’m not the sheriff anymore.” He said to Darla, “Keep Paul here a while longer, until this business is done for good.” To the priest he said, “How about a ride to my Bronco.”

“Cork.” Wanda touched his arm.
“Migwech.”
Thanks.

St. Kawasaki stepped outside with Cork. The sun had dropped below the treeline and the snow across the meadow was a soft blue-white. The air was turning colder.

“I didn’t know about Paul at Lytton’s place yesterday,” the priest said. “I feel responsible.”

“Paul’s responsible for his own actions. He knows it.” Cork picked up his rifle from where it leaned against the mission wall. “Thanks,” he said to Tom Griffin.

“For what?”

“Holding Darla. Letting me work with Paul.”

“It was hard, but easier on him than the legal system. He’s a fine young man.” The priest took a deep breath. “So, what now?”

“Now I get what I need to put a real son of a bitch in his place.”

“You have something on Parrant?”

“I think I probably do.”

“And you’ll be able to keep all this out of it?”

“Whatever happens, they’re safe,” he said, nodding toward the mission. He opened the door of Wanda Manydeeds’s old truck. “I feel exhausted. Is this what you feel like after hearing a confession?”

“Usually,” St. Kawasaki said, “I feel like a drink.”

M
OLLY LOOKED DOWN ON THE WATER
from a great height. The surface was perfectly blue and so still it looked like a cloudless sky. Lake Tahoe? she wondered. Tahoe was like that. Blue. Still. Cold. Freezing cold. So cold when she swam in it sometimes she hurt all over as if she were being squeezed by a great blue hand.

Like now, she thought suddenly. And she realized she was not above the water, but in it.

She shivered in the grip of that perfectly still water, in the terrible grip of the blue water cold as ice.

The sun burned her eyes. She should look away, she knew. If she looked at the sun too long, she would turn into a sunflower. She’d heard that when she was small from a lady at her father’s cabin. The lady was fat and laughed a lot and gave her Baby Ruth and Oh Henry candy bars and smelled like flowers. Gardenias.

The fat lady pointed a plump finger at her and warned her laughing, you’ll turn into a sunflower. Her father told her different, told her she’d go blind. Her father was probably right. Maybe that’s why her head hurt so much. She was going blind from staring at the sun. He’d told her the truth. About that and many things. Told her she came from bad blood. Told her her mother was a tramp. Told her she would end up one, too. Told her men would be after her like devils, and if she let them have her, she would burn. Was that it? Was that the burning in her head? Was she burning like he said she would? Then why was the rest of her so cold?

She tried to lift her hand, to shield her eyes and block the fire that burned them. But she could not feel her hand, could not tell where it was, if it moved at all.

Am I dying? she wondered. Then why am I not afraid?

Cork’s hands were full of flowers. Brilliant yellow petals around a black center. Sunflowers. He held them gently, held them out as if offering them. He stood on the still blue water with fire at his back, all alone with the sunflowers in his hands. She tried to call to him, but she had no voice. He let the flowers drop one by one onto the water. They landed without a ripple and floated toward her, formed a circle, and the circle was warm. That made her happy. To be warm again. She lay in the warm circle of sunflowers thinking how tired she was and how good it would feel to sleep. To sleep and sleep while she waited for Cork to lie down, too.

She was afraid.

. . . Did I tell him? . . .

The fire burned in the blue water around her, in the blue that was all that was left of her vision. The blue and the fire. And then the cloud, black as smoke, moved above her. In the shadow of the black cloud she could see no more.

. . . Did I tell him . . .

Yes.

The voice came from the cloud.

Yes, you told me.

. . . No . . . not you . . . did I tell Cork . . .

Tell him what?

But her eyes were too heavy, and she was too tired to talk. Molly fell back, fell into the dark, into the vast warm dark with one last question trailing her like a broken rope.

. . . Did I tell Cork . . . Did I tell him . . . did I tell him I love him . . .