Iron Lake

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.”

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.