Iron Lake

46

HE HAD ONE PICTURE OF MOLLY. Only one. It was a Polaroid he’d taken with her camera in the summer just moments after she stepped onto the shore from a dip in the lake near the sauna. She wore a black one-piece and had a good tan. She was bent a little awkwardly, torn between reaching down for her beach towel and trying to say “Cheese” for the camera. Her red hair clung to her back and shoulders and hung over her face in long, wet strands. She was laughing.

He’d kept the picture in a collection of poems by Robert Frost, hidden from the eyes of anyone who might, in idle curiosity, have stumbled onto it in a drawer. He always slipped it in with the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Cork didn’t know much more about poetry than the next guy, but he understood well how it felt to have miles to go before he slept.

Now he lay on his bunk, one arm pillowing his head, studying the one and only picture he’d allowed himself of Molly. She looked exactly the way he wanted to remember her, full of life, laughing. That was Molly to him. Not the pale blue icedover body with its sightless eyes set on heaven. Molly deserved to be remembered differently. She deserved a lot of things life never offered her, not the least of which was someone who told her often he loved her. Why hadn’t he? Why had he been so afraid? He couldn’t think of anything so important now that it should have kept him from telling Molly how he felt.

And now it was too late. Too late forever.

Sam’s Place had never felt so empty. He suspected the emptiness was not in the old Quonset hut; it was in him. There was nothing in him now, nothing but the great emptiness of death, which he seemed to carry with him like a virus. People died around him, but he was immune. There was no justice. He should have died long ago. Maybe if he had, Molly would still be alive. And Sam Winter Moon and Arnold Stanley, and God only knew who else. He remembered a line he’d heard once, from an ancient text it seemed. “I am become death . . .” That was him.

The phone rang. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he’d neglected to turn on his answering machine and on the tenth ring he lifted the receiver.

“Cork, it’s Jo.”

“Yeah,” he grunted.

“I know where the negatives are.”

He sat up, instantly alert. “Where?”

“Meet me at Molly Nurmi’s.” She paused, covered the mouthpiece, and mumbled something faintly to someone else. “In half an hour,” she concluded.

“At Molly’s?”

“Yes.”

“Jo, did you know all along?”

“No.”

“Sandy,” he guessed.

“Meet me, Cork. Let me explain.” She hung up without waiting for him to answer.

Cork walked calmly to the front door. He put on his coat and his stocking cap. He grasped his Winchester and fed in the shells he’d stuffed in his pockets at Parrant’s.

“Mr. Senator,” he said as he worked the lever, feeding the first cartridge into the chamber.

“He’ll be there?” Sandy asked as Jo hung up the kitchen phone.

“He’ll be there.”

“Well,” he said somberly, “let’s get it over with.”

She touched his arm. “It will be good to get clear. Whatever happens, whatever those negatives hold, at least we won’t be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives waiting for the worst to catch up with us.”

“You’re right. As usual.”

They headed downstairs, through the basement recreation room and Sandy’s tool room, to the garage.

“Let’s take the Cherokee,” Sandy suggested.

Jo walked past the BMW.

“Oops. Just a minute,” Sandy said, tapping his forehead as if he’d just remembered something. “I’ll be right back.” He returned to the tool room and came out with a roll of silver duct tape. “Almost forgot.” He laughed as he neared her.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

Sandy lunged for her, catching her completely by surprise. He spun her, threw her against the hood of the Cherokee, grasped her arms, and pinned them behind her. She began to struggle, but it was too late. Her wrists were tightly bound together with the tape.

“You’re hurting me, Sandy.”

“And you don’t think you’re hurting me?” he replied, cold and fierce. “Asking me to give up everything. Christ!” He opened the door of the Cherokee. “Get in,” he ordered her.

Jo backed away. He grabbed her arm, yanked her to the open door, and shoved her in. Roughly he settled her in a sitting position, then knelt and began to tape her ankles. She brought her knees up swiftly, striking him squarely in the nose. He fell back, blood streaming from his nostrils, and he sat on the concrete floor, stunned. Jo tried to free her legs so she could run, but Sandy had managed to get one loop of tape around her ankles and she couldn’t break loose. He touched his nose and carefully studied the blood on his fingertips.

“I deserved that,” he concluded in a tone that sounded quite rational. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his bloody nose. “Let me ask you something, Jo. If I told you I’d killed the Nurmi woman, could you let it go? Could you live with me and work with me and love me like you have?”

“My God,” Jo said, breathless as the horrific truth uncoiled before her. “You did murder her.”

“In its own way, it was an accident.” He stood up and used the side mirror of the BMW to assess the damage to his nose. “I didn’t go there meaning to kill her. I did what I had to do to protect myself. You see, we’re not just talking about the end of my political career. What’s in that bag could land me in jail for a good long time. The political thing I could live with, I suppose. There are other challenges. But I couldn’t live in prison. You might as well shoot me.”

“Are you going to kill me? And Cork?”

“What would you do if you were me?”

“You said you loved me.”

Sandy leaned against the BMW and crossed his legs casually as if he were posing for an ad layout. “The truth about love is that you can find it around any corner. Love’s easy. Now a shot at the White House, that’s rare.”

“I can’t believe this,” Jo said.

“I’ll tell you what I think defines greatness. The ability and willingness to perform in extraordinary ways. That’s me, Jo. I’ve always known that I was destined for great things.” He approached her again. “I’m going to tape your ankles now. If you insist on trying to kick me again, I’ll hit you. Very hard. I’d rather not do that, but I will. Okay?”

She gave no sign that she heard or that she agreed at all to his terms. He kept away a little, reaching far out this time to grasp her legs. She lifted her feet suddenly and swung them at his face. He moved fast, dipped his shoulder and tilted his head in the way of a fighter trained to dodge a glove. Her feet struck the door uselessly. Almost immediately, she felt the blow he’d promised, hard to her head, and she saw fireworks. When the light show faded, she was left with a ringing in her right ear and a terrible throbbing in her jaw. Sandy had bound her ankles tightly. He was already backing the Cherokee out of the garage and was saying something about being truly sorry it had to be this way.

He drove down the plowed lane toward the lake. Beside the boathouse he stopped and turned off the engine.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised, and patted her knee. He stepped inside the boathouse and flipped on the light.

Sandy had strapped her in tightly with the seat belt. Even so, she was able to lean forward almost to the dash. With her hands still taped behind her, she struggled to reach the door handle. She made it, wrapped her fingers around the cool metal, and tested to make certain she could, if she had the chance, open the door. Satisfied, she sat back as the light went out in the boathouse.

He came back carrying a clear plastic bag full of negatives, which he set on the floor of the rear seat. He slipped behind the wheel and started the Cherokee again. “It was in the footlocker where I keep the ropes. And this”—he held up his right gloved hand in which he gripped a revolver—“a thirty-eight Police Special, registered to Corcoran O’Connor.” He headed out onto the ice and started across the lake toward Molly Nurmi’s. “You see,” he explained in the self-satisfied tone that until that moment Jo had always forgiven, “while everyone else was looking for Russell Blackwater’s body in the lake, I was looking for Cork’s gun. I had a sense that, with all his prying, I might have to implicate him at some point. In life, as in politics, foresight is all.”

Sandy drove without headlights, but he had no trouble seeing the way. The northern lights made the snow ahead of them dance with color, and the moon was just rising as well. The lights of Aurora drifted past far to their left, thinning out gradually until there was nothing paralleling the Cherokee in its journey but the dark, forested shore.

“I thought I might have to use it on the Nurmi woman,” he said after a while. “But I only had to threaten her with it to get her into the water. I figured a few minutes in the lake and she would be ready to tell me anything. She turned out to be tougher than I imagined. But no one can last forever in cold like that. A tap on the head after she got out and it looked exactly like a terrible accident.” He glanced at her, his face a kaleidoscope of shifting colors that changed with the lights from the sky. “I honestly thought you’d be good beside me in Washington,” he said, clearly disappointed. “I thought we had the same dream, Jo. Greatness. I guess I was wrong.”

“You’ll never be anything, Sandy,” Jo said. “Look how you’ve got what you have. Lies, bribery, extortion.”

“That’s politics.” He shrugged.

“And murder?”

“I’m not the first. I suspect I won’t be the last.”

“How could I have loved you?” she asked bitterly.

“How could you not? Once I decided I wanted you, it was all over. I always get what I want, Jo. That’s part of my attraction, isn’t it?”

They drove in silence after that. The moon went on rising, bright enough in its part of the sky to wash out the colors of the northern lights. Moonlight defined more clearly the details of the lake and shoreline. Shadows below the rims of small drifts curled across the moonlit snow like black snakes. The evergreens on the shore looked dark and ragged. Jo tried to think what was out this way besides Molly Nurmi’s cabin. If she could slip away somehow, was there a place to run to? She eyed the big pines for a break, a light, a sign of hope, but she saw nothing.

“Yesterday,” Jo said, “it was you who tried to kill Cork at Harlan Lytton’s.”

“You were sleeping so soundly.” He smiled. “I was gone and back and you never left the safe territory of your dreams. But I wouldn’t have killed Cork. I only wanted the negatives. Same for the Nurmi woman, actually. You see, I’m only dangerous if you get in my way.” He laughed to himself. “Not like my father. There was a real son of a bitch. After he died, I found keys and other things that led me to his office in Duluth and to that shed of Lytton’s. Cork was right about everything. The old bastard had documented every evil a town can generate. He even kept files on me. I think he had an idea he was going to keep me in line in Washington, make me dance to his tune. If he hadn’t killed himself, I might have done it for him eventually. Here,” he said, pulling a cassette from his coat pocket. “Maybe this will help you understand. For the last year or two, the tricky son of a bitch taped every conversation that took place in his office. The Richard Nixon of the Iron Range.”

He put the cassette into the tape player in the dash, pushed the fast-forward button a few moments, then let up.

“. . . in the middle of a campaign, goddamn it,” Sandy’s voice declared angrily on the tape.

Sandy fast-forwarded again.

“. . . don’t understand why, Russell.” Sandy’s voice again. Still angry. “You had a good thing going. Why fuck it up with something like this?”

“Listen, rich boy—” Russell Blackwater tried to cut in.

“No, you listen. I don’t intend to lose this election because of your larceny.”

“What do you suggest, Sandy?” It was the judge’s voice. Calm. And, it seemed, slightly amused.

“Christ, I don’t know. Vernon, why the hell didn’t you keep your boy in line?”

“He is a man,” Vernon Blackwater replied indignantly. “Not a boy.”

“What he pulled with the casino sure as hell makes me wonder.”

A doorbell rang in the background.

“I have a suggestion,” the judge interjected. “I asked Joe John here. I thought we might all talk this out reasonably. Sandy, would you get the door?”

Sandy Parrant reached out and fast-forwarded the tape again.

“. . . you want, Joe John?” Sandy’s voice.

“The People deserve better,” Joe John replied. He sounded proud and incensed. “I thought you would understand and help.”

“I do understand,” Sandy insisted on the tape. “And I want to help.”

“I don’t think so. I think mostly you’re worried about your own ass.”

“Sit down, Joe John,” the judge ordered. After a pause, he requested, “Please, sit down. I have one final negotiation to offer.”

Silence. In the Cherokee, Jo leaned forward struggling to hear. Then a chair creaked on the tape as a body sat down heavily.

“Thank you,” the judge went on. “It’s been my own opinion since you first stumbled onto all this that the usual inducements we might offer would be ineffective. I’ve watched you carefully, Joe John. From a drunk to a man with good reason to have a lot of self-respect. I’ve thought all along you wouldn’t give up that hard-earned self-respect easily. Not for money, certainly. You’ve more than proven that this evening. And I just want to add how much I appreciate your promise to refrain from making all this public until we’ve had a chance to work things out. Now, the fact of the matter is that my son can’t lose this election. And for many reasons, Russell Blackwater should continue to manage the casino. What I’ve done, therefore, is invite an outside negotiator to help us reach a resolution. I believe he is, as the saying goes, prepared to make you an offer, Joe John, that you can’t refuse. Harlan?”

A door opened.

“What the—” Joe John began.

Three shots. Very close together. Loud on the tape. In the Cherokee, Jo jerked, startled.

“My God!” Sandy Parrant’s taped voice cried.

Behind the steering wheel, the real Parrant mouthed the words as if he’d listened to the tape a hundred times and knew it by heart.

“Jesus,” Russell Blackwater gasped.

“And that, gentlemen,” concluded the judge, “solves everything.”

Sandy stopped the tape.

“It was over so quickly I couldn’t do anything,” he explained.

“And then you had a choice, didn’t you?” Jo guessed bitterly. “Expose everything and probably lose the election. Or stay silent.”

His face in the dark was intense, fired. “I was born to greatness. I’ve known that all my life. Even when things started going bad, it was like I was favored by the gods. Fate smiled and everyone who could incriminate me was eliminated. My father, Lytton, the Blackwaters. I was clear of it all. No one was even looking in my direction except for that fucking husband of yours.” Sandy peered intently through the windshield and slowed the Cherokee to a crawl. “There it is.”

Jo could see the sauna, square and black, and farther up among the trees the light from inside the cabin. Cork had turned all the lights off when they left earlier. That meant he was there now, waiting innocently for them to arrive. Her fault! God, how could she have been so stupid, so blind?

Sandy stopped the Cherokee behind the sauna, out of sight of the cabin. He slipped the key from the ignition and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. “This shouldn’t take long.” He lifted the revolver from his lap.

“You’re not—” she began.

“Going to shoot him? In cold blood? If I have to. But I don’t think I will. Not yet.”

He took the roll of duct tape from his pocket, tore off a strip, and pressed it over her mouth. He reached into the glove compartment and drew out a flashlight. Stepping from the Cherokee, he came around to Jo’s side and opened the door. He took out his jackknife and snapped out the blade.

“I’m only going to cut your feet loose so you can walk. I’m not going to hurt you. But if you try something, I will.”

Slowly he knelt. He reached out carefully with the knife and cut the tape from her ankles.

“In here,” he said, leading her to the sauna door.

He switched on the flashlight. There were three tiers of seats in the sauna, hard, bare cedar planks. Sandy guided her up to the top, forced her to sit, and bound her ankles again with tape.

“I’m just going to have a peek and make sure Cork’s not planning any surprises of his own. I’ll be right back.”

He stepped down, clicked off the flashlight, and left her in total darkness. The boards creaked on the small deck outside as he crept around to the side of the building and headed toward the cabin. She waited a few moments after the creaking had stopped, then she rolled to her side and bumped down the tiers of cedar planks. She felt a jolting pain in her right shoulder as she hit the floor. She scooted toward the door, which opened inward. Pushing herself against the wall, she managed to slide to a standing position. With her hands bound behind her, she groped in the dark for the knob, finally found it, and opened the door a crack, just enough to wedge her body through. She tumbled onto the deck outside.

Like an inchworm, she coiled and uncoiled herself, crawling along the deck toward the edge. She came to the end, a sudden drop-off with the ice three feet below. She brought her body around until she lay parallel with the edge of the deck, then she rolled off. The wind had blown the snow on the ice into uneven depths; where she hit there was almost nothing to cushion the blow on her head. For the second time that night, she was stunned to the point of seeing lights. Her head felt thick and burning as if full of some scorching liquid. Vital seconds passed, a fact she was aware of even through the haze that clouded her thinking. On her side, her injured shoulder taking the brunt of the struggle, she began to move away from the sauna toward a pine tree backed by a small thicket just beyond the shoreline a dozen yards away. She dug at the ice, propelling herself with the side of her boot. Her jacket was a down-filled nylon shell, and the slick material helped her slide easily over the ice, the only piece of luck she’d had all night.

Five feet. Ten. She struggled against fainting. Goddamn it, no! She fed her pain to her anger. She wouldn’t give in. She wouldn’t give Sandy the satisfaction. The pine and the thicket seemed an enormous distance away. If she couldn’t make it there, she’d find another way. Desperately she scanned the area around her, looking for a drift against the shore that might be deep enough to burrow into, to cover herself with snow. Could he find her then? Could he follow a worm’s trail in the night? She was wearing dark clothing, a mistake she regretted now as bitterly as she regretted loving Sandy. She was too easy to see, especially in the unnatural brightness from the northern lights and the rising moon. Her best hope still was to make the thicket before Sandy came back.

She breathed heavily, pushing hard, turning inches into feet, feet into yards. The tree was almost within her reach. She glanced back at the snow-draped thicket just beyond. If she could reach it, nestle in, he might never find her. She hoped he wouldn’t kill one of them unless he was sure he could kill them both.

Ignoring the pounding in her head, the burning in her shoulder, she redoubled her efforts. A moment later she bumped into something hard. The trunk of the pine, she thought with relief. She looked back to gauge the distance left to the thicket and found that the pine tree had not stopped her. It was Sandy Parrant’s left leg.

“I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn’t tried,” he said. “One of the things I’ve always found most attractive is your tenacity.” He took out his jackknife, knelt, and whispered, “You’re also one hell of a piece of ass.” He cut her ankles free and lifted her brusquely.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Our pigeon is roosting.”