Iron Lake (35 page)

I
N THE FADING BLUE
of the late afternoon light, Cork drove toward Aurora. He felt satisfied in a grim way. Things had fallen into place. Most things anyway. The judge. Lytton. Joe John LeBeau’s incomprehensible abandonment of his family. All these things made sense and, in some way, had been reckoned with. There was, however, still one open loop to the maze of tragic events that had befallen Aurora, and down that last convoluted passage hid Sandy Parrant. Did he know he was being pursued? Cork wondered. If not, he soon would. The canvas bag was his undoing. With the evidence Cork was sure the bloody bag had held, he would nail Parrant’s coffin shut. Bam!

It was going on four o’clock when Cork pulled into the parking lot of Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He thought he’d surprise Molly with a lift home, but she wasn’t there.

Johnny was hunched at the register, doing some figures with a pencil on the back of a menu. He looked slightly amused when Cork asked about Molly.

“She left two, three hours ago, big hurry. Said she had to go home to clear a space for a Christmas tree. Christmas tree.” Johnny hooted. “No woman hustles that hard for a Christmas tree. It was a guy, I’ll lay you odds.” Johnny paused a moment, set his pencil down, and looked Cork over keenly. A broad grin spread across his face. “Well, knock me over with a feather.”

Cork thanked him and headed toward the door.

“Christmas tree!” Johnny laughed at his back. “O, Tannenbaum,” he called.

As Cork started back to his Bronco, a car braked hard on the street, hard enough to skid, and when he looked up, he saw Jo’s blue Toyota back up, whip into the lot, and slide to a stop a few feet from where he stood. Jo leaped out, drilling him with an angry glare as she came. She glanced at the Pinewood, tugged off her gloves, and seemed for a moment on the verge of giving Cork a hard slap across the face.

“You know, you really had me fooled,” she said bitterly.

“What do you mean?”

“I really believed you were serious about wanting to put things back together.”

“I was.”

“My ass,” she snapped.

“Look, what’s this all about, Jo?”

“Guilt, shame, remorse, you name it, I was feeding on it. What kind of horrible woman was I to have done that kind of thing to such a nice guy like you. Good father. Faithful husband. Oh, you were good.”

Cork leaned against the hood of the Bronco. Jo’s voice was carrying, and people on the sidewalk looked at them in passing.

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I’m talking about you and that slut Molly Nurmi.” She jabbed a finger toward the Pinewood Broiler.

“What?”

“Don’t look surprised. How long’s it been going on, Cork?
Hmmm?
How long has she been giving you more than coffee at the Broiler?”

Cork took a step away from the Bronco and nearer Jo. The cloud of his breathing broke over her face. “Who told you about Molly?”

“What difference does it make?”

Cork grasped her shoulders. “Who told you?”

“Let go of me or I swear I’ll have you arrested for assault. Don’t think I won’t.” Cork let go and she smoothed her coat where his hands had gripped. “I’m not the only one who was caught with my pants down.”

Cork studied the satisfaction on her face a moment, then understood. “Someone showed you the photographs.”

“Good close shots, Cork. No mistake. A little sauna, a little skinny dip, a little—”

“Who showed you those pictures?”

Jo smiled enigmatically and didn’t reply.

“Was it Sandy Parrant? It was Parrant, wasn’t it?”

“I went to tell him it would be best not to see one another for a while. I was thinking maybe you and I ought to try to work through things, maybe with counseling this time. Foolish me.”

“And he showed you the pictures?”

“Yes!” she threw at him, then shook her head with mock amazement. “You really had me going. You almost had me convinced.”

Cork walked quickly past her toward the Broiler.

“Where are you going? I haven’t finished,” Jo called after him.

Cork pushed through the door of the Pinewood and went to the pay phone on the wall. He dug in his pocket for a quarter, but couldn’t find one.

“Johnny,” he called, “loan me a quarter for a phone call.”

Johnny, who was still at the register, popped the cash drawer, slipped out a quarter, and tossed it to Cork. “There’ll be interest.” He laughed.

Jo stepped through the door and stood watching Cork. Johnny took a look at Jo, then at Cork, and said quietly, “Uh-oh.”

Cork dialed Molly’s number. All he got was a busy signal. He slammed the receiver down and hurried out the door.

“My quarter!” Johnny called.

But Cork was outside already, with Jo right behind him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Parrant knows about me and Molly. I’ve got to get out there before he does.” Cork broke into a run.

“Why?” Jo slipped on a patch of ice, caught herself, and rushed to catch up. “What would he want with her?”

“Not her. What she has.”

Cork jumped into the Bronco. Jo got into the passenger side.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Cork growled.

“I want to make sure it’s not Sandy you’re after. I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”

“Hold on,” Cork said, too worried about Molly to argue.

He shot the Bronco in reverse, nearly sliding into the Dumpster in back of the Broiler. Then he skidded onto the street and headed toward Molly’s.

On the way, he told Jo everything he knew. About the judge and Lytton and Joe John’s murder. About GameTech and the brigade. He told her his suspicions about Sandy Parrant. Jo sat with her arms crossed, looking out the window as if she weren’t hearing a thing.

“It’s lies,” she said. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

He pulled out the prints of Lytton and Joe John LeBeau and gave them to her. Jo looked at them one by one.

“Christ,” she said. Then, “He didn’t know anything about it.”

Cork turned into the lane to Molly’s place.

“This would never stand up in court,” she insisted. “It doesn’t prove anything about Sandy.”

“Come on, Jo, how could he not have known?”

He stopped in Molly’s yard and saw her skis propped by the back door. It was growing dark, yet there was no light on in the big cabin. Cork ran to the back door and into the kitchen.

“Molly!” he called toward the stairs.

He lifted the lid on the woodbox, yanked out the top logs, and saw that the bag of negatives was no longer there. He ran to the stairs and bounded up them calling, “Molly!” as he went.

She wasn’t upstairs. When Cork hurried down, he found Jo standing in the kitchen looking irritated. “Well?” she said.

“Something’s wrong. She should be here. Somewhere.”

Cork pushed past Jo and rushed outside to the shed where Molly kept her old Saab. The Saab was still there.

“See?” Jo said. “No one. Not your precious Molly. Not Sandy. Just no one.”

“The bag’s gone,” Cork said darkly.

“What bag?”

“It had negatives of photographs like the ones I showed you and Sandy showed you. Pictures the judge used for blackmail.”

“If there is such a bag, maybe Molly took it,” Jo said. “Maybe she had reason.”

“It wasn’t Molly.”

He looked toward the sauna by the frozen lake. Jo grabbed his arm.

“Cork, you can’t spread these vicious lies about Sandy. Not now, just as he’s about to head to Washington. If you do, if you say one word that casts a shadow over his going, I swear to God I’ll help him slap a slander suit on you so fast your head’ll swim.”

Cork pulled loose and started for the sauna. Jo was at his heels.

“Is this about us?” she said, nearly shouting. “Do you want to hurt Sandy because of me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Cork replied. “And what makes you think Parrant’s so goddamned innocent?”

“Because I’d know,” Jo told him earnestly. “He couldn’t lie to me.”

“Jesus, Jo, after everything we’ve been through you believe that? People lie all the time and they do a pretty damn good job of it.”

“Not Sandy.”

“Fuck Sandy,” Cork said, and broke into a run.

He pushed open the door to the changing room of the sauna. It was nearly dark inside, but Cork could see clothing piled neatly on a bench. He lifted the sweater, checking its color, wondering with a note of desperation, was this what Molly had worn this morning? He shoved through the door into the sauna that was still warm. He waited a minute for his eyes to adjust to the deeper dark inside the windowless room, and he confirmed that Molly wasn’t there. He stood a moment trying to figure. Where could she be? Had she run? Been taken?

“I’m tired of this, Cork,” Jo said from the changing room. “I want to go home. You can come back and wait for your girlfriend without me.”

Cork looked at the other door, the closed door that opened onto the lake.

“Face the facts, Cork. You’re just trying to hurt Sandy because he hurt you. All these accusations—”

“Are true,” Cork said.

He reached for the door.

“Then prove them, goddamn it. Show me the proof.”

Cork opened the door. Framed in the threshold lay the snow-covered lake, a pale, peaceful blue in the twilight. A sky, pure as springwater, ran above it to the far shoreline. Ten yards from the door was the hole in the ice that Molly and Cork had dipped in when they’d finished their sauna the night before. And between that hole and the door where Cork dumbly stood, Molly lay naked on the ice.

His legs would not move. They barely held him up. His throat went dry and he couldn’t swallow, could hardly even breathe. Yet his senses took in everything about her. Her eyes were open and the look on her face was calm. Her white skin had gone blue, nearly the same soft color the twilight gave the snow. Her long red hair stuck to her shoulders and to the ice, the matted strands stiff as broom straw. Her right arm was outstretched, her hand fisted as if it held to something fiercely.

He felt as if he’d stood there forever, though in truth it was but a moment. Jo whispered behind him, “Oh, God, Cork.”

He moved then, moved although he knew with a cold, empty certainty that it was useless. He knelt at her side, felt at her throat for a pulse in her carotid artery. Her skin was encased in a thin sheathing of ice and seemed almost brittle to his fingertips. He finally took his hand away and looked at Jo.

“Call the sheriff’s office,” he said quietly.

Jo backed away and turned without a word toward the cabin.

“And bring a blanket,” he asked her.

He tried to lift Molly’s head, to cradle her in his lap, but her hair, frozen solid, held her prisoner to the ice.

“The phone’s not working.”