Iron Lake Read Free Page A

how to apply direct pressure or a tourniquet came to his mind. He’d practiced these procedures a hundred times, but never really believing that he’d ever use them. He found himself hoping desperately the judge wasn’t badly hurt, and he panicked just a little at the thought that he might actually have to save a life.

    The blood led him to a closed door where a dim light crept underneath.

    “Judge Parrant?” he said cautiously, leaning close to the door.

    He was reluctant to barge in, but when he finally turned the knob and stood in the threshold, he found a study lined with shelves of books. Along the far wall was a desk of dark wood with a lamp on it. The lamp was switched on but didn’t give much light and the room was heavy with shadows. On the wall directly back of the desk hung a map of Minnesota. Red lines like red rivers ran down the map from red splashes like red lakes. Behind the desk lay an overturned chair, and near the chair lay the judge.

    Although fear reached way down inside him and made his legs go weak, he forced himself to move ahead. As he neared the desk and saw the judge more clearly, he forgot all about the procedures for a tourniquet. There was nowhere to put a tourniquet on a man who was missing most of his head.

    For a moment he couldn’t move. He felt paralyzed, unable to think as he stared down at the raw pieces of the judge’s brain, pink as chunks of fresh watermelon. Paul didn’t even move when he heard the sound at his back, the soft shutting of the door. Finally he managed to turn away from the dead man just in time to see the second thing that night his Scout training could never have prepared him for.

2

    “C ORK ?” Molly said from the bed.

    He heard and he didn’t. Standing at the window with his hands poised at his zipper, Corcoran O’Connor watched drifts rise in the yard. His old red Bronco parked in the drive was already hub deep in powdery white. Farther down through the pines, the abandoned resort cabins by the lake were nearly invisible behind a gauzy curtain of blowing snow.

    “You’re not really thinking of going, are you, Cork?” Molly asked. “Not into that.”

    “What would folks say if I ended up snowbound here?”

    “The truth. That you were screwing Molly Nurmi, that shameless slut.”

    He turned to her, frowning. “Nobody calls you that.”

    “Not to my face, anyway.” She laughed when she saw his anger. “Oh, come on, Cork. I’ve lived with that most of my life. It doesn’t bother me.”

    “Well, it bothers me.”

    “I’m glad it does.” She pushed the hair from her eyes, dark red hair damp with sweat. “Stay, Cork. I’ll fire up the sauna. We can get hot and wet, roll in the snow, come back to bed, and make love again. How does that sound?”

    He finished zipping his pants, buckled his belt, and came away from the window. He went to the bed and took his red corduroy shirt from the corner post where it had been hastily draped. Slipping it on over his long johns, he slowly worked the buttons through. He bent and tugged on his socks. The cold floor had nearly frozen his feet. “Hand me a cigarette, will you?”

    Molly took one from Cork’s pack of Lucky Strikes by the bed, lit it, and handed it to him. “They’ll kill you.”

    “What won’t anymore?” He glanced around the room, looking for his boots.

    “You seem distracted today.”

    “Do I? Sorry.”

    “Feeling a little guilty?”

    “Always.”

    “There’s no need to,” she said.

    “Easy for you to say. You’re not Catholic.”

    “Come on. Relax here beside me a minute while you finish your cigarette.” She patted the bed at her side.

    He looked out the window. “I should get going. It’ll be hard enough getting back into town as it is.”

    Molly drew the blanket and sheet around her and pushed herself up against the headboard. She pulled her knees up to her breasts and hugged them as if she were cold. “Why are you always so concerned with what