Iron Lake

Early the next morning, Jo lets herself into Sandy’s house, wakes him up, and ends their relationship. Sandy will be leaving for Washington, DC soon, but Jo’s family and career are in Aurora. Sandy, however, wants her to come to Washington, DC after her divorce. He shows her a photograph of Cork and Molly having sex, given to him by the judge. Jo is angry, feeling that she took all the blame for their failed marriage while Cork acted like an innocent victim. She and Sandy have sex and stay in bed for the rest of the day.

Cork goes to Harlan’s house. He sees a robin and recognizes it as “a good spirit, manidoo, that warned of danger or the nearness of enemies or of the approach of a maji-manidoo, or evil spirit” (280). When the robin sings, Cork gets his rifle from the truck. He breaks into Harlan’s house and searches for the negatives. As he’s searching, he hears the robin call and looks out the window at Harlan’s taxidermy shed. Inside, he finds the body of Harlan’s dog with an incision in its belly. When he opens it, he finds a bag full of negatives.

As Cork leaves the shed, someone hits him from behind and knocks him down. Cork watches from the ground as a man wearing a ski mask runs away. When the man gets tangled in thick blackberry bushes, Cork fires at him but misses. Cork hears two shots, but they don’t come from the man, who speeds away on a snowmobile. Cork finds the man’s gun in the blackberry bush, and then sees a pool of oil where the snowmobile stood; he realizes it must be Tom’s.

Cork lets himself into Molly’s cabin, goes upstairs, and falls asleep on her bed. When he wakes up, Molly is home. He tells her he needs her more than anything, and they reconcile. He tells her about the bag of negatives, and they both wonder why his assailant didn’t take them. Cork doesn’t want it to be Father Tom and is hoping it’s Sandy. He tells Molly that he hid the negatives in her woodbox.

After Molly goes to bed, Cork sifts through the negatives. He finds a photo of Father Tom and Wanda having sex and wonders if this explains why Tom attacked him at Harlan’s cabin. He also finds photographs of documents, but can only make out the word GameTech. He remembers Ernie Meloux putting GameTech labels on the equipment at the casino. Next, he finds photos of Helmuth Hanover and Judge Parrant at a Minnesota Civilian Brigade meeting. He is disheartened by more and more photos of locals’ indiscretions. The last photo is of Harlan holding a rifle, standing with his foot on a dead man. Cork wakes Molly up to tell her he’s going back to Harlan’s cabin to use the darkroom. She decides to go with him. He thinks the murdered man under Harlan’s foot is Joe John LeBeau.

Cork remembers just enough about photography to develop the negative and make close-ups of the dead man, positively identifying him as Joe John. He also re-develops the photos of Helmuth, the judge, and the Minnesota Civilian Brigade. Then he develops the negatives of the GameTech documents, which include consulting contracts with many local men, including Wally Schanno.

The next morning, Cork calls the phone number on the GameTech documents but gets a recording. He then calls a contact at the sheriff’s office and asks him to find an address for the phone number. He and Molly theorize that Joe John was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t have when he was cleaning the offices at the Parrant development company.

Molly and Cork decide to get a Christmas tree after she gets off work. Cork’s contact at the sheriff’s office tells him that GameTech’s listed address is the judge’s house. Cork decides to search the judge’s house again and confront Wally about his work with GameTech. He also wants to talk to Father Tom. As they are leaving, he tells Molly he loves her, but she doesn’t hear him.

While Cork searches the judge’s house, he hears the front door open. Hannah Mueller, who cleans the judge’s house, is there to clean the crime scene. He asks how she contacts the judge and she shows him two phone numbers. One is the judge’s office in Aurora. Cork tries the other number, but no one answers. That phone number is connected to an address in Duluth—it must be the judge’s GameTech office.

Cork drives to Duluth and breaks into the GameTech office. He finds that GameTech leases games and equipment to the casino at an exorbitant price, essentially embezzling from the casino by purposefully overcharging. Helmuth Hanover arrives with two men Cork recognizes from the Minnesota Civilian Brigade photos. Cork realizes that the judge made Helmuth a partner in GameTech to ally with the Brigade. After Helmuth and his cronies leave, Cork takes the GameTech documents.

Cork goes to Wally’s house and asks him about GameTech. Wally claims he does security consulting, but Cork concludes that since Wally, Sigurd, Stu Grantham, and other prominent locals are all listed as consultants for GameTech, they must be being paid to look the other way while GameTech siphons money from the casino. Wally got involved because he can’t afford the care that Arletta will soon need. Cork shows Wally the photos of Joe John’s murder. Wally says he didn’t know, and Cork believes him. Wally wants to keep the photos to reopen Joe John’s case, but Cork won’t give them to him.

Molly leaves work early and skis home. She is in the sauna when the door opens. She thinks it is Cork, but the man says, “Guess again” (340).

Cork drives out to the old mission on the reservation. Taking his gun, he hides behind a snow bank, watching the mission’s entrance. He hears a car pull up to the mission; a few moments later, the squeaky mission doors open and shut. Cork quietly approaches the building and listens at the window. He hears someone inside whimper.