William Krueger: Tamarack County

The Arctic Cat’s age was evident. The engine lacked the pickup of a younger, newer model. Cork figured he was able to stay with Frogg-he was certain it was Frogg on the other machine-only because the river was narrow and negotiating its twists and turns required a slower speed and demanded the man’s full attention. Maybe Frogg didn’t even realize that he was being followed. Two miles east, the river emptied into Iron Lake. Cork was trying to think of all the places where Frogg might leave the frozen riverway. There were cabins here and there, mostly seasonal, but the only major access was at the old bridge where County 7 crossed. Cork hoped Frogg would take that exit, because if he reached the wide-open expanse of Iron Lake, he could give his machine full throttle and Cork wouldn’t have a prayer of keeping up.

At the bridge, Frogg kept to the river. Cork had fallen back a bit because the Arctic Cat had begun to sputter. He didn’t want the engine to die completely, and he eased up on the gas. The lights of the other sled crept farther and farther ahead. Over the sound of his own machine and the wind whipping past, Cork heard the faint ring of his cell phone. He didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.

A couple of minutes away from Iron Lake he was still trying to come up with some plan that would keep Frogg within range. He wished that he carried a firearm but knew that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Although he was almost certain it was Frogg he pursued, when a gun was involved, “almost” wasn’t good enough. Then he considered what he’d do if he caught up with Frogg, who was probably armed. Cork didn’t even have Anne’s baseball bat with him. He decided he’d worry about that later.

As both machines approached the mouth of the White Iron River, Cork saw something ahead that gave him a moment of hope. Incredibly, from the ice in the middle of the opening onto Iron Lake came the flash of emergency lights atop an Interceptor Explorer, one of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department vehicles. Marsha, God bless her, had called in the cavalry.

The snowmobile ahead slowed. Cork came up on him rapidly. He saw the driver twist on the seat and eye him out of the oval of the hood of his parka. Then the driver turned back toward the emergency lights and gave his machine all the gas he could. The Polaris-Cork could see that the make of the snowmobile was the same as the one Hancock claimed Frogg had borrowed-shot directly at the Explorer. Cork heard a barked “Halt!” Deputy Reese Weber, who must have been called back on duty, loomed in the headlights of the Polaris. He stood at the rear of the Explorer, weapon held with a two-handed grip and aimed at Frogg. The Polaris bore down relentlessly, and Weber fired a single shot, well over Frogg’s head as a warning. The sled was on him before he had a chance to fire again. He leaped to the side and slammed his body against the rear bumper of the SUV. The Polaris veered sharply to the right and shot through the small gap between the vehicle and the shoreline. In the headlights of Cork’s Arctic Cat, Weber rolled and tried to stand, but it was clear the man was injured. Cork stopped where Weber sat in the snow, back against his vehicle.

Weber furiously waved him off. “Go! Go! I’m okay!”

Cork sped on, but he’d lost precious moments. The storm had swallowed Frogg, and Cork could no longer see the headlights of the Polaris. He killed the Arctic Cat’s engine and listened. He’d expected Frogg to flee into the great open of the lake. He was surprised when he heard the mosquito buzz of the engine heading south down the shoreline toward Aurora. He fired up the Arctic Cat and turned again in pursuit.

Frogg had made what Cork hoped would prove to be a fatal error, the error of a man who didn’t know Iron Lake as intimately as a native would. Even in the coldest of winters, Iron Lake didn’t freeze over completely. There were a couple of places where open water remained. Half-Mile Creek near Crow Point was one. The other was a kidney-shaped area adjacent to the old BearPaw Brewery. In the years the brewery had operated, the runoff had kept the water near the shoreline free from ice. The result was that waterfowl sometimes wintered there. When the brewery finally closed its doors, a vocal group of citizenry had succeeded in persuading the city of Aurora to aerate that small section of shoreline to keep the water open for the benefit of the waterfowl. It was an area clearly marked with barricades, and anyone familiar with the lake in winter stayed clear of it. Frogg must not have known the lake, because he was heading straight for the open water. If the storm hampered his visibility enough, the man might just fly right off the ice into the grip of Iron Lake, and Cork would have him.

Cork shot past the North Arm peninsula, barely able to see the lights of the big houses there because of the thick snowfall. Although Aurora lay along the shoreline ahead, all he could see were a million flakes blasting at him as he pursued Frogg. He couldn’t tell distances well and had no clear idea of how far he was from the open water. Once again, he halted his Arctic Cat, turned off the engine, and listened. He heard the Polaris up ahead. Then suddenly the sound changed to a kind of gargle and ceased. Frogg, Cork knew, had hit the water.

He moved the Arctic Cat cautiously forward. In a minute, in the headlights, he spotted an orange barricade on which was mounted a warning sign that read “Caution-Open Water.” He neared the edge where white ice met black water and where the tracks of Frogg’s Polaris ended. He stopped his own machine well away from the open water and directed the headlights at the place where Frogg’s trajectory and momentum would have taken the snowmobile. He knew the little machine would have skipped a bit, like a stone over the water’s surface, but it couldn’t have taken Frogg all the way across. He saw no sign of the snowmobile or Frogg. He thought that could have been simply from the cloaking of the heavy snowfall, so he slowly circled the big kidney of water. It was an area maybe fifty yards wide and seventy yards long. When he reached the far side, he spotted lights deep in the water, the headlights of the snowmobile still shining at the bottom of the lake. There was no sign of Frogg. Even if the man had managed to disentangle himself from the Polaris, in that ice-cold water, in heavy clothing that would have soaked up moisture like a thirsty sponge, his chances were pretty slim. Cork scanned the edge of the ice for any sign that Frogg had swum there and had tried to climb out. He found nothing.

He turned off the Arctic Cat’s engine and pulled his cell phone from its belt holster. He punched in the number for Dross’s cell.

“Cork, where are you?” she answered without preliminaries.

“I caught up with Frogg.”

“Where?”

“The open water by the old brewery. He went in.”

“Is he still in, or have you pulled him out?”

“I can’t see him. His snowmobile’s on the bottom of the lake. I think he’s down there with it.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re already on our way.”

“Weber is injured.”

“We know. We’ll take care of it. You just wait there.”

Cork put his cell phone away and sat on the Arctic Cat while the snow went on falling in a storm that seemed oblivious to the human drama within it.

Cork didn’t stick around to watch the divers go into Iron Lake to retrieve Frogg’s body. He was bone tired and would have loved nothing better than to lie down and sleep for a week. But Stephen lay in a hospital bed eighty miles away, and Cork wanted to be with his son during the ordeal of recovery still ahead. Frogg had done a lot of damage in Tamarack County, and a lot of healing would be necessary. Meloux could help with some of that. Maybe time would help with the rest.