In the Lake of the Woods Chapters 14–16 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 14–16

Summary: Chapter 14, Hypothesis

Chapter 14 presents readers with yet another hypothesis regarding Kathy’s disappearance. Perhaps Kathy drowned after a boating accident. She woke early that morning and regarded John next to her. After showering, eating, and doing a crossword puzzle, Kathy looked out the window and thought about their relationship. They don’t communicate or make love. They need to be honest and confide their feelings. Kathy will confess that she always hated the political lifestyle and she’s glad it’s over.

Eventually, Kathy smells a bad odor and finds the dead plants. She leaves the cottage, gets into the motorboat, and heads north toward Angle Inlet. Kathy skims the shoreline, perhaps believing she could still have the life she always wanted. She and John just need to be open with each other. Kathy will share her resentments from all he has put her through, and they can have a fresh start.

The accident happens after that. Maybe the boat crashed on a sandbar, and she flew into the water and drowned.

Summary: Chapter 15, What the Questions Were

The morning after Kathy’s disappearance is reported, county sheriff Art Lux arrives and sets up headquarters at the gas station run by Vinny Pearson, the local police officer. Lux sends out bulletins, and soon a dozen boats are searching the lake. Lux and Vinny find John at the cottage. Lux updates John on the search, gets a picture of Kathy, and then asks questions.

John explains that he last saw Kathy around midnight and woke up around noon. John thought Kathy was hiking, so he wasn’t worried about her absence. By dusk, he started searching on his own and drinking. At midnight, after discovering the boat was gone, he went to the Rasmussens for help. Lux suggests that if Kathy had taken the boat John would have heard the motor. Lux asks if they had any disagreements, and John admits to marital stress caused by the election. Lux says Myra Shaw, who works at the Mini-Mart, overheard John and Kathy arguing, but John claims it was a minor disagreement. Lux suggests Kathy needed time alone and tells John to contact friends to see if they have heard from her. Lux then asks why the telephone was under the sink, and John says it was symbolic of the election. Throughout the conversation, Vinny tries to interrupt with questions.

After Lux and Vinny leave, John eats, tries to get Pat on the phone, and then attempts to sleep. He thinks about the previous night, but none of his memories make sense. John wakes up around six. Claude says that Lux has arranged for more boats to search tomorrow and that he and Ruth will stay in the spare bedroom in the cottage. Claude assures John that they are on his side but says that John should act like a normal husband. John spends the evening drinking and trying to call Kathy’s sister. John reaches Pat at midnight, but she explains that she has already learned of Kathy’s disappearance on the TV and that she will arrive at the cottage tomorrow.

Summary: Chapter 16, Evidence

This chapter concentrates on testimony provided by soldiers who took part in the attack on Thuan Yen, known as the My Lai Massacre. Some men say Calley commanded them to kill anything that breathed. Calley states that every Vietnamese was considered an enemy. The men describe brutal acts of murder of women, old men, children, and babies. They describe bodies piled up in ditches. Another soldier reports that they received no enemy fire. In a footnote, the narrator shares that he counted 504 people killed that day. Other excerpts focus on the trauma experienced afterward by those who were present during the day’s events and on a few people’s understanding that John needed help. The exhibits include several medals awarded to John.

Analysis: Chapters 14–16

Chapter 15 marks the beginning of the official investigation and search for Kathy, the day after she has disappeared. With the involvement of law enforcement, the situation is wrested from John’s control and will be placed in a much more public eye. If John has any actions to cover up, he will find it infinitely harder to do so.

In the county sheriff, Lux, and the local police officer, Vinny Pearson, John faces a far more skeptical audience than in the cottage owners, Claude and Ruth Rasmussen. The moment the officers show up at the cottage, at 9:00 a.m., highlights the potential difficulties that John now faces, particularly if he had any role in Kathy’s disappearance or even if he tries to tell any lies, a behavior that he seems incapable of avoiding. Whereas these men are ready to get to work and find Kathy, John is sleeping. His attitude could seem far too cavalier to the men he is meeting for the first time.

After hearing John’s story, Lux and Vinny prove to be far less sympathetic to him than Claude, who figured prominently in Chapter 10. Now John has two other men questioning him, and some of his answers strike them as suspicious. Vinny emerges as notable in this chapter, both because readers have been hearing him proclaim John’s guilt since the very first “Evidence” chapter and because his numerous interruptions while Lux interviews John indicate that he is displeased with John’s answers and may have some ideas of his own. One reason for Vinny’s initial suspicion of John may be because Vinny also is a Vietnam vet and he may know the damage the war can do, but unlike John, Vinny didn’t massacre children.

The story that John shares with Lux and Vinny is quite similar to the one described in Chapter 11. In John’s retelling, however, he omits potentially suspicious details, including his destruction of the houseplants and his midnight “fight” with Jesus. John also doesn’t share his fragments of memory, if they do represent memory, of visiting Kathy in the bedroom. If John is lying and he did do something to Kathy that night, John follows a smart strategy to hew closely to the truth. Doing so will make it easier for him to keep the story straight. However, John can’t cover up all the strangeness, like the fact that he unplugged and hid the phone, which means that even if Kathy tried to call him, she wouldn’t have been able to get through. John’s behavior and his answers give Lux and Vinny reason to be distrustful.

Chapter 14, which credibly explores the premise that John may have been responsible for Kathy’s disappearance, is sandwiched by chapters that also focus on death. Chapter 14 has hopeful moments, such as Kathy’s belief that if they can welcome openness in their relationship, they can build a better future, but it ends in her death. If this scenario was true, John wouldn’t technically be responsible, but he certainly is implicated because Kathy fled onto the lake in fear of his erratic and disturbing midnight behavior. In a far less hypothetical manner, Chapter 16 points almost a laser focus on the massacre in which John participated. The sequence of passages connects John to death in general, underscoring the idea that if Kathy is dead, John cannot be wholly innocent.

The sequence of these three chapters, opening with Kathy’s accidental death and ending with a focus on the death at Thuan Yen, emphasizes the very real possibility that Kathy is dead. This section contains few hopeful signs of a positive future for either Kathy or John.

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