“The FBI, they told you what happened. To the rest of the squad.” Wells hoping to keep Callar a little bit on track.
“Yeah. Before I kicked them out. You gonna take notes?”
“This is informal. I don’t have any authority.” Callar had probably guessed as much already, Wells thought.
“I can tell you to get lost whenever.”
“Sure.”
“Well, that calls for a drink.” Callar looked at a cabinet over the fridge.
“I thought—”
“I keep a little something on hand. For special occasions.” He clambered onto the counter and pulled open the cabinet, revealing a dozen bottles of Jack Daniel’s, the oversized square ones.
“Special occasions.”
“Empty, empty, empty. ” Callar rooted through the cabinet. “Here we go.” He pulled down a half-full bottle, the brown liquid sloshing against the glass as though it wanted to escape.
“I didn’t offer this to the
“Clever.”
“Say when.” Callar started to pour.
“When.” But Callar didn’t stop until Wells’s glass was as full as his own.
“In for a penny.”
“You want to get me arrested for a DUI.”
“You? Please.” Callar raised his glass. “Got a toast for us, John?”
“Just hoping it’s not spiked with rat poison.”
“That would be too easy.” Callar drank half his glass. Wells followed, wondering how far down the rabbit hole they would go this afternoon.
“Rachel was a shrink. Ever go to a shrink, John?”
The question surprised Wells. “Not really, no.”
“Not really or no?”
“No,” Wells said, lying. “How’d Rachel end up in the army?”
“The military has these programs, they give you extra cash during residency. You serve when you’re done. Money’s not great, but the benefits are nice. She signed up third year of residency, wound up in the reserves, and after the war started, she rotated in and out.”
“By choice.”
“Pretty much. You’re a doc in the reserves, especially a woman, you don’t want to go into a hot zone, army’s not dragging you over. It doesn’t look good.”
“Tell me more about the two of you.”
“First, I want to hear how you got involved in all this,” Callar said.
“Last week the CIA director, Vinny Duto, asked me to take a look. I’m getting up to speed. If you talked to the FBI last week, you probably know as much as I do about the case.”
“The FBI didn’t have time to tell me much before I kicked them out.”
“But you know, seven members of 673 are dead or missing. Professional hits. No leads, no suspects, no motive. The bureau is going on the theory it’s probably Qaeda. Qaeda or a detainee looking for revenge.”
“And you agree?”
“I can’t figure it out. None of it makes sense. But it started with your wife.”
“Rachel killed herself,” Callar said. “If you read the autopsy, the police report, then you saw. She took that Xanax and she lay down on her bed and put that bag on her head. And she died.”
“She have a prescription for the pills?”
Callar sipped his drink. “Sure. She was having a lot of trouble, anxiety attacks, insomnia. Ever since she got back from Poland.”
Wells decided to let that thread alone for now. “Police report says she didn’t leave a note.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe I burned it before I called the cops. Maybe she blamed me for being such a crappy husband.”
“Were you a crappy husband?”
“No.”
“Was there a note?”
“Listen to me.
“How about the same nobody who’s killed soldiers and ops without leaving a clue? Maybe somebody shot her up with a sedative, liquid Xanax, dumped the pills down her throat.”
“Or maybe aliens landed from planet TR-thirty-six and killed her and flew off. It didn’t happen. She killed herself. You drag it up, rub my face in it.”
Wells found his attention wandering to the light sneaking in the edges of the windows where the blackout shades didn’t quite reach. He hadn’t eaten lunch, and the whiskey was hitting him hard.
“What doesn’t make sense to me,” Wells said. “Most husbands. They’d want to believe this. They’d want the police to investigate. And if they got any whiff it was real, they’d want whoever did it strung up. But you, you’re fighting it hard as you can. And not ’cause you’re a suspect, either. The police, FBI, they say your alibi’s airtight. You were working in Phoenix the entire weekend. Only got about eight hours’ sleep the whole time.”
“I want Rachel left in peace.”
“Her or you?”
“Both of us.”
“Even if someone drugged her and put a bag on her head for you to find.”
In the silence that followed, Wells knew he’d gone too far.
CALLAR SUCKED down the rest of his whiskey. “You got a way with words, John.”
“I’m sorry. Truly.”
“Ought to put my foot in your ass, send you on your way.” But Callar didn’t. Maybe he was tired of drinking alone. Or maybe, despite all his denials, he wondered what had really happened.
“I have to ask,” Wells said.
Callar’s half-shut eyes warned Wells to be careful.
“Before she died, Rachel, she get any threats? Did you notice anything unusual? Cars outside the house?”
“Dumb question. But I’ll answer anyway. No.”
“All right. So, how’d she wind up over there?”
“In 2005 and 2006, she went to Iraq. Four-month tours. Mainly the big hospital there, at Balad, the air base. Evaluating soldiers for psychiatric problems.”
Callar broke off. He poured two glasses of water, slid one to Wells.
“She saw a lot,” Callar said. “Eighteen-year-old kids, faces melted off. Guys with PTSD so bad that they got locked in rubber rooms. After the second time, she was a mess. Angry. She lost weight. She would hardly talk to me. Then she heard about this new squad getting put together. Six-seventy-three. Dealing with guys they couldn’t send to Gitmo. She wanted a job where she could get something back for the red, white, and blue.”
“You weren’t in favor.”
“I thought she didn’t know what she was getting into. But she never listened to me. I was hoping they wouldn’t take her. She was high-strung after that second tour, and I hoped somebody would notice. But she’d been in Iraq, so she had the clearances. And docs weren’t exactly lining up for the work. And shrinks, they know how to fake it. Couple months later, she was on a plane to Warsaw.”
“What was she doing?”
“She didn’t tell me much. I had the impression they wanted her to make sure they pushed the prisoners to the limit but no further. And to fix them up if they did go too far.”
