The Midnight House

“How did she feel about that?”

“Look. I was only getting snapshots. Talking to her a couple times a week. I think. part of her rolled right through it. Maybe even liked it for a while. Then something happened, a few months in, and she hated herself for liking it. And she’d volunteered, so that was worse. She couldn’t put it on anybody else.”

Callar stopped, but Wells didn’t think the story was done. “Then, near the end, there was another incident.”

“Incident.”

“Before you ask, I don’t know what. Not a clue. But when she got back, she was in bad shape. Taking a whole pharmacy worth of stuff. Ambien, the sleeping pills. Antidepressants. Then Xanax, Klonopin. She was prescribing it for herself and getting docs she knew to give it to her.”

“That doesn’t prove she killed herself,” Wells said. Callar’s eyes flickered and his face softened. “All I’m saying is, whatever happened, it came out of something over there. You’re sure you don’t know what it was.”

“Have you not been listening to me? She didn’t talk about anything operational. She was a good soldier girl. You want to know what happened over there, check the records. If you can find them. Talk to the rest of the squad, everyone who’s left.”

“Rachel ever discuss the rest of the squad? Hint who was pushing too hard?”

Now the uncertainty disappeared from Callar’s eyes. “One time. She said, ‘Steve, you’ll never believe what that nasty colonel did today. Ripped out a prisoner’s heart. Reached right into his chest. Fried it up and ate it.’ What have I been saying? She didn’t talk about anything operational. You’re just like those FBI dweebs. You pretend to listen, but you don’t.”

Callar slopped more whiskey in his glass, sucked it down. Though he didn’t seem drunk to Wells. The months in this dark house must have turned his liver into an alcohol-processing machine.

“You have a gun?” Wells said. Apropos of nothing.

“Do I have a gun? No.”

“Did you ever?”

“Yeah. Put it in a safe deposit a couple months back. Came to the conclusion that a nine and finding your wife dead don’t mix. How ’bout you, John? You must be carrying.”

Wells opened his jacket to reveal the empty holster. “In the car.”

“Not scared of me?” Callar laughed. He drank the last of his whiskey, pushed himself up. “Where are my manners? Lemme show you around.”

Callar led Wells up the solid wooden stairs, leaving the light behind. Wells stepped carefully in the dark. Upstairs, Callar opened a door and flicked on another of the ghostly fluorescent lights that he favored. The bed was a modern version of an old sleigh, dark wood and a rounded headboard. The mattress was bare.

“Do you believe in God, John?”

“Used to pray every day. Now I’m not sure.”

“I am. I’m sure. It’s all void. Sound and fury signifying nothing. An accident of biology. Cosmic joke. Whatever you want to call it.”

Wells didn’t feel like arguing. “Ever think about opening a window? Let that California sun in? Stop creeping out the neighbors. You know what they called the prison, don’t you, Steve? The Midnight House. You’ve got your very own version going.”

“See the stain? On the mattress?”

But the thick white top of the mattress seemed spotless.

Callar flipped on the ceiling light. Still, Wells couldn’t understand what he meant. The bedroom was as bloodless as the kitchen. A handful of framed pictures on the bedside table provided the only evidence of life. Callar and Rachel at a baseball game. Callar and Rachel in a rain forest somewhere.

“Pretty.”

“Think that makes me feel better?” Callar nudged Wells. “See the stain.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s ’cause it’s not there,” Callar said. “There’s nothing left of her. Not even that. Nothing but what I have in my head. And if I leave this house, that’s gone, too.”

“You’ll have your memories wherever you are.”

“Then I may as well stay here.”

“Let me ask you—”

Callar put a not-very-friendly hand on Wells’s arm. “No more. Come on, Johnny. Time to go.”

Wells turned to Callar. He had more questions: Could she have been having an affair? How come you never had kids? And, most of all, Were you always this crazy? But the set of Callar’s face left no room for argument.

“When should I come back?”

“When you find the real killer. You and O. J.” Callar squeezed Wells’s biceps, digging his fingers into the muscle. Callar would be an ugly fighter, fueled by alcohol and rage. Wells let him squeeze.

“This thing you’re living, I’m sorry for it. For you. But whoever did this, they’re still out there. You can help us. Help yourself.”

“Please leave my house.”

WELLS LEFT CALLAR’S HAUNTED castle behind. Ten minutes later he stopped at a Starbucks, ordered a large black coffee — he could never bring himself to say venti. He found a table in the corner and spent an hour poring over the police and FBI files on crazy Steve Callar, trying to figure out if Callar could have killed his wife. For whatever reason.

But he couldn’t have. Not unless he’d figured out how to teleport the six hundred miles from Phoenix to San Diego. During his weekend in Arizona, he’d only been off shift once, between midnight and 8 a.m. on Sunday. The last flight from Phoenix to San Diego was at 9:55 p.m. Callar couldn’t possibly have made it.

SO WELLS HEADED UP the 5, leaving San Diego behind and heading for Los Angeles and a red-eye back to Washington. But he made one stop along the way, at a bookstore in Anaheim, where he leafed through a shelf of histories about Germany and World War II, wondering what had provoked Jerry Williams to start reading about the Nazis.

17

STARE KIEJKUTY. JULY 2008

When Kenneth Karp stepped into Mohammed Fariz’s cell, Mohammed sat in his usual position, rocking back and forth in the right rear corner. He closed his eyes as Karp slid the door shut.

“Come on, dude,” Karp said. “You’re hurting my feelings.”

Mohammed was the forgotten detainee, the second Pakistani arrested during the raid in Islamabad, the seventeen-year-old in the Batman T-shirt who’d shot Dwayne Maggs in the leg and made a fuss on the flight between Pakistan and Poland.

In his month at the Midnight House, Mohammed had been difficult. Some days he read his Quran, prayed on a regular schedule, ate his meals without complaint. But others he spent mumbling to himself and squatting in a corner of his cell. Two days before he had refused his dinner, violating 673’s rules, which required detainees to eat every day.

The Rangers called Karp to find out why.

“It’s poison,” Mohammed said.

“It’s the same as we eat,” Karp said. Which wasn’t exactly true. Mohammed and bin Zari got the leftovers from the base cafeteria. Breakfast was an overripe banana, hunks of bread, and a strange sugary jam. Lunch was toast and soup. Dinner was overcooked mystery meat with soggy rice or french fries that seemed to be made out of cardboard. And the portions were small, a deliberate effort to ensure that the prisoners were always slightly hungry.