The Midnight House (26 page)

“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.
Listen.
Nobody could have gotten those pills into Rachel if she didn’t want to take them.”

“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.”

“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.

W
hen 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.

But even if the food wasn’t gourmet, Karp could promise it hadn’t been spiked. He wasn’t a fan of giving prisoners LSD or PCP. The effects were too uncertain. Some guys even enjoyed the trips.

Karp picked up the blue plastic bowl that held Mohammed’s dinner, lifted a piece of meat to his mouth. Salty, leathery, tasteless, with bits of gristle that had a sandy texture. “Yummy,” he said, the meat still in his mouth. He choked it down. “See. It’s fine.”

He handed the bowl to Mohammed, who tossed it against the wall.

Under other circumstances, that misbehavior would have earned Mohammed a week in a punishment cell. But Karp and the rest of 673 were busy with bin Zari. Karp couldn’t deal with another problem.

“Fine, Mohammed,” he said in Pashto. “You want to be hungry, your choice.” For two days, Mohammed went back to eating, and Karp thought he had learned his lesson. But now he was back in the corner.

 

 

IN CIA JARGON,
detainees like Mohammed were “dancers.” They weren’t the most openly resistant prisoners. But their unpredictable cycles of defiance and cooperation made them among the most difficult detainees.

Some dancers were mentally unstable, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Others used the technique as a form of passive resistance, a way to incite their jailers. Openly angry prisoners invited brutal retaliation. By alternating—“dancing”—between resistance and compliance, a canny jihadi could slow an interrogation, giving himself time to resist.

Within the agency, the most famous dancer was a Taliban commander who went by the single name Jadhouri. In 2006, a Ranger platoon in Afghanistan captured Jadhouri in anattack on a Talib-controlled village near the Pakistan border. The raid had been routine, except at the end, when Jadhouri ran out of a one-room hut, his hands raised in surrender. Seconds later, a grenade blew out the hut. When the Rangers checked inside, they found fragments of a laptop. Jadhouri had apparently taken the time to strap a grenade to the computer’s case before giving up. The Rangers did what they could to recover the laptop, but the explosion had launched it to computer heaven.