The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  The house lay in the heart of the prosperous and placid precincts of northern San Diego. To the west, closer to the ocean, homes were even now selling for millions of dollars. But 772 Flores didn’t fit with its neighbors. Blackout shades covered its windows. Brown patches dotted its front lawn. It looked like a foreclosure. But the loss at 772 went deeper than an unpaid mortgage.

  Wells parked his rented Pontiac behind the Toyota. He reached for his Glock, tucked it under the driver’s seat. For this visit, he preferred to be unarmed.

  The front door was heavy and oak, with an old-style brass knocker. A wooden sign proclaimed “Casa Callar.” No bell. Wells knocked solidly. But the house stayed dark. “Mr. Callar?”

  Nothing. Wells heard faint music from upstairs. Classical, a mournful dirge.

  “Mr. Callar?” Wells yelled. “Steven? It’s John Wells. I called last night.”

  He knocked harder. Still nothing. Fine. He was sure Callar was inside. Wells would just have to wait.

  He settled into the Pontiac and flicked on the satellite radio, the car’s main perk, flipping between the all-Springsteen channel and a couple of the alt-rock stations that played the stuff Anne had shown him on their night together. Death Cab for Cutie and The Hold Steady and the rest. Wells liked the songs, but they were too pretty for him, music for overage children whose biggest problems were drugs and love. Though even Springsteen had gone soft these days. Or just gotten old, the desperate anger of his early albums burning down to a quiet melancholy.

  He’d listened twice more to the message Anne had left him, but he hadn’t called her. He figured that he’d wait until the mission was over to decide whether to see her again. Right now, though, he missed her, wondered where she was, what she was doing. He hadn’t wondered that about anybody except Exley for a long time. And he felt vaguely disloyal. But still he wondered.

  AFTER A HALF HOUR, the front door to 772 swung open. A man strode out, nearly running, holding a baseball bat loosely.

  “Off my property. I’ll call the cops.”

  You wanted to call the cops, you would have called them, Wells thought. The guy was about six feet, with long arms, skinny and muscular. He looked like a pit bull kept hungry so he’d fight better. A barbed-wire tattoo knotted his right biceps. His hair was short and flecked with gray, his face long and flecked with pain.

  “Mr. Callar? I’m John Wells. We spoke yesterday.”

  Callar cocked his head sideways as if he’d caught Wells lying but couldn’t be bothered to argue. He lifted the bat, took a practice swing, a cutting, long arc that stopped just short of the Pontiac’s driver’s-side mirror.

  “What would you do if I put a hole in your windshield?”

  “It’s a rental.”

  For a moment, Callar smiled, and Wells could see the man he’d been. Then the smile was gone. Callar walked back to the house. At the door, he tossed the bat aside, turned, looked at Wells. Waved him in.

  The blackout shades left the house almost spookily dark. Callar led Wells into the kitchen. Wells could dimly see a chef’sisland, a brushed-steel fridge, tall, white cabinets. Given the messy front lawn, Wells imagined the house would be chaotic. Furniture upended in the dark, bugs underfoot. But when Callar flipped on the lamp on the counter and filled the room with the cool gray light of a compact fluorescent, Wells saw that the place was clean, plates and glasses neatly stacked in the cabinets.

  Wells was reminded of a mausoleum. The house was carefully tended but lifeless, the mirror image of the Northern Cemetery. The great graveyard had been stolen by the living. Seven seventy-two Flores now belonged to the dead.

  “Nice house,” Wells said.

  “My wife had good taste. I’d offer you a drink, but the house is dry.”

  “Water’s fine.”

  Callar pulled a jug of water from the fridge and leaned against the kitchen counter. He took a long swig and wiped his mouth. He didn’t offer the jug to Wells.

  “What exactly do you want to know, John? You don’t mind if I call you John. Seeing as you’ve come all this way in your rental Pontiac.”

  “I want to hear about your wife.”

  “Rachel. Her name was Rachel. Call her that, please.”

  This meeting was already stranger, harsher, than Wells could have expected. “I want to hear about Rachel.”

  “You want the fairy-tale version, how we met when she was a resident and I was a nurse and it was love among the crazies? For our first date we went to a Dodgers-Astros game. Jeff Bagwell hit a foul ball our way and I snagged it. And I’d never caught a ball before in my life, and I wanted it. But I gave it to this six-year-old three seats over because I wanted to impress her. And it worked, even though Rachel told me afterward she knew I only gave the kid the ball to show off. We were married two years to the day after that game. Or you want the real version, how she was dating this ER doc when we met? And she didn’t bother to tell me that until a month later, when the guy got up in my face. You want to know how we afforded this house? Shrinks do pretty well out here, all these rich housewives. Plus Rachel got a few bucks when her grandma died. You want to know her favorite color? What she called me in the middle of the night?” Callar had kept his dark eyes locked on Wells for this litany. Now, finally, he looked away.

  “You don’t care about any of that. Not you or those FBI androids. They look human, but they’re not. All you want is how she died, yeah? How she looked when I found her on the bed with a plastic bag on her head? How she smelled after two days alone? Dead and alone? Because she sent me to Phoenix because she knew she was going to do it and she didn’t want me to interrupt her. That’s what you want to know.”

  Callar was an open wound, pouring pain out with every word. Yet Wells couldn’t escape the feeling that he was watching a performance, Bereaved Husband of a Suicide. The guy was too furious to be so articulate. Or too articulate to be so furious. Or maybe he had just had too much time to chew his grief into mush, compose his feelings into this angry melody.

  “Whatever you want to tell me,” Wells said.

  “What I don’t get, man, what I don’t get is why you’re here at all. Seeing as how I told everything to the cops and the detectives. And then two days ago to these robots from the FBI. They left me their card and told me to call if anything occurred to me. If I remembered anything that could be useful in the investigation. Now you show up to kick some more dirt on it. John Wells. You don’t have anything better to do?”

  “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 federales, but you strike me as at least half human,” Callar said. He slopped whiskey into a glass, stopping only when the brown liquid neared the rim. “This way if anyone asks, you been drinking, I say, just one or two a day.”

  “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. 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. H
e 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.