The Midnight House (6 page)

NOW HE WAS CLOSING
on the peak of Mount Adams, scrambling over trees that the winter’s winds had torn down. He hopped over an iced-over stream and landed in a thick patch of muddy snow that dirtied his jeans. As he reached the final stretch, a cold drizzle began, matting down his unkempt hair. Tonka had changed her mind. She looked up at him, asking wordlessly why he’d brought her out in such weather.

“You wanted to come. I warned you.”

The last half mile the trail turned to scree, loose rocks and boulders. Wells pulled his gloves from his pack and climbed hand over hand. He was cold now, cold through and through, and he loved the gray sky above and gray rock below, loved everything around him. He was free. If he slipped and broke a leg on this mountain, if the weather turned ugly and somehow he died up here, the earth wouldn’t care. He was in a mortal battle, and yet he didn’t have to hurt anyone to win. He needed only to survive.

His legs chilled and lungs aching, he reached the summit and surveyed the mountains around him. To the south, the mass of Mount Washington dominated. To the north, the range fell off sharply, and the narrow path of a river, probably the Upper Ammonoosuc, was just visible through the brown bark below. The trees had not yet budded for spring, and the valleys beneath Wells were almost monochrome, a mix of gray and white and flat dark green from the pines and firs, the only flashes of color coming from the cars and trucks rolling on Highway 2.

Tonka bumped against his legs and whined quietly, telling him that he might be enjoying this communion with nature, but she was cold and wet and wanted off the mountain.

“I thought you were tougher than this, bud,” he said. “You’re the one with the fur coat.”

He reached into his jacket for a PowerBar, gave half to her, swallowed the other half in two ungraceful bites. Still the dog’s tail drooped.

“All right,” he said. “I get it.”

Wells took a final survey of the land. And realized he wasn’t alone. Several paths climbed Mount Adams. Wells had come up the west face, the main trail for day hikers. But the mountain could also be reached from the northeast or the south, on a path that was part of the Appalachian Trail. A hiker had just popped out from a ridge on the northeast side of the mountain, a couple of hundred yards away.

“Just a sec,” Wells said to Tonka. “Let’s see.”

He was surprised anyone else had braved the weather, more surprised when the hiker turned out to be a woman. She was much better equipped than he was. She carried a solid frame pack with a tent attached and wore a red jacket and jeans and boots and a floppy hat to keep the rain away. She was tall and solidly built and moved confidently up the mountain. When she got close, she waved and gave him a friendly gap-toothed smile. He wouldn’t have guessed a woman alone up here would be so confident meeting a strange man and a strange dog. Then he saw the pistol holstered on her hip, half hidden under her jacket.

“Nice day for a hike,” he said.

“Isn’t it, though? ”

“Least you dressed for it,” Wells said. “I was gonna stay out overnight, but the dog says no.”

“You blame the dog? ”

“For everything.”

She reached out a hand and they shook through the gloves. “I’m Anne.”

“John,” he said, using his real name for the first time in months. He nodded to the dog. “This is Tonka.”

She smiled again. Despite the frigid rain, Wells felt a sudden warmth in his groin. He kept holding her hand until finally she let go.

“Hi, Anne.”

“What’s a nice flatlander like you doing in a place like this? ”

“Is it that obvious? ”

“You have all your teeth.”

“Is that joke allowed? ”

“For me.”

“I’ve been living in Berlin the last few months, but I’m from D.C.”

“And came to New Hampshire for the winter. Bold. Stupid, but bold.”

“I got a great deal on a cabin. Frostbite included.”

“I’ll bet.”

She smiled, and Wells realized he wanted very badly to keep the conversation going. “How about you?” he said. “I take it you’re a native.”

“Conway.” Conway was about forty miles south of Berlin. “I like being up here when it’s quiet. No city slickers to spoil the view.”

Wells nodded at her pistol. “Looks to me you could clear the trail whenever you wanted.”

“I don’t shoot anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Fortunately, that leaves plenty of targets.”

“My ex-husband, for one.”

Now they were flirting, Wells thought. A deliberate mention of an ex-husband had to count as flirting. Though he wasn’t totally sure. He hadn’t flirted in a long time. Tonka let out a growl that turned into a deep bark, and he decided to quit while he was ahead. “She has better sense than I do,” he said. “We should get going.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe I could take you for a hike sometime.”

She laughed.

“I’m sorry. Too cheesy? ”

“Much, much too cheesy. How about this? I had a reservation tonight at a cabin past Mount Washington. But the weather’s so crummy I might change my mind. You know Fagin’s Pub? ”

“In Berlin.”

“None other. I might stop by tonight.”

“You might.”

“I might. You should, too.”

“I’ll do that,” Wells said. “On one condition.”

“What’s that? ”

“You leave your gun at home.”

T
he Accord was hidden behind a Silverado. It backed out fast, its driver as anxious to get home as everyone else, and Mike Wyly almost bashed it. He jammed his brakes and horn, and jolted to a stop a foot from its trunk. Its driver waved, a half hearted apology, and went back to her cell phone. Wyly had half a mind to give her a talking-to, but he’d been speeding, too. And she was cute.

Instead, he waved back and followed her down the ramps of the giant employee parking garage at Universal Studios, six levels of concrete, thousands of cars. He wondered if he’d ever get a pass to park on the lot. These endless left turns were a pain. Especially in a ’67 Mustang convertible without power steering.

Life was strange. If anyone had told Wyly two years ago that he’d be worrying about parking passes, he would have . . . well, he didn’t know what he would have done. Probably just laughed. Back then he’d been in the middle of the most secret war the United States had ever fought. Now he was wondering if he had enough points to join the Screen Actors Guild.

Wyly eased out of the garage and onto Lankershim. He fired a stream of dip-darkened spit into the Coke bottle in the passenger seat and plugged his iPod into the Mustang’s radio, an aftermarket addition, the only part of the car that wasn’t genuine Ford. The smooth twang of Brooks & Dunn poured from the backseat, and Wyly looked into the warm night sky. Another day done. Eight thirty-eight p.m., according to the iPod. Twelve hours’ work. With the overtime he’d made close to five hundred, pretax. Not bad.

When Wyly quit the army, he figured on staying in North Carolina, his home state. Working security in Charlotte. Then his wife, Caitlin, told him they were moving to Los Angeles. She’d always wanted to be an actress. She was twenty-four now, and if she waited any longer, she’d be too old.

Caitlin certainly had the looks. She’d been in a “Girls of the ACC” spread in
Playboy
five years before. But she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. Wyly had seen her try. He told her she would miss her family and friends; she could act in Charlotte.

No dice. She told him she’d divorce him if he didn’t “support her dream, help her reach her potentialities.” He’d always been “an avatar of failure” for her, she said.
“Potentialities”? “Avatar”?
Wyly didn’t even know what an avatar was, and he was sure Caitlin didn’t, either. He could always tell when she’d been talking to her sorority sisters.

He should have let the marriage come to its inevitable sorry end right then. He’d hardly seen her for two years. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up. And he figured he could work security in Los Angeles as easy as Charlotte. They could live by the ocean. He’d learn how to surf. So off to California they went.

But Los Angeles was more expensive than either of them figured. They got stuck renting in Chatsworth, the northwest corner of the Valley, a five-room house for $1,625 a month. Robbery. As for surfing, the traffic meant that they were an hour from the beach, on a good day.

To nobody’s surprise but her own, Caitlin didn’t land any gigs. To help pay the rent, she started waitressing at a restaurant called the Smoke House, by the Warner Bros. studio lot. A month later, barely three months after they moved to California, she told Wyly she was leaving. She’d met her soul mate. He made the mistake of asking
Who is he?
and got the dude’s résumé in return. Bart Gruber. He made the kind of movies that went right to the video store. Gruber had convinced Caitlin her career would take off if she would let the world peek at her C cups in his next movie,
The Smartest Girls in the Room,
something about lesbian scam artists. Even worse, Caitlin had convinced herself she was in love with him. Probably the best acting she’d ever done.

Wyly was through arguing. Thank God she hadn’t listened when he told her, that first year together, that they should have kids right away. He dragged her suitcases out of the bedroom closet.

“Careful,” Caitlin said, when he started tossing her clothes onto the bed. “A lot of that stuff is new.”

“Now I know where your money’s been going.”

“Mike. Aren’t you even going to fight for me? ”

A single tear ran down her cheek. Typical. Now that she was an actress, she wanted some drama. He almost laughed. “Fight for you. No.”

“Because you never loved me.”

“No, Cate, I loved you, best I could considering we’ve hardly seen each other. I don’t think you ever loved me. And I’m not inclined to take on a fight I’m bound to lose. But I do feel a tiny bit bad for you. You oughta marry a doctor back home, like Cindy and Sandy”—her favorite sorority sisters. “Put those tits to use before it’s too late. You’re gonna whore, get yourself paid.”

“Michael Steven Wyly. I won’t let you speak to me that way.” She hauled off and slapped him across the face. He let her. If he grabbed back, she’d probably call 911. He did not need a domestic violence charge on his back.

“Listen to me here,” he said. “I know you don’t think so, but I’m looking out for you. You wind up staying out here too long, these guys like Geller—”

“His name’s Gruber—”

“They’re gonna use you up. Go home while you still have it.”

“I love California.”

“Love. Sure. That word again. You wouldn’t know love if it gave you a hundred bucks to suck it off.” He guessed he was angrier than he knew. He’d never said anything like that to her before.

She tossed back her hair and tried to slap him again. “You’re a pig, Michael. Bart says you’re a Fascist, just like the Germans.”

Wyly felt his heart race. For a few seconds they were both quiet, and then he spoke, slowly, carefully. “This guy I’ve never met says I’m a
what
? Like the
who
? ”

“He says you and your unit, what you did to those detainees, it was criminal and you should be in jail—”

Wyly took a breath, stepped away from her so he wouldn’t do something he’d regret. They were in deep waters here. “What did you tell him about me, Caitlin? You know I don’t talk about that.” Not now, and not ever, Wyly didn’t add. He didn’t talk about it, and he didn’t think about it. Different guys had different ways of handling it. He’d decided as soon as he got out that the best way for him would be just to forget it. That plan was working pretty well so far.

“I said you were on an interrogation unit. That’s all.” She sounded defensive. Then her face hardened. “I didn’t have to tell him anything else. He says everybody knows what you did. He says we broke the Geneva convention—”

“You know what the Geneva convention is, Cate? You have any idea? ”

“He says you embarrassed the whole country—”

Ugly words went through Wyly’s mind, slurs about this guy Bart, but he didn’t say them. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. He summoned his Ranger discipline and kept his voice even.

“He doesn’t know what it was like over there, and you don’t, either.”

“Just like Apu Grab, Bart says.”

“You mean Abu Ghraib? You don’t have a clue.”

“I know you think I’m stupid, but I have a college degree, Michael. Unlike you.”

“Physical therapy is not a college degree. Even if NC State says it is. Tell your boyfriend we were interrogating top-level terrorists. The guys who pulled the strings. Not random Iraqi farmers who got caught in raids.”

“Just answer me one thing. If you’re so proud of what you did, how come you never talk about it? How come you always change the subject?”

And despite himself, Wyly was carried back to the barracks in Poland. He pushed the images out of his mind. Past was past. “I’m a soldier, Cate. I did what they told me, my superior officers. That’s how it works.”

“Bart said you’d say that. You were the muscle, you followed orders. He said that’s an old story.”

Wyly stepped toward her, raised his hand high. Then he turned away, grabbed a T-shirt and shorts and his running shoes. Los Angeles had a chain of gyms called 24 Hour Fitness. He’d joined a couple of weeks back. If he wasn’t going to get arrested for assault, he needed to get out of this house.