The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

“That happen a lot? The abandoning, I mean.”

  “More than you’d think. ’Specially now. People have to choose between their kids and their dog, dog’s gonna lose. You can see she’s been cared for, she’s not afraid of people. She’s a good girl. I don’t think they, the owners, wanted to do this. Though who knows? ”

  “I’ll take her,” Wells said.

  “Just like that? ”

  “Why not? ”

  “Dog’s a commitment. Ever owned one before? ”

  “Growing up.”

  “You live around here?”

  “Berlin.” Berlin was about fifty miles north of Conway. “Moved in a couple months back.”

  “Do you travel a lot? ”

  “Once in a while,” Wells said.

  “And you’re sure you’ll be able to take care of her, Mr. Cant? ”

  Wells’s new driver’s license and credit cards identified him as Clarkson Cant. Every time he had to use them, Wells imagined Ellis Shafer smirking. Shafer, his sort-of boss at the agency, a man with the sense of humor of a not-so-naughty ten-year-old. Wells had almost demanded a less ridiculous alias before deciding not to give Shafer the satisfaction.

  “Yes,” Wells said evenly. He refrained from pointing out that the dog would surely choose him, whatever his flaws, over the alternative.

  The woman looked Wells over, considering his patched-up jeans, shaggy hair, and half-grown beard. Finally she nodded. “Okay. Fill out the papers, pay the fee, she’s yours.”

  Wells and the dog had gotten along fine ever since. She’d been a boon companion during the winter, which had been harsh even by the standards of northern New Hampshire. For two straight weeks in February the temperature stayed below zero, a lung-burning, skin-sloughing cold that kept Wells inside except for runs to the grocery store and stretches of wood chopping. Wells loved working the ax. The sky was bright blue and the air bone-dry, and the logs split easily under the blade. Tonka, no dummy, watched from inside the cabin. He couldn’t pretend he was entirely alone. Trucks rumbled distantly and snowmobiles whined along the creek trail. But Wells didn’t mind. In fact, he liked being reminded that the world was still there, with or without him.

  A YEAR BEFORE, Jennifer Exley, Wells’s fiancée, had almost died in an assassination attempt aimed at Wells. In the aftermath, she’d demanded that he quit the agency. Wells couldn’t. But he couldn’t accept that he’d lost Exley, either. So he’d fled Washington, fled her. Though even Shafer, never known for his tact, was too polite to use that word.

  For months he backpacked through Europe and Asia, bunking in hostels alongside students half his age. Then he rented a cabin in southwest Montana, where he’d grown up. But after a week, he left. Heather and Evan, his ex-wife and son, lived in Missoula with Heather’s second husband. Their proximity disturbed him. He wanted to make amends with Evan, at least announce his presence to the boy. Take him out for pizza. But the simple act of picking up the phone, asking to speak to his son, left him shaking his head.

  Years before, when he’d last talked to Heather, she’d told him she wouldn’t let him parachute in and then disappear again. At the time, Wells understood. The agency had been on the verge of declaring him a terrorist. These days no one would question his loyalty to the United States. His judgment maybe, but not his loyalty. But he knew Heather’s feelings hadn’t changed. Quit the job, she would tell him. Come back to earth and then we’ll talk. Just as Exley had.

  Only Wells couldn’t quit. He wished he could tell himself that his sense of duty and honor wouldn’t let him. And those fine words were part of the reason. But only part. In truth, he feared being bored. Feared, he supposed, that one day people would ask him, “Didn’t you used to be John Wells? ”

  No, he couldn’t quit. But he wasn’t ready to work again — not yet, anyway. So no to Exley, no to Heather, no to Evan. He would be alone.

  He left Montana, headed east, to the Presidential Mountains of New Hampshire. Wells remembered his surprise when, as a fresh-man at Dartmouth, he’d first seen the Presidentials. He’d imagined that mountains in the East were hummocks. But Mount Washington towered nearly a mile over the valley to its east. And its weather was fierce. The observatory at its peak had measured the highest wind ever recorded, 231 miles an hour. If the Sawtooth Mountains were out, the Presidentials would do.

  Wells rented a two-room cabin on a gravel road in Berlin, a little town just north of Mount Washington. He had twelve acres to himself and a woodstove for heat. The place also came with DirecTV, and Wells had to admit that he watched more television than he’d planned. Still, he plowed through a couple books a week, mainly biographies. Jackson, Lincoln, Rockefeller, Churchill, great men facing great obstacles. War, slavery, depressions global and personal. No women, and no religion. Not the Bible, not the New Testament, not the Quran. In his cabin, alone, he wanted the tangible consolations of the world as it was, not the uncertain promises of paradise.

  For the same reason, he worked out incessantly. He turned the cabin’s second room into a miniature gym. Every weekday afternoon he turned on the television — okay, he’d admit it, he watched General Hospital and then Oprah; he wasn’t proud of himself, but the truth was the truth — and spent an hour running and an hour lifting. On Saturdays, before the winter got too nasty, he hiked Mount Washington, carrying a frame pack loaded with twenty-pound bags of dog food. In the winter he substituted a three-hour climb on the treadmill, eight thousand vertical feet.

  A mental renaissance came along with the physical. In his first months without Exley, he’d awoken more than once certain that she was beside him. When he reached for her and didn’t find her, his mind refused to accept her absence. He told himself that his fingers were lying, that she really was with him. As though he were an amputee insisting on the presence of a lost arm or leg. Then he would wake fully and feel the same emptiness he’d felt when he’d learned his mother had died and been buried while he was eight thousand miles away.

  Slowly, though, his dislocation and loneliness faded. He still missed Exley badly, but part of him was happy that he was no longer hurting her. She’d made him choose, her or the job, and he’d chosen. One day, if they were meant to be, they would be.

  As the days got longer and the worst of the winter faded, Wells felt his thirst for action returning. Hard as the job had been, it had given him the chance to see worlds most people couldn’t even imagine. Years before, during the worst sickness of his life, he’d had a dream — a vision, really — that the guns he carried were part of his body. He couldn’t put them down even at the cost of losing his chance at Heaven. Wells was no fan of tarot cards or psychics, but he had never forgotten that dream, or doubted its truth. He couldn’t stay in New Hampshire forever. Soon enough, the call would come, and he’d have to answer.

  But for now he was free. And so this morning, with clouds hiding the sun and the wind whistling from the north, he had decided to brace himself with his first big hike of the new year. He hedged his bets slightly, choosing to go up Mount Adams, slightly lower and easier than Mount Washington. He packed his daypack and offered Tonka two cans of her favorite high-protein food. She knew where they were going without being told. When he opened the cabin door, she headed straight for his Subaru WRX, her tail wagging wildly. Then she stood against the front door and tried to open it herself.

  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 be
low, 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.”

  3

  LOS ANGELES

  The 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 waitre
ssing 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.”