The Passage - By Justin Cronin Page 0,26

to say I never heard of you guys.”

Wolgast did his best to smile. “Is there a problem with that?”

“I’m supposing if there were, one of those ME reports would show up with my name on it. I’ve got kids, Agent.” He picked up his phone and punched a number. “Have two COs bring Anthony Carter to the cages, then come to my office.” He hung up and looked at Wolgast. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to wait outside. I look at you any longer, I’m going to have a hard time forgetting about all this. Good day, gentlemen.”

Ten minutes later, a pair of guards stepped into the outer office. The older one had the benevolent, overfed look of a shopping mall Santa, but the other guard, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, was wearing a snarl on his face that Wolgast didn’t like. There was always one guard who liked the job for the wrong reasons, and this was the one.

“You the guys looking for Carter?”

Wolgast nodded and showed his credentials. “That’s right. Special Agents Wolgast and Doyle.”

“Don’t matter who you are,” the heavy one said. “The warden says to take you, we’ll take you.”

They led Wolgast and Doyle down to the visiting area. Carter was sitting on the other side of the glass, the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. He was small, just as Doyle had said, and his jumpsuit fit him loosely, like the clothing on a Ken doll. There were many ways to look condemned, Wolgast had learned, and Carter’s look wasn’t scared or angry but simply resigned, like the world had been taking slow bites of him his whole life.

Wolgast gestured at the shackles, turning toward the two COs. “Take those off, please.”

The older one shook his head. “That’s standard.”

“I don’t care what it is. Take them off.” Wolgast lifted the phone from its cradle on the wall. “Anthony Carter? I’m Special Agent Wolgast. This is Special Agent Doyle. We’re from the FBI. These men are going to come around and remove those shackles. I asked them to do that. You’ll cooperate with them, won’t you?”

Carter gave a tight nod. His voice on the other end of the phone was quiet. “Yessir.”

“Anything else you need to make you comfortable?”

Carter looked at him quizzically. How long since anybody had asked him a question like that?

“I’s all right,” he said.

Wolgast turned to face the guards. “Well? How about it? Am I talking to myself here, or am I going to have to call the warden?”

A moment passed as the guards looked at each other, deciding what to do. Then the one named Dennis stepped from the room and reappeared a moment later on the far side of the glass. Wolgast stood and watched, keeping his eyes fixed on the guard while he removed the shackles.

“That it?” said the heavy guard.

“That’s it. We’ll want to be left alone for a while. We’ll tell the OD when we’re done.”

“Suit yourself,” the guard said and walked out, closing the door behind him.

There was only one chair in the room, a folding metal seat, like something from a high school auditorium. Wolgast took it and positioned himself squarely to the glass, while Doyle remained standing behind him. The talking was Wolgast’s to do. He picked up the phone again.

“Better?”

Carter hesitated a moment, appraising him, then nodded. “Yessir. Thank you. Pincher always does ’em too tight.”

Pincher. Wolgast made a mental note of this. “You hungry? They give you breakfast in there?”

“Pancakes.” Carter shrugged. “That was five hours ago, though.”

Wolgast swiveled to look at Doyle, raising his eyebrows. Doyle nodded and left the room. For a few minutes, Wolgast just waited. Despite the large No Smoking sign, the edge of the counter was rutted with brown burn marks.

“You said you from the FBI?”

“That’s right, Anthony.”

A trace of a smile flicked across Carter’s face. “Like on that show?”

Wolgast didn’t know what Carter was talking about, but that was fine; it would give Carter something to explain.

“What show’s that, Anthony?”

“The one with the woman. The one with the aliens.”

Wolgast thought a moment, then remembered. Of course: The X-Files. It had been off the air for what, twenty years? Carter had probably seen it as a kid, in reruns. Wolgast couldn’t remember very much about it, just the idea of it—alien abductions, some kind of conspiracy to hush the thing up. That was Carter’s impression of the FBI.

“I liked that show too. You getting on in here all right?”

Carter squared his shoulders.