Linwood Barclay: Parting Shot

“April sixteenth, 1995.” Gaffney watched as Duckworth scribbled things down. “I was born in New Haven.”

“Current address?”

“They might be here,” Gaffney said, lowering his voice again. “They might be cloaking themselves in human form.”

Duckworth’s pen stopped moving. “Who’s they, Mr. Gaffney?”

Gaffney blinked and said, “I live at 87 Hunter Street. Unit 201.”

Duckworth felt a touch of mental whiplash. “That’s an apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“You live alone, Mr. Gaffney?”

“Yes.” Another nod. Gaffney’s eyes were now fixed on the banana on Duckworth’s desk.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Detailing. Are you going to eat that?”

Duckworth glanced at the brown piece of fruit. “Uh, you want it?”

“I don’t think they fed me. I haven’t eaten for a long time.”

Duckworth picked up the banana and handed it to Gaffney, who took it gently in his hands, then shoved one end of it into his mouth without bothering to peel it. He bit hard so his teeth went through the skin. He chewed quickly, took another large bite, still with the peel on.

Still chewing, he said, “You know what detailing is?”

Duckworth, distracted by what he’d just seen, said, “Sorry?”

“Detailing.” He swallowed the last of the banana, washed it down with some coffee. “You know what it is?”

“No.”

“Like, instead of just getting your car washed, you get it detailed. Like a super- super-cleaning. I work at Albany Detailing.”

“So, that’s in Albany?”

The man shook his head. “No, here in Promise Falls. It’s a franchise thing.”

“Mr. Gaffney, the police found you wandering around downtown. When they brought you in, you said you wanted to talk to a detective.”

“That’s right.”

“So how can I help you?”

“I made a mistake,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Gaffney surveyed the room for what had to be the tenth time, then whispered to Duckworth, “It’s not your jurisdiction.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I mean, what can you do?” Gaffney shrugged. “Arrest them?”

“Arrest who?”

“What day is this?”

“This is Wednesday.”

Gaffney gave that some thought. “So... two nights. I went out Monday night, and now it’s Wednesday, so two nights. Unless it’s, like, the next Wednesday, and it’s been nine days.”

Duckworth had put his pen down. “Two nights what?”

“That they had me.” He put down the mug, ran his hand over his chin, felt stubble. “It must be just two. If they had me nine days, I’d almost have a beard by now.”

Duckworth’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean, they had you?”

“I think I was abducted,” Gaffney said, running his tongue over his lips. “You know about Betty and Barney Hill?”

Duckworth quickly wrote down the names. “They abducted you?”

Gaffney shook his head. “No, they were in a book. Real people. I’ve got an old paperback copy of it. The Interrupted Journey , by John G. Fuller. It happened to them, too.”

“What happened, Brian?”

“They were driving at night from Niagara Falls back to their home in New Hampshire on September twentieth, 1961. This part of the country, you know? They’d have passed within forty miles of Promise Falls.”

“Okay.”

“He was black, and she was white, although that really doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to them. Unless it did.”

“Go on.”

“So the Hills saw this bright light in the sky, and the next thing they knew, it was hours later, and they were on the road, almost home. There was all this time they couldn’t account for. So they went to a hypnotist.”

“What’d they think the hypnotist could do?”

“Help them remember what happened to them during those missing hours.”

“And did he?”

Gaffney nodded. “They were taken aboard a ship. The aliens experimented on them, put needles and other things into them, and then made them forget it had ever happened.” He shook his head slowly, wonderingly. “I never thought something like that could happen to me.”

Duckworth said, “Okay. So you’re saying you have two days you can’t account for?”

“Yes.” Gaffney trembled, as though he’d had a momentary electrical shock, and took another sip of coffee.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I’d gone into Knight’s for a couple of drinks, like, around eight? You know Knight’s?”

Ah , Duckworth thought. Knight’s. One of the town’s best-known bars.

“I know it,” the detective said.

“I had a few beers, watched TV. It gets a little blurry after that.”

“How many beers?”

He shrugged. “Four, five. That’s, like, over an hour and a half or so.”

“You’re sure you didn’t have more than that?”

“That’s all.”

“You drive yourself there?”

Strong head-shake. “Nope. I can walk to Knight’s from my place. Don’t want to worry about getting pulled over. Do you have another banana?”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. Just a couple more questions and I’ll find you something. You remember leaving Knight’s?”

“Maybe. When I came out, I think someone called to me from the alley next to the bar. You can walk through there to get to a parking lot out back.”

“Was this a man or a woman who called out to you?”

“A woman, I think. At least, it was in the form of a woman.”

Duckworth let that go. “What did she say?”

Gaffney shook his head. “It’s all pretty foggy. And then there’s almost nothing for two days, until I wake up right back in the same place. I guess I stumbled out of the alley, was walking around, and that was when the cops found me. I didn’t have any ID on me. My wallet’s gone, and my cell phone, too.”

“Is it possible you were in the alley for those two days?”

Gaffney slowly shook his head again. “People walk down there all the time. Someone would have noticed me. And they couldn’t have done the experiments on me there.”

His breathing became more rapid. “What if they infected me? What if they gave me some disease?” He set down the mug again, placed a palm on his chest. “What if I’m a carrier? What if I’ve exposed you? Jesus, oh man.”

Duckworth kept his voice level. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Brian. We’re going to get you checked out. Why would you think you’d been experimented on?”

“They... took me someplace. It might have been a ship, but I don’t think so. There were lights, and I was lying down on a bed or something, on my stomach. I remember it smelled bad. That’s where they did it.”

“What did they do?”

“It felt like hundreds and hundreds of needles going into me. Probably taking samples, you know? DNA, maybe?”

His face began to crumple. He looked up, as though looking past the ceiling to the heavens above.

“Why me!” he shouted. “Why did it have to be me!”

A couple of other detectives sitting at desks across the room looked over. Duckworth put his hand back on the man’s arm. “Brian, look at me. Look at me.”

Gaffney lowered his gaze to look into Duckworth’s eyes. “I’m sorry if coming here was the wrong thing.”

“It wasn’t. I’m going to try to help you. Let’s get back to those needles. Why do you think that was done to you?”

“My back,” Gaffney said. “It’s really sore. It feels all scratchy, you know? Stings like hell.”

Duckworth, with some hesitation, said, “You want me to have a look?”

Gaffney hesitated as well, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. After a moment, he said, “If you don’t mind.”