“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?”