“Physically brutal?” Marcus asked.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “But he didn’t beat me.”
He got the drift. He didn’t want the confession—he wasn’t a priest. But it came anyway.
“I was abused. Sexually abused. I left home when I was sixteen, but I’m afraid the lifelong damage was done. He died of a heart attack when I was twenty. It was all very difficult and tragic, especially for my poor mother who did not have a good life before or after, to be honest.”
He tried to find something positive to say. “You seem to have done all right.”
“Perhaps my childhood created the environment, a certain sensitivity that led to fostering my psychic abilities. In that sense, I did do all right. I have been able to earn a living, helping people, doing what comes naturally. But what I’ve told you is also a long answer to your question of why me? Because of my complicated relationship with my father, I’ve always been attracted to men who are older than me. I saw a psychiatrist some years ago and I have a complete awareness of my situation. Of course, the men must be attractive.”
“I’m glad it’s not just my age,” he said with an edge.
“Please don’t be offended, Marcus. I’m comfortable with you, so I am able to be totally honest.”
“Honesty is good,” he said.
“Will you tell Mickey about my vision? About Torriglia?”
“It’s my job to pass along information, regardless of what I think about it. He’s a grown man. He’s the one paying the bills. He’ll make his own decisions about what to do with it.”
“Will you promise not to put up a roadblock?”
“Like I said, he makes up his own mind.”
She reached over and began stimulating him. “Will you promise?”
His head was clearer now. The effects of the booze were waning.
“Yeah, I promise.”
He rolled onto her and this time, at the risk of making his headache worse, he was the aggressor.
*
When he returned to Villa Shibui, the house was dark. The Carabinieri let him through the gate and the late shift of Mickey’s private security, verified him before he could get inside. He sat at the kitchen table with a big glass of water, donned his reading glasses, and browsed Carter’s printouts on the Zanfretta abduction.
On December 6, 1978, Pier Zanfretta, a twenty-six-year-old night watchman was on a routine patrol at the empty country house of one of his clients in Torriglia, north of Genoa. Suddenly, his car died and its radio and lights failed. He saw lights in the garden and, believing there were thieves, he exited the car with his pistol and flashlight. In the garden, he felt something touching his shoulder, and when he wheeled around, he saw, according to his testimony, “an enormous green, ugly and frightful creature, with undulating skin, no less than ten feet tall.” Then he saw a huge triangular UFO hovering over the house and was pulled into the craft after he was blasted by a searing wave of heat. A couple of hours later, Zanfretta was deposited back at the house where he contacted his dispatch by radio, babbling incoherently about being assaulted by non-humans. When other watchmen from the company arrived, the normally sober family man was agitated and inconsolable. The Carabinieri were summoned and they discovered imprints of three-meter wide horseshoes in the frosted grass of the garden, presumably from the ship’s landing gear. Their subsequent investigation found over fifty residents of Torriglia reporting a bright illumination in the vicinity of the country house at the precise time of Zanfretta’s abduction.
In the midst of the media hysteria, experts were called in. Zanfretta was put under hypnosis by a renowned specialist whereby he described details of his time on board an alien craft and communicating with the giant creatures using translation devices. He was probed and examined and was told that the aliens wanted to talk to humans and would return at a later time in larger numbers.
That wasn’t the end of things for Zanfretta. Back on patrol three weeks after the first incident, he was abducted again near the mountainous Scoffera Pass and was returned after some hours in a confused and agitated state. When the Carabinieri arrived, his Fiat, though bathed in cold rain, was said to be as hot as if it had been baking under a hot sun. The car was also surrounded by fifty-centimeter-long boot prints. He was once again hypnotized and revealed an account of his captivity on a spaceship, where, among other details, the aliens fired his pistol into a panel to test the destructiveness of Earth weapons. A prominent neurologist examined Zanfretta and declared that he was in a state of shock but perfectly sane.
The furor died down for several years until Zanfretta was abducted four more times in 1979 and 1980 in and around Genoa, firmly establishing the region as the UFO capital of Italy, and Zanfretta as an icon. But now, Marcus was skimming and yawning, glossing over the details of the remaining papers in Carter’s Zanfretta file. He got the picture. Torriglia was hallowed ground for alien-abduction types.
“How come you’re up in the middle of the night?”
Mickey was in his bathrobe.
“Just doing a little reading,” Marcus said.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Mickey said. “I’m going to have some cereal. Reading about what?”
Marcus was going to tell him about Celeste’s new vision and Torriglia in the morning, but now was as good a time as any. He kept his promise. It was difficult, but he played it straight, giving Mickey the facts devoid of the snarky commentary he could have interjected. Mickey munched and listened and when Marcus was done, he took his bowl to the sink and washed it out.
“I know what you must be thinking about all that, Marcus. I appreciate your being an honest reporter and keeping your opinions to yourself. This is on me. If there’s even the slightest chance of getting Jesper and Elena back, it’s imperative
