Crazy in Chicago

by Norah-Jean Perkin

  Madame Carabini glanced at Cody, then lowered her voice. “Please, try to get him to look into this further. Or do it yourself.”

  She glanced once more at Cody, then back to Roberta. “Please. Whatever danger was there before for him, it seems to have returned. I don’t know what it is, or why, I just know it’s there. I’m afraid for him.”

  Roberta’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? You think he might be kidnapped again?”

  Madame Carabini shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know that the forces at work—whatever or whoever—last year, have entered the picture again. I sensed it. I don’t know why.”

  She grasped Roberta’s arm. “Promise me you won’t give up. You’ll look into this. Please.”

  Her urgency touched Roberta. She nodded. “I will.”

  Her gaze held Madame Carabini’s for a moment longer, and then she followed Cody to the car.

  * * *

  On the boulevard in the waning evening light, Joanne Carabini stood and watched until the Corvette turned the corner and disappeared. She stood there for several minutes more, heedless of the strange looks she received from people driving by. There was so much on her mind. So much she’d felt but didn’t understand. So much she hadn’t told Mr. Walker and his more supportive friend Miss Vandenburg.

  Undecided and uneasy, Joanne stood there. Perhaps she should have told Cody Walker everything. At the time she’d been too startled, too frightened, to tell.

  As she remembered, she shuddered. Shuddered at the strange feeling that someone was watching her, even as she watched Cody in that cold, gray room, in a place she couldn’t identify. The feeling had disturbed her so much her concentration had faltered and the vision had crumbled.

  Far worse, however, had been the voice in the car. With the flash of eerie blue light had come a sense of dread. As the dread grew, a disembodied voice had presented a direct warning, a warning that had sent her scrambling from the car: “Discontinue this probe. It does not concern you. Discontinue immediately.” The warning had been in plain English, impossible to ignore.

  Madame Carabini put her hands in her pockets and started for the house. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She’d always seen or sensed impressions, snatches of people’s lives, even of conversations. And yes, sometimes what she’d sensed had been unpleasant, disturbing, frightening.

  But this was different. This voice had been talking to her. To her and to no one else.

  She reached the door, then turned back to face the street.

  Should she have told them? Indecision gnawed at her. It was always the same. Tell the truth and face ridicule and disbelief. Don’t tell the truth and suffer guilt and worry over what might come.

  It was clear Mr. Walker had believed little of what she’d said. His friend, however, seemed more open-minded. Perhaps . . . .

  She shook her head and reached for the door. No. She’d done enough. What would be, would be.

  * * *

  The rhythmic motion of arms cutting through the water, the repetitive nature of swimming lap after lap in the apartment building’s indoor pool, and his growing exhaustion, encouraged Cody. He touched the side and executed a racing turn. Forty-six.

  Four laps later, he stopped, done in. He propped himself against the side of the pool and reveled in the relief seeping through him. If this didn’t make him sleep, nothing would.

  Roberta stood on the deck at the other end of the pool, preparing to dive. Her simple, plum-colored, one-piece suit complimented her high breasts, small waist and full hips. Plump wasn’t the word he’d use to describe her.

  He watched as she executed a clean dive and performed a competent crawl through the water toward him. He’d been surprised when she hadn’t talked about Madame Carabini’s unsettling suggestions on the way home. He’d had trouble thinking of anything else, however ridiculous they’d been. Erik and Allie linked to his disappearance. He snorted.

  Roberta stopped beside him. She hung onto the side of the pool and slicked her wet hair back. Drops of water hung like dew drops on her dark lashes. “Had enough?”

  “Yes. Fifty laps is more than enough for me. Let’s go.”

  Cody hauled himself out of the pool. Roberta followed. After drying themselves off and donning robes, they headed upstairs.

  When they reached her door, Roberta turned to him. “Coming in for some warm milk?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” From her serious expression, Cody suspected the milk was a ploy to get him to discuss what the psychic had said. He knew it wasn’t a ploy to get him into her bed.

  He followed her inside. The living room exuded a comfortable, lived-in feeling. He hung his towel over the back of a chair and followed her into the kitchen. He could see himself spending a lot of time here.

  Roberta busied herself preparing the milk. The white terry cloth robe, wrapped primly around her, accentuated her golden skin, and set Cody’s mind to wondering the best way to get her out of it. But she had other things on her mind.

  “So what did you think?”

  “About what?” Cody pretended obtuseness.

  “About what Madame Carabini said.” Roberta grimaced.

  “Bunk,” he said flatly. “I think it’s all bunk.”

  Roberta sighed. “But what about the light? We didn’t tell her about that. And she certainly acted frightened.”

  “Acted is probably the operative word.” Cody folded his arms across his chest. “The lady’s been doing this sort of thing for a long time. She’s a master at it. The light was a lucky guess.”

  The microwave beeped. Roberta retrieved the mugs of milk, stirred them, and handed one to Cody. She leaned against the counter. “Are you going to talk to Erik? Investigate his background?”

  “Why would I bother?” Cody took a sip of milk. “It’s all foolishness.”

  “But you don’t have anything else to go on. What have you got to lose?”

  “It’s just too weird, too . . . ephemeral. Blue lights. Strange, cold places. Voices, or maybe not voices. Feelings and impressions. I can’t believe it has anything to do with me.”

  “What does it matter if it’s weird or not? Not sleeping and feeling sick are weird, too. Besides, there’s nothing else to pursue.”

  Cody sipped his milk and tried to close his mind to her questions, the same questions that plagued him whether he liked it or not. He set down his mug. “I don’t like weird stuff,” he said finally. “I’m a reporter. I like facts and figures, things I can see and touch.”

  “But it’s all you’ve got left.”

  He shrugged. “That may be right, but I don’t choose to pursue it. I’m not interested in tall tales and weird possibilities.”

  Roberta’s brow puckered. She looked at him as if he were a puzzle she had to figure out. Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious!”

  He shook his head, unwilling to discuss a subject that struck far too close to home. “I’ve just had more than my fair share of weird, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cody didn’t want to explain. But as he looked at Roberta, her face a picture of tender concern, his resistance started to melt. She seemed to want to know, to care what he meant and why. Ever since he’d returned to work after his disappearance, apparently healthy and normal, no one had seemed to care about the demons that made him run. No one, at least, until Roberta. But was it an illusion?

  He wavered and then, won over by her sincerity, decided. “Okay,” he said. He took another sip of milk, then looked past her to the kitchen cupboards. “I’ll tell you. My father was a fairly normal father at first. But when I was around eight, he started to change. Little things at first. He bought crystals. He grew his hair and wore a pony tail, gave up his suits for jeans and sandals or flowing robes. He started meditating and cooking brown rice and tofu.”

  He paused, remembering what it had been like for him and his mother. As always, with the memories came the fierce pain
of his first and sharpest disillusionment. He swallowed and plowed on.

  “It was all right at first. Funny, even. My mother used to tease him about what the neighbors would think. But as he got deeper into mysticism, into unusual avenues of thought, everything started to change for the worse. He claimed he had visions. He stopped washing. He had a direct line to God, or should I say a whole army of gods that he personally named. He said he was in touch with other dimensions, other beings. Eventually they became more important to him than my mother and me. He didn’t come home at night. He quit his job. He and my mother had terrible fights. He refused to get help. Finally, one day, he just up and left.”

  Lost in memories, Cody stopped. Pangs of embarrassment and bewilderment assaulted him as he pictured, as clear as if it had happened yesterday, his father stopping to talk to him and his friends. Pre-adolescent boys, gawky and uncertain, they’d guffawed nervously and looked away while his father had waved his arms and launched into rambling monologues about the meaning of life and his astral travels. Cody remembered wishing a hole would open in the floor and swallow him. How he’d tried to distance himself from his father. And yet, his father’s eventual desertion had devastated him.

  “Your father. Where is he now?”

  Cody blinked. Roberta looked horrified, and indignant, like an avenging angel ready to seek out and throttle his father.

  Cody smiled faintly. Her passionate response was endearing, but unnecessary. He shook his head. “I don’t know. India, maybe. I think he’s a member of some new sect there. Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  He sipped his milk, then set it down on the counter again and looked at Roberta intently. “I decided when he left that I would never be like him. I’ve tried to be the exact opposite of him in every way.”

  He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. “But look what’s happening now. I disappear. No one can explain it, not even the police. Suddenly, a year later, I can’t sleep. I feel sick. I see blue lights, haunting blue lights. Worse, I have this damn assignment on UFOs, one which puts me in touch with a lot of really strange people, people who remind me of my father. I don’t like it. I’m starting to think I’m turning into the one person I never wanted to be: My father. Either that or I’m slowly losing my mind.”

  The admission out, he picked up his mug and headed for the living room patio doors. He stared blindly outside. He’d voiced the fear he’d never told anyone, the fear gnawing at him more and more as each sleepless night and nauseous day passed. The fear intensified by the flashes of blue light and the comments of Madame Carabini. The fear fed by Roberta’s constant probing.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, alone with his demons, trying to convince himself he’d never be like his father. Suddenly he felt the feather touch of Roberta’s hand on his arm. He turned to face her.

  She tilted her chin and looked up at him. Her beautiful, blue eyes brimmed with tenderness. “I don’t think you’re weird at all,” she whispered.

  When he said nothing, she repeated her statement. “I don’t think there’s anything weird about you. I see a man who’s searching. A man who’s strong enough and brave enough to look for the answers, and will face them when he finds them. There’s nothing weird about that.”

  He looked down at her, moved by the gentleness, by the conviction and belief he saw shining in her eyes. No one had looked at him like that, for a long time. No one had believed in him like that.

  He drank in the caring in her eyes, letting it seep inside and fill him with wonder. Silently, he moved to the sideboard and set down his mug. He needed to hold her in his arms, to—

  His gaze lighted on a file lying on the sideboard and half-hidden by magazines. He started to move away when something drew him back. It was the bold label in black marker, a label reading, “Disappearances, Walker C.”

  Puzzled, he picked up the file folder. “What’s this?”

  In a flash Roberta crossed the room and reached for the folder. “Just a file,” she said.

  He dodged her. “It’s got my name on it.” He opened it and started to flip through the contents.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  The file contained clippings on his disappearance, right from the original announcement through to his re-appearance. And they were originals, not the photocopies he’d given her to read the other day. She—or someone—had highlighted parts of the stories with yellow marker.

  “You usually keep files on your neighbors?” Cody looked at her from under raised brows. His mouth twisted.

  She flushed. “No. I . . .”

  “These aren’t copies. They’re originals. So you had them long before you’d ever met me.” He tossed the file back onto the sideboard. “What I want to know is why? And why you didn’t tell me the other day you already had them?”

  She fiddled with the chain around her neck, pulling it back and forth. Finally, without looking at him, she responded in a small voice. “Ever since I began working for SUFOW, I’ve kept my own files on unusual disappearances, ones for which there were no obvious explanations. I was looking for clues, for the possibility of—”

  “Of what?” He cut her off. “The possibility that I might have been abducted by aliens? Is that it?”

  Anger spurted up inside him, anger that he’d been used, anger that her sweet concern had all been a ruse. Anger that he’d been stupid enough to confuse affection with manipulation.

  She stared at him in silence, then looked away. “Yes.”

  “Oh great.” He reacted with fury, a fury heightened by hurt pride. He’d just spilled his guts, something he never did. He’d been about to take her into his arms and tell her how much she meant to him. And now this.

  “And all this time I thought you were interested in me, if not as a lover, at least as a friend,” he ground out.

  Bitterness surged through him. He looked at her with hard eyes. “Now I discover I’m just a specimen, another case for one of your boss’s crazy books. Is that why you wouldn’t got out with me?”

  “It’s not like that. I wouldn’t . . .”

  He grabbed his towel and headed to the door. “Never mind. I can imagine.”

  The door slammed after him.

  Chapter 6

  In the glimmer of light from the stars filtering through the sliding doors, Roberta reached for the phone and began picking out the digits. Halfway through the number, she paused, then replaced the receiver in its cradle. She couldn’t call Cody now. It was after midnight. He probably wasn’t asleep, but what if he was? She’d hate to wake him, especially now.

  She stood up and pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the door. She should have gone after Cody as soon as he’d left two hours ago. But to do what? That was the problem to which she had no answer. To tell him that she cared about him? To tell him she was sorry that she hadn’t told him the truth? To tell him that he was more than a potential ticket to the first real abduction case of her own?

  She sighed and turned away from the door. She crumpled the hem of her silk boxers in her hands. The problem was that she did care. She did like him, far more than any researcher should care for a potential subject. She hated to see him suffering from insomnia and nausea, and the uncertainty they bred. She wanted to help him.

  None of which was helped by the physical attraction side of the equation. Her pulse speeded up every time Cody came near, for that matter, every time she thought of him. Her body tensed in delicious anticipation of a touch, a kiss that shouldn’t happen. Her insides melted when he smiled at her.

  But, dammit, she still thought there was a good chance he’d been abducted by aliens. Certainly pursuing and proving it would be good for her, bolstering her reputation and giving her the credibility she craved, with Garnet and everyone else who counted in the field. After this evening’s visit to Madame Carabini, an alien abduction appeared more likely than ever.

  But it could also be good for Cody. It would clear up the ambiguity of what happened to him during the missing six
weeks, end the torment of not knowing. She knew of more than one person whose mind had been set at ease after finally discovering that he wasn’t going crazy, and that he had indeed been abducted by aliens.

  She bit her lip and grimaced. Unfortunately, she was too honest to ignore the fact that the confirmation of an alien abduction had also made many abductees more fearful and neurotic than ever.

  Still. Roberta paced back and forth across her living room, struggling with the problem of what to do. No doubt she should have told Cody her plans right from the start and attempted to win his agreement to investigate. She should have made it clear that theirs was strictly a professional agreement, and stuck to it despite the mixed-up feelings he provoked in her.

  She stopped in the middle of the living room, seeing again the hurt look on his face, hearing the wounded tone of his voice when he’d accused her of using him, of helping him only to further her career.

  That hurt look had shaken her, especially coming from Cody. Was she really that bad? Was that how she appeared to Cody? A manipulative user who cared only about herself?

  Head bowed, she dragged herself to the bedroom. She wanted to tell Cody he was wrong; she wasn’t like that. She wanted him to like her. But she also wanted to prove his case and add it to her resume.

  She crawled under the coverlet on her bed, turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She’d known from the start she couldn’t have Cody both for a case study, and for a friend. But perhaps it didn’t matter any more.

  With Cody’s exit, she no longer had a willing, if unsuspecting, case to investigate. Nor did she have him as friend. She refused to consider which loss hurt the most.

  With a groan, she rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head.

  * * *

  Shortly after two in the afternoon the next day, Cody halted in the open door to the office of SUFOW’s director. Involuntarily his gaze was drawn to the compelling painting of the alien over Garnet Jones’s desk. The huge black eyes stared back at him with a glare that struck Cody as more malicious than ever. As if the creature knew of him and dared him to continue.