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By Root 563 0

that car backin out of the barn. First thing I thought of was bow I don't store no car like that. Second thing I thought of was how anybody got it in there in the first place, when there's a big old Kreig padlock on the barn door and I got the only key to it on my ring.'

'What about the people with cars stored in there? They don't have keys?'

'No, sir!' Fuzzy seemed offended by the very idea.

'You didn't happen to get the license plate number, did you?'

'You're damn tooting I got it!' Fuzzy cried. 'Got the goddam ote jeezly b'noc'lars right there on the kitchen windowsill, ain't I?'

Alan, who had been in the barn on inspection tours with Trevor Hartland but never in Fuzzy's kitchen (and had no plans to make such a trip soon, thanks), said: 'Oh, yeah. The binoculars. I forgot about them.'

'Well, I didn't!' Fuzzy said with happy truculence. 'You got a pencil?'

'I sure do, Albert.'

'Chief, why don't you just call me Fuzzy, like everyone else?'

Alan sighed. 'Okay, Fuzzy. And while we're at it, why don't you just call me Sheriff?'

'Whatever you say. Now do you want this plate number or not?'

'Shoot.'

'First off, it was a Mississippi plate,' Fuzzy said with something like triumph in his voice. 'What the hell do you think of that?'

Alan didn't know exactly what he thought of it . . . except a third flare had gone off in his head, this one even brighter than the others. A Toronado. And Mississippi. Something about Mississippi. And a town. Oxford? Was it Oxford? Like the one two towns over from here?

'I don't know,' Alan said, and then, supposing it was the thing Fuzzy wanted to hear: 'It sounds pretty suspicious.'

'Ain't you Christing right!' Fuzzy crowed. Then he cleared his throat and became businesslike. 'Okay. Miss'ippi plate 62284. You got that, Chief?'

'62284.'

'62284, ayuh, you can take that to the fuckin bank. Suspicious! Oh, ayuh! That's just what I thought! Jesus ate a can of beans!'

At the image of Jesus chewing down on a can of B & M beans, Alan had to cover the telephone for another brief moment.

'So,' Fuzzy said, 'what action you gonna take, Chief?'

I am going to try and get out of this conversation with my sanity intact, Alan thought. That's the first thing I'm going to do. And I'm going to try and remember who mentioned —

Then it came to him in a flash of cold radiance that made his arms crown with gooseflesh and stretched the flesh on the back of his neck as tight as a drumhead.

On the phone with Thad. Not long after the psycho called from Miriam Cowley's apartment. The night the killing—spree had really started.

He heard Thad saying, He moved from New Hampshire to Oxford, Mississippi, with his mother . . . he's lost all but a trace of his Southern accent.

What else had Thad said when he had been describing George Stark over the telephone?

Final thing: he may be driving a black Toronado. I don't know what year. One of the old ones with a lot of blasting powder under the hood, anyway. Black. It could have Mississippi plates, but he's undoubtedly switched them.

'f guess he was a little too busy to do that,' Alan muttered. The gooseflesh was still crawling over his body with its thousand tiny feet.

'What was that, Chief?'

'Nothing, Albert. Talking to myself.'

'My mom useta say that meant you was gonna get some money. Maybe I ought to start doin it myself.'

Alan suddenly remembered that Thad had added something else — one final detail.

'Albert — '

'Call me Fuzzy, Chief. Told you.'

'Fuzzy, was there a bumper sticker on the car you saw? Did you maybe notice — ?'

'How the hell did you know about that? You got a hot-sheet on that motor, Chief?' Fuzzy asked eagerly.

'Never mind the questions, Fuzzy. This is police business. Did you see what it said?'

''Course I did,' Fuzzy Martin said. 'HIGH-TONED SON OF A BITCH, that's what it said. Can you believe that?'

Alan hung up the phone slowly, believing it, but telling himself it proved nothing, nothing at all . . . except that maybe Thad Beaumont was as crazy as a bedbug.