How in your altered state you miss details, even when you think you’re calm. The world around you becomes a kind of blur. You turn off the radio because it distracts from the chaos in your head, only you thought it was the chaos in your head and with silence, you’re still adrift. Spinning.

How you realize you’re hyperventilating when you hit the first stoplight and you stare in the rearview mirror and notice there’s a black SUV right behind you. Except there’s a soccer mom type in the front seat and two kids in the back giving her hell.

But that jogged something loose. The scrap of paper Charlie had given me had slipped my mind in the aftermath of the hill encounter. I took it out and, with one eye on traffic, looked up the vehicle license number.

It took so little time. Registered to a shell company, Offshore Shithead Corporation. A sigh of frustration, smacked my hand against the steering wheel. Trying to unravel that to a source probably would be pointless. Allie might’ve had the time and patience, but not me.

Fuck it. I pulled into a pharmacy parking lot, across two lanes of traffic. Ignored the honking. Ignored the pissed-off looks. At least no one followed me across.

There was only one direct lead. Even if it came with a threat.

I called Fusk at his antiques store. End of the day for him. Early afternoon for me. What else could I do?

Idling there as if I were a meth addict screwing up the nerve to go in and buy Sudafed. The Christmas decorations at the entrance were garish, incomprehensible, partisan. What kind of a country did we live in?

Fusk answered on the fourth or fifth ring. But said nothing.

“Fusk. It’s Jane, the detective.”

“Can’t help you,” came the rough rasp.

Hung up.

I looked at the phone. Recalled the photo of his wife and two kids right before he’d pulled the gun on me. Estranged or not, I had to think he was protecting them, not himself. Or mostly them. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t still be the villain.

I wondered if Fusk had actually read Furtown, with its psychosis and its warnings.

“For reasons man may never fathom, the raccoon is lured by shiny metal. When the trapper learned of this weakness, he ingeniously set his traps with bright metal. The moon ray appears to brighten the silvery tinfoil image in the crystal stream. Soon, the racoon appears and is attracted by the glint and steps into the trap, to be held prisoner until the trapper appears with his final death sentence.”

I called again. Different phone card. Still disguised, if someone tried to track it. The phone rang for a long time. Nothing. No one. Gone for the day or suspicious?

I cursed. Didn’t want to go home without having talked to him.