Fear Nothing

Frost, lived aboard their vessels, and they were no doubt sound asleep. The docks were no less lonely than the granite rows of eternal berths in St. Bernadette's cemetery.
        The fog muffled our voices. No one was likely to hear our conversation and be drawn to it.
        Keeping his attention on Orson but addressing me, Stevenson said, “I can't get what I need, because I don't even know what it is I need. Isn't that a bitch?”
        I sensed that this was a man at risk of coming apart, perilously holding himself together. He had lost his noble aspect. Even his handsomeness was sliding away as the planes of his face were pulled toward a new configuration by what seemed to be rage and an equally powerful anxiety.
        “You ever feel this emptiness, Snow? You ever feel an emptiness so bad, you've got to fill it or you'll die, but you don't know where the emptiness is or what in the name of God you're supposed to fill it with ?”
        Now I didn't understand him at all , but I didn't think that he was in a mood to explain himself, so I looked solemn and nodded sympathetically. “Yes, sir. I know the feeling.”
        His brow and cheeks were moist but not from the clammy air; he glistened with greasy sweat. His face was so supernaturally white that the mist seemed to pour from him, boiling coldly off his skin, as though he were the father of all fog. “Comes on you bad at night,” he said.
        “Yes, sir.”
        “Comes on you anytime, but worse at night.” His face twisted with what might have been disgust. “What kind of damn dog is this, anyway?”
        His gun arm stiffened, and I thought I saw his finger tighten on the trigger.
        Orson bared his teeth but neither moved nor made a sound.
        I quickly said, “He's just a Labrador mix. He's a good dog, wouldn't harm a cat.”
        His anger swelling for no apparent reason, Stevenson said, “Just a Labrador mix, huh? The hell he is. Nothing's just anything. Not here. Not now. Not anymore.”
        I considered reaching for the Glock in my jacket. I was holding my bike with my left hand. My right hand was free, and the pistol was in my right-hand pocket.
        Even as distraught as Stevenson was, however, he was nonetheless a cop, and he was sure to respond with deadly professionalism to any threatening move I made. I didn't put much faith in Roosevelt 's strange assurance that I was revered. Even if I let the bicycle fall over to distract him, Stevenson would shoot me dead before the Glock cleared my pocket.
        Besides, I wasn't going to pull a gun on the chief of police unless I had no choice but to use it. And if I shot him, that would be the end of my life, a thwarting of the sun.
        Abruptly Stevenson snapped his head up, looking away from Orson. He drew a deep breath, then several that were as quick and shallow as those of a hound following the spoor of its quarry. “What's that?”
        He had a keener sense of smell than I did, because I only now realized that an almost imperceptible breeze had brought us a faint hint of the stench from the decomposing sea creature back under the main pier.
        Although Stevenson was already acting strangely enough to make my scalp crinkle into faux corduroy, he grew markedly stranger. He tensed, hunched his shoulders, stretched his neck, and raised his face to the fog, as though savoring the putrescent scent. His eyes were feverish in his pale face, and he spoke not with the measured inquisitiveness of a cop but with an eager, nervous curiosity that seemed perverse: “What is that? You smell that? Something dead, isn't it?”
        “Something back under the pier,” I confirmed. “Some kind of fish, I guess.”
        “Dead. Dead and rotting. Something… It's got an edge to it, doesn't it?” He seemed about to lick his lips. “Yeah. Yeah. Sure does have an interesting edge to it.”
        Either he heard the eerie current crackling through his voice or he sensed my alarm, because he glanced worriedly at me and struggled to compose himself. it was a struggle. He was teetering on a crumbling ledge of emotion.
        Finally the chief found his normal voice-or something that's free, and the pistol approximated it. “I need to talk to you, reach an understanding. Now. Tonight. Why don't you come with me, Snow.”
        “Come where?”
        “My patrol car's out front.”
        “But my bicycle-”
        “I'm not arresting you. Just a