Fear Nothing

hoped, one knee on the passenger seat, to switch off the engine.
        Stevenson's black-olive eyes were open. No life or unnatural light glimmered in them, yet I half expected to see them blink, swim into focus, and fix on me.
        Before the chief's clammy gray hand could reach out to clutch at me, I plucked the keys from the ignition, backed out of the car, and finally exhaled explosively.
        In the trunk I found the large first-aid kit that I expected. From it, I extracted only a thick roll of gauze bandage and a pair of scissors.
        While Orson patrolled the entire perimeter of the squad car, diligently sniffing the air, I unrolled the gauze, doubling it again and again into a collection of five-foot loops before snipping it with the scissors. I twisted the strands tightly together, then tied a knot at the upper end, another in the middle, and a third at the lower end. After repeating this exercise, I joined the two multiple-strand lengths together with a final knot - and had a fuse approximately ten feet long.
         Tick, tick, tick.
        After coiling the fuse on the sidewalk, I opened the fuel port on the side of the car, and removed the tank cap. Gasoline fumes wafted out of the neck of the tank.
        At the trunk again, I replaced the scissors and what remained of the roll of gauze in the first-aid kit. I closed the kit and then the trunk.
        The parking lot remained deserted. The only sounds were the drops of condensation plopping from the Indian laurel onto the squad car and the soft ceaseless padding of my worried dog's paws.
        Although it meant another visit with Lewis Stevenson's corpse, I returned the keys to the ignition. I'd seen a few episodes from the most popular crime series on television, and I knew how easily even fiendishly clever criminals could be tripped up by an ingenious homicide detective. Or by a best-selling female mystery novelist who solves real murders as a hobby. Or a retired spinster schoolteacher. All this between the opening credits and the final commercial for a vaginal deodorant. I intended to give them-both the professionals and the meddlesome hobbyists-damned little with which to work.
        The dead man croaked at me as a bubble of gas broke deep in his esophagus.
        “Rolaids,” I advised him, trying unsuccessfully to cheer myself.
        I didn't see any of the four expended brass cartridges on the front seat. In spite of the platoons of amateur sleuths waiting to pounce, and regardless of whether having the brass might help them identify the murder weapon, I didn't have the nerve to search the floor, especially under Stevenson's legs.
        Anyway, even if I found all the cartridges, there was still a bullet buried in his chest. If it wasn't too grossly distorted, this wad of lead would feature score marks that could be matched to the singularities of the bore of my pistol, but even the prospect of prison wasn't sufficient to make me take out my penknife and perform exploratory surgery to retrieve the incriminating slug.
        If I'd been a different man than I am, with the stomach for such an impromptu autopsy, I wouldn't have risked it, anyway. Assuming that Stevenson's radical personality change-his newfound thirst for violence-was but one symptom of the weird disease he carried, and assuming that this illness could be spread by contact with infected tissues and bodily fluids, this type of grisly wet work was out of the question, which is also why I had been careful not to get any of his blood on me.
        When the chief had been telling me about his dreams of rape and mutilation, I'd been sickened by the thought that I was breathing the same air that he'd used and exhaled. I doubted, however, that the microbe he carried was airborne. If it were that highly contagious, Moonlight Bay wouldn't be on a roller-coaster ride to Hell, as he had claimed the town was: It would long ago have arrived in the sulfurous Pit.
         Tick, tick, tick.
        According to the gauge on the instrument panel, the fuel tank was nearly full. Good. Perfect. Earlier in the night, at Angela's, the troop had taught me how to destroy evidence and possibly conceal a murder.
        The fire should be so intense that the four brass cartridges, the sheet-metal body of the car, and even portions of the heavier frame would melt. Of the late Lewis Stevenson, little more than charred bones would remain, and the soft lead slug would