Fear Nothing

thick neck, rounded shoulders, and proportionately short arms and stocky legs, he might have been a storybook gnome before a watch fire deep in the earth. Brow sloped and heavy. Bridge of the nose flat. Ears set too low on a head slightly too small for his body. His soft features and the inner epicanthic folds of his eyes give him a perpetual dreamy expression.
        Yet on his high work chair, turning the glass in the flame, adjusting the oxygen flow with intuitive precision, face shimmering with reflected light, eyes concealed behind didymium goggles, Toby did not in any way seem below average, did not in any way impress me as being diminished by his condition. To the contrary, observed in his element, in the act of creation, he appeared exalted.
        Orson snorted with alarm. He dropped his forepaws from the window, turned away from the studio, and tightened into a wary crouch.
        Turning as well, I saw a shadowy figure crossing the backyard, coming toward us. In spite of the darkness and fog, I recognized him at once because of the easy way that he carried himself. It was Manuel Ramirez: Toby's dad, number two in the Moonlight Bay Police Department but now at least temporarily risen by succession to the top post, due to the fiery death of his boss.
        I put both hands in my jacket pockets. I closed my right hand around the Glock.
        Manuel and I were friends. I wouldn't feel comfortable pointing a gun at him, and I certainly couldn't shoot him. Unless he was not Manuel anymore. Unless, like Stevenson, he had become someone else.
        He stopped eight or ten feet from us. In the annealing flame's coruscating orange glow, which pierced the nearby window, I could see that Manuel was wearing his khaki uniform. His service pistol was holstered on his right hip. Although he stood with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt, he would be able to draw his weapon at least as quickly as I could pull the Glock from my jacket.
        “Your shift over already?” I asked, although I knew it wasn't.
        Instead of answering me, he said, “I hope you're not expecting beer, tamales, and Jackie Chan movies at this hour.”
        “I just stopped by to say hello to Toby if he happened to be between jobs.”
        Manuel's face, too worn with care for his forty years, had a naturally friendly aspect. Even in this Halloween light, his smile was still engaging, reassuring. As far as I could see, the only luminosity in his eyes was the reflected light from the studio window. Of course, that reflection might mask the same transient flickers of animal eyeshine that I'd seen in Lewis Stevenson.
        Orson was reassured enough to ease out of his crouch. But he remained wary.
        Manuel exhibited none of Stevenson's simmering rage or electric energy. As always, his voice was soft and almost musical. “You never did come around to the station after you called.”
        I considered my answer and decided to go with the truth. “Yes, I did.”
        “So when you phoned me, you were already close,” he guessed.
        “Right around the corner. Who's the bald guy with the earring?”
        Manuel mulled over his answer and followed my lead with some truth of his own. “His name's Carl Scorso.”
        “But who is he?”
        “A total dirtbag. How far are you going to carry this?”
        “Nowhere.”
        He was silent, disbelieving.
        “It started out a crusade,” I admitted. “But I know when I'm beaten.”
        “That sure would be a new Chris Snow.”
        “Even if I could contact an outside authority or the media, I don't understand the situation well enough to convince them of anything.”
        “And you have no proof.”
        “Nothing substantive. Anyway, I don't think I'd be allowed to make that contact. If I could get someone to come investigate, I don't think I or any of my friends would be alive to greet them when they got here.”
        Manuel didn't reply, but his silence was all the answer I needed.
        He might still be a baseball fan. He might still like country music, Abbott and Costello. He still understood as much as I did about limitations and still felt the hand of fate as I did. He might even still like me-but he was no longer my friend. If he wouldn't be sufficiently treacherous to pull the trigger on me himself, he would watch as someone else did.
        Sadness pooled in my heart, a greasy despondency that I'd never felt