"How do you like being dead?" he breathed softly.
The car's tires were still on fire, but in less than ten minutes, the fire would have spread to the engine compartment and trunk. Then carbon monoxide would penetrate the driver's cab before the entire vehicle would end up in flames. All that would be left of Norman Roberts, the young man crouched in the driver's seat, would be a charred skeleton.
"Didn't anyone ever teach you?" asked the gloomy figure in the black coat, who had stepped as close to the open driver's door as the increasingly intense heat would allow. "Didn't anyone tell you what happens if you don't follow the rules?"
Norman Roberts had only ventured out from the protection of his seemingly safe hiding place twenty minutes earlier. The secluded parking lot behind the supermarket seemed ideal for his purpose; some local residents had parked their Mercedes overnight. Roberts had waited about forty-five minutes in his cover until he was finally convinced that no one would notice him. Not before the fire had grown to full size. He had crept up to the car, taken the barbecue lighters from his rucksack, placed one on each tire, and carefully lit them. It took a while for the rubber to start burning before it finally set the whole vehicle ablaze. The young man had decided to watch this spectacle from a safe distance. As he did every time.
"I'm going to read something to you now, and I want you to listen carefully," the stranger explained with eerie calm and pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of his left inside pocket with a shaky hand. He unfolded it and began to read out what was written on it in a bizarre singsong.
Roberts was unable to follow the words. He could no longer even scream. He was still paralyzed by the electric shock that the stranger had sent through his body shortly before. Moreover, the toxic fumes drifting in his direction from the burning rubber tires had already clouded his mind. Roberts didn't know who the dark figure was, but now, having folded up the note and put it back in its pocket, he looked at him motionless and terrifyingly. He also didn't know why his hands were chained to the steering wheel of the Mercedes. But Norman Roberts understood one thing - however confused his thoughts were - that the fire he had started would engulf him briefly.
"That too," breathed the stranger before the flash of a cell phone camera flickered twice quickly for a split second.
The man slipped the cell phone into the right breast pocket of his shirt and turned back to his victim. "So, was it worth it?"
The first flames were now bursting out from under the hood. Roberts began to cough miserably after inhaling some of the smoke that had come out through the vents in the dashboard. He opened his eyes in panic, struggling to find his bearings, realizing that the eerie figure was gradually being pushed back by the heat of the burning vehicle.
"Help me," he managed to say with the last of his strength.
"I'm sorry," he received in reply. "Not you." Then the man stepped a little closer to the Mercedes once more, rocked his upper body forward three times in succession without being able to control it, then reached into his right outer coat pocket and pulled out something that looked like a stone. "If it's any consolation," he said, throwing the object elegantly through the open driver's door onto his victim's lap. "You're going to save a lot of people's lives. A lot of people."
Then, the stranger pushed the driver's door shut with his foot, grabbed the cell phone again, and took two more pictures. Finally, he turned around, left Roberts in the flames, and walked out of the parking lot with straight steps, singing softly as he went.
"Sleep, my baby, high up in the tree,
the wind shakes the branches like the sweetest dream.
Then, when the branches break, the cradle falls
and lands with the baby in the dark grave."
The stranger heard a few more desperate cries from a distance, but they stopped abruptly shortly afterward.
"Finally," said the man in the dark coat, exhausted and struggling to breathe, as he reached his car, parked a safe distance away. In the meantime, the vehicle was lightly covered in snow, which continued to pelt down on Boston.
The man then pulled out his car key, inserted it into the trunk lock, and opened the hatch. After making sure that everything inside was still as he had left it, he involuntarily rocked his upper body forward once more and then said wistfully: "Soon --"
While smoke and flames rose into the Boston night sky on the horizon, he slammed the trunk lid shut again, got behind the wheel, started the engine, and disappeared into the icy cold of the night, full of unbridled zest for action.