Dolan's Cadillac
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Dolan’s Cadillac is a novelette by Stephen King. Because it is relatively short (55 pages), it was later included in the story collection, Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
Written from the point of view of a schoolteacher (the hero), there is only one other main character, Dolan (the villain).
The schoolteacher finds himself in a tragic set of circumstances when Dolan, a wealthy crime-boss, murders the schoolteacher's wife in order to silence her from testifying against him. Dolan gets away with the murder, and the schoolteacher has no recourse. Over a seven-year period, however, the schoolteacher devises a scheme of retaliation. Discovering that Dolan often makes the same road trips in his silver Cadillac, the schoolteacher sets an elaborate trap on one of the roads. He excavates a ditch just wide enough to contain the car, but not so wide as to allow escape through the doors. The schoolteacher even takes on a summer job with a road paving crew just so that he can learn to operate the heavy equipment he needs to execute his plan. In the end, the plan is successful, and Dolan is buried alive in his Cadillac. The schoolteacher pays a relatively small price of undergoing much physical and mental exhaustion, but he feels satisfied that he has done a great service to the memory of his late wife.
The story is a modern version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado.