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sink.
    “I need to get across the border,” said Wallace.
    Crow hesitated. “I thought that’s where—”
    “You know people, right?” Wallace interrupted. He dragged filthy nails across his teeth, breaking off tiny slivers and spitting them on the floor.
    “What do you mean? People.”
    “I can’t use my passport.”
    “Why? Did something happen—”
    Wallace interrupted again. “I’ll also need a gun.”
    Crow raised one eyebrow.
    The pain that wracked his friend’s face was palpable. He was struggling to keep his composure, but his body trembled with all the fragility of a featherless bird fallen from its nest. Wallace had aged a decade since Crow last saw him and he smelled as though he had recently bathed in a sewer.
    With his requests delivered, Wallace lowered his head and focused on the floor mat. A sudden violent tremor coursed through his body, making his shoulders twitch and his legs jerk in uncontrolled spasms. He looked ashamed, destroyed, but also in the latter stages of shock.
    Crow switched on the truck’s heater and aimed the dashboard vents toward his passenger. He studied the blood on his friend’s clothing. There wasn’t a lot of it, but still . . .
    Before he went any further, he had to know.
    “Where’s the van?” Crow asked.
    “In a ditch,” Wallace mumbled. He didn’t look up. “A few miles back. I . . . I lost control.”
    Crow swallowed, suddenly afraid as every dark thought, every dark question that he had tried to suppress bubbled up to the surface. “Where’s Alicia and the boys?”
    Wallace inhaled deeply and his mouth struggled to form the words. “I . . . I . . . don’t know.”
    “But they’re alive?”
    Wallace jerked, his eyes suddenly wide with horror, his voice incredulous. “Why would you ask that?”
    Crow had no choice.
    He told Wallace about the police at his house and the blood on the floor. The discarded mop and concerned neighbor. He told him about Marvin. And finally, the missing clothes and toys.
    Every detail landed like dirt on a coffin lid. There was no way to fake it. Unless the man sitting beside him was a different Wallace than the one Crow had known for over twelve years, he hadn’t known about any of it.
    “The police think I killed my family?” Wallace said.
    Crow nodded. “They’ve issued a warrant for your arrest. They’ll be looking for the van.”
    “And the photograph cements it.” Wallace shook his head in disbelief. “It makes this shopping trip look like a stupid, ill-planned cover-up.”
    “What photograph?” asked Crow.
    In one breathless soliloquy, Wallace recounted the hours at the mall, the missing luggage and passports, and the damning photograph.
    “See?” Wallace’s voice verged on hysteria. “I’m not just a murderer. I’m a stupid fucking one, too. No luggage. No passports. And a bloody picture of me driving alone across the border.”
    “How is that even possible?” asked Crow.
    Wallace shook his head and looked over at his friend. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
    “No, I do,” Crow said quickly, trying to hide the quiver in his voice. “It’s just so . . . hard to imagine. Somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble, but why?”
    Wallace closed his eyes and released a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”
    Crow almost didn’t want to ask, but before he could stop himself, the words tumbled out. “Do you think Alicia and the boys are okay?”
    Wallace flinched before opening his eyes and wiping away some of the mud that had streamed down his cheeks.
    “I have to believe so.”

CHAPTER 9
     
     
    After Crow’s truck pulled away, a black-on-black Lincoln Navigator SUV drove into the gas station and parked beside the middle pump on the island farthest from the Plexiglas-enclosed cashier.
    The Navigator’s lone occupant climbed out, swiped a credit card through the pump’s electronic reader and began filling the vehicle’s fuel tank with mid-grade unleaded.
    Although he stood with his back to the