Wallace hung precariously by his seatbelt, barely scratched despite the non-deployment of air bags. He punched the roof in frustration, bruising his knuckles, and struggled against his bonds. The buckle was jammed and the seatbelt cut deep into his waist every time he moved.
To calm his racing pulse, Wallace closed his eyes, listening to the burst radiator hiss and the strained engine tick as it cooled. Above the mechanical sounds, a cacophony croaked from a puddle of angry frogs.
He breathed deeply. He was a better driver than that. What the hell was he thinking?
The answer was simple: he wasn’t thinking, he was reacting. Blindly. Stubbornly.
He contorted his body again and attacked the belt mechanism with both hands.
This time the lock snapped open and Wallace fell, his body twisting uncontrollably as gravity took hold. His feet flew skyward, his bad leg smashing painfully into the steering column while his arms vanished through the shattered opening of the passenger window to sink into the murky, foul-smelling ditch beneath.
He panicked as his head and shoulders quickly followed. Grimy brown water filled his mouth as he thrashed around to find a purchase on something solid. His hands slipped across sunken roots and submerged grass while his fingers sunk into deep loose clay and his lungs began to burn. He flailed his feet, but that only pushed him deeper into the suffocating murk.
Desperate, he realized it was impossible to fight his way back into the van. Instead, Wallace twisted onto his back, grabbed hold of the broken side mirror and yanked himself forward. His body slid barely two feet, his shoulders and back squelching into a layer of thick clay. The weight and angle of the van seemed to push him deeper into the dank and he suddenly wondered if he had just made his perilous situation even worse.
He scrambled to grasp the slippery hood, but his fingers failed to find a grip. Blind and frantic, his lungs on the verge of collapse, he tucked in his knees and felt his feet hit the edge of the broken window.
This was it. Last chance.
He braced his feet against the window edge, wincing slightly at a sharp pain in his left leg, and pushed with all his might. A loud, internalized sucking noise filled his ears as his shoulders fought against the vacuum of mud—
His mouth opened in a silent scream as the vacuum popped and he was suddenly launched like a loosed torpedo.
Scrambling, desperate, he squeezed around the van’s front bumper and clawed his way skyward.
HIS HEAD broke the surface just as his lungs gave out. He gulped in air and spat out slime, cursing his own damn stupidity.
After crawling out of the ditch, Wallace slopped off as much of the mud and rotting vegetation as he could. He looked like hell, but didn’t care. That was the least of his worries.
He started walking, his limp more pronounced but the pain manageable.
He needed to find a phone.
CHAPTER 8
Crow answered on the first ring. Sleep had proved impossible. His thoughts too troubling. His answers too few. If he still drank, it would have been a bad, bad night. When the phone rang, he silently thanked his ancestors for helping him stay strong.
On the other end of the line, Wallace said, “I need your help.”
Crow sighed with relief at the sound of his friend’s voice.
“Where are you? What’s happening? Is everyone OK?”
“It’s a mess. Can you pick me up?”
“Yeah, of course. Are Alicia and the boys with you?”
Crow heard the catch in his friend’s throat.
“I can’t talk on the phone.”
“Hang tight,” said Crow. “I’ll be right there.”
Wallace gave him the address.
Crow’s clothes were in a heap on the floor beside the bed. All he had to do was step in and zip up.
Delilah didn’t stir.
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES later, Crow pulled into a 24-hour gas station in Surrey and spotted Wallace sitting on a plastic bench out front.
He was alone and he had spoken true. He was a mess. His clothes were ripped and soiled with a mixture of mud and blood from numerous shallow cuts and scrapes.
Wallace limped over to the truck and climbed inside. His shoes squelched and his eyes revealed a roadmap of sorrow and pain. He had a difficult time meeting Crow’s questioning stare and Crow felt his heart 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 do
wn 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 late-night attendant locked inside the brightly-lit kiosk, he easily observed the sloth picking his nose and thumbing through a glossy magazine in the reflection of the Lincoln’s heavily-tinted glass.
If the bored clerk happened to take an interest and look outside, he might wonder if he was looking at an empty silhouette — an echo — rather than the man himself. A charcoal two-piece suit draped seamlessly over an ebony shirt and a minimal Western-style shoestring tie. Even the piercings in each ear were invisible: black metallic tunnels in the same circumference as a .45 shell.
If the driver closed his gloriously bright eyes and sucked bruised plum lips inside his mouth, he could almost disappear.
The cashier wiped sticky fingers on one of the magazine pages before turning it, causing a visible shudder to run down the driver’s back.
Observing was a force of habit. As natural as breathing. And at times like these, a curse, especially when he was forbidden from bringing any undue attention to his presence.
More the pity.
The clerk was disgusting. A poorly-shaved monkey with an IQ no larger than his waistband, he was one of those useless specimens whom nobody would miss and whose only benefit to the planet would come when he stopped consuming its limited resources, especially oxygen and water.
With his gloved left hand engaged with the gas nozzle, the driver’s bare right palm glowed purple from the screen of his personalized cellphone. Although to call the slender, touch-screen device a phone was a tragic misnomer. Boasting military-level encryption and specialized apps, the phone was the closest thing to secure communication since the Navajo Windtalkers stumped the Japanese.
While texting with only one thumb slowed his overall speed, it was only a slight impediment as the phone’s artificial intelligence had a surprisingly good record of correctly auto-completing his words.
When his latest message was composed, he hit Send. The phone’s software automatically encoded all of his outgoing messages and decoded his incoming. It did it with such alarming speed, it was virtually invisible.
Like him.
The driver returned the nozzle to its housing. Before pocketing the printed receipt, he glanced at the customer name gleaned from the credit card: Sean Black. He didn’t care for the Christian name, but the surname was surprisingly delicious.
He could enjoy being Mr. Black.
Before getting behind the wheel, Mr. Black endured one last unobserved glance at the sloth-like attendant. The young man’s skin was the color of ash under the booth’s harsh fluorescent lights. His milky eyes were already dead to the dim future of his existence.
Spilling his blood would be a blessing, but such things were no longer that simple.
It was better before. Much better.
Inside the vehicle, Mr. Black placed his phone in its dashboard cradle and activated the tracker application. A detailed map appeared on the phone’s generous high-resolution screen.
A pulsating red dot, like a single drop of blood, showed him exactly where to go.
CHAPTER 10
When Crow turned off the main road onto the quiet side street that led to his home, Wallace finally emerged from his self-imposed cocoon.
Crow had glanced over numerous times during the trip, wondering if his friend had fallen asleep. But every time, he saw Wallace’s eyes staring blankly through the windshield, seeing nothing.
Or perhaps, thought Crow, seeing too much.
He hadn’t pushed, even though the heavy silence made him nervous.
The time to talk would come.
Wallace stirred and took in his surroundings. “What are we doing here?”
“The people whose help we need don’t appreciate drop-ins,” said Crow. “It’s best I give them a heads up first.”
“I thought they were family.”
“They are, but that doesn’t make them any friendlier.” Crow wriggled his nose. “Besides, you could do with a shower and a change of clothes.”
When they were within two blocks of the house, Crow eased up on the gas and flicked on his high beams. The street ahead looked the same as it always did — a harsh commingling of pride and neglect with the self-respecting owners holding a narrow lead over those who had given up trying to stand on their own two feet — but still . . .
“Marvin was at your house,” Crow said, thinking aloud. “He knows we’re tight and bringing you in would look good. Maybe earn him a pat on the head.”
Wallace leaned forward and peered through the windshield. “You think he would stake out your place?”
Crow shrugged. “He’s one of them now.” He paused, chewed his cheek. “Although if you wanted to turn yourself in. Explain everything. He would treat you alright.”
Wallace’s eyes flashed with anger as he shook away the suggestion.
“I need to get back down there.” His jaw was clenched so tightly, the words could barely squeeze through. “Find Alicia and the boys. The cops get me now, I could be locked up for days.”
Wallace’s eyes hardened and Crow felt his gaze on a physical level. It burrowed into his skull with the force of a dentist’s diamond-tipped drill.
“I don’t want to get you or Delilah into trouble,” continued Wallace. “If you think you need to turn me in, drop me off now and I’ll be on my way.”
Crow slowed the truck further and turned a small dial beneath the headlight switch all the way to the left. The lights in the dashboard went dark until only a green luminescence remained that showed the vehicle’s decreasing speed.
“It disables the interior light,” explained Crow.
Wallace turned away and reached for the door handle, but as he did so, Crow grabbed his shoulder and squeezed.
“This is just a precaution,” he said. “I’ll see you at the house.”
CROW PULLED into the driveway and wished his garage wasn’t so stuffed. Summer gear for the kids. Winter gear for hunting and snowmobiling. If they weren’t such pack rats, he could just drive inside and close the door.
Instead, he parked in the driveway beside Delilah’s compact, four-passenger Focus and switched off the engine. As soon as he opened his door, a powerful flashlight cut through the darkness to blind him.
“You alone, Crow?”
“Nope,” said Crow. “You’re here.”
The beam moved to illuminate the truck’s interior. When it found the cab empty, the beam travelled the length of the open truck bed before returning to Crow.
“Kind of late for another drive, ain’t it?”
“Kinda early for a visit, too,” answered Crow. “I don’t remember making plans to go fishin’.”
Marvin’s sigh of exasperation traveled across the dormant lawn like a golf ball on the moon.
“Did you see him?”
“Who?”
The vexed sigh again. “You know who.”
Crow scratched his chin. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Marvin. I talked to Wallace.”
“Damn it, Crow.”
Crow held up one hand. “Now hold on a minute and listen.”
Crow moved his hand slightly to block some of the flashlight’s intensity. He could see Marvin standing behind it. He was dressed in regular street clothes, which told Crow that he was alone and unofficial.
“I gave Wallace your offer about turning himself in,” Crow continued. “But he has a slight problem.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s innocent.”
“He tell you that?”
“He did. And I believe him
.”
A third sigh. “How did he explain the blood?”
“He doesn’t know how it got there.”
“Then where’s Alicia and the boys?”
“He doesn’t know that either.”
Marvin snorted. “Listen to yourself. How could he not know where his wife and kids are?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not. Where is he?”
“He’s gone looking for them.”
“Bullshit. Where is he?”
Crow shrugged. “I don’t know. I told him not to tell me.”
Marvin ground his teeth in frustration. “Dammit, Crow. I could have you arrested.”
Crow narrowed his eyes and held out his wrists. “That would look good on your record, Marvin. Locking up family members for leaving the Rez and talking out of turn.”
Marvin bristled. “It’s called aiding and abetting. Wallace is wanted—”
“Fancy words for the same thing,” interrupted Crow. “I haven’t done anything except deliver your message to a friend. Arrest me and you’ll just be trying to prove how white you can be.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Marvin. Fuck you. If you want to be the goddamn sheriff then do some of the work. Wallace said he didn’t do anything and I believe him. That should mean something to you, too. Has your department even tested the blood to make sure a crime was actually committed there?”
“It’s not just the blood, Crow. You know that.”
“First things first. Find out whose blood it is and then we’ll see about the rest. If the blood belongs to Alicia or the boys, I’ll hunt Wallace down myself and bring him to you.”
“That’s not how this works,” said Marvin. “The evidence points to Wallace and we need to talk to him.”
“Well, you can’t. He’s gone. You do some bloody work and maybe he’ll come back.”
Marvin shook his head. “You watch too much damn TV, Crow. DNA takes a long time to process, plus there’s nothing left to match it to. He got rid of everything, remember? No toothbrushes. No hair brushes. No soiled clothes. Pretty convenient, you have to admit.”
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