“If I thought there was a chance I could hold on to my life, I think I’d try to stay around,” Tolliver said, deep in thought. “Running is getting harder and harder with the rise of computers and the use of debit and credit cards. Cash isn’t common, and people who use it are remembered. You have to show your driver’s license for almost everything. It’s hard to stay invisible in the United States, and it’s hard to cross a border without a passport. If you’re not a career criminal, it would be almost impossible to do either one.”

“I don’t think we’re dealing with a career criminal here. I think we’re dealing with an enthusiastic amateur.”

Tolliver said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He was at the end of indulging me.

We’d had fights before, but they’d never had this element of the personal. But now we were more than manager and talent, more than brother and sister, more than survivors of a common hell.

And he was right. We had no business doing what the police were supposed to do, and God knows there were police enough to do it. But every time I thought of Chuck Almand, dead at thirteen because he wanted to lead me to discover what his life had been like, living with a man who tortured other boys for a pastime…. Then I told myself, He succeeded. He got you there, and all the law enforcement people, which was what he surely intended. Let them take the weight of this now.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Tolliver’s shoulders relaxed. Up to that moment I hadn’t realized how tense he’d been.

He was right.

We had to go to the police station to give our statements, and since there were still plenty of news crews around, we phoned ahead on the cell and asked if we could come in the back. We were denied permission. “It’s already too crowded back there,” the dispatcher said. “The state boys all have cars there, and a couple of the forensic guys, plus we have deputies working extra shifts. Park in the front, and we’ll have someone watching out for you.”