Five Days in Summer

welcome.”
    “You pick and choose your friends here,” Bell said, “like anywhere else.”
    Bell folded himself into the other side of the booth. He was over six feet tall with long thin legs, a bloated middle and the ruddy complexion of someone who had refused sunblock his entire life and now paid by wearing a map on his face. His closely cropped salty hair ringed a bald head hit hard by the sun. His tight goatee still had more pepper than salt. One eyebrow grew white and wild over a deep brown eye; the other eye was blind, hidden under an eye patch. Purple, to match his shirt. Geary shook his head and chuckled at the sight of his old friend. He could never get over the man’s audacity in having his own eye patches made so he could coordinate them with his clothes.
    Geary’s tuna melt arrived. He folded the newspaper twice and tucked it behind the napkin holder. Bellordered his grilled chicken on a Caesar salad without consulting the menu.
    Geary spoke through a mouthful of tuna. “I thought college starts at the end of August these days.”
    “We start after Labor Day.” Bell’s voice was measured but loud, and as usual, heads spun to see who had made all the racket.
    “That would make it... today?”
    “Precisely.”
    “For once I’m glad you’re the irresponsible asshole you are, Roger.”
    “My first class is Monday. The school can handle registration without me. I’ll be there by the end of the week. I’m tenured, my friend, a privilege not available in government service.”
    “So we work our butts off while you do whatever the hell you want and rake in the pay.”
    “And benefits.”
    “Not to mention summers off.”
    “Great minds need room to wander.” Bell leaned back against the sparkly turquoise banquette. “If memory serves, you did well by my personal expertise.”
    What a master of the universe. Bell brought out that old invoice every time they got together, waved it in Geary’s face to remind him he not only owed big time, but interest was accumulating. It had started as a joke, their personal wink, but Bell hadn’t let up all these years. Geary was getting a little tired of it but he played along. Without the professional testimony of the brilliant Dr. Bell, John Geary would have been painfully, totally and officially censured by the FBI. Dismantled. Destroyed.
    Worse, Ruth would have known he had lied to her.
    “Without you...” Geary shook his head.
    “I’ve made a decision, John. I’m taking early retirement this spring. I’m going to winterize my house andjoin you here permanently. I’ll edit your book for you. Full credit, of course.”
    “And a full cut of the advance?” Geary laughed. So that was why his old friend had pushed so hard for him to do a book when it was no secret he didn’t like to write. When Geary had finished his dissertation, he and Ruth had thrown a party and he never looked back. The longest things he’d written since then were profiles, filled with FBI shorthand meant to focus a picture of a killer, not develop style. Maybe Bell was getting tired in his advanced age. Or was it payback time? He could see it now: Geary would do all the legwork and suffer through the first draft, then Bell would polish it up and share the credit — and the money. It stank, but Geary liked it. Bell had written whole books by choice, and one of them, The Hate-Filled Mind, had even popped onto the bestseller list. So they could double their money with his pain-in-the-ass name. The big personality and the big head. Stick a crown on it and you’ve got your king.
    “Think again, John. I’m sure you’ll reach the same conclusion. Retired, all alone.” He broke out his oversized, yellow-toothed smile. “We’ll need each other. You’ll see.”
    The waitress brought over Bell’s salad and he dug in.
    “I’ve got a title for our book,” Geary said.
    “Do tell.”
    “Head in the Dunes.”
    Bell’s eyebrow twitched. “Interesting. Explain.”
    Geary filled Bell in on the Emily Parker case.
    “People go missing all the time,” Geary finished. “Women, mothers. But here’s the hitch. Exactly, I mean exactly to the day seven years ago, a woman named Janice Winfrey goes missing from Woods Hole. Five days later, her son disappears. His arm washesup on shore, the rest of him they never find. The mother turns up naked outside the aquarium.”
    “Dead, I presume.”
    Geary shook his head. “Alive. But mentally detached. Unable to speak, can’t even