Five Days in Summer

under a shade awning that rolled out from the side of the house.
    “How are the kids taking it?” Geary asked.
    Will looked at Geary. “I’ve been trying to decide exactly what to tell them.”
    “Until we know something, you should assume your wife’s coming home.”
    “Why?”
    Geary didn’t answer right away; it seemed he had something to say that wouldn’t be easy.
    “I have some information,” Geary started. When Will leaned toward him, he pulled back. “Nothing concrete, but a lead.”
    “Tell me.”
    Geary uncrossed his legs and set his elbows on his knees. He leaned forward over steepled hands.
    “Something you said this morning to Detective Snow sounded a lot like something I’d just read in an old file.”
    “Your research?”
    “Yes.”
    “But aren’t cold cases unsolved crimes?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It’s the date,” Geary said. “It’s happened on the same date. I don’t like to tell you this, but this would be the fifth time. Always on September third. Every seven years.”
    Will’s lungs emptied as if an invisible hand had come from nowhere and slammed him. What Geary was telling him was worse than anything his imagination had considered since he’d gotten Sarah’s first call. He’d seen Emily gone. He’d seen her hurt. But he hadn’t seen her trapped by a maniac, suffering his unfathomable compulsions. Will closed his eyes and waited for the rest.
    “I’ve been talking to my old friend Tom at the FBI. He’s with VICAP — they track serial crimes.”
    Beneath his closed eyelids Will saw big blocks of blue and red. If he opened his eyes, he’d see the sun. He’d see nothing.
    “Listen up, Will, because this isn’t over yet.”
    Will’s eyes opened to see Geary staring intently at him.
    “It’s a matter of the mothers.”
    “Mothers? The woman has to be a mother? Why?”
    Again, Geary hesitated. There was more that he wasn’t telling.
    “His goal isn’t to kill them. He holds them for five days.”
    “And then?”
    Finally, Geary said it: “He takes the woman’s child.”
    A deathly heat fanned out through Will’s body.
    He takes the woman’s child.
    “And then what?”
    Geary sighed. “We’re going to catch this asshole.”
    “You’ll catch him now? When he hasn’t been caught yet?”
    “We haven’t noticed him yet.”
    “What happens to the mothers?” Will asked.
    “They’re released,” Geary said, “when he’s finished with the child.”
    Will stared at the old man’s face and forced himselfto ask the next question. “What does he do to the child?”
    Geary didn’t answer.
    Will stood up. “What does he do to the child?”
    “Keep them close” was the only answer he got. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”
    The boys’ voices rang out in the distance. They were laughing. Will fought an impulse to race off the deck and go to them.
    “I don’t believe this,” he said to Geary.
    “I know you don’t. You shouldn’t have to. No one should.”
    Emily. His children. The twist of panic Will had tried to bike away wrung at his neck. His voice scratched when he spoke. “Which one?”
    Geary nodded and looked away, toward the woods. “One of the boys.”
    A high-pitched voice echoed over the lake, but Will couldn’t tell whose it was or whether it was tinged with delight or anger. He couldn’t tell.
    Geary turned his eyes back to Will. “I’ve already been working on this with that criminologist I told you about. I promise you, Will, we’re going to get a profile of this thing and then I’m going to get the locals behind me, and the state, and the feds, whatever it takes. I’m going to pull the string on this one, I’ve done it before. We have three more days. We’re going to catch him.”
    “How do I protect them?” Will could barely hear his own voice, it was like a vapor. “What if I can’t?”
    From the corner of his vision, Will saw David wandering up from the lake. He stopped when he saw his father. Will tried to smile and he managed a wave, but David didn’t wave back. He stopped walking and watched the two men on the porch.
    David. When he was born, so small and perfect,Emily said he was her work of art. He thrust his life into theirs with such force that he transformed them completely, taught them how to be parents, deepened their humanity, prepared them for the younger children. David had come out of nowhere and changed what mattered to them. He was their defining moment.
    “Why