Five Days in Summer

day in the national spotlight. Geary wondered how long it would take before Smith found his seat across from Larry King for his proverbial fifteen minutes.
    “They’re going to ruin the grass,” Geary said.
    Amy shook her head. “They don’t even see the grass.”
    She drove past the reporters and they all stopped talking to take a good, long look.
    “You want to go first, or should I?” Geary asked.
    “I’ll take the honors.”
    Amy pulled into a parking spot, unlatched her seat belt, paused a moment to collect herself and opened her door. They sprinted over in a pack, pads and microphones out, red lights flashing on their industrial-strength video cameras.
    Smith squeezed himself past NBC and CNN, who Geary could have sworn shot her loafer out just a moment too late to trip the local reporter. Too bad.
    “Are you Retired Special Agent Dr. John Geary formerly of the FBI?” Smith rattled.
    “Don’t you think the retired and the formerly cancel each other out?” Geary winked.
    “I’ll take that as a yes.” Smith scribbled on his pad.
    “Would you mind spelling your name for us, Detective Cardoza?” the tall CNN gal asked with a dazzling smile.
    “C-A-R-D-O-Z-A.”
    “Detective Cardoza” — CBS; needed a shave — “will you make a statement about the status of the Emily Parker case?”
    “She’s missing,” Amy said. “That’s all.”
    “Dr. Geary” — CNN; that smile — “we know Dr. Roger Bell has been consulted on this case. Why would two of the country’s top behavioralists be here if it were just a missing persons?”
    Geary smiled back. “Haven’t you heard of retirement?”
    “But, Dr. Geary—”
    “No further comments right now, folks.” Geary turned around and started walking, relying on Amy’s good sense to follow.
    They made it through the front doors with the usual relief, but Geary knew there would be no slowing down; at this point in the game, it was out of one fire and into another.
    Suellen nodded at them from behind the reception glass. “Boss said to send you right to the conference room when you got here.”
    They walked quickly down the hall, made the turn, and opened the door to what had just this morning been a sleepy room. Not anymore. State and federal agents had turned the long windowless conference room into a living brain, with specialized teams running each lobe. They’d even brought their own computers, and now the ordinary space designed for sitting and talking and dusting off your doughnuts was a beeping, whizzing, clicking, ringing nerve center. You barely noticed the framed seascapes hanging on the walls.
    It was going to be a long night. They would sleep in shifts, if they did at all.
    Kaminer orchestrated a volley of introductions that left Geary with the basics he’d been able to eyeball the minute he’d entered the room. First of all, the FBI guy with the short silver hair was in charge: Reed Sorensen. He was the oldest, maybe a whopping fifty, a special agent from the Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center. Geary recognized him, but not so long ago his hair had been brown; he must have worked on some nasty cases on his way up the ranks. Sorensen had brought along a new trainee from Quantico, Janet, a woman young enough to be his daughter except no decent man would expose his own blood to something this grotesque. The CASMIRC duo had the head of the table staked out with their laptops, phones and file folders, which was the other way Geary knew Sorensen had the reins.
    Down the line and around the table they met an agent from the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group. There was a three-agent team from the state’s Crime Scene Service Section; that had been their white van in the parking lot, loaded with the latest in mobile forensics. Then there was the pair of state criminalists who looked like Barbie and Ken and talked like parolees on the mend. The state had also sent in its own ViCAP agent, a young guy with a pockmarked face, introduced as a member of the original team, which didn’t mean much, since the state hadn’t gotten on track with its own Violent Criminal Apprehension Program until six years ago. Better late than never. Half the agents at the table were new resources, since their divisions had come into being toward the end of Geary’s career. In the early days, they toughed it out with brain juice and elbow grease and pounded the pavement like there was no tomorrow. Today it was all