Five Days in Summer

to the kitchen phone. She took out the local phone book from the counter drawer, looked up the number and dialed. When she asked to speak with Dr. Geary, she was put on hold.
    “Detective Geary?” he answered, as if he wasn’t quite sure it was his own name.
    “Dr. Geary, this is Sarah Goodman.”
    “John to you, my dear.”
    “Your friend Roger Bell stopped by this morning with some information for Will.”
    “Roger Bell doesn’t skimp on service,” John said. “Never has.”
    “Anyway, he had his fancy car. I think he may have taken the boys for a ride. I can’t find them anywhere. I was hoping you’d know how to reach him. Will wentto get Maxi and I promised him I’d keep the boys home.”
    “Bell drives a Nissan. I wouldn’t call it fancy.”
    “Oh no,” Sarah said, “this is a beautiful red Corvette, a classic. The boys were really interested in it. That’s why I think he may have taken them for a drive.”

Chapter 24
    John Geary stood in the conference room with his back pressed against the wall, listening as Sarah described the events of that morning. Will sat next to her, holding his baby girl in his lap a little too tightly. His face was a study in the abandonment of confidence, with black-and-blue swaths under his eyes like he’d been punched in the face.
    “He’s a doctor,” Sarah said, and looked right at Geary. “He’s your friend. I naturally trusted him.”
    Geary was listening but he couldn’t believe it. Roger Bell driving a Corvette ? Killing car dealers? Stealing kids? He had known the man nearly thirty years, and like most criminal psychiatrists he was nuts but he wasn’t a psycho.
    Tears drowned Sarah’s pale eyes and she broke into a sob. “I looked everywhere for David and Sam, everywhere .”
    “I shouldn’t have left my boys.” Will’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “I should have made them come with me.”
    No one responded, because it was true: he should have, but now it was too late.
    “It’s not your fault, Will,” Sarah said. “It’s mine.”
    Poor old woman, it was a different world from theone they’d grown up in. Locked doors, daughters missing, grandchildren stolen, good friends turned inside out into freaks.
    Sarah repeated every detail of the morning, again and again, staring at her hands clasped in her lap. Geary listened to the clink of every coin of fact as it dropped into his brain, but there was no resonance; his mind fought back with disbelief that his old friend could be a serial killer. Geary just didn’t buy it; he had known and trusted Bell half his life.
    Yet Geary knew that if he wanted to, his old friend could have gotten past the cop who had been on guard at Gooseberry Way that morning; Bell was on the case, after all, and his credentials were beyond question.
    Geary knew that at this moment Sarah’s house and grounds were swarming with police, and if the media hadn’t wormed their way in by now it would be a miracle.
    He knew that all the roads radiating twenty miles from Gooseberry Way were blocked.
    He knew that if the Corvette was still on the road, it would be an easy target.
    He knew that if Roger Bell was behind the wheel, he was as good as dead.
    He also knew they had a good chance now of saving the boys. And a good chance of finding Emily Parker, possibly even alive.
    What he had trouble knowing was that Roger Bell was Mr. White.
    Geary heard a voice vibrating outside his head. Talking to him.
    “How long have you known this?”
    It was Sorensen, his laser eyes digging a path into Geary’s brain.
    “Bell never collected cars,” Geary answered.
    “How long have you known?”
    “I still don’t know.”
    “Your Dr. Bell may be Mr. White.” Sorensen’s words spread into every corner of the room. “You must have suspected.”
    Geary focused his eyes on Sorensen, the sharp face, tight silver hair, eyes filled with all the horrors he’d seen. Here was a man who could believe anything.
    “Never.”
    What was it they said? The closer something was to your face, the harder it was to recognize. Could Geary possibly have been that nearsighted? That totally blind?
    Bell nearly fit the profile — nearly. He wasn’t compulsive about his schedule, which had been a key point, and his mother had died when he was a toddler. He’d been raised an only child by an adoring father and loving stepmother. Other than the early loss of his mother, there just wasn’t any significant emotional conflict in Bell’s life that Geary