Five Days in Summer

remembered one of their many outings together, motoring past the horizon line, Ruth back at the house preparing their dinner. He remembered the swell of their friendship, the ease of that afternoon. Hot, windy, eerily bright. He remembered noticing the rash on Bell’s chest, barely visible under the curls of graying chest hair. But in this sun he saw them distinctly: a web of scar tissue spanning his chest, connected by individual points.
    “Someone play dot to dot on your chest, Roger?”
    The laugh, coolly humored. Steering the boat into the wind.
    “A dermatological outbreak as a child,” Bell had answered. “I barely notice it anymore.”
    The memory made Geary feel sick. He walked out onto the dock, into the wind, and stopped at Bell’s empty mooring. He thought of Daniel Lipnor’s torso still warm in the baby swing, dripping blood, fresh pinpricks covering his small chest. He was six years old, big for his age, looked seven.
    Seven years old. Every seven years, to the day.
    What had happened to Roger when he was seven, on the third of September?
    What had happened to his chest?
    What was he hiding under that eye patch?
    A cold sweat gathered on Geary’s skin and nausea rose in a wave. He fell to his knees and braced the palms of his hands on the edge of the dock. He could hear the footsteps of Sagredo and Graves as theywalked toward him, then stopped. They were watching him, that was all — doing their job. He leaned over the dark water and vomited into its chill.
    “Roger has a boat,” Geary said softly.
    “What kind of boat?” Amy crossed the room to stand in front of him. She took his face in her hands and steered it in her direction. “Where does he keep it?”
    “Never Land.”
    Amy blinked. “What?”
    “He named it Never Land . Peter Pan. The motherless boy who couldn’t grow up.”
    “John, we’re losing time.”
    “It’s a SeaRay Sundancer, small, interior cabin, functional galley, latrine. Nothing fancy. Moors it at Point Isabella on North Bay, but it isn’t there now. He must have taken it out. He parked the Corvette at the dock.”
    Kaminer and Sorensen were on their phones like wild animals on a fresh kill. In minutes, they were told that Bell’s boat had been at his mooring only intermittently for a week.
    “Every marina!” Kaminer barked into the phone. “All up and down the coast, down Connecticut, up to Maine. Every dock on the East Coast, do you hear me? Every little podunk dock in every backyard!”
    “Sir,” Amy said, “what do we do about Robertson? He’s still under surveillance.”
    “Bring him in,” Kaminer said. “We’ll get what we need to book him on trafficking child pornography. I’m not letting that sicko loose in my town. I’ve got grandkids.”
    Geary forced himself to stand up. He felt a little dizzy, shook his head to dislodge the demon, wanted some coffee, needed to wake up. Had to face thisnew, bitter truth, but didn’t want to, still couldn’t fully believe it.
    Will Parker got up and walked over to Geary. Parker, who had met the worst luck of his life, yet at the same time was luckier than Geary had ever been. Life should never get that paradoxical, Geary thought. He had seen it so many times, the pitiless hand extending unforeseen from the side of the road, destroying futures. He had seen people shocked out of a complacent trust in the safety of their world’s perimeters. Other people. Never himself.
    Will stood in front of Geary and held out an arm to steady on. Geary took it.

Chapter 25
    “Down here?”
    The hatch opened and Sammie’s voice drifted in on a cloud of fresh air that found Emily’s nose like a magnet. The quick slap of sneakers down the steps, someone just behind him, the corn man, the corn man, no . Did Sam see her? She could feel him moving around the boat like he was on a school trip, discovering something new. She felt the movement of his looking around, the pause of his recognition. She could almost see his ecstatic face for a split second before it fell into despair. She grunted through the tape, grunted and shook her naked body.
    “Mommy!”
    A voice thinned by fear. How she must have looked to him. An impostor. Was everything she had taught him to believe wrong? Hadn’t she taught him not to talk to strangers? Hadn’t he learned how to defend himself? All those words and all those lessons, had she failed so badly? Was Sarah wondering the same thing? Was it Emily’s own fault she was here? She should