Five Days in Summer

was dated 1995, and up until today had been adequate for their purposes. At this moment, it looked more decorative than informative, with its hand-drawn lines, pastel colors and glaring omissions. To get his update, Kaminer had mobilized every local police station to every town hall in search of permits for docks built in the last six years.
    Cops and agents were out on foot, walking beaches, searching for an elusive SeaRay Sundancer called Never Land . Amy felt the inching dread of suffocation in this airless room with its nonstop electronic fizz. She was still a little in shock from the news about Dr. Roger Bell stealing the Corvette, and by inference killing Ragnatelli, and by inference having driven off with Emily Parker in Ragnatelli’s ’47 Ford. And she was disturbed by the obvious conclusion that had they known about Al Snow’s visit to Fall River twelve, even eight, hours earlier — before he went home for his beauty rest — they would have had a better chance of saving Emily Parker’s life. And her sons would be on their way home instead of lost... missing.
    Amy squeezed shut her eyes and pushed out the haunting thought that it was too late. If Mr. White — Roger Bell — was working on schedule, Emily would still be alive and possibly even conscious; and the boys, or at least one of them, had at least until tomorrow.
    It was impossible to keep still. As Amy’s mind raced, she walked the floor in front of the map, thinking, projecting shapes onto the island’s contours that weren’t there, aching to clarify the picture.
    Even Will and Sarah had left with the baby, saying they had to look, couldn’t just wait. Amy could picture them, driving the routes, following any sign for a boating launch. Spinning wheels of desperation.
    There were hundreds of miles of shoreline surrounding Cape Cod, along with a complex system of bays, estuaries, rivers, inlets and creeks fed by Cape Cod Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and Nantucket Sound. There were dozens of registered private marinas and public docks, and hundreds of private docks not including those built without permits, hidden in the brush of people’s backyard waterways. And then there were the neighboring islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Both islands’ police forces were on high alert and additional VICAP agents were flown in to help direct the effort to find Emily, David and Sam Parker.
    Geary hunched over the table with Special Agents Ingram and Jones, as well as Sorensen, Kaminer and Tom Delay, forcing himself to work the problem through his supple mind as if he alone was responsible for finding the Parkers. Amy knew that Geary and Bell had a long history, that they had woven themselves together over the years, but began to suspect there were underlying knots and that was partly what Geary was searching for. That he thought he couldunravel the dilemma of this long friendship by solving two crimes at once: catching a serial killer, and unearthing the real man inside the one masquerading as his friend. Amy felt for him, and hoped he got his answers.
    “He wants to get caught,” Geary said, “which is why he dropped so many crumbs. Once we recognized the trail, he knew it would lead to him.”
    “Easy,” Ingram said, shaking her head.
    “Too easy.” Sorensen tapped his pen in sharp staccato against the edge of the table.
    “Exactly,” Geary said. “If he stuck to his precedent, five days, we’d have an extra day and we’d find him.”
    “But he acted today,” Jones said, “one day early, like he can’t help himself.”
    Ingram nodded. “Like he feels he has no choice but to try and win this game.”
    “We need to understand his motive for acceleration.” Amy left the map and joined the group. “Why? To win? Or to satisfy something deeper in himself? And why did he need to accelerate so badly that he took two boys instead of one, as usual?”
    “Was it incidental,” Tom asked, “that he took two kids this time?”
    “Opportunity?” Kaminer said. “The boys were both there, and he saw his chance.”
    “Maybe,” Amy said, “or maybe not. Isn’t Roger Bell smart enough to figure out how to get one kid into the car instead of two?”
    “Please,” Geary said, “we don’t know for sure it’s Roger.”
    Amy nodded in agreement to disagree; there was no point arguing details now. “If Mr. White used the ploy of offering them a ride up the road in the Corvette, he could have had them go one at a time. He didn’t need