Five Days in Summer

of energy.
    “But the mother-son relationship, the age of the son — how does he know?” Tom asked.
    “Research,” Geary said. “He keeps his eyes open, and researches until he’s sure he’s got the right match.”
    “So he stalks them first,” Sorensen said.
    Kaminer took in a sharp breath and checked his watch. “We need to nail his time frame for today.”
    Kaminer’s impatience usually riled Amy, but their lack of time was starting to suck the air out of the room. It was getting hard to breathe, knowing whatwas happening, or about to happen, somewhere on the shores of Cape Cod.
    “How much time we have depends on Mr. White’s anxiety level,” Geary said.
    “He took two boys, one day early,” Sorensen said.
    Amy nodded. “He’s anxious.”
    “I’d say it was already building seven years ago,” Ingram said.
    “Daniel’s torso was delivered fresh,” Geary said, “to a place it would be found immediately. The other children had body parts buried or sunk. Those had to surface with nature.”
    “That’s right,” Amy said. “A head in the dunes, an arm in a swamp, another arm buried under a wharf.”
    “Why the torso in a swing?” Sorensen asked. “Why the departure from gradual detection?”
    “He was getting anxious seven years ago,” Amy said. “The pattern started to change back then.”
    “Up until then,” Jones said, “he needed time—”
    “To facilitate his restitution,” Ingram said. “He hid in the gradual alterations of nature.”
    Jones glanced at her. “Nice.”
    “Surfacing with dune erosion,” Ingram went on, “rising in water as gasses trapped in the flesh lightened its weight, tangled up in seaweed and dragged onto shore—”
    “Cut the poetry,” Kaminer snapped.
    Amy had an idea. “Has anyone checked the tides?”
    Tom shot up and jogged around the table to his computer. He struck at the keyboard with his quick, heavy fingers until he found the Web page he wanted. “Looks like tides vary up and down the coast. They’re all over the place. Depends on what body of water you’re in.” His eyes darted around the screen. “It looks more complicated when you’re into the bays andestuaries. There’s a whole network of tidal variations, heights and currents, flood currents, ebb currents, slack water periods.” He looked across the room to Geary. “It’s Sanskrit to me.”
    Amy stood up and walked across the room, back to the map with all its possibilities. It was starting to come to her now.
    “He didn’t go very far. He’s hiding her somewhere off the Cape, but close by, because he has to get the boy onto the boat. He’ll only dock as long as he needs to. Then he’ll go back to his hiding place. Somewhere tucked into the folds of the shoreline — a cove or a river or a bay. Somewhere you’d get beached if you were there at low tide. Somewhere undeveloped, remote, no houses.”
    The room was quiet; they were all listening.
    “My guess is he acts during the low tides,” Amy continued, “possibly in the middle of the night, when the noise is less likely to be heard by other boaters. He drops one signature body part into the water just before the first morning tide goes out.” The image, as she said it, sickened her. “I’m wondering... if we could understand how the tides fluctuate around the coasts, we might be able to focus our search. He’d avoid the places the currents are roughest. He wants cooperation, predictability, not interference.”
    She turned around and faced the map. The lines she’d been studying earlier transformed into a lucid image, as when a scribble congeals into a recognizable landscape. Where before she saw outlines of land bulging into ocean, she now saw its inversion: notches pulled inward to create secret places. It was like a gift from the echoing depths of her exhausted mind.
    “Interesting,” Geary said, and Amy felt the rush of validation. It was better than coffee or even sleep.
    Sorensen stood up and looked at the map and she knew he saw it too.
    Amy turned to Kaminer, who was nodding, pleased. She knew he spent some of his spare time on the water. “How many times a day do the tides change?”
    “I’ve been fishing the Cape my whole life,” Snow said. He was standing in the doorway, holding a takeout tray from Dunkin’ Donuts with a dozen coffees and a box of doughnuts balanced on top. “You can average the tides at two in and two out, every day, give or take.”
    The sight of Snow standing there,