Five Days in Summer

single memory: Eleanor Snow and Son.
    Local records filled in some of the details of their lives. On Al’s birth certificate, his father was listed as unknown. The year after Al’s birth, 1950, the Snows’ name was dropped from the roster of the DAR; Daughters of the American Revolution did not give birth out of wedlock. And old-line families, apparently, did not support them. Eleanor Snow, who had grown up in one of the stateliest houses in Osterville, had moved on to a series of shelters for wayward girls, ending up in a trailer park listed by town and zip code but no street address, just Wakeby Park. How she made a living was unclear, but according to the townhall she used the foster care system to help raise her son.
    When Snow was seven years old, Eleanor pulled him out of foster care and brought him home. He was hospitalized five times that year alone, with injuries ranging from broken bones to burns on the soles of his feet and buttocks. The hospital record noted hundreds of pinprick-sized scars on his chest and stomach. Geary had read the description and it was severe, nothing like the scarring left behind by Roger Bell’s dermatological outbreak as a child. Snow’s map of ruin showed a war against love. What child would not conclude he was abhorred by his own mother?
    Geary filled in the blanks. Snow must have been tormented by his mother’s lack of love and empathy for him. He must have developed a craving for some glimmer of feeling — pain, guilt, regret — when she hurt him. He must have craved a look in his mother’s eyes that he had never once seen. The record also showed that Eleanor Snow was brutally murdered twenty-eight years earlier — crime never solved. Geary took a wild guess that Snow himself had killed her. But not enough.
    There was plenty of opportunity to repeat history. The world was full of mothers with seven-year-old sons.
    Snow had figured out that in the course of five days he could reduce the mother physically through starvation and dehydration, and demoralize her by keeping her bound and blindfolded, in a puddle of her own waste. She would be alive yet significantly weakened and confused, which in combination with the muscle inhibitor would ripen her mind for a kind of mental implosion, given enough stress. The boy would be injected with an overdose of an antianxiety drug to excitehis fear — Snow experimented with them over the years, trifluoperazine being his most recent selection. He figured that any mother watching her son die a slow, painful death in utter terror would die along with him. And they did, fully at first, then only mentally as Snow perfected the scenario. He shattered their minds by creating a state of perpetual, empathetic horror. He tested their love, watched it writhe, because he could.
    Turned out Snow wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He was keen, resourceful, and one of the most dangerous animals on the planet.
    “Roger” — Geary cringed, but it had to be said — “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
    Bell’s good eye cocked at him. “Guilty, are we?”
    “Now you’ve really got a hammer for your old nail.”
    Bell laughed. “Yes, I do, and I’ll die using it.”
    “Go right ahead. I’ll take my penance.”
    “I don’t fully understand how you could have suspected me, old friend.” Bell’s eye steadied ahead as he steered them into the narrowing passage.
    “It was the Corvette. Why didn’t you tell me you were buying it?”
    Bell stopped the motor and the Sundancer came to rest in the marsh. Tall reed and cattails walled them off from the bog and cast a shadow over the boat. Bell stood up and dug his weathered hand into his shorts pocket. He showed Geary a key on a round plastic key chain with a red insert that read STEGNER MOTORS. The key chain didn’t surprise Geary; Vera Ragnatelli had already confirmed that Ragnatelli’s Vintage Automobiles hadn’t had a Corvette on the lot in years.
    “Happy birthday, John.”
    The gesture confounded Geary; it was too much, too fast, too late. “My birthday’s in June.”
    “Better late than never.”
    Geary stared at the key dangling from Bell’s hand.
    “Take it.”
    “Why?”
    “You’re starting over.” Bell broke into that yellow-toothed grin of his, and Geary felt worse than before. “I thought this might sweeten the trip.”
    “Thanks, but no, thanks,” Geary said. “Makes me feel like I’m sticking my hand in your retirement fund.”
    Bell shook his head and rigged a half