Five Days in Summer

Will felt the boat sway and the sewer rankness brought his stomach to his throat. He was just moving toward Sam when David shouted:
    “Dad!”
    There was a loud scrape.
    Snow was on his feet, holding the knife with his one good arm. The broken arm dangled by his side. His shirt was drenched and his pupils were dilated even in the dimness of the boat.
    “You’re fools,” Snow hissed.
    Will spun around. He would get to the broken arm and yank it down; he would curdle the monster with pain. But when he saw David charging at Snow, his impulse transformed and all he wanted was to keep his son out of danger.
    He ran forward to intercept David. But he was too late.
    Snow tripped David and grabbed a handful of his shirt, twisting him down to the floor. The knife had dropped beside them. David tried to pull away but Snow was fiercely strong. In a second he had David clamped between his knees. He picked up the knife and aimed it at exposed belly. Will hurled himself forward. The air seemed to turn gelatinous as the knifeslipped through it, aimed at his own heart, barely protected in David’s fragile body.
    Then, a rush of footsteps thundered overhead, stopping time. Snow suspended the thrust of his knife briefly enough to listen. But as Will bore down on the killer’s last chance, Snow’s determination erupted. His face reddened and his fingers squeezed the knife’s handle. He lifted it back as if to accelerate its ability to destroy.
    Voices spilled through the open hatch and someone looked inside. Will recognized Officer Sagredo from the police station. Sagredo catapulted himself into the cabin, shouting, “Police!” Officers Landberg and Graves jumped in after. They were momentarily baffled as they took in the scene but in seconds got it right. In a refrain of mutual agreement, they aimed their guns at Snow’s back.
    “Al!” Graves shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
    “Put your guns down,” Snow said, “or I’ll kill the boy.”
    Sagredo’s finger pulled against his trigger. “Don’t make me do this, Al.”
    Snow’s nostrils flared in defiance as the knife pierced David’s skin just between his ribs.
    Will felt a detonation of heat throughout his body and heard his own voice fly out: “No!”
    There was a shot, and Snow’s chest exploded. Blood spewed from a gash dead center in his front, like a target ripped open at the bull’s-eye. Snow fell off David, a look of blank surprise dawning on his face. He rolled onto his back. Blood frothed from his mouth and nose.
    David sobbed quietly, and Will held him, whispering, “Shh, it’s over,” and whispering it again. Helooked up to see who had shot Al Snow, expecting Amy Cardoza to be on her feet, having leveled her best shot into a man who had briefly been her partner. But Amy was still sprawled on the floor, unconscious.
    Instead, Will saw Emily.
    She was on her knees, buckling in exhaustion, the gun falling from her loosened grip onto the floor in front of her. Her hands trembled as they reached up to catch her face, which dropped forward, pulling her fragile body into a curve. She dissolved onto the putrid floor, and wept without sound.

Chapter 36
    John Geary stood under the SeaRay Sundancer’s blue awning, next to his old friend Roger Bell, who manned the helm. It was Thursday evening, the cool end of a brilliant September afternoon. They made waves through Shoestring Bay, past Ryefield Point, and slowed down into a tidy outlet called Pinquickset Cove.
    The cove was bordered by Crocker Neck, conservation land ending in a narrow channel that fed right into Fullers Marsh. Not a house in sight. At the end of the channel were abandoned cranberry bogs hidden by a tall curtain of reed. Egrets and blue herons stalked their prey, osprey hovered in the eerily quiet sky.
    “I’ve been in here before,” Roger said. “Saw a couple of paddlers once, but that’s it.”
    Geary had rarely heard so much quiet in his long life. “Perfect,” he said.
    Turned out Al Snow really had known the Cape like the back of his hand, and as a lifelong fisherman he knew about Fullers Marsh. Once the Coast Guard had zeroed in on the area, they found it pretty fast. It took all of five minutes for the forensics team to locate fingers of engine oil slicking the surface of thequiet estuarial waters, evidence that a motor boat had recently strayed into the overgrown bogs. Residue of white paint was found on a few stalks of reed, and they all expected the lab would