The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(63)

She let that statement hang for a moment.

“You didn’t like all of them,” Stevie said, trying to read Susan’s expression.

“No. I didn’t like all of them. I never like to say kids are rotten, but . . . Todd Cooper, he was a rotten kid. Charming. Polite to your face, always. But he was the son of the mayor, who was himself—pardon my French—a real son of a bitch.”

“Do you think Todd had anything to do with Michael Penhale’s death?” Stevie asked.

“Oh, I absolutely think so,” she said, her voice getting louder and her expression more animated. “I don’t think anyone doubts that. He was guilty as sin, and everyone knew it. That was the shame of our town. It was a disgrace, and that no-good sheriff we had did nothing, just like he did nothing when the murders happened. Then there was Diane





McClure. You know, I liked Diane. She was a good kid, deep down. Her parents owned the Dairy Duchess, the ice cream place across the way. But she was a hard nut. Tough. Good athlete. I tried more than once to get her to join the track team, but she never would. I think Diane liked a good time and bad boys. Todd was a bad boy. I was unhappy to see those two together, but it wasn’t a surprise.”

“What about Sabrina?” Stevie said. “No one seems to understand why she was there.”

“Sabrina was everything people say she was. She was bright as hell. Hardworking. Nice kid. Really nice kid. She would have left town, done something special with her life. Her parents put a lot of pressure on her to be perfect, and that concerned me sometimes. She was hard on herself. I think she was probably trying to cut loose a little that summer, after graduation. She was starting to hang around with Eric Wilde. . . .” She trailed off. “Eric Wilde,” she said, smiling. “I knew him since he was a little boy. His father taught at the school, and his mom was the librarian in town. He was smart, funny. He was also mischievous, but not in a malicious way. It didn’t exactly surprise me to find out he was the one supplying the pot to the camp. There’s less of a stigma about that now—it’s legal here—but at the time, it was a bigger deal. When we found him on that path, it was . . .”

She sighed deeply and reached down to pet the orange cat who had come over and stretched up on his hind legs for a head scratch.

“Talking about it gets easier with time, but the feeling





never goes away completely. Which is good, I suppose. It means it matters. It should matter. I was in charge. I ran that camp. I was responsible for them. No one ever blamed me, which I think was really generous. I don’t know where I stand on blaming myself. I ran a tight ship, for the time. You have to understand, never in a million years did we think anything like this could happen. Maybe it was a more innocent time. I’m not sure. There’s more monitoring now. Kids don’t play unsupervised. Everyone has a phone. Back then, even little kids went out to play on their own, sometimes all day. Kids rode their bikes all around town. I was considered a hardass for doing spot bed checks and having a lot of rules. So people in town were very good to me after it happened. No one thought I’d failed when those kids went out to the woods. Because that’s what kids did back then. We expected them to, to a degree. More coffee?”

Without waiting for a reply, she took the mugs and went to the counter to refill them.

“The night of the murders was very normal,” she went on as she put the mugs into her coffee machine. “It was a few days after the Fourth of July. Dinner was served between five and six, and then from six to eight the kids were allowed to play outside, with the counselors supervising them. At eight, everyone returned to their bunks for the night. One counselor always had to be present, but the other could have some free time. I’d walk around the camp at night, generally checking on things. Our biggest concern was the lake, that a camper or a counselor might try to swim at night and drown. That’s why





we had the lifeguards stay in the lake house, and one of them was always up and around at night. So that night I stopped by the lake house and Paul and Shawn were in there. They were playing guitar, trying to learn that song that was all the rage—‘Stairway to Heaven.’ God, they played that song endlessly. I continued around the camp doing a few spot checks on bunks, then I returned to my cabin to go over notes for the day and set up for the next. I would often be awoken during the night for some reason or other, a sick camper or kids getting upset about a snake or something, but nobody came that night. It was quiet.”

She put fresh cups of coffee in front of Stevie and David, who now had the orange cat on his lap, sniffing his face.

“And the next day?” Stevie said.

“I’d just made the wake-up announcement,” Susan said, her gaze drifting as she remembered. “I was going over the schedule, and I heard a scream. It was one of those noises—you don’t hear them often in life, thankfully—where you know something terrible has happened. I went to find the source of it. As I walked, I called Magda on the walkie. She’d heard it too and was also heading in that direction. We both got to the path that led to the theater and the archery range. It was Brandy Clark who’d screamed. I’ll never forget her face; she’d gone completely gray. She pointed, and we went up the path and saw Eric. How detailed do you want me to get?”

She fixed Stevie with a firm look. David raised his eyebrows a bit.