The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(89)

“He was a lot easier to find,” Germaine said. “Otto von Hessen was a high-ranking Nazi intelligence officer working out of Berlin. Lots of stuff out there about him. He was last seen in April of 1945, right before Berlin fell. Then he vanished. Want me to put up the pictures?”

Stevie nodded, and Germaine shared her screen, putting Arnold Horne’s Harvard photo next to an official photo of von Hessen.

The resemblance was unmistakable.

“Arnold Horne went to Harvard and was a spy in World War II,” Stevie said. “He was in Berlin. We know from the conversation that he had a connection to von Hessen. When Berlin was falling and the Nazis needed to make their escape, what better way than to take the identity of an American intelligence officer? They aren’t identical, but the resemblance was good enough if you didn’t look too closely. The





real Arnold Horne went to Germany, but it was Otto von Hessen who came back and started a quiet new life in America and tried to keep himself under the radar. He moved to a small town where nothing ever happened, ran the local bank, and didn’t like getting his picture taken. And for years, it worked out. But then, Barlow Corners built a statue, a local photographer took a good picture, and that picture went into a national magazine. Wendel Rolf saw his old friend’s photo, paid him a visit, and realized something was wrong—that he wasn’t visiting Arnold Horne at all. Wendel Rolf was never seen again. He’s victim number one. This is where the story begins. It’s also probably where the story would have ended if Sabrina Abbott hadn’t been in the cabana with Greg, if she wasn’t so observant and determined. Now . . .”

Stevie nodded to Germaine and closed that window, then turned to Patty.

“. . . you enter the story. It’s graduation, summer 1978. You told me yourself that you were kind of aimless. You had no plan for what you were going to do when the summer was over. Greg, your friends, hanging out—that was your whole world. On the day that Greg and Sabrina were in the cabana and your father met Wendel Rolf, you had no idea what was going on. None of those three people wanted you to know what had happened at your house that afternoon. That night, Wendel Rolf comes back, and your father kills him. The next day, Sabrina returns to the house and sees things have been moved around. She was already curious about what she’d heard. You still have no clue, and neither does your dad. But





then, Sabrina’s conscience gets to her and she tells you she was in the cabana with Greg. You leave camp and tell your dad, and your dad knows that it’s all coming apart. Your friends—the ones he despises—are going to destroy your lives. I’m guessing a lot of things went down in your house that night. I think your dad told you the truth, or some version of it, because you knew your friends had to die, and you had to help your dad kill them. Something had to be done, fast, and he couldn’t exactly sneak into the camp and take care of it. It had to happen somewhere else, where there were no people around. And you knew exactly the spot—the weekly drug delivery out in the woods. Sabrina would be there. Eric, Todd, and Diane—they were unlucky. And who knows what they’d been told? They all had to die.”

Stevie put the slide with the photos of the four victims back up on the screen, so that Patty would have to look at them.

“You had to be protected. So the next day you returned to camp, and suddenly everything was fine with Greg—so fine that you were busted getting busy with him and put on house arrest. This ensured you had an ironclad alibi. Some details of the Woodsman murders had been in the paper. This was perfect. There was no internet then—if Arnold wanted to get the details, he would have needed to get a copy of the newspaper articles. So it’s not that surprising that Sabrina ran into him on July 5, when she was on her way out of the library and he was going in. That encounter sealed her fate.”

Stevie waved a stray bug that had gotten inside the





Bounce House away from her face. She had been talking for a long time and her body was starting to ache. She wanted to flop down in a beanbag and rest for a while, but the story was not finished. It was time to open the box in the woods, time to ruin the surprise.

“On the night of the Box in the Woods murders,” she continued, “your father went into the woods. He went to the spot you told him to go to. He’d been a Nazi intelligence officer. He’d faked his identity for thirty-three years. Cornering four stoned teenagers in the woods was probably not a big deal. The evidence suggests what happened there. Todd and Diane were probably off by themselves in a sleeping bag. They had no defensive wounds, so they likely never saw him coming. They were killed where they were and taken away in the sleeping bag. Sabrina and Eric were each attacked in a different way. Sabrina fought—there were wounds on her hands. Eric had been struck on the head but managed to run away. That must have been a scare, because if Eric got away, the whole thing would be over. But your father caught him and killed him at the border of the camp. The scene was made to look like one of the Woodsman’s crimes, and the job was done. Except . . .”

Stevie brought up a photo of Greg.

“. . . Sabrina wasn’t the only one in that cabana. Greg was there too. This wasn’t a problem that could be partially solved. They all had to go. What did you say when your father told you your boyfriend had to die? Were you sad, or were you glad to get him back for cheating?”