The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(90)

Patty put her head down, and Stevie knew she had hit the bull’s-eye with this one.


“I was in the hospital last night, after you chased us through the woods with a gun. You ran Nate and me off Point 23, which is why my arm’s in this. . . .”

She held up her cast.

“I was kind of out of it last night. I kept trying to sleep, but there was this reflection of a flashing light that kept me up. It was really distracting. It got me thinking again about something you told me, Susan. What did you tell me you saw that night at the football field when all the students gathered?”

“The memorial night?” Susan asked.

Stevie nodded.

“I saw Patty crying at the end of the school driveway, and then I saw the crash up ahead.”

“No,” Stevie said. “That’s not exactly what you saw.”

“Well, no. I saw a flash of light as he crashed. He crashed around the bend.”

“Why would you see a flash of light when Greg crashed?”

“His headlight, I guess? As the bike spun around? I don’t know, actually.”

“How bright was it?”

“Very bright,” Susan said thoughtfully. “Enough that it’s most of what I remember. I suppose that would have been too bright for a headlight. Maybe it was something else.”

Stevie turned to Janelle.

“Can you bring it out now?” she asked.





Janelle nodded and tugged on Nate’s arm. They went into one of the side rooms and emerged a minute later with a large platform covered in cardboard and crafting materials. A box represented the high school. There was a curving road of fabric, glued down to the pasteboard. Some lumps of modeling clay represented the rocks at the turn of the road, and there were trees made of pipe cleaners and some kind of fluffy, moss-like substance. The Liberty High sign had been re-created with cardboard.


“I didn’t have a lot of time to make it look great,” Janelle said. “But the proportions are right. And here . . .”

She handed Stevie a few saltshakers, each filled with a different color of craft sand.

“Okay,” Stevie said, placing a saltshaker full of pink sand at the end of the driveway. “Here’s Patty Horne. And here . . .” She set a shaker full of green sand on the road next to Patty. “. . . this is you. Is this about where you were when you saw the light?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “I was about to turn into the driveway.”

“And what was Patty doing?”

“She was crying,” Susan said.

“But what else was she doing? What did you tell me?”

Susan paused for a moment, cocking her head in thought, puzzled by the question.

“Crying,” she said. “Screaming. Really upset. Waving a flashlight around.”

Stevie pointed at her, indicating this was the thing she had been waiting for.





“Waving a flashlight around,” she said.


“But that’s not the light I’m talking about,” Susan said quickly. “I saw something in the distance.”

“Oh, I know you did,” Stevie said, reminding herself not to smile.

She pulled out her phone. She held it next to the pink saltshaker.

“We need to turn down the lights for a minute,” Stevie said.

Carson hit the dimmer on the lights, and the barn fell into shadow. Stevie switched on her phone flashlight. She had already put a little masking tape around the light to narrow the beam. She angled it very slightly, flashing it around on the dark blue Liberty High sign. The little dot of light bounced around.

“Patty flashes her light here,” Stevie said. “Janelle, now.”

At the far end of the road, Janelle had rested her phone on the little clay rocks and pipe cleaner trees. She switched on her phone flashlight, which was not taped and brighter and broader than Stevie’s light. Stevie turned away immediately, as she had planned, and saw many people turn or shield their eyes.

“This is what you saw,” Stevie said. “Turn the lights back on.”

The lights came back up, and several people were still blinking.

“That’s a pretty good reconstruction,” Susan said. “But why would you have to demonstrate that?”





“Because what you saw was a signal and a response. Patty was shining her light on the sign, which is clearly visible from the far end of the road. That meant that Greg had left the parking lot and was traveling in the only direction he could travel—it’s a one-way road. Down at the other end of the street, her father was waiting with a high-powered flashlight. As Greg approached, he flashed it on. The light was bright enough that you saw it all the way up the road. Greg, being closer, would have been blinded by something that bright. A little drunk or high, unable to see, he loses control at the turn. The crash was a guarantee. Simple. Clean. Effective. Just an accident.”


“You wouldn’t even have to stand there to do it,” Janelle pointed out. “You could put something reflective there and shine the light from an angle so you were well out of the way. It’s so basic.”

“It really is,” Stevie said. “So basic that it looks like nothing at all. It’s something someone who studied spy craft would be really good at coming up with. Lights. Mirrors. Signals. Untraceable stuff. Simple, smart, and effective. I think you learned that from your dad, and when you had to kill Allison, you did it in the kind of way he would have done it. Allison always wanted her sister’s diary. The police didn’t have it. It was never found at the camp. As we learned, it was bad news for you if anyone found it. But if no one had turned it up since 1978, it wasn’t likely that it was ever going to be found. You’d always been safe. But then, a few days ago, I gave Allison a paper we found in the art supply tent, and Allison realized