The Box in the Woods

MURDER IS WRONG, OF COURSE. STEVIE’S FUTURE WAS PREDICATED on that fact. She wanted to solve murders, not commit them. To solve them, you had to understand why they’d occurred. Motive. That was the key. It was all about motive. Understand the reasons behind the act. What pushes another human being to that point of no return? It has to be a strong impulse.

“I’ll have . . . a pound of . . . is that . . . do you have . . . low-sodium ham?”

“Yes,” Stevie said, staring at the woman on the other side of the deli counter.

“Which one is that?”

“It’s the one marked ‘low-sodium ham.’”

“Where?”

Stevie pointed at a round-edged rectangle of ham, the one with the card that read “Low-Sodium Ham.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll have a . . . I guess . . . make it a half pound of that, and a pound of . . . do you have low-fat Swiss cheese?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s that?”

Stevie pointed at the cheese that was similarly marked.

“Oh.” The low-fat Swiss cheese somehow disappointed. The woman bit her upper lip and consulted her phone. “The recipe says low-fat Swiss, but . . . do you have low-fat provolone?”

“No,” Stevie said.

“Oh. Um. Hmmmm.”

What were the murder statutes in Pennsylvania? Surely there had to be something in there about people who came to the deli counter and stood there asking questions about things that were clearly written on signs, making ten other people wait behind them. It was the Friday-evening shift, which meant people wanted their weekend lunch meat and deli stuff and they wanted to go home. And here was this woman, lost in the cabinet of wonders that was the deli counter.

“Do you have . . . ,” the woman began.

Lots of murder weapons at the deli counter. So many knives. The most dangerous thing was the meat slicer, but it would be hard to turn that into a murder weapon. Too heavy, and it had a safety guard. It could probably be done, though. . . .

“I guess . . .” The woman peered into the glass. “I mean, I guess I’ll take the Swiss. The low-fat Swiss. A quarter, no . . . wait. I’m probably going to double it, so . . . well . . . a quarter would probably be fine. Or . . .”

You’d have to get someone into the feeding side of the slicer. Really hold them in there. You could take off their fingers. . . .

“Miss?”

Stevie snapped back. She had been staring at the slicer, shoving imaginary fingers into the opening.

“A quarter pound of the low-fat Swiss,” the woman said again.

This was said with a bit of an edge to it, indicating that it was outrageous how Stevie had made this woman wait entire seconds. There was no recognition of all the time the woman had spent pondering her lunch-meatorial thoughts. She saw the woman give a side-eye to someone else in the line that said, Can you believe the kind of person they hire here? Stevie clenched her jaw and took the heavy brick of cheese from the refrigerated counter.

“Thin!” the woman yelled. “Thin!”

Stevie considered the slicer again. Not the most elegant weapon, but it could get the job done.

Fame is a fleeting thing. One minute, she was the student sleuth, celebrated on the internet for catching a killer at her exclusive boarding school. People wrote articles about her. She saw her face at the top of some news pages, her short blond hair that she cut herself sticking up at weird angles, her face too round for the camera but normal in life, and her vintage red vinyl coat looking good. She’d finished out the school year a celebrity. She’d kept her school open and safe. And, though the world at large didn’t know it, she’d solved one of the greatest cases of the last century.

And then . . . the world moved on to the next shiny thing. Her name still popped up from time to time, but not as much, and then not really at all. Then she was home from school, back in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Her Ellingham friends returned to their homes as well, all over the country. Her old job at the mall was filled, and she was super lucky to get this job at the grocery store, four days a week, from four to eleven.

Stevie didn’t mind the job so much, really. The first part of the evening was the most annoying—the four-to-eight shift behind the deli counter. She liked putting things in order, filling containers, slicing, packing. Where the whole thing fell apart was when she had to deal with people. She learned a lot working with customers. She knew the person who would chat to her nonstop, the person who felt that they were entitled to her entire soul as she got them ham. She saw people stressing and straining, working out budgets in their heads. She learned that people really like American cheese, and that she wasn’t sure what American cheese even was.

The second half of the shift was spent breaking down the salad bar. That was definitely the best part of the night. From that point onward, she usually didn’t have to talk to customers anymore. While she technically wasn’t supposed to wear earbuds while people were in the store, no one cared that much, especially if you were doing a job like this one, where you didn’t have to deal with people. She had a full hour and a half of a true-crime podcast to listen to while she removed the steam trays, filled carts with the leftover vegetables and fruits, and cleaned up the weird gunk that was on the side of the industrial-size salad dressing bottles. She was in the middle of dumping out the bloody remains of a tray of pickled beets when her phone rang.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

“How’s my princess?” David said.

“Still working. You talk.”

“Well, I’m here in . . . I don’t remember the name of the town. We had dinner at Cracker Barrel. And now I’m at the local firehouse helping run a raffle for a group of candidates in this area. If you play your cards right there might be a basket full of lavender bath salts in your future. What do you have for me?”

“Do you like used potato salad?” she asked.

Stevie noticed her manager eyeing her curiously.

“Gotta go,” she whispered. “I think they know I’m on the phone.”

“Talk later. And remember, if these coasters I’m looking at are telling the truth, it’s always wine o’clock somewhere. Think about that for a while.”

At eleven, Stevie Bell, student sleuth and destroyer of salad bars, clocked out and stepped into the muggy night. Her mother’s maroon minivan was there, waiting by the curb. Stevie did not have a car of her own; that was definitely out of the Bell family’s financial reach. Every night, one of her parents came to get her.

“Have a good night?” her mom asked as she got in the car.

“It was okay. I got the cheese you asked for.”

American cheese, of course.

“You talk to David tonight?” her mom asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Uh-huh.”

“How is he?”

“Fine,” Stevie said.

“He’s a good one.”

Historically, Stevie and her parents had not gotten along. She wasn’t what they expected from a daughter. Daughters were supposed to like prom dresses and getting their hair done and shopping. Stevie assumed those things were all fine and good, but she didn’t understand them, really—at least not in the way that you were supposed to understand them. She never once in her life felt the desire to dress up, do her hair and nails, accessorize. She stared blankly at Instagram ads for new makeup palettes that looked, to her eyes, exactly like every other makeup palette. The only clothing item she really adored was her vintage red vinyl raincoat from the seventies. She wore a lot of black, because it suited her and it always seemed to go together. Sometimes she felt like she was missing a chip or a gene or something that made this all matter, but it never bothered her much.

Before Ellingham, Stevie’s lack of daughterly graces was a sticking point, but there had been peace in the household for months now, and not because Stevie had solved a murder. No. It was because she had a boyfriend—and not just any boyfriend. Stevie’s boyfriend was David Eastman, who happened to be the son of Senator Edward King. Stevie’s parents loved Edward King. That Edward King had recently been the subject of a major scandal and had to withdraw his bid for the presidency did not diminish their love for him. Like any true believers, they felt that the more Edward King was accused of wrongdoing, the more right he must be, the more it had to be someone else’s fault.

Her parents didn’t know that David was the one who had gotten his father busted. They certainly didn’t know that Stevie had seen the proof against Edward King with her own eyes.

David had been pulled out of school when his father found out what he had done. He finished the school year remotely, then left home to work with a voter registration campaign that traveled around the country. This was why he didn’t know what town he was in tonight, and why he was standing around at a Cracker Barrel with baskets full of lavender bath salts and coasters.

The details of all this were largely unknown to Stevie’s parents. They only knew that David had completed high school off campus, and that he was doing some kind of internship or work-study somewhere. All that mattered was that Stevie had a boyfriend—the perfect boyfriend, in their eyes—and therefore she had completed her mission.

It was the most infuriating thing that had ever happened, and it made Stevie want to scream all the time, but she also wanted to maintain this weird peace that had been established so that she could get back to Ellingham in the fall, and then to college after that.

But what then? She had gotten in with the stated purpose of solving the Ellingham case. She’d done that. It was impossible, but she’d done it.

What do you do for your next act after that? What would she study? Where would she go from there?

It hit her every night, this weird emptiness, usually as she unclicked her seat belt and got out of the car, still smelling of grocery store deli department, biting her tongue so that she didn’t snap at her mom about the boyfriend thing.

As she climbed into bed, Stevie thumbed through her messages. Right after the Ellingham case broke, she had gotten many of them—media requests, strange influencer offers (“We think you’d be a great fit to promote our paleo meal kits”), creepers, and people who wanted her to help find their lost relatives or dogs. The media requests had been okay, but they had petered out. The bizarre influencer offers had stopped. Stevie had sympathy for people who had missing relatives or dogs, but usually there was nothing that could be done from a distance. So really, it was just the creepers now. They were loyal.

Tonight there was one note about a lost cat, two messages that said “hi” and nothing else, and a random picture of a teddy bear holding a heart. But right in the middle, there was a subject line that stood out: “Camp Wonder Falls.”

There was only one Camp Wonder Falls.

Well, that probably wasn’t true. There might be a lot of places called Camp Wonder Falls. But there was one Camp Wonder Falls that was related to true crime.

She opened the message.

Stevie,

My name is Carson Buchwald, and I am the owner and founder of Box Box (you’ve probably heard of it). I’ve recently purchased a camp in western Massachusetts called Camp Sunny Pines. It used to be called Camp Wonder Falls. Yeah. That Camp Wonder Falls.

I am making a true-crime podcast/documentary about the Box in the Woods murders. I read about what you did at Ellingham Academy. I like to think outside the box (which is ironic, I know, because I run Box Box) . . .

(Stevie frowned at the screen.)

. . . and I thought of you right away. How would you like to come and work here this summer and look into the case with me? You could be a counselor at the camp, but mostly you could do what you need to do to look into the case. I can provide you with travel funds and pay you for your time. You can bring friends, if that sweetens the deal. It’s a camp—there’s plenty of room.

If you’re interested, get back in touch with me. I hope to hear from you.

Carson Buchwald

CEO and founder, Box Box

“It’s what’s inside that counts!”

Well. This was a development.

July 7, 1978

7:30 a.m.

THE MORNING’S PA BLAST RATTLED THROUGH THE TREES, STIRRING the birds.

“Good morning, Camp Wonder Falls! Welcome to another beautiful day!”

Brandy Clark shoved her face into her pillow and pressed it against her ears, trying to block out the announcement, the light, the birds, the sound of ten kids waking and laughing. Too soon. Too much morning.

Just a little more sleep. Please.

Brandy had been up five times during the night with Claire Parsons. Claire was eight and scared of going to the bathroom by herself. The bathroom was outside, about thirty feet away from the cabin, and Claire had to pee more than any child alive. Brandy had tried everything—cutting off Claire’s supply of bug juice after dinner, taking Claire to the bathroom three times before lights out, offering to give Claire something to pee into on the cabin porch so she wouldn’t have to go out to the toilets. If you told Claire to go by herself, she would stand by your cot and poke you with a wet finger until you took her. (Why was it always wet? From what?)

Usually, Brandy split this duty with her fellow counselor, Diane McClure, but Diane had never come back from her midnight rendezvous with her boyfriend.

“We’re going to have a beer and a smoke,” Diane had said the evening before. “I’ll be back by two. Promise.”

Sure.

“This morning we have pancakes in the dining pavilion, and it’s softball day, so everyone let’s get up and at ’em!”

“Shut up shut up shut up shut up . . . ,” Brandy mumbled into the pillow. “Shut up and die. Shut up and die.”

“What?”

Brandy turned and looked up to see Bridget Lorde, another one of her campers, standing right next to her. The campers slept in the main part of the cabin; the counselors had a little privacy in the form of a plywood half-wall. The campers weren’t supposed to cross this boundary unless they needed something. Most of them followed this rule, but not Bridget. Bridget was a natural narc with a nose for trouble, and she would quite literally get in your face to find out what was going on.

“Where’s Diane?” Bridget asked.

“I don’t know,” Brandy said, rubbing her eyes.

“Did she stay out all night?”

As much as Brandy was annoyed at Diane right now, there was still a code around here: you didn’t rat on the other counselors. If you wanted to go to the woods for private time, or skip out on a bunk inspection, or cut a few corners with any of the rules, everyone else would look out for you.

“No,” Brandy replied, pushing herself out of her cot. “She probably went to get an early shower.”

“Why?”

“More hot water. I don’t know.”

“I didn’t hear her get up,” Bridget said.

“So? Do you hear everything?”

“Kind of. One time I heard my sister smoking. In the garage. And I was in my room.”

Brandy believed it. Bridget was terrifying.

“Well, you didn’t hear her. Get your stuff. Come on. Shower time.”

Bridget narrowed her eyes. She could smell Brandy’s coverup, but there was nothing she could do about it because she was eight and being eight sucks. You have no power. Someday, Bridget would have her revenge. The world would know her rage.

Brandy abandoned hope of a blissful five or ten extra minutes and shuffled into the main part of the cabin, not bothering to put on her flip-flops. The campers were all crawling out of bed. She made sure they had their bath caddies and towels and that they were all moving in the direction of the bathrooms.

“Where’s Diane?” Bridget asked again, tagging along beside Brandy as they all got in line.

“I told you. She got up early.”

“And went where? She’s not in the showers. I looked for her stuff.”

“Bridget, can you stop?”

She was going to kill Diane and Todd. Those idiots were going to ruin it for everyone.

Little Claire was the first one into the bathroom. She may have been a midnight pee-er, but she was mercifully quick in the shower. (There was no way she washed. She just turned the water on and off. Brandy knew this but did not actually care. Little kids were filthy. You accepted it and you moved on.) She ran out merrily in her little terry-cloth robe. In daylight, Claire was all butterflies and rainbows. She sang to herself and spun and skipped toward the edge of the woods. She reappeared seconds later and hurried back to Brandy.

“Someone’s asleep on the path,” she said.

This was all Brandy needed—one of her friends passed out in the dirt.

“They’re all sticky,” Claire added.

Great. Super great. Working alone? Check. Cleaning vomit off a passed-out person before even waking up completely? Perfect.

“Where?” Bridget asked, whipping around toward Claire.

Claire pointed toward the path. Bridget tore off in that direction, her whole demeanor screaming “J’accuse!” Brandy trailed behind her. This morning was the worst.

Beyond the cabins and the bathrooms, there was a parting of the woods and a slender dirt path that snaked back toward the archery grounds and the structure that was generously referred to as the “open-air theater.” A few yards up the path, there was a figure, fast asleep, facedown in the dirt.

“That’s not Diane,” Bridget said, her voice dripping with disappointment.

Bridget was right. The figure on the ground wasn’t Diane. It was a guy, a guy with a head of blond curly hair. That and the red jersey T-shirt told Brandy it was Eric Wilde.

“What’s wrong with him?” Bridget asked.

“Go brush your teeth, Bridget,” Brandy said.

“I want to see.”

“Bridget.”

Bridget narrowed her eyes but backed up as directed.

Brandy continued down the dirt path. She could see now why Claire had said he was sticky—there was something darkening the dirt all around him, some explosion of bodily emissions. This was going to be a bad one. That it was Eric was at least less trouble. She would be obligated to cover for Diane, help her shower. That was what bunkmates did. With Eric, though, the obligations were less arduous. Just shake him awake and get him moving. Not her problem after that.

“Eric, you moron,” she called, stumbling down the dirt track in her bare feet. “What the hell?”

Eric didn’t stir.

Now that she was closer, Brandy could tell something was off about his position—he’d fallen facedown, his arms and legs extended like he was in Superman position. Such a weird way to fall. His vomit—or whatever it was—dribbled all down the path to where he had landed and pooled out around him. The underside of his skin was faintly purple, and there was something wrong with his hair. It was darker than it should have been.

“Wake up,” Brandy said, coming up to the unconscious figure and kneeling down. “Eric, come on. . . .”

His stillness was unnatural. He made no sound. There was only the soft birdsong and the sound of the trees and the chatter of the camp as it woke.

“Eric?” she said.

She rolled him over.

Someone was screaming. It took her a moment to realize it was her.