The Box in the Woods

THE NEXT MORNING, STEVIE PLANTED HERSELF AT THE KITCHEN TABLE with a bowl of cereal and an Ellingham library book that she had been permitted to take home for the summer. This was one of the many perks of Ellingham, and of being on good terms with Kyoko, the school librarian, who had specially ordered it for her.

“What’s that you’re reading?” her mother said as she passed behind Stevie. She paused, leaning in to look, as Stevie knew she would. “Is that a dollhouse?”

“Sort of,” Stevie said, flipping the page.

Her mother made a noise that sounded like a hamster being gently but persistently pressed until flattened.

The scene depicted was a kitchen lovingly crafted in miniature. The walls were papered in a cheerful pattern of deer and flowers. There was ironing on the small board, a pot in the sink, two potatoes on the draining board, each no bigger than a child’s pinkie nail. From the curtains to the line outside the window pegged with bras and stockings to the pile of folded linens, everything about this scene was made with care. This included the unmistakably dead figure on the floor by the oven, a doll-size ice tray under her hand.

“It’s called The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” Stevie said. “They’re dioramas made in the thirties and forties to teach investigators how to look at crime scenes. This one is called Kitchen. Look at the incredible level of detail. See these tiny cans on the shelves? Those labels are accurate reproductions. See the carefully printed tiny newspapers stuffed in the cracks of the doors? And all these doors have tiny, functioning keys. Everything in this scene has been made and put in here to be examined. It all means something. Did the woman stuff the paper in the door herself to gas herself? You can tell it’s gas for sure. The jets are open on the stove, and her skin has been painted so you can see the blush you get from carbon monoxide poisoning. But did she do it herself or did someone knock her out, then stuff the paper in the doors and leave her in there? See, she’s in the middle of taking things out of the oven. . . .”

Her mother stared at Stevie grimly.

“The woman who made these was named Frances Glessner Lee,” Stevie went on. “It used to be that when someone died, there was no set method for examining the body and the scene. All kinds of people would be sent who had no formal training, and they’d move things, or they’d guess at what happened, or they’d contaminate the scene. Sometimes people would be accused of murder when it was an accident and the other way around. So this woman . . .”

Stevie flipped to the photo of the grandmotherly woman with the old-fashioned glasses and bun who was peering lovingly into a skull.

“. . . was the heiress to a tractor fortune, and she was friends with the chief medical examiner in Boston. He told her about all the trouble he was having with how bodies and scenes were being treated, and all of the things you could learn about a death from the scene and the body. She basically established forensics in the United States. Then she made these miniatures, each depicting an unexplained death. Each one is a contained mystery. They still use them to train detectives.”

Her mother walked over to the counter, shaking her head. Stevie observed her surreptitiously.

“I wish you’d get another hobby, but . . .”

The sentence was left unfinished.

Stevie flipped back to the kitchen scene and let a few moments tick by while she waited for her mother to speak again.

“What are you up to this afternoon?”

“I was going to read,” Stevie said.

“It’s a gorgeous day. You could get some sun.”

Stevie hmmmmed and leaned in close to the picture of the death kitchen.

“I got a note,” she said casually, “from a guy who owns a summer camp. He read about me, what I did at Ellingham. He asked if I wanted a job working there as a counselor. I guess he thought I’d be an interesting addition, you know, something extra for campers.”

“A summer camp?” Stevie’s mom said. “You?”

“I know,” Stevie said. “Right?”

Stevie had never precisely been the outdoor type. They had camped once as a family, when Stevie was twelve and the neighbors down the street invited them to come on a week’s trip to a state park. Stevie spent most of the week huddled under their RV awning trying to read, while her parents and the other family drank iced teas and beers and talked about television shows and what was “wrong with America.” No one could swim in the lake because apparently there was some kind of brain-eating bacteria in it. Periodically someone would encourage her to walk through the woods or try out the mountain bike. Stevie viewed these offers with grave suspicion and declined. Stevie couldn’t listen to anything or talk to anyone because her parents had taken her phone in order for her to experience some “offline time,” which she had been anyway because they were in the middle of nowhere with no real signal and no Wi-Fi.

Camping sucked.

Stevie flipped to another part of the book slowly, to an even more graphic image.

“This is the most elaborate of the Nutshell Studies,” she said. “It’s called Three-Room Dwelling. Three rooms, three bodies. What’s key in this one is the blood splatter . . .”

“Where is this camp?”

“Somewhere in Massachusetts,” Stevie said. “Looks pretty, I guess. He even said I could bring my friends. Look at the blood on this blanket here . . .”

“What’s it called?”

“What?” Stevie said.

“The camp. What’s it called?”

“Oh. Um. Sunny something. Sunny . . . Oaks. Some kind of tree. Wait. I looked it up on my phone last night.”

This was a careful calculation. Her parents had probably never heard of the Camp Wonder Falls murders, and the Sunny Pines website certainly didn’t advertise the connection, but she couldn’t risk them Googling it. She had it primed and ready to go.

Her mother looked at Stevie’s phone while Stevie continued her contemplation of the blood splatter on the tiny kitchen floor.

“It looks nice,” her mother said.

It did. Stevie had examined the site in detail. It was image after image of trees, kids leaping off a platform into a lake, kids playing instruments and making crafts, bonfires, cookouts, and toasting marshmallows.

“And they said you could bring friends?” her mom asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Stevie flipped to another part of the book, to an attic scene that featured a hanging.

“And this is a real offer?” her mom said, eyeing the pictures. “From the real owner?”

“Yup.”

“Let me see it.”

Stevie blinked, as if this request was a surprise.

“Oh,” she said. “Sure. I guess.”

Stevie reached for her phone and pulled up a message, then passed it back to her mom.

Stevie,

My name is Carson Buchwald, and I am the owner and founder of Box Box (you’ve probably heard of it). I also own a summer camp in western Massachusetts called Camp Sunny Pines.

I read an article about what you did at Ellingham Academy, and I thought it was incredible. How would you like to come and work here this summer? You could be a counselor. I think it would be great to have someone like you on our staff! Our camp is in some beautiful woods. We have a swimming lake, falls, and a great little town nearby with some of the best ice cream in the country. It’s a fantastic place with great kids!

You are welcome to bring friends, if that sweetens the deal.

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!”

“This sounds great,” her mom said. “Wouldn’t you rather do this than work in a supermarket and read books about murder dollhouses?”

“That seems like a lot of outside,” Stevie said.

“Outside is good. You could use some sun.”

“Skin cancer,” Stevie said. “Besides, I want to get a lot of reading done this summer, and there’s a free online course in forensic pathology starting in a week. . . .”

“Stevie,” her mom said. “Don’t you want to be social? Wouldn’t you like to be with your friends?”

Stevie made a show of considering this point.

“I guess,” she said after a long moment. “I’ll think about it.”

This little piece of magic had been achieved with relative ease.

She had recently been reading about Charles Manson, who used many popular persuasion techniques in order to form his murderous cult. One tip he had picked up from a popular self-help book was “Make the other guy think the idea is his.” Stevie wanted nothing to do with Charles Manson’s personal philosophy, but this passed-along tidbit was very useful and, it appeared, effective. (The only thing worse than saying “I want to go work at a murder camp” was probably “I have been studying the persuasive techniques of Charles Manson.” So this was one she was keeping to herself.)

The new email from Carson was real. She had written back to him immediately the night before.

Carson,

I am very interested. But I can promise you this—my parents are never going to let me go if they think this is about investigating a murder. Could you write another note about how this is all about camping and doing healthy outdoor stuff?

Stevie

She had no idea if he’d go for it, but it turned out he did. The squeaky-clean new email had arrived with astonishing speed. All Stevie had to do then was prop herself up with her murder dollhouse book in the morning and wait. By midafternoon, the matter was settled. Stevie Bell was going to be a camp counselor at the most notorious camp in America.

More important, she was back on a case.

July 7, 1978

7:30 a.m.

SUSAN MARKS WAS PROUD OF HER CLIPBOARD WALL.

There were twenty-six clipboards in all, hung from little screw-in hooks that she had put in herself five years ago, when she started running the camp. From this command center she made order out of chaos, organized hundreds of children and dozens of teenagers. There was a section for everything. Clipboards for every bunk, listing campers, counselors, contact numbers, known allergies. Another line of clipboards listed the activities for every week of the camp, which led to a different section of clipboards that broke down activities for every day.

For most of the year, Susan Marks ran the physical education and health department at Liberty High. During the summer, she ran the camp, and the job suited her very well. She woke early, when the camp was still asleep, and took a quick seven-mile run. She began on the camp side, running around the lake, then crossing over the dirt road that separated Camp Wonder Falls from the public campground on the other side. She continued her way around the lake there, where the paths were more rugged and rocky and the incline steeper. She went quietly past the tents full of sleeping tourists and waved to the fishermen setting out in their little boats. Up, up, up, working hard now as she ascended the hill at the far end of the lake. Here, the path left the lake edge and wound through the trees. Once she made it to the top, at the far end, she would pause at Arrowhead Point to catch her breath. The spot was so named because it resembled an arrowhead of dark stone, jutting seventy feet above the lake.

It was the best view you could ever hope to see. Below, Lake Wonder Falls stretched out, reflecting back the early sun. There was nothing like seeing dawn break from up here. After this moment of reflection, it was an easy trip downhill and back over to her cabin at Camp Wonder Falls for a quick (cold) shower. At seven thirty exactly, she picked up the clipboard with that day’s activities and switched on the loudspeaker.

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

She meant it, too. The runner’s high stayed with her for a while.

“This morning we have”—a quick glance at the clipboard that read “menus”—“pancakes in the dining pavilion, and it’s softball day, so everyone let’s get up and at ’em!”

She switched off the loudspeaker and ticked “announcement” off the daily to-do checklist. Even if you knew your routine like the back of your hand, a checklist was still important.

She ran down the rest of the day. The local stable was coming by and bringing five horses for riding lessons. There was a water safety test. Cabin 12 had developed a leak in the roof. Someone was taking a canoe out at night and she needed to find out who it was, and some other joker had put a snake in the girls’ changing rooms at the junior pool. She would start by calling the stable and . . .

Then there was a scream. A single, unbroken scream.

Screaming was common at the camp. Campers screamed when they swam and played and sometimes simply for the sake of screaming. But this scream had a high, clear ring to it, and it did not break for almost ten seconds. It lingered over the water before it sounded again, this time louder, more insistent. She had never heard its equal, not when Penny Mattis almost drowned in the lake, or when that counselor a few years back fell out of a tree.

Susan did not hesitate. She grabbed her walkie-talkie from its charging base as she went to the small porch of her cabin to survey the camp. It was impossible to know exactly where the scream had come from, but it was certainly on the other side of the lake, from the direction of the cabins.

Her walkie crackled to life.

“Susan, did you hear that?”

It was Magda McMurphy, the camp nurse.

“Yes. Not sure where it came from.” Susan was moving quickly toward the footbridge. “I think it was over toward the edge of the woods, over by archery.”

The scream came once more, and it stirred the whole camp.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Magda said. “I’ll meet you over there with my bag.”

It didn’t take Susan long to locate the source of the scream—the camp had all turned in its direction, many moving toward it. She made her way through, encouraging people to go back to what they were doing as she went. When she reached the edge of the woods, she found one of the younger campers, Claire Parsons, standing outside of her cabin in her little terry-cloth robe. She looked up at Susan and pointed toward the path into the woods.

“She went that way,” Claire said.

“Who did?”

“Brandy.”

“Go inside and get dressed, Claire,” Susan said as she hurried off.

“He’s asleep.”

Susan had no time to try to work out what that meant. She moved faster. Behind her, there was the sound of a bicycle. Magda skidded up, hopping off the bike and then dropping it on the grass. Before them, the path bent gently to the left, going deeper into the woods, toward the camp’s theater and archery range. They came upon a strangely calm scene. Brandy Clark, one of Susan’s most reliable counselors, was kneeling on the ground, looking straight ahead. In front of her, maybe twenty feet or so, there was a figure on the path. Susan recognized the curly head of hair at once. Eric Wilde.

“He’s there . . . ,” Brandy said, sounding sleepy and distant. “I put him back.”

Again, this made no sense. No time for questions. Susan and Magda continued on.

Eric was facedown in the dirt, like he was taking a nap. His shirt was mottled, ragged. There was something wrong with his hair—Eric was blond, but this hair was much too dark in places.

But the most telling thing? The flies. All the flies, buzzing around, landing in groups.

Magda made an odd noise, like a hissing tire, and broke into a run. She dropped down on the ground next to Eric and pressed her fingers to his wrist.

“He’s cold,” Magda said.

“I’ll call an ambulance . . .”

“No point. He’s gone.” Magda looked at her watch. “I’m putting it at 7:46. What do you have?”

Susan blinked once, then consulted her own watch. “I have 7:44.”

“I think we can call it 7:45.”

Magda turned Eric over just enough to look at the underside of his body. Shock spread across her face.

“Susan, you need to come here.”

Susan walked the few steps to what she already thought of as “the body.” The sight she saw then would never leave her.

“There are stab wounds,” Magda said in a low voice. “And his head . . . Jesus, Susan.”

Susan raised the walkie to her mouth, which had gone dry.

“Lake house,” she said. “Pick up.”

“Lake house,” said a sleepy voice.

Shawn Greenvale. He was always reliable, and the lake house was one of the only other buildings with its own phone.

“I need you to call the police. Tell them to come right into the camp, to the path that leads to the theater. Say there’s been a serious accident. No ambulance.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just do it, Shawn.”

Behind them, campers were starting to congregate. They were getting louder, talking, crying, pointing. They didn’t know exactly what was going on, but it was clear to them, as it had been clear to Susan, that something terrible had happened.

“Everyone,” she said, “stay calm and back up.”

Everyone did not keep calm. She needed to establish order, now. She did what came most naturally to her—she blew the whistle that hung around her neck. This startled everyone enough to shock them into silence.

“Get to the dining pavilion,” she said. “Now.”

She marched over to Brandy and helped her to her feet.

“Come on,” she said. “Come on. Time to go.”

Brandy let herself be led, but she was almost deadweight, stumbling through her shock. Patty Horne, who had been staying in the nurse’s cabin the last few nights as part of a house arrest, came running, breaking through the wall of campers who were reluctantly leaving the scene.

“Is that Eric?” she said.

“Patty, go get your campers and go to the dining pavilion.”

“What about the others?” Patty asked. “Are they okay?”

Susan froze.

“Others?” she repeated.