“I was, like every other teenager in town. Everyone knew that group was going out that night. It was an open secret when Eric was going to get the weed. Back then, it was both illegal and everywhere. I bought off him. Everyone did. Every week he would come around and ask you what you wanted, and you’d give him a few bucks, and he went somewhere and picked up the stash.”
“Who would have known where that was?” Stevie asked.
“Everyone knew it was in the woods somewhere—the whole thing was kind of an open secret. The only part Eric really kept quiet was the exact spot it was hidden, to make sure it wasn’t stolen. I mean, he took Sabrina out there, and she wasn’t really in that group of people for very long. It was in all other respects a totally normal night. There were three lifeguards—Todd, Greg Dempsey, and Shawn Greenvale. Todd was out in the woods, Greg was on house arrest in one of the camp admin offices, so I went over to the lake house to hang out with Shawn. I would never have gone in with Todd there, or Greg, really. Shawn was learning guitar, and he was trying to learn how to play Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ just like every other kid in the seventies. Susan checked on us. Then I went back to my bunk. I think I read a book or something for a while, then I went to sleep. I remember waking up to someone screaming the next morning. That’s really all I know. Obviously, people looked at my family because of what happened to Michael, but we got lucky in one respect—our neighbors were over at our house all the time after Michael died, bringing us food, generally taking care of us and keeping us company. On the night of the murders, our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, were over for dinner and stayed to watch television. My mom took medication every night to help her sleep, and she went to bed around nine thirty. Mrs. Atkins went home, but Mr. Atkins stayed until two in the morning having beers with my dad on the porch and playing cards. At least that left my parents out of it. And I was with Shawn up until the time I went to bed. The other counselor saw me come in. So we were spared that mostly. People still looked at us funny sometimes, but everyone knew we had nothing to do with it.”
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
“It was so chaotic,” he said. “The police were in way over their heads. Everything was botched from the jump. First they said it was something to do with drugs, but no one was going to murder four people over a bag of grass at a summer camp—and then, on top of it all, leave the grass there. So then they started talking about the serial killer. That was the big angle, and I guess most people thought that must have been what happened, but that’s fallen apart with time as well. So what do I think?”
He looked up and around at his town for a moment.
“There was too much wrong in our town,” he said. “I knew it. I’d experienced it. I don’t believe in curses. I’m not superstitious or anything like that. I just mean that ours was the kind of town where bad things could happen and everything could remain under the surface. Something about it always felt . . . personal. Local. Something about finding that spot in the woods, being there at the right time, something about the timing of it all.”
He crumpled his empty coffee cup.
“Hope that helps,” he said. “Honestly, I think too much time has passed. I don’t think we’ll ever know. Good luck anyway. I hope you get to enjoy camp at least.”
He smiled and left Stevie alone with her thoughts, sitting in the shadow of John Barlow and his horse.
17
AS STEVIE LEFT TOWN AND HEADED BACK TO THE CAMP, SHE HAD A thought. She swerved and looped down one of the side streets.
It maybe was tempting fate to visit the spot where someone had been struck down on a bicycle on a bicycle—especially when you were uncertain about your skills on said bicycle. But Stevie had never been one to take the prudent course. She looked up directions to the site on her phone. It was a nondescript corner—a four-way stop lined with low suburban houses. There were no sidewalks here, just lawn all the way up to the street. It was placid and tree-lined, and there was nothing to mark the spot where Michael Penhale had fallen on that December night. But it was easy to see how such an accident could have happened. At night, it would be dark here. There were no streetlights now that she could see, which meant there were probably none then either. A car barreling along, not stopping, or clipping the edge . . .
She leaned on the handlebars, looking carefully at the traffic around her.
As she rode back, she came up on the sharp curve that turned down the road toward the local high school. This was where Patty said Greg Dempsey had crashed his motorcycle in the week after the accident. It was easy to see how he had done it. The turn was sharp, heavily bordered by a wall of trees and rock. If you didn’t make it, you’d go right into it, as he had done. It was a death turn. It certainly seemed like others had made the same mistake, because there were remnants of old memorials—a decrepit cross, half-buried by tall grass, and a teddy bear coming apart from age and exposure.
Stevie looked down the length of the road and saw the comically large Liberty High sign. There was something eerie about being out here alone, even though it was just a roadside on a bright summer’s day. A lot of bad things happened in this town in a short time between December 1977 and July 1978. Seven months or so of tragedy. It was grim.
She stuck very close to the grass edge of the road as she cycled back toward the town center, more than once getting off the bike and wheeling it by her side out of nervousness of someone coming along the road and striking her from behind. By the time she got back, Camp Sunny Pines had changed. The children had arrived. They came in cars and buses, in ones and twos. They came with their shiny backpacks and their scooter helmets. They came, screaming their high-pitched screams over the peace of the lake.
Obviously, this was no surprise, but still, the landscape was so totally altered by their presence that Stevie was confused. She had started to know this place, its long stretches of field that always smelled of fresh-cut grass, the little brown buildings, the outdoor pipes, the signs. It had been hers first, then shared with a few people her age, but now? The children were everywhere.
It suddenly occurred to her what she had actually signed up for.
She wandered past as parents slowly detached crying children from their legs, or watched as happy children ran off, unaware that their parents were still there.
Janelle and Nate were two of the last counselors left in the dining area. Breakfast was largely closed up and over, but Stevie managed to convince the woman behind the counter to peel back the plastic wrap and let her have some cold pancakes. She didn’t even need silverware or a plate. She put them in a napkin and ate them by hand, dry. She snagged a cup of the substance that passed as orange juice and sat down with her friends. As soon as she did so, she felt a presence at her back. Nicole sat down on the bench next to her.
“You in town this morning?”
Stevie sipped some acidic orange juice–like drink and hmmed.
“I know you have special permission from Carson, but the kids are here now.”
“I know,” Stevie said. Because she did know. She could see the children, who were being rounded up by some of the counselors and led off to their bunks in the distance.
“So that means you have a job to do.”