Without waiting for a reply, she took the mugs and went to the counter to refill them.
“The night of the murders was very normal,” she went on as she put the mugs into her coffee machine. “It was a few days after the Fourth of July. Dinner was served between five and six, and then from six to eight the kids were allowed to play outside, with the counselors supervising them. At eight, everyone returned to their bunks for the night. One counselor always had to be present, but the other could have some free time. I’d walk around the camp at night, generally checking on things. Our biggest concern was the lake, that a camper or a counselor might try to swim at night and drown. That’s why we had the lifeguards stay in the lake house, and one of them was always up and around at night. So that night I stopped by the lake house and Paul and Shawn were in there. They were playing guitar, trying to learn that song that was all the rage—‘Stairway to Heaven.’ God, they played that song endlessly. I continued around the camp doing a few spot checks on bunks, then I returned to my cabin to go over notes for the day and set up for the next. I would often be awoken during the night for some reason or other, a sick camper or kids getting upset about a snake or something, but nobody came that night. It was quiet.”
She put fresh cups of coffee in front of Stevie and David, who now had the orange cat on his lap, sniffing his face.
“And the next day?” Stevie said.
“I’d just made the wake-up announcement,” Susan said, her gaze drifting as she remembered. “I was going over the schedule, and I heard a scream. It was one of those noises—you don’t hear them often in life, thankfully—where you know something terrible has happened. I went to find the source of it. As I walked, I called Magda on the walkie. She’d heard it too and was also heading in that direction. We both got to the path that led to the theater and the archery range. It was Brandy Clark who’d screamed. I’ll never forget her face; she’d gone completely gray. She pointed, and we went up the path and saw Eric. How detailed do you want me to get?”
She fixed Stevie with a firm look. David raised his eyebrows a bit.
“As detailed as you want,” Stevie said. “It’s okay.”
“Well, this isn’t about being salacious. I give details because people should know this was brutal. Those kids died terribly. Eric had big, curly blond hair. I could see that hair of his as we walked toward him. I remember—because we didn’t know what it was precisely that we were looking at—but Magda and I slowed a bit, then we ran. He was facedown. Cold to the touch. He had a wound on the back of his head—dark, bloody, coagulated. Then we saw the stab wounds.”
She took a moment as the cat climbed into her lap and immediately coiled up and began purring loudly.
“So that was around seven forty-five in the morning. We had a serious situation on our hands. At that point, of course, we had no idea the extent of it. We knew Eric had been killed, and we had to get all the kids and counselors in order and make sure everyone was safe, and then get them away from the area. Patty Horne came running up and asked about the others—that’s when we found out there were more missing kids. When I heard the names—Todd and Diane, that made sense to me. But the third was Sabrina Abbott, and that didn’t. I suppose Patty would have been with them, but she was in trouble and had to stay in the infirmary. We’d caught her and her boyfriend up to some—romantic business. Kids could have seen them. Magda had terrible insomnia. It came in very handy. Whenever we had a staff member who broke the rules, we would have them sleep on one of the infirmary cots and Magda would keep an eye on them. Because there were two of them, I made Greg spend the nights at home. That punishment also worked well because it put a burden on the other counselors. People were less likely to break the rules if it made things hard for all their friends as well. There was social pressure not to do that. Anyway, once we found out there were three more missing, the police went out in the woods to search. You know the rest about what they found.”
She inhaled through her nose, as if it was all happening again in front of her.
“Obviously, camp didn’t continue that year. We had to make a few hundred calls, get everyone home. I don’t think I slept much that week. As I said, I didn’t have a great deal of faith in our local sheriff. As soon as they saw there was pot there, he assumed that it was a drug-related case. Then the FBI came in some time that week, I think, when the talk of the Woodsman started. I mean, it was complete chaos. Everyone was terrified that the woods were full of murderous drug dealers or serial killers.”
Susan wrinkled her nose in a way that indicated she had not shared those feelings.
“It didn’t end there,” she went on. “Patty’s boyfriend, Greg, the one I said she’d been caught with? You know he died that week as well. All the kids had gathered on the playing field behind the school the night the town had a gathering. I was driving over in that direction. I remember Patty was standing at the end of the school driveway, crying and waving a flashlight around, really upset and beside herself. I was about to pull in and stop to check on her, and there was a kind of lightning flash up ahead as Greg crashed. I didn’t know what it was at the time. That’s how that week was, horror upon horror.”
“What do you think happened?” Stevie said.
“You don’t know what to think when four teenagers are stabbed to death in the woods. It makes no sense, so you assume it must be someone sick, some stranger, something like that. My gut always told me it had nothing to do with drugs or serial killers, but the truth is, I have absolutely no idea what happened in the woods that night. It was so barbaric, so confusing.”
“So,” Stevie said, “if not drugs or a serial killer . . .”
“I don’t know,” Susan said again, and her tone was final. She was done. Stevie glanced over at David, who drained his coffee in one gulp.
“One last thing,” Stevie said. “Sabrina’s diary . . .”
“Oh yes. Allison has been . . . Allison wanted that diary for years. She asked me about it many times. I packed up Sabrina’s things for the family, but it wasn’t there.”
“Could someone have taken it?”
“Of course,” Susan said, as if this was a stupid question, which it kind of was. Anyone can take anything.
“I mean,” Stevie said, “it sounds like Sabrina hid it to keep campers from reading it.”
“I had hundreds of hysterical kids and parents to take care of,” Susan said. “It took a few days—some people had gone on vacation, things like that. I got every single one of those kids packed up and home. Then I spent two full days packing up everything those four brought to camp. I made sure their parents got every last thing, neat and packed with care. Well, almost every last thing. Anything like cigarettes, drug related—I put those things in separate boxes.”
“Didn’t the police go through their things first?”
“No,” Susan said, smirking. “Never bothered to go through their stuff in their cabins. I asked them several times if they wanted to search the bunks, but they had no interest.”
“Do you still have the boxes?” Stevie asked.
“No. Eventually, maybe fifteen years later, the police asked for them. The whole investigation was a mess. But to answer your question, no. I cleaned out every inch of Sabrina’s cabin. The diary was not there. I told Allison that, and I’m telling you that.”