“I . . . I can’t . . .”
“You can,” he said. “I don’t care what was going on, just tell me.”
“He . . . gets the grass. In the woods. They went out for the grass.”
“Shit,” Don said again, but he managed to keep it under his breath.
“Stop here,” Susan said. Don remained in the car to coordinate over the radio and watch Patty. Susan and the sheriff hurried down the path. The morning was eerily silent, the campers all gathered in the dining area. It was a stunning morning, soft and sweet, birdsong in the air. It made the sight of Eric’s discolored and lifeless body all the more grotesque. Magda McMurphy, the camp nurse, was with him, though it was immediately clear that there was nothing she could do aside from shoo away the flies.
“He’s been dead for some time,” Magda said. “A few hours at least.”
The sheriff squatted down next to the body.
“Let’s turn him over,” he said to Magda.
They rolled the body carefully, and the full extent of the carnage was now clear.
“What in holy hell happened here?” the sheriff said in a low voice.
“I can count six stab wounds,” Magda said. “There may be more. It’s hard to tell. He’s also got a massive head wound.”
Sheriff Reynolds took a long, steadying breath and sprung back to stand.
“Come on,” he said to Susan, then broke into a run back to the car. Susan paced him easily. He threw open the back door to the cruiser, where Patty Horne sat with her knees tucked up to her chest, her long hair pulled over the sides of her face like she was trying to cocoon herself away from the horror.
“Patty,” he said without any preamble. “Where do they go to get the grass?”
“In the woods. Up the road.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Once.” She nodded heavily. “I don’t know where, it’s just . . . in the woods somewhere.”
“Do you walk or drive?”
“Todd drives. We take his Jeep.”
“About how far up the road? How long do you drive?”
“I don’t know,” she said, still weeping but maintaining control. “Five minutes?”
“Stay here with Susan.”
Patty slid out of the car, looking terrified.
“Keep all the kids together,” he said to Susan. “I don’t even want them going to the bathroom by themselves, got it?”
Susan nodded, and he knew she was more than up to the task. He got back behind the wheel, where Don regarded him in bafflement.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a dead kid with half a dozen stab wounds to his chest.”
“Shit,” he said. “Do we call the mayor if Todd’s involved?”
“No,” the sheriff said, stepping on the gas. “We’re not getting him involved again. Keep him the hell out of this as long as we can. We call the state police and head out now, see if we can find the others. Get them on the horn.”
They took the bumpy road through the woods at a good pace. It didn’t take long to find Todd’s Jeep. Patty’s estimate had been correct—it was about five minutes up the road, parked off to the side on a slight diagonal. The sheriff pulled the cruiser up behind it. He retrieved his gun and holster from the locked glove compartment. Guns weren’t usually required in Barlow Corners; he’d only pulled it once in his career there, during a suspected robbery that turned out to be a raccoon in the wall.
“Get the rifle from the trunk,” he said to Don.
Once armed, the two men began to scan the area. There was nothing around to suggest a rendezvous spot.
“Todd!” the sheriff called. “Diane! Sabrina!”
There was no reply.
“Footprints this way,” Don said as he scanned the dirt. “Looks like they went in this direction.”
They tramped into the trees, pushing back branches, calling all the while. Birds scattered, but no one replied. They came upon a small clearing, with a blanket on the ground and the smoldering remains of a fire, now just a tiny smoking glow under a pile of smoked-out logs. There was a tape player sitting on one of the logs by the fire. The blanket was a sleeping bag that had been unzipped and spread out, and an open can of Coke sat on a log. Three unopened beers were on the ground nearby, along with a cafeteria tray that contained a McDonald’s bag, some small papers, and some kind of green substance.
“Marijuana,” the sheriff said, examining it. “They were here. I don’t know why they’d leave this behind if they weren’t in trouble.”
He scanned the ring of trees around them. In a clearing like this, you were vulnerable. There were ample places to hide, and someone could approach from any direction. In the dark, this place would have been terrifyingly easy to attack a group of teenagers.
He pulled his handgun from its holster.
“Todd Cooper is a big kid,” Don said, as if having the same thought. “He’d fight. So would Diane.”
But there was no sign of a fight. The area was neat. It was as if they had simply walked away from their camp, leaving the fire, the tape player, and a significant amount of grass spread out on a tray.
The sheriff and Don made a slow circuit of the area, looking at the spaces between the trees, examining the ground.
“Here,” the sheriff said. “Something’s been dragged here.”
They picked their way between the trees. Don reached for a branch with a piece of torn dark green fabric and a tuft of white filler clinging to it.
“Looks like it could have come from a sleeping bag,” Don said.
They continued on, and about a minute later came upon a sagging hunting blind. Beside it, neatly rolled, was the sleeping bag with a tear in the side. The woods were velvety quiet as they approached the box. The sheriff opened it slowly. The smell hit first, seconds before his brain could process the hideous jigsaw that was before his eyes.
“Oh god,” Don said. “What the hell . . . what . . .”
There was a single-word message, roughly painted on the inside of the lid in white paint. It read: SURPRISE.
4
IT APPEARED THAT CARSON HAD CORRECTLY READ THE ROOM WHEN HE returned with a stack of pizza boxes containing every possible kind of cheesy, meaty pizza. The traveling, the reunion joy, and the sweet woodland air seemed to have stimulated all their appetites, and the pies were soon torn apart and consumed. For his own meal, Carson brought a giant cup of thick blue juice and regarded the pizza carnage like someone watching a nature documentary.
“So you own a box service, right?” Nate asked innocently as he reached for his fifth slice of pizza. “One of those get-a-box-every-month things?”
“Box Box,” Carson said.
Nate knew all this already, which meant he was asking for entertainment, rather than information.
“What is it, though?”
“Every month you get a curated selection of boxes,” Carson replied.
“What’s in the boxes?”
“Boxes. It’s a box full of boxes. We have themes, like bathroom boxes, or closet boxes, or gift boxes, kitchen boxes, garden boxes. Everyone needs boxes. We’re starting a new thing in a few months. We’re either going to call it Bag Box or Bag Bag. You get reusable bags. See all those fabric samples over there? Those are for the bags. I was Think Jamming them.”