She pulled out her phone. She held it next to the pink saltshaker.
“We need to turn down the lights for a minute,” Stevie said.
Carson hit the dimmer on the lights, and the barn fell into shadow. Stevie switched on her phone flashlight. She had already put a little masking tape around the light to narrow the beam. She angled it very slightly, flashing it around on the dark blue Liberty High sign. The little dot of light bounced around.
“Patty flashes her light here,” Stevie said. “Janelle, now.”
At the far end of the road, Janelle had rested her phone on the little clay rocks and pipe cleaner trees. She switched on her phone flashlight, which was not taped and brighter and broader than Stevie’s light. Stevie turned away immediately, as she had planned, and saw many people turn or shield their eyes.
“This is what you saw,” Stevie said. “Turn the lights back on.”
The lights came back up, and several people were still blinking.
“That’s a pretty good reconstruction,” Susan said. “But why would you have to demonstrate that?”
“Because what you saw was a signal and a response. Patty was shining her light on the sign, which is clearly visible from the far end of the road. That meant that Greg had left the parking lot and was traveling in the only direction he could travel—it’s a one-way road. Down at the other end of the street, her father was waiting with a high-powered flashlight. As Greg approached, he flashed it on. The light was bright enough that you saw it all the way up the road. Greg, being closer, would have been blinded by something that bright. A little drunk or high, unable to see, he loses control at the turn. The crash was a guarantee. Simple. Clean. Effective. Just an accident.”
“You wouldn’t even have to stand there to do it,” Janelle pointed out. “You could put something reflective there and shine the light from an angle so you were well out of the way. It’s so basic.”
“It really is,” Stevie said. “So basic that it looks like nothing at all. It’s something someone who studied spy craft would be really good at coming up with. Lights. Mirrors. Signals. Untraceable stuff. Simple, smart, and effective. I think you learned that from your dad, and when you had to kill Allison, you did it in the kind of way he would have done it. Allison always wanted her sister’s diary. The police didn’t have it. It was never found at the camp. As we learned, it was bad news for you if anyone found it. But if no one had turned it up since 1978, it wasn’t likely that it was ever going to be found. You’d always been safe. But then, a few days ago, I gave Allison a paper we found in the art supply tent, and Allison realized
that while working the crafts with the counselors, Sabrina ordered a ceramic cookie jar in the shape of a turtle to paint. She made it to hide her diary. She also made the lid nice and tight so that the campers wouldn’t be able to get into it. Allison realized that the ceramic turtle she had in her house was a jar, not a figurine. She must have been so excited. She went home and tried to pry it open, but the lid was stuck. She had to figure out how to get it open without damaging it. Allison would never have damaged something of Sabrina’s. Did she call you, her friend, to tell you she thought she might know where the diary was? Your whole life—everything you’d built, everything you were—would be over. You’d be the daughter of a notorious murderer, not the daughter of a war hero. And maybe people would start to look into what happened with Greg a little more carefully. No. None of that could happen. You’d already let five of your friends die. Now one more had to go to keep your secret.”
Susan Marks turned and fixed Patty with a devastating gaze.
“What was the one thing you could count on with Allison? Her schedule. She ran every morning and she stopped on Arrowhead Point. That was perfect. Easiest thing in the world to fall off a place like that, and that there would likely be people nearby who would see the entire thing go down and be able to swear—absolutely swear—that no one else was up there. Honestly? I’m kind of worried that I gave you the idea. When we came into your shop on the first morning we were here and we were looking at your cakes, Janelle asked how