“This”—Carson pointed at a cabin with the word PUMAS painted over the door—“is the cabin Brandy Clark was in the morning the bodies were discovered. As you can see, it’s close to the tree line. The first body was found this way.”

He led them down a wide grassy opening in the trees, which narrowed to a path about eight feet wide, surfaced in cedar wood chips.

“Eric Wilde was found right about here,” he said, taking his tablet out of his messenger bag and pulling up the black-and-white photo he had shown them the night before. “You can see that he was lined up more or less with that tree there with the double trunk.”

Stevie took the tablet and compared the spot. Eric had been found facedown, with his head pointed in the direction of the camp.

“It looks like he was heading back,” she said.

“It was a dirt path then, so they had a footprint trail for at least part of it. What seems to have happened is that he was attacked and injured probably at the primary site, and he ran through the woods to escape. He must have largely stayed off the path to keep away from his attacker. He was almost back to the camp when the killer caught up with him. He almost made it.”

The landscape and the path looked very much the same. Standing here, she could see that the path veered around the performance area, meaning there was no clear line of sight to the camp. Eric had been close, but not close enough.

“Now,” he said, “ready to go to where the main event took place? We’ll need the car for that one.”

Nate mouthed the words main event.

They got back into the car and drove over the short bridge that spanned the narrow of the lake. This route continued back past the camp buildings and into the woods. It was startling how quickly things went from manicured and inhabited to entirely forested and overgrown. The canopy of trees was so dense that the woods were dark in the bold light of day. The road bent gently to the left and merged with the dirt track they had seen earlier. It was a narrow, bumpy trail, more holes than solid ground. The Tesla handled it but was clearly used to more refined surfaces, and the group bounced up and down in their seats like popping corn. After a few minutes, Carson pulled over and stopped the car on the side of the road.

“This is it,” he said. “Blink and you’d miss it.”

They stepped out into the woods. The air here had a rich smell of leaves and plant life, and the sun occasionally poked through the cover in a thin finger of light, but mostly it was subdued and soft. Their footsteps fell silently on the dirt and soft pine needles underfoot.

“This is like being inside of a meditation app,” Nate said, looking around.