“Wait, what?”

“It doesn’t have to be long,” Hayes said. “Five pages or something. Ten. Just something about the crime, something that happens in the tunnel. Didn’t some student die? Or the thing with the ransom? Wasn’t there a thing with the ransom? With a boat or something? In the sunken garden?”

Stevie nodded.

“So that,” Hayes said. “Do that. Write something with the tunnel and something about the ransom in the sunken garden. We can do that. This is going to be great.”

Minutes later, he was gone, and Stevie wondered how you made a script. It was a minor point. She was going into the tunnel. That was all that mattered.

Strange conversation three was instigated by Stevie.

“Think about it,” Stevie said, sitting in Nate’s desk chair later that evening. “I could give you all the facts. There are transcripts. There are files. It’s practically written. You’d barely need to do anything.”

“I don’t know anything about writing scripts,” Nate said.

“But you write!”

“Scripts are totally different,” Nate said. “Scripts are . . . they’re like an X-ray of a book. Just the bones. The words people say and the things they do. Books are . . . everything. What the characters see and feel and how everything is told.”

“It sounds easier,” Stevie pointed out.

“It’s a different thing,” Nate said. “I’m supposed to show Dr. Quinn outlines for the next three chapters of my book, plus all this reading . . .”

“Maybe,” Stevie said, “if you wrote this, Dr. Quinn would let you have more time on the book. You could write this instead of that for a while? They love group projects here.”

Much like Stevie had been lured in by the tunnel, Nate could not resist the offer of skipping out on his book.

“So I take this stuff and make it into some scripts,” he said. “And you do what?”

“I advise on technical matters.”

“Meaning?”

“I explain what happened,” she said. “I help you. We could call it Truly Devious.”

Nate exhaled long through his nose.

“Fine,” he said. “Anything is better than doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

April 14, 1936, 3:00 p.m.

ROBERT MACKENZIE WAS SUPERVISING THE DELIVERY OF LARGE SUMS of cash from New York. Two hundred thousand dollars was piled on the floor throughout the day. As he and George Marsh sorted the money, Ellingham removed two small blue bottles from a cabinet, along with a fine brush.

“What’s that?” Marsh asked.

“A solution that Nair brewed up that we use for our games,” Ellingham said. “It dries completely clear. To see it, you need to use a solution and a special light. This stuff is so good that I’ve often suggested to Nair that he sell it to the government. If for some reason things don’t go as they should tonight, I want to be able to track these bills.”

The bills were marked down the side with a slash of the paint. Ellingham took the further measure of marking the bundle wrappers with his fingerprint. Fans were placed around the room to dry everything quickly, and then the money was packed into four bags.

“I got some people out watching street corners tonight,” Marsh said. “Didn’t tell them why or what for—just to mark down license plates and anything unusual. I gave them fifty cents each if they give me good info.”

“Give them five dollars each,” Ellingham said. “Give them whatever they want!”

“For five dollars,” Marsh replied, “they’ll know this is big and they might start coming up with stories. Fifty cents keeps them honest and the profile low.”

Robert Mackenzie watched this all nervously.

The call with instructions came at 7:07 that evening. The instructions said to move the money into Burlington and wait by a selected telephone booth for a call. Ellingham himself drove the car, with Robert Mackenzie and George Marsh riding along. Each man brought a revolver. They arrived just before 8:00 p.m., when the phone rang. From there, they were instructed to drive toward Rock Point.

Rock Point is very much what it sounds like—a rocky point off the side of Burlington, jutting into Lake Champlain. The point was largely uninhabited and the terrain rough. Once they arrived, they found an arrow chalked on the ground, pointing to the narrow dirt-and-rock path toward the water.

“Robert,” Ellingham said, “you stay here with the car.”

Robert looked at the pitch-black path into the rocky wooded point.

“Mr. Ellingham, this is . . .”

“You heard me, Robert. Stay here. If you see or hear nothing from us in an hour, turn around and drive back into town and get help.”

Ellingham switched on his flashlight. His shoes slipped a bit against the slick rocks as he began the walk into the dark.

“There’s a light ahead,” he said.

The path was marked by a series of impromptu lanterns made out of tin cans that would later be traced back to a diner in town. The diner appeared to have nothing to do with the crime—they had simply put out their garbage the night before. The garbagemen on their route reported that their trash was empty in the morning. Someone had stolen the garbage.

Even with the tiny tin-can lights, the path was treacherous and blind, and it got more so as the lights spread out and led to the cliff face. Finally, at one rocky ledge, they found three cans and a coiled rope. Below, a lantern flashed.

“There’s a boat down there,” Marsh said, looking over carefully, his gun ready.

“Use the rope,” called up a voice. “Lower the money.”

“Not until you show us Mrs. Ellingham and Alice,” Marsh called back.

“Look next to you.”

Ellingham scrabbled around and called for his wife, but found on the ground a handbag and a child’s shoe.

“We need a better sign,” Marsh said. “Proof of life.”

Ellingham dropped his bag to the ground and tied the end of the rope to the handles. Marsh sighed and helped him secure it.

“I’m putting the money on the rope,” Ellingham yelled. “Please, get my wife and child to a safe place so we can collect them. We have no interest in you, only them.”

The money went over the rock face, all four bags of it. Ellingham tossed the rope end over the side.

“That’s everything!” Ellingham yelled.

Below, the lantern began to flicker in a strange pattern.

“What are they doing?” Ellingham said. “What is that? It’s not Morse.”

“I have no idea,” Marsh said, cocking his revolver.

“Don’t shoot at that boat! They could be in there!”

The lantern went out. For a solid minute, there was no sound but the gentle lapping of the water and the wind.

“What’s happening?” Ellingham asked. For the first time that night, he sounded truly vulnerable and afraid.

“I don’t know,” Marsh said.

“Hello!” Ellingham yelled. “I gave you the money! What now? Where are they?”

The tiny boat sailed into oblivion, along with any chance of recovering Iris or Alice.