In The Woods Chapter 3 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Rob phones Missing Persons and comes up with a possible ID for the dead girl in the woods: Katharine "Katy" Devlin.
  • Cassie and Rob set up a temporary office in the shed of the archeological site and start interrogating.
  • First, they talk to Damien, the teen who found the body in the woods.
  • Rob hates him for being "adorable [and] helpless" (3.63), a quality he only likes in women, so he lets Cassie lead the interrogation.
  • Damien says he found her on the rock, and "shook her" (3.69) to see if she was still alive. She wasn't.
  • Cassie asks if Damien ever saw a stranger on the site, and he says yes—a man in a dark blue tracksuit.
  • Next, they interview Melanie Jackson.
  • Mel says the girl was a local who used to hang around the site a lot.
  • She says she's pretty positive the body wasn't there yesterday; a dead girl on a sacrificial stone is the kind of thing you notice in the woods.
  • After lunch, Rob and Cassie go to talk to the Devlin family, and as they're talking to Mr. Devlin, Katy walks in.
  • Oh wait—it's her twin sister, Jessica, who seems to have some sort of developmental disability. Margaret, their mother, breaks down sobbing when told that Katy was found dead.
  • Another girl comes in, Rosalind, Katy's older sister.
  • With the whole family present, Rob and Cassie tell them everything they know about Katy's death.
  • According to her family, Katy was a good girl who liked to dance.
  • When asked what his relationship with his daughter was like, Jonathan, the father, gets angry that they're accusing him of hurting her.
  • They assure him they're not accusing him of a thing.
  • He says he received three threatening phone calls, because he's part of the Move of the Motorway campaign, to, well, move the motorway away from the dig site.
  • Rob and Cassie search her room for clues before leaving. Cassie's only comment: "There is something deeply, deeply f***ed up in that house" (3.196). Her words, not ours.
  • They return to the site, where reporters have gathered. They're asking questions about satanic cults and Druids, but Rob and Cassie give no comment.
  • Sophie calls them over to look at one more thing: a makeshift campsite in the woods, including the remains of a campfire and a giant red blotch…
  • But it's not blood. It's red wine. Spill the wine and… kill that girl?
  • There's also a home-rolled cigarette and a long, fair hair—Rob remembers that Mark smokes rollies.
  • They decide to talk to him tomorrow. Until then, it's time to dance…