Susie remembers hanging out with Ray for the first time, and meeting Ruth, after Ruth is harassed by teachers because of her realistic drawings of nude women.
Meanwhile, Jack tries to teach Buckley how to play Monopoly and explain to him that his sister is dead. On Christmas day Samuel Heckler comes to visit Lindsey, beginning their romance. He thinks Harvey is weird, but doesn't find any evidence to make him a suspect. He calls Detective Len Fenerman with his suspicions. Susie is trying to send her dad ghostly messages, and she must have succeed because Jack begins to suspect Mr. Harvey assemble the structure and talks to him. Harvey's back yard and finds him making this odd structure. After Jack Salmon breaks the ships in bottles, he happens to walk to Mr. Harvey gets the idea to build a tent-like structure. Afterwards, Susie's four-year-old brother Buckley finds his dad and comforts him. He sees Susie's projected reflection in each piece of glass. On December 23, Susie's dad smashes some miniature ships a the bottle, which Susie often helped him with. Harvey puts the bag with Susie's body parts into a safe and dumps the safe into a sinkhole about eight miles from their Pennsylvania neighborhood. Harvey thinks about how nice it was to kill Susie. Susie will learn later that he killed other girls before her. Then he puts her "body parts" (4.1) in a bag, which he puts in his garage, while he goes up for a shower. Harvey collapses the underground room where he raped and killed Susie. When Susie leaves Earth, she touches Ruth Connors, a school friend, and Ruth becomes obsessed with her. On December 15th, Len Fenerman tells the Salmons that Susie is probably dead. Harvey, who builds dollhouses for a living, calmly goes on with his life. Susie watches with frustration as her murderer, Mr. Ray has a perfect alibi, but the rumors wreak havoc on his school life. She didn't get to read it when she was alive. He'd slipped it into her books the day before she died.
Susie's schoolbooks and class notes are found, including a love letter from Ray Singh, Susie's first and only love. Later that day the police try digging up the cornfield, even though the snow and rain have screwed up their crime scene. The next morning, Jack breaks the news of the elbow bone to his other daughter, Lindsey, who's thirteen.
From her heaven, Susie watches her parents in bed, unable to talk. On December 9, the detective in charge of Susie's case, Len Fenerman, calls Susie's mom and dad, Abigail and Jack Salmon, and tells them they've found Susie's elbow bone.
Right now she's in heaven, which she soon learns is her personal heaven – everybody gets one when they die. She quickly learns this is a mistake, and he rapes and then kills her. He piques Susie's curiosity and lures her into the hole. He's built an underground shelter, with a door that's covered with earth. Harvey (who she recognizes but doesn't know) is in the cornfield. After school, Susie takes a shortcut through the cornfield to her suburban Pennsylvania home. She was fourteen years old when she was raped and murdered by her neighbor. Meet our narrator, Susie "like the fish" Salmon (1.1).