Seven Minutes in Heaven (7 page)

Emma wanted to ask Quinlan some questions, too—about the state of the body, whether there was any evidence of murder or footprints nearby or anything—but he was already looking at her strangely, and she didn’t want to set off any more alarms in his head. Instead, she just nodded. “Sure. I’ll come after school.”

Quinlan paused where he stood, looking around at each of them. His gaze lingered longest on Emma. “I should warn you, this is going public tomorrow.”

“Public?” Emma asked, frowning.

“There’s a press conference scheduled for eight
A.M.
I’m guessing the media are going to have a field day with it. You should be prepared for that.”

Mrs. Mercer rose from her seat. “Can’t we keep this quiet?” she asked pleadingly. “We haven’t even had time to take this in.”

Quinlan looked sympathetic, but he shook his head. “There’s already a half dozen news helicopters circling over the spot where we found her. I’m afraid the story’s going to hit pretty hard.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and removed a business card. “I’ll leave this here. Give me a call if you remember anything else that you think might be of use.”

“Of course,” Mr. Mercer murmured. “I’ll see you out, Detective Quinlan.”

The detective followed Emma’s grandfather back to the front door. As they passed her, Quinlan flashed her a sharp look, his eyes glittering brightly. Then he was gone.

Emma braced herself against the kitchen island, the strength flooding out of her all at once. She’d managed to dodge the truth one more time. But she had a feeling Quinlan wasn’t done with her yet. How much longer would she be able to conceal her identity, now that the cops had found Sutton’s body?

Emma’s secrets—and mine—were unraveling faster than she could build new lies to cover them up. And I knew from experience what happens at the end of a Lying Game.

You get caught.

10

STAND BY YOUR MAN (AND VICE VERSA)

The last bit of evening light illuminated the cracked wood of Ethan’s front steps when Emma pulled up outside his house a few hours later. Ethan sat on the creaky porch swing, a can of root beer in one hand and his laptop propped on an enormous wooden spool used as a table. When he saw her, he jumped to his feet and walked quickly toward her, his face disappearing into the shadows as he left the porch’s warm glow.

“What’s going on?” he asked, before she could say anything. “Charlotte and Madeline said you’d been pulled out of class, and I couldn’t find you. Why didn’t you answer my texts?”

She stumbled forward into Ethan’s arms. “They found her,” she whispered, burying her face in his T-shirt. “Sutton’s body. In Sabino Canyon.”

She felt his body tense, then curl protectively around her. “That explains it.” She looked up at him quickly. He jerked his head toward the canyon in answer. “I sat out here watching the cops turn into the parking lot all afternoon. The place was crawling with reporters, too.”

A groan escaped her lungs. “There’s going to be a press conference, Ethan,” she said. “It’s all going to come out. And look.”

She handed him the crumpled ball of paper that had been left on her windshield that afternoon. He took his arms from around her to smooth the note flat against his thigh, then held it up to the light. A sob bubbled up from inside her while he silently stared at the note.

“The killer is threatening my family and my friends now!” she exclaimed. “Ethan, this person is watching me
all the time
to make sure I don’t mess up. I’m putting the Mercers in danger. I’m putting
you
in danger!” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’ve been so selfish. I should never have told you the truth! I never should have let you help me with the case. And now it’s not just the murderer we have to worry about.” She wrenched out of his grasp, taking a few steps back. “The cops. The media. They’re going to figure it out. I don’t want to drag you down with me. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.” She looked wildly around, suddenly afraid the killer was here, watching her right now. The street was quiet now, but anyone could be out there in the darkness.

Ethan closed the distance between them and pulled her against his chest. She struggled for one panicked moment and then melted into his embrace.

“I’m not letting you go through this alone,” he said fiercely. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. No matter what, Emma, I’m here for you. With you. You can’t leave me now.”

“If they find out who I am, they’ll think I killed her. And you’ll look like my accomplice.” She pressed her face against his shoulder.

“I don’t care,” he said, his voice muffled, his face buried in her hair.

Her tears dampened the cotton of his shirt. “Ethan, I don’t want what happened to Nisha to happen to you, too.”

He took Emma by her shoulders and held her a little apart from him, forcing her to meet his gaze. Half of his face was in shadow, but his eyes shone with determination. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

She desperately wanted to believe him. The idea of going through the investigation without him felt like sending her heart through a shredder.

“Ethan,” she whispered. “I think Garrett might be the killer.”

His eyes widened. “Did you find proof?” he asked.

She told him about seeing Garrett in the classroom, about the way he watched her unfold the note. “He just sat there grinning at me. Like he was having the time of his life watching me squirm.”

Ethan’s jaw tensed. With another glance up toward the canyon, he took her hand and led her onto the dimly lit porch. Two small brown moths flung themselves at the bare bulb that hung over the house numbers. Ethan’s telescope sat near the railing, angled toward the sky. Next door, Nisha’s house was dark and silent. Emma ran her fingers through her hair nervously. The whole street felt haunted to her now.

Ethan’s laptop sat open, a cursor blinking placidly on an open document. Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
sat splayed out, spine up, on the seat next to it. “Oh, sorry. Were you doing homework?” she asked, another pang of guilt cutting through her. She wondered how much of Ethan’s schoolwork she’d interrupted since she’d arrived in Tucson.

He sat down on the porch swing, picking up the computer and setting it on his lap. “It’s not due until the end of the month. I was just trying to get a head start.” As he spoke, he exited the document and pulled up Facebook. Emma loved the way his hands flew over the keyboard, doing everything with the shortcuts he’d programmed, never using the mousepad. Even though his computer was old and dented, Ethan had painstakingly built the machine inside.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sitting next to him on the swing. She’d stopped crying, but now the salt of her tears was drying on her face and making her skin feel stiff. Rubbing at her cheeks, she cuddled against Ethan’s shoulder as he pulled up Garrett’s profile.

“I want to know what Garrett was up to the night of Sutton’s murder,” he said. He handed her the can of root beer, and she took a small sip. The bubbles churned in her fluttering stomach.

“Good thing his profile is public,” Emma said, craning her neck to see. “We’re definitely not friends anymore.” The screen filled with hundreds of pictures of Garrett—scoring at soccer, shirtless and oiled up on a beach somewhere, lifting a glass to the camera at a fancy restaurant. In a few he stood by his sister, an arm wrapped protectively around her.

The most recent update read:
RIP Nisha B. You’ll be missed, baby girl.
Before that, though, most of his status updates were pretty banal, things like
Anybody see
The Voice
tonight?
CeeLo brought his parrot!!!
or
Only five more months before I never have to do a trig proof again.
Sometimes he linked to soccer news or
Saturday Night Live
clips. It looked like he posted several times a day.

“Go to the night of the thirty-first,” Emma said, her hand on Ethan’s shoulder. He scrolled backward through the months, slowing when he hit September. Emma winced when she saw the phrase
Garrett went from being “in a relationship” to “single,”
updated on her birthday.

“Nothing interesting,” said Ethan. She leaned in and peered at the monitor. Then her eyes fell on Garrett’s last post before Sutton’s murder, late in the afternoon of the thirtieth.

Do you ever get tired of all the lies people tell?

Emma and Ethan exchanged glances. “That could be about Sutton and Thayer,” Emma said quietly. Ethan nodded. Then they saw a status update from September first, and shivered. It was updated at 2:38
A.M
.

Eventually, people always get what’s coming to them.

I stared at the screen, my mind churning, willing the words to spark my memory to life, to take me back to that night so I could finally see how he had done it. But I couldn’t remember past that point when he grabbed my shoulder and said my name.
Sutton
. He’d said it like it was the dirtiest, most insulting word he’d ever heard.

“Garrett would probably have known about the snuff video,” Emma said softly, rereading the September first update. “It wouldn’t have been hard for him to steal it from Laurel’s computer sometime when he was at the house.”

Somewhere far away an ambulance siren wailed. The dogs up and down the street howled in response. Emma gazed out at the canyon, looming like a dark shadow, like a secret.

“I don’t get it,” Ethan said. “Stealing it and hoping you’d see it . . . that seems so complicated. Why wouldn’t he just Facebook you from Sutton’s account?”

“I didn’t use Facebook much when I was Emma. It’s not like I had a lot of friends. My profile was hidden.” She sighed. “And Garrett needed me to come out to Tucson and take over Sutton’s life,
fast
. If he did any research on me, he’d have known about Travis. What better way than to label that video
Sutton in AZ
and slip it to my slimy foster brother? Obviously I’d look for a girl who looked just like me. Then once I did, he replied to me as Sutton.”

Ethan stared at her. “Emma, that makes it sound premeditated. Like he planned all along to use you to cover up the murder. Which means he already knew you were out there, somehow.”

The thought sent an icy thrill down her spine. How would Garrett have known about Emma, when not even the Mercers knew she existed? But it would all fit in with knowing about Travis.

Emma glanced over at Nisha’s house, which was completely dark. She wondered if Dr. Banerjee had gone to stay with friends or family. Maybe he was at the hospital, burying his grief in his work like he’d done when his wife died. She could just make out the short organza curtains in Nisha’s bedroom, motionless now.

“How are we going to prove that he did it, though?” she asked, laying her head back against the siding of the house. Ethan stared at the computer screen thoughtfully.

“If we had access to Garrett’s texts or e-mail, we’d be able to see if he sent the link,” he said. “Even if he deleted the messages. That stuff stays on record forever. You just have to know how to pull it up.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” she said. “Maybe I can figure out a way to get my hands on his phone.”

“Be careful.” Ethan looked worried. “He’s dangerous, Emma. Especially now. He’s probably getting desperate.”

“Well, so am I,” Emma said, sounding tougher than she felt.

And so was I. I’d never felt so helpless, so hopeless. I finally knew who had killed me—and I couldn’t tell a soul.

11

REALITY TV BITES

“The girl’s body was found just a half-mile off Upper Sabino Canyon Road, at the bottom of this scenic overlook.” The newscaster, the same woman who had covered Nisha’s death just a few days earlier, was now wearing a poofy yellow North Face vest. Emma guessed that must be her “outdoorsy” look. She stood in front of a picnic area with green-painted benches and an awning, wisps of hair flying free from her ponytail in the breeze.

Mrs. Mercer passed a basket of steaming rolls to Emma, her eyes never leaving the fifteen-inch television they’d propped at the end of the island. The Mercers almost never ate dinner in front of the TV, but there seemed an unspoken consensus to do so tonight.

Emma and Laurel had both been surprised when the Mercers said they would be missing school that day—until they looked out at the front lawn and saw the crowd of news vans gathered outside. The Mercers had refused to open the door, but any time they saw someone in front of a window the reporters started shouting questions. “Sutton! Sutton, did you know Emma? What do you think happened to her, Sutton?” So Laurel and Emma had spent most of the day in the kitchen, baking cookies and flipping through magazines. “You are looking for answers in the wrong places,” Emma’s horoscope had said, and she rolled her eyes.
Tell me something I don’t know.

For most of her life, Emma had wanted to be an investigative reporter when she grew up. But now that she was experiencing a media siege firsthand, she wasn’t so sure. The reporters felt like nothing so much as vultures, circling her family, waiting for one of them to show signs of weakness.

The TV screen cut to a young man with glasses and a long blond ponytail, standing in front of a dormitory building on campus. “She was covered up with leaves and branches,” he said, his voice breaking. “All I could see was her . . . her foot, sticking out at a weird angle.” He looked terrified, blinking in the bright light like a nocturnal creature out during the day.
This will haunt him for the rest of his life
, Emma thought sadly.

The reporter returned. “The body has been identified as Emma Paxton from Las Vegas, Nevada.” The previous year’s school photo flashed on the screen. Emma had worn a vintage wrap dress she’d scored from a garage sale in Green Valley. Her bangs were shorter then; she’d grown them out to match Sutton’s longer hairstyle. Her smile was maybe a little more guarded than Sutton’s, a little less confident. Still, the image made the Mercers stir in their seats. Mr. Mercer dropped his fork onto his plate of untouched lasagna, and Mrs. Mercer stared at the screen with a rapt, shocked expression.

“It’s so weird,” Laurel said. “She looks just like you.”

All Emma could do was nod.

Watching news coverage of her own death was dizzyingly surreal. She felt weirdly exposed every time her picture appeared on-screen, as if the Mercers would suddenly be able to see that the girl in the photo was sitting right in front of them. The newscasters had said her name so many times it was almost easy to believe that poor Emma Paxton, foster kid,
was
dead—that she really was Sutton Mercer now.

It was weird for me, too. I watched as my parents grieved for a girl they’d never met when their own daughter was gone. Would I be buried in Vegas, far away from my family and friends? Would my headstone say my sister’s name? What if Emma never found my killer—would she live as me forever, until she was finally buried as Sutton Mercer at the ripe old age of ninety?

“Paxton went missing almost three months ago from Las Vegas, after an argument with her foster family. Clarice Lambert, her guardian at the time, spoke with our Nevada correspondent.”

Emma choked on a mouthful of water, sending it down the wrong pipe. She coughed, clutching her throat.

“Honey?” Mrs. Mercer put a hand on her back.

“I’m okay,” she said quickly. “Just drank too fast.” She took a deep breath, wiping the corners of her eyes. There on the screen, in front of the little bungalow house she’d stayed in for a few short weeks, stood Clarice and her son, Travis. Clarice was wearing a strappy sundress meant for someone much younger than she was, her platinum hair piled high on top of her head. She had a mildly shocked, scandalized expression on her face. Travis slouched next to her, a baseball cap pulled askew across his ear and a sanctimonious expression on his wide, fishy lips.

“She was obviously a troubled girl,” Clarice said. “She stole from me, she lied to me, and when I tried laying down the law, she took off in the dead of night. Never a note or a message saying where she was going. Of course I worried, but there wasn’t anything I could do. She was almost eighteen.”

Emma’s body twitched involuntarily. Clarice had all but kicked her out of the house after Travis had framed her for stealing from her purse. Why was the news even talking to her? She didn’t know anything about Emma.

Travis had the microphone now. “Emma was a wild girl,” he said with a smirk. “She was into all kinds of crazy stuff. I found a video of her online, getting held down and strangled and . . .” His next word was replaced with a loud beep. “She always had money, too. Maybe she was involved with some kind of fetish dungeon or something.”

I goggled at the TV—would they show the snuff video? I didn’t want my parents to see me like that. They both stared at the screen, my mom with a disturbed grimace, my dad looking confused. I wondered if he’d ever even heard the phrase “fetish dungeon” before, much less in connection with anyone he might be related to.

Across the table, Laurel set her glass down with a loud
thunk
. Emma glanced up at her, her mind shooting back to what she’d learned of the snuff video. Laurel had masterminded that prank—and she’d been the one with the movie saved on her hard drive. What if she recognized what Travis was describing? But Laurel just toyed with her food, a distracted look on her face.

The newscaster’s voice came back. “When investigators tried to find the video, they found no trace. Whether it’s been since taken down, or was a case of mistaken identity, is still under investigation. Meanwhile, LVPD, who is assisting the Tucson police with the investigation, discovered a locker checked out to the missing girl at the Greyhound station, containing clothes, what seem to be journals, and around two thousand dollars in cash.”

Emma’s insides lurched. They had her journals? Her cheeks felt like they were on fire. She imagined the police flipping through the cheap composition books, guffawing over the phase in junior high when she’d dotted all her i’s with hearts, or reading her fake headlines out loud to a room of beat cops.
Girl Goes Stag to Homecoming, Stands by Refreshment Table All Night
—she imagined Quinlan and his buddies reading it aloud and erupting in laughter. The very thought made her want to hide her face in her hands.

The cameras jumped back to the newscaster, who held her microphone to her lips and looked seriously into the camera. “Meanwhile, the Tucson Police Department has refused to give an official cause of death, saying the case is still under investigation. But our sources tell us Paxton was hoping to meet up with her biological family in Tucson. Whether she made it to them is unknown. The family has so far declined our requests for an interview.” At that, Mrs. Mercer hit the remote, and the sound muted.

“Requests?” she snapped, curling her lip. “You spent most of the day on our front lawn, you gargoyle.” Then she sighed, and started gathering dishes. “Poor Emma. It sounds like she could have used our help.”

“What do you mean?” Emma asked, glancing up at her grandmother.

“Just, if she was as troubled as those people said . . .” Mrs. Mercer trailed off, then shook her head. Her face darkened. “I wish we’d known about her sooner. This is all Becky’s fault. It’s always Becky’s fault. She lies, she steals, she keeps secrets, and she doesn’t care who she hurts along the way.”

“Kristin,” Mr. Mercer said softly. But his wife scowled, grabbing the Pyrex dish of lasagna from the center of the table. She moved so violently a small splatter of sauce flew free and landed on her sweater, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“You know it’s true. She kept us in constant agony, wondering where she was and if she was okay. And for some insane reason, she didn’t tell us about this other little girl who we could have . . .” Tears sprang to her eyes. “This little girl we could have saved.”

Mr. Mercer stood up and gently pried the dish from her hands. He set it back on the table and pulled his wife into his arms. She broke down then, sobbing against his chest as he patted her back. Laurel and Emma looked at each other with wide, frightened eyes. Emma had never seen Mrs. Mercer this emotional, and from the look on Laurel’s face, she hadn’t either.

Emma couldn’t help but agree with Mrs. Mercer. She wanted to forgive Becky—Becky was her mother, after all—but sometimes she was so angry she could scream. What had been the point of keeping Emma if she was only going to abandon her five years later? What had been the point of separating the twins?

It was so unfair. If Sutton hadn’t died, if Emma hadn’t come out to Tucson to find her, the wheels might have been set in motion on their own, by Becky’s confession to Mr. Mercer. What would it have been like if the Mercers had come for her as a family? She imagined being called out of class in Henderson, just like she had been the day they found Sutton’s body. But in this alternate reality, she was summoned to meet her family. Her real, blood family. She pictured it: Mr. Mercer, gentle and reassuring; Mrs. Mercer, a nervous but excited smile twitching the corners of her lips; Laurel, wary at the possibility of a new rival but hopeful, eager to be liked. And Sutton. Her sister. Her twin.

“What was she like?” Laurel asked softly, breaking Emma’s thoughts. Emma gave a start, her mind racing to come back to the present. To the reality where Sutton was gone, and she was alone.

“What was who like?” she asked.

“Emma,” she said. “You talked to her, right?”

Emma ran her finger along the condensation on the outside of her glass. “Just a little bit. I didn’t know much about her.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, she added, “I know her foster mom had just kicked her out of the house. She sounded kind of awful.”

“Who, that woman with the tacky lounge-waitress hairdo?” Laurel said. “She
looked
awful.”

“Now, girls,” Mr. Mercer said, frowning at them from where he still stood with Mrs. Mercer in his arms. “You don’t know that. It can be hard to know what to do for someone who’s troubled. I’m sure that woman did her best for Emma.”

Emma knew he was speaking more about his own relationship with Becky than anything, but she was glad that Laurel at least had sided with her.

Mrs. Mercer wiped her eyes with a pineapple-print cloth napkin, then let go of her husband. “Did anyone want dessert? There’s some ice cream in the fridge.”

“No thanks, Mom.” Laurel threw her own napkin down in front of her. Emma shook her head, too. Her stomach felt like a lead weight.

Mr. Mercer pulled a chair out for his wife. She sat down, her eyes still damp, and he set about clearing the rest of the dishes. The plates and silverware clattered together, echoing around the silent kitchen. On the muted TV Santa Claus delivered pizzas in his sleigh, the phone number for a regional pizza chain painted on the side.

“Do we have to go to school tomorrow?” Laurel asked, sucking her lower lip anxiously. Mr. and Mrs. Mercer exchanged uneasy glances from across the room. Then Mr. Mercer came back to the table, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“I wish I could hide you girls from this forever,” he said, “but I don’t know if you should miss any more school. We talked to the principal this afternoon, and she promised me there would be no press allowed on campus. I know it won’t be easy. I’m sure your friends have a lot of questions for you.”

Emma rolled her eyes. That was an understatement. All day long she’d been fielding texts from Madeline and Charlotte.
WHAT IS GOING ON
???? Charlotte had asked, while Madeline had seemed excited that a “mega-foxy” reporter had cornered her outside campus to ask if she knew Sutton.
THIS IS SO CRAZY
, she’d texted, along with a photo taken from her phone of a line of news vans just off campus.