Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Sara Shepard

Page 17

 

  In one, Nisha beamed at the camera in tennis whites. And in the other, Sutton gave her best movie-star pout from a lounge chair, dressed in a jade-green bikini and a flowered sarong.

  The frames shook in her hands. Why would he have these here, on his desk, after both girls had broken up with him?

  I stared at the pictures. What did he think about when he looked at them? Did he relive what he’d done to us? Did he tell himself that I’d deserved it for hurting him? A shiver moved through me as I looked at my own coy smirk, frozen forever in time.

  Emma set the pictures back where she’d found them. She suddenly felt a lot less safe than she had a moment before. She backed toward the door, stumbling over a stray hiking boot on the way.

  As she turned to go, she kicked an orange prescription bottle with the tip of her toe. A few pills rattled inside. She frowned, stooping to pick it up.

  It was Valium.

  Time froze. She stared at the crisp black print on the label until the letters didn’t make sense, until they looked like a jumble of alien signs. Detective Quinlan’s voice floated back to her. The examiner found extremely high amounts of diazepam in her bloodstream. Nisha hadn’t had a prescription. But Garrett did.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  The voice cut through Emma’s thoughts like a knife. She jumped, throwing the bottle to the floor, and looked up to see Garrett’s sister in the doorway.

  Louisa wore cut-off jean shorts, bright green tights, hiking boots, and a large black T-shirt that draped off one shoulder. Her dyed-black hair was cut in a shaggy bob, and she wore dozens of black jelly bangles on her arms. She stood in the doorway, looking both curious and mildly annoyed. Emma hadn’t even heard her open the door.

  “Oh . . . uh, hi, Louisa,” she stammered, fastening a bright smile on her face. “Long time no see. ” Louisa raised an eyebrow. Emma swallowed. “Your mom let me in. I thought I’d left a sweatshirt here, but I don’t see it. I mean, I don’t know how I could find it in this mess. ” She gave a nervous laugh, but Louisa didn’t smile.

  The younger girl gave her a long, steady look. Emma squirmed. She felt like she was being memorized for a police lineup. But finally Louisa spoke.

  “You should stay away from Garrett. ”

  Emma blinked. There was no malice in Louisa’s voice—just a blunt matter-of-factness. But her brow was crumpled in a worried frown.

  “I’m not trying to make any trouble,” Emma said carefully.

  Louisa shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Look, Sutton, I’m not just trying to be bitchy. He’s seriously worse when you’re around. I don’t know what happened between you guys, but these past few months he’s been a total wreck. There’s no way you guys are going to be buddies after all that, okay? Just stay out of his life. You owe him that. ”

  A chill crawled up Emma’s spine. “He’s been unstable since the breakup?”

  Louisa gave an impatient snort. “Since before that. The night before Nisha’s party he came home hysterical at like three in the morning. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been, but he was hyperventilating and pacing. It took me the rest of the night to get him to calm down. ” She sighed. “I thought you guys had broken up, but then you were together at Nisha’s, so I didn’t know what to think. ” She gave Emma a tiny, almost apologetic smile. “I’m not saying it’s your fault, Sutton. We both know my brother has problems. But you make them all so much worse. If you really want what’s best for him, you’ll stay far, far away. ” And with that, she left.

  Emma stood paralyzed in the middle of Garrett’s room, Louisa’s words tossing around in her mind. We both know my brother has problems . . . but you make them all so much worse.

  A sick, twisted fear washed over her. The night before Nisha’s party was the night Sutton died. Was his mood frantic because he’d just murdered her in cold blood?

  Frustration raged through me. I felt like I was choking on all the things I couldn’t tell Emma. If only I could beam my memories straight into her head. If only I could show her what I knew—that Garrett had been in the canyon with me. That he’d killed me.

  I’d kill him myself, but thanks to him, I was less than a shadow: silent, intangible—and helpless.

  16

  LAW AND ORDER: LONG-LOST TWIN UNIT

  Later that afternoon, Emma pulled Sutton’s Volvo into a parking space outside the police station for her interview with Quinlan. Mr. Mercer had offered to meet her there, but she’d told him not to. She’d lied to the Mercers enough already; she didn’t want him to witness this, too.

  By now the drab gray building was familiar to her. This was where she’d first tried to report Sutton missing, only to be accused of crying wolf. This, too, was where she’d been brought after she was arrested for shoplifting, when she’d first read Quinlan’s file on her twin.

  Every time she’d been there before, a sleepy, muted feeling had permeated the air, almost as if the station were underwater. But now officers strode quickly and purposefully through the labyrinth of desks behind the reception area. Phones jangled from every corner, pitched just slightly off from one another so their tones clashed painfully. A flat-screen TV had been installed on the wall of the waiting area, tuned in to the national news. The sound was off, but the headlines sprang up swiftly along the bottom of the screen. She gave a jolt as she realized that the silver-haired CNN reporter was standing outside Sabino Canyon’s visitor center. His lips moved soundlessly. GIRL’S BODY FOUND WEDNESDAY, said the blocky text under his handsome face. TPD HAS YET TO RELEASE AN OFFICIAL CAUSE OF DEATH.

  So it’s gone national, she thought grimly. No wonder the station was looking sharper than usual.

  Behind her the door opened and then closed, a blade of sunlight cutting quickly across the room and then disappearing again. She glanced away from the TV and gasped.

  Travis Lambert, her old foster brother, stood there looking as smarmy as ever, though he’d obviously tried to dress up. He wore a button-down shirt that bunched around his waist where it was badly tucked in, and he’d shaved off the pathetic little strip of hair on his upper lip.

  Next to him was a balding, middle-aged man in a tailored gray suit. He carried a briefcase, swinging it back and forth like it was some kind of weapon. They walked to the reception desk, where a female officer with thin, penciled-on eyebrows sat typing on an ancient-looking computer.

  “My client’s here to see Detective Ostrada,” drawled the man with the briefcase. The officer gave them a skeptical, unimpressed look, then picked up a phone receiver and hit a button.

  “Ostrada? The witness you requested is up here. ”

  Emma took a few steps backward and sat on the low bench in the waiting area, trying to look like just another citizen waiting to talk to a cop. Stay calm, she ordered herself. He hasn’t seen you. And even if he does see you, you’re Sutton Mercer. You have no idea who the hell he is. She softened her gaze so that she could look as though she were staring into space while keeping Travis in her periphery. The last thing she wanted was to make eye contact.

  The officer hung up the phone and stood up. “You can follow me,” she said, sounding like she didn’t really care if they did or didn’t. She opened the gate that separated the reception desk from the rest of the station, and the lawyer stepped through.

  Travis lingered for a moment, his hand on the gate. Go on, Emma urged him. Straight through the gate and out of my sight. But instead he pivoted slowly, his pupils flaring with recognition when his eyes landed on the bench. Emma fought to keep her face neutral, to act like he was just someone a girl like her wouldn’t have the time of day for. She was Sutton Mercer now—not poor, powerless Emma Paxton, with a whole journal titled Comebacks I Should Have Said. She pretended to be captivated by a poster on the wall over his head with McGruff the Crime Dog peering suspiciously over the lapel of his trench coat.

  “Travis?” the lawyer said, sounding mildly impatient. “Come on,
we have a meeting. ”

  “Coming,” he said in a singsong voice. Then, staring right at Emma, he pursed his lips to kiss in her direction before pushing through the gate and disappearing into the back.

  Her stomach twisted in knots, a sick, shaky feeling sweeping through her. Of course she was still poor, powerless Emma. So long as the murderer kept playing with her like she was his puppet, so long as she had to hide the truth from everyone she loved, she would still be as helpless to control her own fate as she had ever been as a ward of the state back in Vegas.

  Emma uncrossed and recrossed her legs on the bench, shifting her weight, wondering why in the world Travis was even here. Maybe they just wanted someone else to identify the body. Maybe he was there to tell more lies about Emma, about how wild and perverted she’d been.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Detective Quinlan, who was now standing at the gate holding it open for her. “Thanks for coming down, Miss Mercer. Please follow me. ”

  As Quinlan led her past the clusters of desks, she was intensely aware of all the eyes following them both. Everyone in the office seemed to know who she was and what she was there for. A paunchy, buzz-cut officer gawked openly as she passed. A woman whose black hair was twisted in a high pompadour on her head took a surreptitious photo of her with a cell phone.

  Who knew the police force would be just like a bunch of high school kids, I thought bitterly.

  Quinlan led Emma down a linoleum hallway to an interrogation room at the back of the station. Like everything else in the building, the room was drab and industrial gray. A faded silk fig tree stood in a plastic pot in one corner, thick dust on its fake leaves. She glanced nervously at Quinlan. “How come we’re in an interrogation room?” she asked, trying to sound like she was joking. “Do I, uh, need a lawyer?”

  Quinlan’s mustache twitched slightly. “No, no, Miss Mercer. Not to worry. This is just a casual conversation. ” He moved to the far side of the table, then tossed two manila folders onto the table, side by side. The tab on the thicker one read SUTTON MERCER. The other read EMMA PAXTON.

  Emma stared at the thin folder with her name on it. What could possibly be inside? The only time she’d ever gotten in trouble with the law in her old life was the night she and Alex had broken curfew to see a punk show on UNLV campus, and the officer then hadn’t even written them up—he’d just driven them home and handed them over to Alex’s furious mother, which had been bad enough. Was the file only for information about the body they’d found in the canyon? Her fingers ached to flip it open, but that was obviously impossible with Quinlan right in front of her.

  I wanted to see inside just as badly as Emma did—especially if there was information about my body in her file. Every time I tried to imagine my corpse, an overwhelming sense of curiosity took hold of me. I’d never liked creepy things when I was alive—I didn’t watch slasher movies or medical dramas or anything like that. But the urge to see my body was like an itch just out of reach. It wouldn’t go away until I’d scratched it.