Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Sara Shepard

Page 32

 

  Emma felt like something was clamped down around her lungs, cold and metallic and painful. This wasn’t what Ethan had told her. For a moment she thought it had to be a mistake, or a joke. Maybe Nisha had been trying to get into the Lying Game and had mocked these up to mess with her. But somewhere at the back of her mind Emma knew the records were real. The papers shook in her fingers. She turned the page quickly, her breath short and hard.

  Over the course of our sessions, Ethan confided in me that he had considered the deceased to be his “best friend,” but that she’d been playing with another child from the neighborhood just before her death. Again and again, he told me that “you weren’t supposed to have more than one best friend. ” Ultimately, Ethan confessed to me that he’d killed Elizabeth Pascal on purpose, then lied to the authorities. Due to the double-jeopardy clause I am unable to make this observation to the court, as Ethan has already been acquitted.

  Her mind reeling, Emma shook her head as if someone were reading the notes out loud to her. The shrink had to be wrong. She must have misunderstood what Ethan told him. The little girl’s death had been an accident, a mistake, and Ethan had been carrying this guilt for his entire life. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell Emma the truth. He must have been tormented by the memory. She kept reading, faster this time, looking for the words that would reflect her Ethan, the caring, thoughtful boy she had fallen in love with.

  Ethan is incredibly gifted at playing to an audience. I have caught him in dozens of lies in the past six months, all engineered to manipulate my opinion of him. In our first sessions he seemed confused and saddened by what he had done; once he’d made sure I could not do anything to indict him, however, he couldn’t seem to resist telling me the details of what must now be called a murder. He has a need to show off and reveal the depths of his own cleverness, which in this case has led to his confession for a crime he can no longer be charged with. I am of the opinion that Ethan has antisocial personality disorder with obsessive tendencies, possibly bordering on psychopathy. It is likely that he will display violent behavior again.

  She whipped through the pages of the report, looking for a note that said obviously this had been a huge mistake, that Ethan Landry couldn’t have hurt a fly. She tried to find the word CURED rubber-stamped across a page in green ink. But the transcripts attached to the report didn’t seem to challenge the doctor’s opinion. “If she wasn’t going to be my friend, she didn’t matter anymore. She deserved what she got,” Ethan said in one session. In another, he boasted: “The police officers in San Diego are stupid. They were really easy to trick. You’re actually pretty stupid too, Dr. White, but that’s okay. I like talking to you anyway. ”

  The taste of bile filled Emma’s mouth. Even as her brain spun, making frantic excuses and explanations—this wasn’t her Ethan, the shrink was wrong, the reports were fake—in some dark corner of her mind, thoughts were cascading into one another like falling dominoes.

  Only Ethan had known she wasn’t Sutton. None of Sutton’s friends or family had figured it out. But Ethan, a boy Sutton barely knew, had confronted Emma that very first week in Tucson. You’re not who you say you are, he’d told her. You’re not Sutton. You’re someone else. She remembered, with a cold, sick dread, that she’d immediately accused him of killing her sister—how else could he have known that Sutton was gone? He’d recoiled as though she’d slapped him, his face gray. Sutton’s dead? he’d repeated, clearly shocked. And Emma—trusting, naive Emma—hadn’t questioned him again. She’d simply broken down and told him the whole story, desperate for an ally.

  Another domino fell. Ethan lived across the street from the canyon. Ethan had a telescope that was always angled in that direction. Ethan had been positioned perfectly to watch Sutton on her last night alive—and to watch Emma arrive and leave her duffel bag on a park bench.

  Time froze as Emma quickly rewound through the last four months, replaying every moment, every conversation with Ethan. How he’d fed her information and encouraged her to pursue different suspects. How he’d tried to keep her away from Thayer, and then Garrett. How desperate he’d been to keep her from Nisha’s house when she’d wanted to look for the evidence. How Ethan had arrived late to dinner at the Mercers’ the night Nisha had died—how he hadn’t been in school that day. And she knew he was an expert hacker.

  Her heart froze over in her chest, hard and metallic, heavy with certainty. Ethan had killed Nisha. Ethan had killed her sister.

  And now she was alone with him in a dark house.

  Footsteps echoed in the kitchen, and she froze.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” came Ethan’s voice. It sounded strangely distorted, like it belonged to a stranger. Emma listened furtively, and then fumbled in her purse for the burner cell.

  Her hands were shaking so hard she had to try a few times before she managed to dial the right number. When the line began to ring, she crammed her fist in her mouth to keep from letting out a sob.

  “Hello?” Laurel’s voice cut through the dense silence. Emma flinched, covering the speaker with one hand. Down the hall she heard something clatter onto the tile. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “It’s me,” she hissed. She cupped her hand around her mouth, her knuckles white around the phone. “Emma. ”

  “Emma?” Laurel’s voice shot up an octave. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “Laurel,” Emma gasped, swallowing a frantic sob. “It’s Ethan. He did it, there are these files at Nisha’s house, and it sounds like he’s killed before. ”

  “Emma, wait, slow down,” Laurel instructed.

  But Emma couldn’t stop, the words tumbling from her mouth. “I don’t know what to do. I’m alone in Nisha’s house with him . . . ”

  Emma trailed off as footsteps echoed down the hall. Her jaw started to shake. She fumbled the phone, then jammed her finger against the power button and shoved it into the depths of her bag. The file was still in her hands. She glanced wildly around the room, looking for somewhere to put it. Just outside the door, a floorboard creaked.

  Quickly, she shoved the file back under the sink, back behind the Tampax box. As she stood up again and opened the bathroom door, she came face-to-face with Ethan.

  “Were you talking to someone in here?” he asked.

  “Just . . . just myself. It helps me think,” she said, clasping her fingers together behind her back so he couldn’t see them shaking. All she could think about was the file, inches from them both. She forced herself not to look toward the sink. “Did you find anything?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. What about you?”

  “No, nothing. ” She knew as soon as she’d said it that she’d answered too quickly. Her voice was shrill in her ears. He blinked, staring at her strangely. Then he exhaled loudly.

  “Whatever Nisha had on Garrett, I guess she hid it really well. ” He glanced around the room. For a moment she could have sworn his gaze lingered on the cabinet. Then he looked back at her. “We just have to hope that the stuff in the storage unit is enough to put Garrett away. ”

  She nodded silently. Her insides felt stripped raw. Ethan stood before her, the same Ethan he’d been ten minutes earlier. The same Ethan who told her he loved her, who covered her face in tender kisses. The same Ethan she’d given her virginity to. But he’d never been that Ethan, not really.

  He slid his fingers through hers, as he’d done a thousand times before. But now the touch sent a howl of panic sweeping through her. That hand had killed her sister. She fought to control the tremor of fear running up and down her body. She couldn’t let him sense it.

  “Let’s go,” Ethan whispered. “There’s nothing for us here. ”

  “You’re right,” she said, and let him lead her down the hall.

  Agassi crouched over his bowl, eating his kibble with a crunch that seemed loud in the silent kitchen. Ethan pushed the patio door open, then turned back to face her. For a moment her legs refused t
o budge. She stood frozen in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and staring, her heart hammering in her chest. For a split second she thought she saw Ethan’s expression shift, an uncertain frown flickering over his face. She swallowed hard, then followed him out the door.

  Her only hope was to play along like nothing had changed and get to the police station. Once she was there, once she was safe, then she could start to think of a better plan. She forced a smile as they pushed back through the wrought-iron gate to where Ethan had parked his car. “I can’t believe this is almost over,” she whispered.

  “Me neither. ” He ran his fingertips lightly up her arm. She shivered at the touch, her throat constricting in a wave of revulsion.

  Ethan opened the passenger-side door of his Honda. Panic ripped through me as I realized my sister was going to get in with him. I wished I could grab her shirt and pull her back.

  Emma seemed to have the same thought—she paused with one sneaker on the footboard. Fear clawed at her stomach, but there was something else churning there too, a softer, sadder emotion. Ethan stood next to her, waiting to close the door for her the way he always did. He gave her a curious look. She reached up to put her hand on his cheek.

  “Thank you, Ethan,” she said. And slowly, she stood up on her tiptoes and placed a single, soft kiss on his lips.

  She didn’t know whether she had kissed him to lull him into a false sense of security—or to say good-bye.

  Ethan gave her a long, tender look, his hand touching her lips. Then he shut the door carefully behind her, walking around the car to get in on the driver’s side. Emma clutched the sides of the seat as they pulled away from the house, her knuckles white and aching.

  The scant houses they passed were draped in red and green lights, plastic reindeer perched on roofs or in Xeriscaped yards. One family had hung a giant neon candy cane over their four-car garage. The roads were winding out here, and she felt disoriented in the darkness. Emma’s stomach pitched with every turn, her breath shallow and fast. She watched Ethan from the corner of her eye. He drove with both hands on the wheel, his face washed out by the pale blue dashboard light. It gave him a spooky, alien look. Not quite human.

  It only slowly dawned on her that something was not quite right—they should have hit a main road by now. She stared out the window, trying to figure out where they were. When she saw the neon candy cane for a second time, she turned to look at him.

  “I think you missed the turn,” she said, her voice tight with anxiety.

  Alarm bells started to go off at the back of my mind. I stared silently at Ethan. He didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “I know you found the records, Emma. ” His voice was so low she almost thought she was imagining it for a minute. “You know as well as I do that we’re not going to the cops. ” The car hummed into gear as he slowly pushed down on the gas pedal.

  For a moment Emma’s eyes went out of focus, the world blurring around her. She could feel the car accelerating. Ahead of the car she caught sight of Nisha’s house, and Ethan’s next to it—but they weren’t slowing down. He was heading straight for the desert.