Seven Minutes in Heaven
Page 28

Hey man, thought you might like this video of your sweet little foster sister. Do me a favor and show her, too.
Below that was a link. Emma was willing to bet it would be dead now, but she was certain that back in August, it had led straight to the Sutton in AZ video that started it all.
“This is two days before the murder,” she said, a clammy feeling descending over her body. That meant that Sutton’s murder had been premeditated—not a crime of passion or an accident. And it meant that Garrett had been watching Emma, too; had known where she lived and with whom. It meant she’d been a part of his plan all along.
Travis had replied: That is some freaky shit, bro. Thanks for the link. But what’s in it for me if I show her?
Hollier_hell answered: $5K sound good to you? But don’t tell anyone about this. Delete these messages. If Emma leaves town you’ve done your job. Then meet me at 5784 W. Speedway in Tucson on September 15. I’ll be there with the money.
The last e-mail in the thread was from Travis: I’m game. Sept. 15. Be there.
Emma clenched her fists, her fingernails digging into her flesh. Travis had sold her to her sister’s murderer for $5,000. “Ethan. Do you know that address?”
“I’m on it.” A map flew open on the browser when he searched for the address. It was on the outskirts of Tucson, on the west side of town. When Ethan selected the pin on the map, the name of the business sprang up.
“Holy shit,” Ethan muttered.
The address the murderer had given Travis was for Rosa Linda Storage.
Slowly, Emma reached over him. She slid open his desk drawer and pulled out the tiny silver key they’d found in Garrett’s locker, holding it up next to Ethan’s monitor. She stared at the scratched-out second word again.
Emma’s blood went still in her veins. The glittering key dangled motionless between her and Ethan, catching the bright overhead light. There it was: Under the scratches and the scars on the metal, the second word was suddenly clear. It couldn’t be anything but LINDA.
Emma pulled the burner cell out of her tote. Wordlessly, she keyed in the number on the website. Ethan opened his lips to ask what she was doing, but she held her finger to her lips. The line rang five times before someone finally answered.
“Rosa Linda Storage,” croaked a man’s voice in the receiver. Emma took a deep breath.
“Hi, this is the tenant of unit three-fifty-six,” she said, using a brisk, important voice. “I’m calling to find out when my next payment is due.”
A crackling silence came from the other end of the line. After a moment, the creaky voice replied, heavy with skepticism. “This is Arthur Smith?”
Her heart sank. She’d hoped it would be in Garrett’s name—if it had been, all she’d have had to do was turn the key and Travis’s phone over to the cops. But of course Garrett had covered his tracks.
She cleared her throat. “This is Mrs. Arthur Smith, yes.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Smith.” There was a rustle of paperwork. “It looks like your account is clear through the end of the month. Will you be paying in cash again?”
Emma ended the call, lowering the phone back to her bag. Then she looked at Ethan, his eyes round and questioning.
“Get your coat,” she said. “We’re going to Rosa Linda.”
If I still had fists, I would have punched them toward the sky in excitement.
Finally, we were going to find out what was behind door number two.
27
MEMENTO MORI
Rosa Linda Storage was located on a desolate stretch of road on the outskirts of Tucson, between a run-down motel called the Flamingo and a boarded-up liquor store. A neon sign stood out front, several of the letters burnt out so that it said only OS LIN STOR. A chain-link fence wound around the property, the barbed wire dotted with incongruous red bows for the holidays.
Emma traced her sister’s initials on the key fob as Ethan pulled into the parking lot. She knew that they wouldn’t find old furniture or soccer equipment in that storage unit. Whatever it was, it had something to do with Sutton.
I knew it, too. I could feel the truth just out of my reach, like a dream that fades from memory upon waking.
Ethan parked, and they stepped out into the packed-earth courtyard. Rows of storage units, shuttered and silent, branched off into the darkness in four directions. No one else was there at that hour.
“Are you ready for this?” Ethan asked, his voice low.
“I don’t know,” Emma admitted. She took a deep breath, the dry desert air filling her lungs and calming her. “Come on,” she said, giving Ethan’s hand a squeeze. “Let’s get this over with.”
They started down the aisle of buildings hand in hand. The floodlights that lit each unit made their shadows flicker grotesquely across the ground, misshapen and eerie. Their footsteps echoed in the stillness. Farther into the desert, a coyote gave a shrill yip.
The unit numbers were painted on the doors in bright orange, starting with 100. Emma counted out loud as they walked through the aisles. “One hundred fifty,” she whispered. “Two hundred . . . three hundred . . . three fifty—it should be down here, Ethan.” She jerked her head around a corner.
Unit 356 looked like all the others, the numbers stenciled across the folding leaves in the garage-type door. Emma had leaned down to fumble at the padlock when Ethan grabbed her elbow.
“Wait,” he said, handing her a pair of knit pink gloves, which no doubt belonged to his mother, from one of the pockets in his cargo pants. From another he extracted a pair of black climbing gloves and pulled them over his own fingers.
“Good call,” Emma said, tugging on her gloves and grasping the padlock once more. The key was a perfect fit. With an almost inaudible click, the latch sprang free. Emma gripped the door’s handle—and pulled sharply up.
The inside was completely dark. She groped along the wall to find the switch, and a single fluorescent bulb hanging in the center of the unit flickered to life. The unit was large enough to hold an apartment’s worth of furniture or a few hundred boxes—but it was almost completely empty.
Almost.
In the center of the cavernous space, a single manila envelope lay on the floor just under the light. Next to it was a stuffed octopus missing one of its black button eyes. Emma knew that octopus. She’d hugged those blue knit legs countless times as a little girl, whenever she needed comfort. It was her Socktopus, one of the only things she’d brought with her from Vegas.
She slowly walked forward, picking up the stuffed animal and staring down at it. Socktopus had been in the duffel that was stolen from the bench in Sabino Canyon, her first night in Tucson. Whoever took it had acted quickly—it had only been unattended for a few minutes before she’d returned looking for it.
Ethan hung back, glancing at the open door every now and then as if afraid someone would spring out at them. “What is that?” he asked, frowning.
“My mom got it for me,” she said. Her voice sounded far away, even to her. “When I was little.”
For a moment the dingy storage unit faded, and she could feel Becky tying two of the octopus’s arms around Emma’s neck in the store so it hung down on her back like a cape. So he can protect you, Becky had explained, a rare smile lighting up her pretty face.
Emma blinked away her tears, and the dusty unit came back into focus. She tucked Socktopus under her arm, leaning down to pick up the envelope. For a moment she fumbled at the brad that held it closed, her fingers wooden and clumsy through the gloves. Then a pile of papers and photos slid out in one large stack. On top was a disc in a clear jewel case, labeled SUTTON IN AZ in red Sharpie.
“The video,” Ethan whispered.
She nodded, but she was already rifling through the pages behind the disc. There was a printout of the very first message Emma had sent Sutton. This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. We look exactly the same, and we have the same birthday. Behind that was a page with Sutton’s e-mail and Facebook passwords. And behind that were photos—a thick stack of glossy black-and-white photos.
Emma had gotten so used to seeing Sutton’s face everywhere that for a moment, she thought the pictures were of her twin. But that wasn’t right—in the very top picture, the girl stood behind a ticket window. Emma’s heart skipped a beat. It was the New York–New York roller coaster in Vegas, where she’d worked the summer before coming to Tucson. In the picture she was busy counting change for a customer, completely unaware that someone had a lens trained on her.
The next picture caught her and Alex, running side by side on a trail through Red Rock Canyon. Another showed her reaching up to pull something off the top shelf at the public library. In a third she was walking into Clarice’s house, an expression of utter despondence on her face. The photos were grainy, taken surreptitiously and at awkward angles—but she was clear in all of them.
The old Emma had been an expert at staying anonymous and invisible, at keeping low to the ground so she couldn’t get hurt. The old Emma would have been embarrassed to realize that someone had been watching her all that time.
But the new Emma? The new Emma was pissed.
And so was I.
Emma shuffled the pictures to the back of the stack of paperwork, and leafed through the rest of the pages. She frowned at one that was simply a list of numbers. For a moment she didn’t know what she was looking at. Then she recognized one of the numbers.
It was the Mercers’ alarm code.
Her jaw dropped. Beneath that code was the Chamberlains’. And below that was another set of digits she recognized: 0907.
September seven. Mrs. Banerjee’s birthday.
Nisha had given Emma that same code nearly a month earlier so she could access the mental health files at the hospital. Emma was willing to bet that was the alarm code for their house, too. Garrett had used it to break into Nisha’s house, to find what she’d been hiding there, but Dr. Banerjee had scared him away.
Except Dr. Banerjee was out of town now.
“Ethan,” she breathed, holding up the sheet of paper. “We can get into Nisha’s house. We can find the evidence!”
Ethan stared at her. “Emma, we need to go straight to the cops. The stuff in here is enough to put Garrett away.”
“But it’s not,” she argued. “There’s nothing here that points to Garrett. It’s rented under a fake name, paid in cash—and I’m willing to bet there aren’t any fingerprints on any of this stuff,” she added bitterly. “The only thing that links Garrett to this unit is the key we found, and that’s our word against his. But whatever Nisha had was damning enough that Garrett killed her for it.”
Ethan let out a breath. He glanced around the storage unit, then back at her. “Okay. You’re right. We’ll swing by Nisha’s and look around one more time. Then we’ll go to the cops and give them what we have.”
She nodded, excitement bubbling in her chest like fresh water from a spring. She felt lighter than she had in weeks. They were so close now—just a little more evidence, and they’d be able to prove what Garrett had done to her sister.