Seven Minutes in Heaven (19 page)

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.

“We should leave the stuff here, how we found it. It’s a crime scene now.” She slid the paperwork and the photos back into the manila envelope and carefully put it back on the ground. Then she picked up Socktopus, hugging him to her chest once more before setting him next to the envelope.

They locked up the unit and went back to the car. Ethan hit the highway, driving carefully but fast. The desert spread out on either side of them, disappearing into darkness just a few feet from the road. Emma clutched the key to the storage unit in her hand.

Hell yeah!
I shouted silently, wishing I could slap my sister five. Garrett was finally,
finally
going down.

28

A MESSAGE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Emma pushed through the wrought-iron gate leading to the Banerjees’ backyard, Ethan right behind her. The house was completely dark, the windows gaping like empty eye sockets. The only light was the moon catching on the surface of the pool, vague and shimmering. The sight made her queasy. It was easy to imagine Nisha, facedown, her long hair billowing around her head.

“I hate it back here,” she whispered. Ethan nodded. He slid his fingers through hers and squeezed.

Two enormous French doors connected the patio to the kitchen. To the left, an alarm panel glowed softly red. Emma approached it cautiously, her nerves humming. She couldn’t risk making a mistake. If the alarm went off, Dr. Banerjee would change the code again, and who knew what he’d change it to. For a moment her fingers hovered over the numbers, about to punch in 0907. Then she thought of Garrett, and how he’d already broken in.

“Dr. Banerjee changed the code,” she whispered. “Of course. He would have, after finding Garrett in his house. There’s no way it’s Mrs. Banerjee’s birthday anymore.”

Ethan’s face fell. “You’re right. We can’t . . .” But he trailed off as she spun back to the panel. Before she could second-guess herself, Emma typed in a new number: 0420. Nisha’s birthday. For a moment, nothing happened. She held her breath, bracing herself for the blare of alarms cutting through the silent night, ready to run as fast as she could back to Ethan’s house.

But then, after what felt like forever, the light turned green. She heard a soft click inside the door. They were in.

She turned to face Ethan, a triumphant grin spreading over her face. His jaw hung slack, his head whipping from the panel to her and back again. “How did you know the right code?”

She shrugged. “A hunch.”

Ethan swallowed hard. “Jesus, Emma, you could have set the alarm off.”

“A girl’s got to get lucky sometimes. Even me.” She opened the door silently and stepped inside, her eyes adjusting to the deeper gloom of the kitchen.

The room had been scrubbed top to bottom since she’d last seen it. A strong smell of Pine-Sol lingered on the air, and the bronze fixtures winked in the scanty light. Next to the door, a bowl sat on the floor, overflowing with cat kibble.

I followed Emma’s gaze around the room, remembering the parties and tennis dinners I’d attended at Nisha’s house, standing around the kitchen island with my friends, eating carrot sticks and gossiping. Now the house was silent and empty, like the very walls were in mourning.

A small sphere of light appeared out of the blue. Emma spun around to see Ethan, holding a pocket Maglite out in front of him. It was attached to his key ring. He handed it to her. “We should keep the lights off,” he whispered. “We don’t want anyone to see us from the street. I’ll check the living room and Dr. Banerjee’s office. You take her bedroom. Meet back here in five minutes?”

“Okay,” Emma said, leaning up to kiss his cheek. Then she turned and slipped into the hall, sending the flashlight’s beam ahead of her.

Motes of dust swirled in the pale light. The pictures along the hall seemed to leer at her, grotesque in the dark. She flinched as she stepped on a squeaky floorboard, the low squeal sounding as loud as an alarm in the thick silence. What if Garrett chose this moment to rebreak into the house? What if he arrived only to find that she and Ethan had beat him to the punch? She shuddered at the thought of what he might do.

At Nisha’s bedroom door she paused. Even though she’d already searched this room once, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the evidence was here. She knew from her years as a foster kid that the only safe hiding place was somewhere personal, close to you.

Her heart thudding against her ribs, Emma paused in the doorway, sending the orb of light slowly over Nisha’s things but carefully avoiding the window. Everything was just as it had been the last time she visited. Crystalline vials of perfume sat on top of Nisha’s dresser, next to a small collection of tennis trophies. The creased spines of books faced out from the shelf, neat and alphabetized, and the bedspread was smooth and unruffled. Next to the Compaq laptop on the desk lay a DVD case for the BBC
Pride and Prejudice
miniseries—Nisha must have been watching it before she died.

Nothing seemed out of place. Emma hit her fists against her thighs in frustration, her nails digging into her palms. Nisha had found something important—and it was still
here
. Emma could feel it in her gut. But where would she have hidden something that important?

The thought came to her slowly, like a lens coming gradually into focus. Emma had hidden plenty of things herself—she’d spent her childhood protecting her scant treasures from nosy foster parents and kleptomaniacal roommates. She inhaled sharply. It seemed too much of a long shot, too simple an answer. But it was worth a try. Creeping on the balls of her feet, she pushed the door to Nisha’s bathroom open. A small night-light flashed on from the outlet by the mirror. She knelt down by the cabinet and started opening drawers.

There, in the gloom beneath the sink, was an enormous, Costco-sized carton of Tampax.

She froze, almost afraid to move. Afraid her last decent hope would be quashed. Boxes of tampons had been her go-to hiding place for years. But Nisha couldn’t possibly have had the same secret spot . . . could she?

Slowly, she pulled out the box. Her heart felt still in her chest. She groped inside the carton, past the rows of individual boxes, and at the bottom her fingers closed on something that felt like a tube.

It was a plain manila folder, rolled into a tight spiral and rubber-banded several times. Emma’s head spun as she peeled away the rubber bands and smoothed the folder flat on the ground. Paper-clipped to the outside of the folder was a piece of pink Hello Kitty notepaper. She recognized Nisha’s neat handwriting right away.

Sutton, I’m so sorry. I had a bad feeling about this after we talked, and I had to check. You need to know the truth.

Holding her breath, she flipped the folder open.

On the top page, the words
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA MEDICAL CENTER RECORDS
were typed in a large bold font. Under “department” someone had scrawled the word
psychiatric
in black pen.

When I saw the name written on the form next to
PATIENT
, it didn’t register at first. The letters were like hieroglyphics, strange and illegible. But then the world snapped into a painful, horrifying clarity.

The name sparked something in my memory, and with a deafening roar began pulling me back to that night in the canyon. And I knew with sickening certainty that finally,
finally
, I was going to relive the last moments of my life.