Seven Minutes in Heaven

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 Voicetonight? 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.