“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.
11
REALITY TV BITES
“The girl’s body was found just a half-mile off Upper Sabino Canyon Road, at the bottom of this scenic overlook.” The newscaster, the same woman who had covered Nisha’s death just a few days earlier, was now wearing a poofy yellow North Face vest. Emma guessed that must be her “outdoorsy” look. She stood in front of a picnic area with green-painted benches and an awning, wisps of hair flying free from her ponytail in the breeze.
Mrs. Mercer passed a basket of steaming rolls to Emma, her eyes never leaving the fifteen-inch television they’d propped at the end of the island. The Mercers almost never ate dinner in front of the TV, but there seemed an unspoken consensus to do so tonight.
Emma and Laurel had both been surprised when the Mercers said they would be missing school that day—until they looked out at the front lawn and saw the crowd of news vans gathered outside. The Mercers had refused to open the door, but any time they saw someone in front of a window the reporters started shouting questions. “Sutton! Sutton, did you know Emma? What do you think happened to her, Sutton?” So Laurel and Emma had spent most of the day in the kitchen, baking cookies and flipping through magazines. “You are looking for answers in the wrong places,” Emma’s horoscope had said, and she rolled her eyes. Tell me something I don’t know.
For most of her life, Emma had wanted to be an investigative reporter when she grew up. But now that she was experiencing a media siege firsthand, she wasn’t so sure. The reporters felt like nothing so much as vultures, circling her family, waiting for one of them to show signs of weakness.
The TV screen cut to a young man with glasses and a long blond ponytail, standing in front of a dormitory building on campus. “She was covered up with leaves and branches,” he said, his voice breaking. “All I could see was her . . . her foot, sticking out at a weird angle.” He looked terrified, blinking in the bright light like a nocturnal creature out during the day. This will haunt him for the rest of his life, Emma thought sadly.
The reporter returned. “The body has been identified as Emma Paxton from Las Vegas, Nevada.” The previous year’s school photo flashed on the screen. Emma had worn a vintage wrap dress she’d scored from a garage sale in Green Valley. Her bangs were shorter then; she’d grown them out to match Sutton’s longer hairstyle. Her smile was maybe a little more guarded than Sutton’s, a little less confident. Still, the image made the Mercers stir in their seats. Mr. Mercer dropped his fork onto his plate of untouched lasagna, and Mrs. Mercer stared at the screen with a rapt, shocked expression.
“It’s so weird,” Laurel said. “She looks just like you.”
All Emma could do was nod.
Watching news coverage of her own death was dizzyingly surreal. She felt weirdly exposed every time her picture appeared on-screen, as if the Mercers would suddenly be able to see that the girl in the photo was sitting right in front of them. The newscasters had said her name so many times it was almost easy to believe that poor Emma Paxton, foster kid, was dead—that she really was Sutton Mercer now.
It was weird for me, too. I watched as my parents grieved for a girl they’d never met when their own daughter was gone. Would I be buried in Vegas, far away from my family and friends? Would my headstone say my sister’s name? What if Emma never found my killer—would she live as me forever, until she was finally buried as Sutton Mercer at the ripe old age of ninety?
“Paxton went missing almost three months ago from Las Vegas, after an argument with her foster family. Clarice Lambert, her guardian at the time, spoke with our Nevada correspondent.”