Emma nodded, shrugging. “Yeah. I know it’s weird; I thought so, too. But like I already told you, Becky’s weird. Maybe she was in contact with Emma, too.”
Quinlan pushed the phone back across the table. Emma slid it into her pocket, her skin crawling under his gaze. He was watching her intently, his gray eyes sharp and glinting. She tried not to squirm away from making eye contact.
“Do you know anything about her foster family?” he asked then. She shook her head.
“I saw them on TV yesterday, but she didn’t tell me anything about them.” She frowned slightly. “I thought I saw her foster brother—what’s his name, Travis?—out front in the waiting area. Does he know anything about what happened to my sister?”
The corner of Quinlan’s eyebrow twitched again, but besides that his face didn’t move. “We’re hoping he can help us with a timeline,” he said. He picked up Emma’s file, opening it near his chest. She strained her eyes to try to see over the top of the page, but he kept it at a close angle to his body.
“Okay, now, what can you tell me about Nisha Banerjee?” Quinlan’s voice was almost conversational, his face neutral and earnest, but a blade of cold shot up Emma’s spine. She stared at him blankly.
“What about her?” she asked. She fought to keep her fingernails out of her mouth, instead sliding her hands under her butt on the chair. Quinlan gave her a disingenuously curious look.
“Well, her phone records show that she called you over and over the day she died. She apparently had something really important to tell you. What was so urgent?”
Emma shrugged, trying to look more wistful than terrified. “I’ve already told you, I wish I knew. She died before she could tell me. But what’s that got to do with Emma?”
“I don’t know, Sutton. You tell me.” Quinlan closed the file and set it down, then crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at her for a long moment, as if expecting her to volunteer more information.
Alarm bells went off in my head. I knew this game too well. Quinlan and I had played cat and mouse for the past few years. His bullshit radar was hair-trigger keen. Emma needed to step very carefully.
Quinlan leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his neck. “You know, when I first got word of this, I was sure it was a prank. Sutton can’t have a twin, I thought—one of you is more than enough. Still, something isn’t adding up.”
Emma straightened in her chair. Her hands trembled, but she tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Hey, thanks for recording this. I’m glad whoever’s going to listen will hear you harassing a grieving teenager without her parents in the room.”
That seemed to startle him. He glanced at the recorder, then back at her. “Look, I’m just saying, given your history the whole thing seems kind of far-fetched.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get to write my own life,” Emma snapped. That was true enough, she thought. “Sorry you don’t like the plot.”
Quinlan held up his hands defensively. “All right, I’m sorry. You’re right.” He sighed. “Can you just do me one favor, though?”
“What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Can I swab your cheek?” She frowned, but he persisted. “I don’t want to go into details, but your sister’s body wasn’t in great shape when we found it. We just want to make sure that she is your biological twin. A quick DNA test will resolve the whole thing.”
Emma bit her lip. There was something about it that she didn’t like—Quinlan’s rapid-fire questioning had left her feeling vulnerable and confused. But there was no way a DNA test could incriminate her—she and Sutton would be identical, and refusing would seem suspicious. She nodded.
Quinlan extracted a Q-tip from a clear plastic tube in his briefcase. She opened wide, and he ran it along the inside of her cheek, peering into her mouth like a dentist. Then he briskly slid the swab back in the tube and slammed his briefcase shut.
“Wait right here,” he said. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
With that he turned to the door and was gone.
An uneasy feeling descended on me in the silence left in his wake. I didn’t trust Quinlan. He was almost as crafty as I’d been. And now he was out of sight. But that also meant that Emma was alone—and he’d left the files on the table. It was finally time to see how I’d died.
17
BODY OF EVIDENCE
Emma counted to ten, holding her breath so she could hear Quinlan’s movements as he went down the hall. A distant door opened and shut, and then there was silence. When she was sure he was gone, she grabbed the file that listed her own name.
She flipped it open—and immediately dropped it. The file landed on the table in front of her, gaping open. Paper-clipped to the inside of the folder was a photo of a skeleton.
Emma’s throat went dry. She’d known there would probably be post-mortem pictures in the file, but she hadn’t stopped to imagine what they’d look like. She couldn’t swallow; her tongue felt like sandpaper inside her mouth. But she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. What if there were clues the cops hadn’t known to look for? She had to see those pictures.
The body’s empty eye sockets stared straight up at the sky. Brightly colored leaves partially covered it, red and gold and brown. Scraps of skin still clung to the bones, and its long hair spread out behind it, dried out and bleached red by sun and exposure. The skull’s awful grin was a strange contrast to the faded pink hoodie still zipped around the corpse’s torso.