WOODS
The inside of the station was the same as the past two times Emma had been there: first to report that Sutton was missing, then after she’d stolen the bag from Clique. It still had that rancid smell of old takeout. The telephones bleated loudly and jarringly. An old HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?
flyer with Thayer Vega’s face and information hung on a bulletin board in the corner, next to a document listing Tucson’s most wanted. Emma stepped forward and gave her name to an emaciated woman with a helmet-perm who sat at the front desk.
“S-U-T-T-O-N M-E-R-C-E-R,” the woman repeated, her purple acrylic nails tapping each letter on an ancient-looking keyboard. “Have a seat and Detective Quinlan will be right with you.”
Emma sat on a hard yellow plastic chair and looked at the bulletin board again. The calendar was still on August.
Emma guessed it was the receptionist who had chosen the picture of a kitten chasing a tattered ball of red yarn. Next she scanned the MOST WANTED poster. It looked like the majority of the guys on it had outstanding warrants for drug possession. Finally, she let her eyes graze the MISSING
poster. Thayer’s hazel eyes stared directly at her, the hint of a smile playing across his lips. For a moment, Emma swore the boy in the photo actually winked at her, but that was impossible. She ran her hands over the back of her neck, trying to get a grip. But Thayer was somewhere in neck, trying to get a grip. But Thayer was somewhere in this building. Just his proximity made her shudder.
“Miss Mercer.” Quinlan appeared in the doorway wearing dark brown pants and a tan button-down. At six feet tall, he cut an imposing figure. “C’mon back.” Emma stood and followed him down the tiled hallway.
Quinlan opened the door to the same cinderblock interrogation room he’d stuck Emma in the week before, when he’d questioned her about shoplifting from Clique. As soon as the door whooshed open, Emma was enveloped in lavender Febreze. She pressed her hand to her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth.
Quinlan scraped back a chair and gestured for Emma to sit. She lowered herself into it slowly, and Quinlan sat across from her. He leveled a look at her over the table, as if he expected her to just start talking. Emma studied the gun at his waist. How many times had he used it?
“I called you in about your car,” Quinlan finally said. He steepled his hands and stared at Emma over his fingertips.
“We found it. But first—is there anything you want to tell me about?”
Emma tensed, her mind drawing a blank. She knew very little about Sutton’s car—that she had used it in a cruel prank against her friends a few months ago, pretending to stal the vehicle on the train tracks when an Amtrak commuter was barreling down on them. That she had signed it out of the impound lot the night she died. That it had since vanished, along with Sutton.
I wished I remembered what I’d done with the car that day. But I didn’t.
Still, Emma’s heart quickened with excitement, too.
Sutton was driving that car the day she died. Maybe the car held a clue inside of it. Maybe there was some sort of evidence in there. Or maybe—she cringed—maybe it contained Sutton’s body.
I hoped not. But suddenly, a flash of memory sparked in my mind. I felt my feet pounding over rocks and my ankles scratching against tree branches and cactus needles as I sprinted across a dark path. Fear pulsed through me as I ran. Then I heard footsteps hammering the earth behind me, but I didn’t stop to turn around to see who was following me. In the distance, I was able to make out the outline of my car waiting in a clearing beyond the brush.
But just before I could reach it, the memory popped like a soap bubble.
Quinlan cleared his throat. “Sutton? Can you answer my question?”
Emma swallowed hard, wrenched from her spinning thoughts. “Um, no. I don’t have anything to tell you about the car.”
The detective sighed loudly, raking his hands through his dark hair. “Fine. Well, the car was abandoned in the desert a few miles away from Sabino Canyon.” He sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at Emma meaningfully, as if waiting for some sort of reaction.
“Want to explain how it got there?”
Emma blinked, her nerve endings firing rapidly. “Um…
it was stolen?”
Quinlan smirked. “Of course it was.” The corners of his mouth lifted. “So then I’m guessing you don’t know anything about the blood we found on it?”
Emma’s entire body shot to life. “Blood? Whose?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re still testing the evidence.” Emma pushed her hands to her lap so Quinlan wouldn’t see them shake. The blood had to be Sutton’s.
Had someone run down her sister then stashed the car and Sutton’s body in the desert? Who?
Quinlan leaned forward, perhaps sensing Emma’s fear. “I know you’re hiding something. Something big.” Emma shook her head slowly, not trusting her voice to work.
Then Quinlan reached behind him and pulled a plastic bag from a rusted metal shelf. He emptied the contents onto the table in front of Emma. An ikat-print silk scarf fluttered across the table, along with a stainless-steel water bottle, a duplicate of the sign-out sheet from the impound lot with Sutton’s signature on it in big, bold letters, and a copy of Little House in the Big Woods.
“We found these items inside the car,” he explained, pushing them across the table.
Emma’s fingers traced a line across the silk scarf. It smelled exactly like Sutton’s room—like fresh flowers, chocolate mint, and that organic, Suttony essence she couldn’t quite put her finger on.