As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  Pip’s pen dragged to a stop, her mind too full. “Maria, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. This has all been very”—don’t say helpful, don’t say terrifying—“interesting,” she said.

  “Oh, sweetheart, please, thank you for taking the time.” Maria sniffed. “There’s no one I can talk to about this, no one who listens, so thank you for that. Even if it goes no further, I understand, darling. You know how hard it is to appeal a conviction once it is made? It is almost hopeless, we know this. But Billy will be so touched to even know you reached out. And I will get right on to scanning the transcript of Billy’s interview, so you can see for yourself.”

  Pip wasn’t sure she wanted to see for herself. There was a part of her that wanted to clasp her hands over her eyes and wish this all away. Wish herself away. Disappear.

  “Tomorrow,” Maria said firmly. “I promise. Shall I send to your podcast email address?”

  “Y-yes, that would be perfect, thank you,” Pip said. “And I’ll be in contact soon.”

  “Goodbye, darling,” Maria said, and Pip thought she heard it in her voice then, the smallest stirrings of hope.

  She thumbed the red button on her phone, and the silence grated in her ears.

  It was a maybe.

  It was possible.

  And that possibility, it began with Green Scene Ltd.

  And it ended—the voice in her head interrupted—with her dead.

  The sixth victim of the DT Killer.

  Pip tried to speak over that voice in her head, distract it. Don’t think about the end for now, just the next step. One day at a time. But how many more of those did she have?

  Shut up, leave her alone. First step: Green Scene. The echo of those two words sounding in her head, morphing into the click of her pen. DT. DT. DT.

  And that’s when she realized: Jason Bell wasn’t the only person she knew who was connected to Green Scene Ltd. There was someone else too: Daniel da Silva. Before he became a police officer, he’d worked at Jason Bell’s company for a couple of years. Maybe even worked directly with Billy Karras.

  This case, which just yesterday had seemed so far away from her, so remote, it was creeping closer and closer to home, just like those chalk figures climbing up her wall. Closer and closer, like it was leading her right back to Andie Bell and to the very beginning of everything.

  There was a sudden sound, a harsh buzzing.

  Pip flinched.

  It was only her phone, vibrating against the desk with an incoming call.

  Pip glanced at the screen as she picked up the phone. No Caller ID.

  “Hello?” she said.

  There was no answer down the other end. No voice, no sound, other than the faintest trace of static.

  “Hello?” Pip said again, holding onto the o sound. She waited, listened. Could she hear someone breathing, or was that just her own? “Maria?” she said. “Is that you?”

  No answer.

  A telemarketing call, maybe, with a bad connection.

  Pip held her breath and listened. Closed her eyes to focus her ears. It was faint, but it was there. Someone was there, breathing into the phone. Couldn’t they hear her speaking?

  “Cara?” Pip said. “Cara, I swear if you think this is funny, then—”

  The call ended.

  Pip lowered the phone and stared at it. Stared at it for far too long, as though it might explain itself to her. And it wasn’t her own voice in her head now, it was Harriet Hunter who spoke to her, in an imagined voice Pip created for her, talking about her murdered sister from that article about DT. She also mentioned getting a few prank calls. That was in the week before she went missing.

  Pip’s heart reacted, and the gun went off inside her chest. Billy Karras might be the DT Killer. And he might not. And if—an if that circled Pip like a black hole—if Billy wasn’t DT, then the game had changed again. Into the final round. And now a timer was ticking down.

  The week before.

  Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

  File Name:

  Download: Billy Karras police interview.pdf

  Page 41

  LT. NOLAN: Come on, Billy, let’s stop messing around here. It’s going to be OK. Look at me. Let’s stop playing this game, hey? You will feel so much better when you just say it. Trust me. Everything will be better for you if you just tell me what happened. You probably didn’t mean for any of this to happen, right? And you didn’t mean to hurt any of those girls, I understand that. Maybe they wronged you in some way, did they? Were they mean to you, Billy?

  BK: No, sir, I don’t know any of them. I didn’t do it.

  LT. NOLAN: See, you’re lying to me now, Billy, aren’t you? Because we know you knew Bethany Ingham. She was your supervisor at work, wasn’t she?

  BK: Yes, sorry, I meant I didn’t know the other women. I knew Bethany, though. I didn’t mean to lie, sir, I’m just so tired. Could we have a break soon?

  LT. NOLAN: Did you hate Bethany, Billy? Did you think she was attractive? Did you want to sleep with her, and did she turn you down? Is that why you killed her?

  BK: No, I— Please, can you stop asking so many questions so fast? I–I’m trying to not get confused, to not accidentally lie again. I didn’t hate Bethany at all. I liked her, but not like how you’re saying. She was nice to me. She brought in a cake to the office for my birthday last year, made everyone sing for me. People aren’t normally nice to me like that, except my mom.

  LT. NOLAN: So, you’re a loner, are you, Billy? Is that what you’re saying? You don’t have a girlfriend, do you? Do women make you uncomfortable because you’re lonely? Does it make you angry that they don’t want to be with you?

  BK: No, I…Sir, I just, I can’t keep up. Please, I’m trying. I’m not a loner, I just don’t have many friends at the moment, maybe some of the guys at work. █​█​█​█​█​█​█, who used to work with me in Bethany’s team too, he’s actually a police officer now. And I have nothing but respect for women. My mom raised me, a single mother, and she’s always taught me that.

  Page 76

  LT. NOLAN: You can’t remember?

  BK: I just mean that sometimes, when I’ve drunk a lot, I black out. I can’t really remember what I’ve done. I think I have a problem. I’m going to get help with it, I promise.

  LT. NOLAN: So you’re saying that you don’t remember any of the nights that these women died? You can’t remember where you were on any of these dates?

  BK: No, I would have been at my house, I just don’t remember exactly. I was explaining to you sometimes the reason why I don’t remember.

  LT. NOLAN: But, Billy, if you don’t remember, isn’t it possible that you weren’t at home? That you did kill these women, while you were blacked out?

  BK: I-I-I’m not sure, sir. I don’t…I guess it is possible—

  LT. NOLAN: It is possible that you killed these women? Just say it, Billy.

  BK: No, I di— Just, if I don’t remember, then I can’t say what I was or wasn’t doing, that’s all. Can I get some water or something? My head hurts.

  LT. NOLAN: Just tell me, Billy. And then this can all stop, and yes, you can have some water, get some sleep. Come on, we’re both tired. You will feel so much better, so much lighter. The guilt must just be eating you up. Just tell me you did it. You can trust me, Billy, you know that. You’ve already gone from saying I didn’t do it to I don’t remember. Come on, let’s just go one step further, tell me the truth.

  BK: That is the truth. I didn’t do it, but I don’t remember those nights.

  LT. NOLAN: Stop lying to me, Billy. Your van was captured driving to the site where Phillipa Brockfield’s body was dumped, on that same morning. Your DNA is all over Tara Yates’s body. Look, I have a file as thick as my arm of e
vidence against you. It’s over. Just tell me what you did and I can make this all go away.

  BK: I shouldn’t have touched her. Tara. I’m sorry. I thought she was alive. I was trying to help her. That’s why my DNA is on her.

  LT. NOLAN: Someone saw you, Billy.

  BK: S-saw me? Doing what?

  Page 77

  LT. NOLAN: You know what, Billy. You know exactly what. Let’s stop pretending here. You’ve been caught. Just tell me, so we can give the families of these poor girls some peace.

  BK: S-someone saw me? With Tara…before? At night? But I don’t remember, I don’t…How could I not remember if…This doesn’t make sense.

  LT. NOLAN: What doesn’t make sense, Billy?

  BK: Well, from everything you’re telling me…all the evidence you have, it sounds like…maybe, I must have done it. But I don’t understand how.

  LT. NOLAN: Maybe you blocked it out, Billy. Maybe you didn’t want to remember, because you feel so sorry for what you’ve done.

  BK: Maybe, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. But someone saw me?

  LT. NOLAN: I’m going to need you to say it out loud, Billy. Tell me what you did.

  BK: I think, maybe…it must have been me. I don’t understand how, but it was me, wasn’t it? I was the one who hurt those women. I’m sorry. I don’t…I wouldn’t ever do anything like that. But it must have been me.

  LT. NOLAN: Well done, Billy. That’s really good. There’s no need to cry, now. I know how sorry you must feel. Come on, now, here’s a Kleenex. There you go. Right, I’ll go and get you some water now, but when I’m back, we need to carry on this conversation, OK? Get everything, all the details out in the open. You’ve done really well now, Billy. You must feel better already.

  BK: Not really. Are you…is my mom going to find out?

  Page 91

  LT. NOLAN: How did you kill them, Billy?

  BK: It’s the tape around their faces. They couldn’t breathe, that’s how.

  LT. NOLAN: No, Billy. That’s not how they died. Come on, you know the answer. How did you kill them? It wasn’t the duct tape.

  BK: I…I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry. Did I, did I strangle them? Y-yes, I strangled them.

  LT. NOLAN: Good, Billy.

  BK: With my hands.

  LT. NOLAN: No, it wasn’t with your hands, was it, Billy? You used something. What did you use?

  BK: Um…I don’t…maybe, a rope?

  LT. NOLAN: Yes, it was. Blue rope. We found fibers that match the exact type of rope in your van.

  BK: It’s the kind we use at work. Especially with the tree surgeon teams. I must have taken it from work, did I?

  LT. NOLAN: As well as the duct tape.

  BK: I guess.

  LT. NOLAN: Where did you kill them, Billy? After you abducted them, where did you take them to kill them?

  BK: Um, I don’t…my work van, maybe? And then I could drive them straight to where they were found.

  LT. NOLAN: You left each of them for a while, though, didn’t you? After you bound them in the duct tape, before you returned to strangle them. A few of the women had managed to loosen the tape around their wrists, tear it in places, which suggests you left them unsupervised for a little while. Where did you go, in that time?

  BK: I…just drive around, I suppose.

  Page 102

  LT. NOLAN: Good, that’s right, Billy. And what did you take from Melissa Denny? As a trophy.

  BK: Another bit of jewelry, I think.

  LT. NOLAN: No, it wasn’t, that time. It was something else. Something else a woman might carry in her purse.

  BK: Oh, maybe her wallet? H-her driver’s license?

  LT. NOLAN: No, Billy. You know what it was. Something she probably used every day.

  BK: Oh. A lipstick?

  LT. NOLAN: You might have taken a lipstick too, Billy. But there was something else missing from her bag. Something bigger than that, something her family told us she took everywhere.

  BK: What—oh…something…h-hair, a hairbrush? Is that what you mean by that?

  LT. NOLAN: Yes, it was a hairbrush, wasn’t it, Billy? One of those wider brushes. She had a lot of hair, Melissa, long blond hair. Is that why you wanted to keep the brush?

  BK: I guess. That makes sense.

  LT. NOLAN: And what color was the brush?

  BK: P-pink?

  LT. NOLAN: Hmm, I’d describe it more as a purple, myself. A light purple. Lavender-ish.

  BK: L-like lilac?

  LT. NOLAN: Yes, that’s exactly it. So, where are you keeping the trophies, Billy? Phillipa’s necklace, Melissa’s hairbrush, Bethany’s watch, Julia’s earrings, and Tara’s key rings. We’ve searched your house and your van, and we couldn’t find them.

  BK: I think I must have thrown them away, then. I don’t remember.

  LT. NOLAN: Threw them in the trash?

  BK: Yeah. Wrapped them up and threw them in the trash.

  LT. NOLAN: You didn’t want to keep them?

  BK: Can I please go to sleep now? I’m just so tired.

  The town was sleeping but Pip was not. And neither was someone else.

  An alert on her phone. A new message through her website. A notification on Twitter.

  Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?

  Her blood didn’t feel right. It was too fast, foaming uncomfortably as it crashed in and out of her chest. Maybe those two coffees in a row at the café had been a mistake. But Cara had offered, said Pip looked tired at this ungodly hour of the morning. Now Pip’s hands were shaking, and her blood was fizzing as she walked from the café toward Church Street.

  She was running on empty, no sleep at all last night, none. Even though she’d taken a full pill, a double dose. It was wasted on her, after reading through Billy Karras’s interview transcript. More times than she could count, sounding out the voices in her head like a play, the pauses filled with static from the recorder. And the voice she’d imagined for Billy…it didn’t sound like a killer at all. He sounded scared, confused. He sounded like her.

  Every shadow in her room had taken on the shape of a man, watching her wrapped up in her comforter. Every blinking electronic light was a pair of eyes in the dark: the LEDs on her printer and the Bluetooth speaker on her desk. It was even worse after the new message came through at two-thirty, the world shrinking to just her and those prowling shadows.

  Pip had lain there, eyes growing scratchy and dry as she stared up at the black ceiling. If she was being honest with herself, truly honest, she could hardly even call that a confession at all. Yes, the words had come out of Billy’s mouth. Yes, he’d said I was the one who hurt those women. But the context changed everything. The lead-up and the aftermath. They stripped the meaning right out of those words.

  Maria hadn’t been exaggerating, hadn’t been twisting the truth because she’d read the transcript through a mother’s eyes. She was right: the confession did seem coerced. The detective had trapped Billy into a corner by talking in circles, catching him in lies he never meant to tell. No one had seen Billy with Tara Yates the night before, that wasn’t true. And yet Billy had believed it of himself, believed a made-up person over his own memory. Lieutenant David Nolan had fed him everything, all the details of the murders. Billy didn’t even know how he’d killed his own victims before being told.

  There was a chance it was all an act. A clever ploy by a manipulative killer. She’d tried to comfort herself with that thought. But that was overshadowed when placed beside the other possibility: that Billy Karras was an innocent man. Now that she’d read his confession, it was no longer just possible, no longer a weak maybe. In her gut she could feel it tilting, abandoning maybe to reach for other words. Likely. Plausible.


  And there must be something wrong with her, because part of her had felt relieved. No, that wasn’t the right word, it was more like…excited. Her skin prickling, the world shifting into half speed around her. This was it, her other drug. A twisted and writhing knot for her to untie. But she couldn’t believe that part without accepting the other, the one that came with it, hand in hand.

  Two halves of the same truth: if Billy Karras was innocent, then the DT Killer was still out there. Out here. He was back. And Pip had one week left before he made her disappear.

  So, she would just have to find him first. Find whoever was doing this to her, whether it was the DT Killer or someone pretending to be.

  The key was Green Scene Ltd., so that’s where she would begin. Had already begun. Last night, as the clock on her dashboard ticked past 4:00 a.m. and on, Pip had scrolled through her old documents. Searching through files and folders until she found the document she needed. The one that had snuck up on her brain like an itch, reminding her of its existence, of its importance, as she’d tried to think through everything she knew about Jason Bell’s company.

  Back into My Documents and the folder labeled Schoolwork. Into Senior Year, and the folder sat halfway between her AP classes.

  Senior Capstone Project.

  Pip clicked into it, revealing the rows and rows of Word documents and sound files she’d made one year ago. Photos and .jpgs: the pages of Andie Bell’s academic planner spread open on her desk and an annotated map of Fairview Pip had drawn herself, following Andie’s last-known movements. She’d scrolled down through all the Capstone Project Log documents until she found the one. The itch. Capstone Project Log—Entry 20, the one with the interview with Jess Walker.