As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

“Someone who used to go over to their house, even have dinner with them,” Pip said, underscoring the line with her finger. She clicked her tongue as another old thought stirred, came back to life.

  “What?” Ravi asked.

  “Last year, I went to speak to Becca at the Fairview Mail office. This was back when Max and Daniel da Silva were my main suspects for Andie. We talked about Dan, because I found out he was one of the officers who did the initial search of their house when Andie went missing. And Becca told me Daniel was close with her dad. Jason got him a job at Green Scene, then promoted him to the office, and also was the one who suggested Dan apply to be a police officer.” Pip was untethered again, floating through time, from then to now, the start to the end. “She said that Daniel was often coming round theirs after work, sometimes stayed for dinner.”

  “Oh, right,” Ravi said gravely.

  “Daniel da Silva.” Pip said his name again, testing it out on her tongue, trying to somehow fit all the syllables inside DT.

  “And there’s this bit.” Ravi scrolled back up the email draft. “When she talks about going to the police, but she’s scared they won’t believe her and that he might find out. There’s this part that trips me up.” He pointed it out. “Of course he’d find out. He’s practically one of them. One of what?”

  Pip ran the sentences through her head, tilting them to see them from a different angle. “A police officer, it sounds like. Not sure what the practically means.”

  “Maybe she meant a newly trained police officer, like Daniel da Silva was.” Ravi completed her thought.

  “Daniel da Silva,” Pip said again, testing it out, watching her breath dissipate around the room, taking his name with it. And what about Nat? asked the other side of her brain. She and Dan weren’t the closest of siblings, but he was still her big brother. Could Pip really think that of him? She’d certainly considered him before, for Andie’s murder, and in Jamie’s disappearance. What was different now? She and Nat were close, bonded, tied together: that’s what was different now. And he had a wife. A baby.

  “I thought you were speaking to that retired detective today too?” Ravi said, a tug at her sweater to bring her attention back to him.

  “Yeah, he canceled on me last-minute,” Pip said with a sniff. “Rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “OK, that’s good.” Ravi nodded absently, eyes returning to Andie’s never-sent email.

  “I just need my phone to ring,” Pip said, staring down at it lying inconspicuously on her desk. “DT just has to call me one more time. Then CallTrapper will give me his number and then I can find out who he is, if it is Daniel or…” She broke off, narrowing her eyes at her phone, begging it to ring, wishing so hard she could almost hear the echoes of her ringtone.

  “And then you can go to Detective Hawkins,” Ravi said. “Or go public.”

  “And then it’s over,” Pip agreed.

  More than just over. Normal. Fixed. No blood on her hands, or pills to keep it all at bay. She will be saved. Normal. Team Ravi and Pip, who can talk about normal things like new college bed sheets and movie theater times and tentative, half-shy discussions of the future. Their future.

  Pip had asked for a way out, one last case, and something had answered her. Now it was even more perfect, even more fitting. Because DT was the origin. The end and the beginning. The monster in the dark, the creator, the source. Everything that had happened traced right back to him.

  All of it.

  Andie Bell knew who DT was and she was terrified, so she sold drugs for Howie Bowers to save up money to escape, to get far away from Fairview. She sold Rohypnol to Max Hastings, who then used those drugs to rape her little sister, Becca. Andie pursued Elliot Ward in her desperate plan to escape to Yale with Sal. Elliot thought he accidentally killed Andie, so he murdered Sal to cover it up, Ravi’s brother dead in the woods. But Elliot didn’t kill Andie, not really; it was Becca Bell, too angry and shocked at her sister’s role in her own tragedy that she froze and let Andie die from her head injury, choking on her own vomit. Five years went by and then Pip came along, uncovered all those truths. Elliot in prison, Becca in prison though she shouldn’t be, Max not in prison though he should be. And, most importantly, Howie Bowers in prison. Howie told his cellmate that he knew the real Child Brunswick. The cellmate told his cousin, who told a friend, who told a friend, who put the rumor online. Charlie Green read that rumor and came to Fairview. Layla Mead, wearing the face of Stella Chapman. Jamie Reynolds missing. Stanley Forbes with six holes blown in him, bleeding out on Pip’s hands.

  Three different stories, but one interconnected knot. And in the center of that writhing knot, grinning at her from the dark, was DT.

  File Name:

  Interview with Lieutenant Nolan about DT.wav

  PIP: Thank you so much, Mr. Nolan, for agreeing to this interview. And sorry for stealing you away from your Friday afternoon.

  LT. NOLAN: Oh please, call me David. And yes, no worries at all. Sorry I had to cancel our call yesterday. Last-minute golf game, you know how it is.

  PIP: Of course, yes, no worries. Not like there’s a time limit or anything. So, firstly, how long have you been retired?

  LT. NOLAN: Three years now. Yes, it was 2017 when I left. I know: golfing, reliving my glory days, I’m a retired-cop cliché. I’ve even tried pottery-making, my wife made me.

  PIP: Sounds lovely. So, as I said in my emails, today I wanted to talk to you about the DT Killer case.

  LT. NOLAN: Yes, yes. Biggest case of my career, that was. A great way to go out. I mean, terrible, of course, what he did to those women.

  PIP: It must have been memorable. Serial killers aren’t that common.

  LT. NOLAN: Certainly not. And there hadn’t been a case like this round here in decades, in living memory. DT was a very big deal for us all. Luckily we had the case because the first victim was from Bridgeport, and she was found just outside the city. DT was a huge deal. And the fact that we managed to get him to confess. That was my proudest moment, I think. Well, other than the birth of my daughters. [Laughs]

  PIP: Billy Karras sat in that interview room for over five hours overnight before he started to confess. He must have been tired, exhausted. Do you ever have doubts about his confession? I mean, he recanted first thing in the morning after he’d had some sleep.

  LT. NOLAN: No doubts. None. I was in the room with him when he confessed. No one’s going to say they did those awful things if it’s not true. I was exhausted too, and I didn’t confess to being a serial killer, did I? And, you won’t understand this, but after so many years working as a detective, of heading up the division, I could tell he was telling me the truth. It’s in the eyes. I can always tell. You know when you’re in the presence of evil, believe me. Billy recanted in the morning because he’d had time to think of all the consequences. He’s a coward. But he definitely did it.

  PIP: I’ve spoken to Billy Karras’s mother, Maria—

  LT. NOLAN: Oh man.

  PIP: Why’d you say that?

  LT. NOLAN: Just, I’ve had several run-ins with her. She’s a strong woman. You can’t blame her, of course; no mother is going to think their son capable of the horrific things Billy did.

  PIP: Well, she’s done a lot of research on the literature surrounding false confessions. Is there any part of you that thinks it possible that Billy’s confession was false? That he only said those things because of the pressure applied in the interview?

  LT. NOLAN: Well, yes, I think he only cracked because of the pressure I applied in the interview, but that doesn’t mean the confession isn’t good. If it were the only piece of evidence, then I might entertain the idea, but there was other evidence tying Billy to the murders: forensic and circumstantial. And he pleaded guilty, remember. This isn’t what your podcast is about this time,
is it? Trying to prove Billy innocent?

  PIP: No, not at all. I’m just trying to tell the true story of the DT Killer, in all its detail.

  LT. NOLAN: OK, good, because I wouldn’t have agreed to this interview otherwise. I don’t want you to try to make me look stupid.

  PIP: Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, David. So, a lot of the evidence tying Billy to the case seems to be connected with his job. He worked at a grounds-maintenance company called Green Scene Limited. I just wondered whether you were aware of Green Scene’s connection to the murders, before Billy became your number one suspect.

  LT. NOLAN: Yes. We certainly were looking into Green Scene before that. It was after Bethany Ingham—the third victim—was killed, because she worked there. Then, when Julia Hunter was killed, we made the connection that a couple of the dump sites were places where Green Scene was contracted. We asked to search the premises, and I remember the owner being very helpful and considerate, and that’s when we discovered they used the exact same brand of blue rope and duct tape as used by DT. So that was sort of the slam dunk, really, and we started to look into current employees. But there’s only so much looking you can do without probable cause. Then Billy Karras came along, was the one who found Tara Yates, and we knew pretty quickly he was our guy.

  PIP: Did you have any suspects before Billy? Before Tara was killed? Anyone connected with Green Scene?

  LT. NOLAN: I mean, we had a few persons of interest, but nothing concrete or substantial.

  PIP: I suppose you’re not going to tell me any names, are you?

  LT. NOLAN: I don’t even remember them, to be honest.

  PIP: Fair enough. So, I’ve spoken to Harriet Hunter, Julia’s younger sister, and she told me about some weird occurrences at their house, in the weeks before Julia died. Some dead pigeons brought into the house, chalk figures drawn near their house, and prank phone calls. Was this ever a focus of your investigation? And had the families of the other victims reported similar incidents?

  LT. NOLAN: Oh yes, I remember the dead pigeons now. Yes, the younger sister, she told us about them at the time. And we asked the friends and family of the previous victims, but they’d never heard anything of the sort. We asked Billy if he had had contact with the victims before abducting them. He told us that he watched them, so he knew when they were alone, et cetera, but he didn’t make contact with them, not with dead birds or phone calls or any other method. So, it’s unrelated to the case, unfortunately. Though it makes for a more compelling story, I give you that.

  PIP: Got it, thanks. So, now on to the trophies. You know exactly what item the DT Killer took from each victim. Something personal they had on them when he abducted them: earrings, a hairbrush, and so on. But you never found these trophies in Billy’s possession, did you? Does that concern you?

  LT. NOLAN: No. He told us he threw them away. They’re probably all in a landfill somewhere in the country. We would never have found them.

  PIP: But isn’t the whole point of a trophy that it’s something you keep with you? To remind you of the violent crime, and to delay the compulsion to kill again? Why would he throw them away?

  LT. NOLAN: He didn’t say, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? He knew we were zeroing in on him after Tara, and he got rid of the evidence before we got a warrant to search his house. I don’t think he wanted to throw the trophies away.

  PIP: Got it, OK. But, going back to Tara: why would Billy draw attention to himself like that, staging that he found her body? He might not have really been on your radar before then; why would he draw attention to himself like that? That’s essentially what got him caught.

  LT. NOLAN: This goes back to something that has been observed in a lot of serial-killer cases similar to this. The killers will show a lot of interest in their own cases, will follow coverage on the news, discuss it with all their friends and family. I’m no psychiatrist, but it’s a narcissism thing, I believe. Thinking they are so clever and it’s right under everyone’s noses. And some of these killers, they even try to insert themselves into the police investigation somehow, offering tips or to help with search parties and the like. That’s what Billy was doing, being the hero and finding Tara so he could insert himself into the investigation, maybe find out what we knew so far.

  PIP: Right.

  LT. NOLAN: I know, it doesn’t make much sense to you or me, to normal people. But it’s one of the things we were already on the lookout for in this investigation. It’s quite funny actually [laughs], but this was already on our minds because we had an officer from a nearby town who kept asking lots and lots of questions about the case. He wasn’t involved in the investigation, he was a newly trained officer, as I remember, but he was showing a little too much interest in what had happened and what we were doing, if you know what I mean. He was new and just very curious, I’m sure, but it certainly raised a couple of red flags. Before Billy came along, that is. That’s why we were sort of primed and ready for some kind of insertion from the perpetrator.

  PIP: Oh really? Where was this officer based?

  LT. NOLAN: I think it was Dari—oh, no, it was Fairview Police Department, I remember now. Yes, because I remember talking about this officer with one of my old colleagues who was based there. Still is. I think you know him, actually. Detective Hawkins. Good man. But, yeah, that’s an amusing little anecdote for your show there. An eager newbie police officer and we thought the worst [laughs].

  PIP: This officer…was his name Daniel da Silva?

  LT. NOLAN: [Coughs] Well, of course, I can’t tell you the officer’s name. And you wouldn’t be able to air it on your show anyway, data protection and all that. How many more questions do you have? I’m afraid I might have to go soo—

  PIP: But it was Daniel da Silva, right?

  No head. The dead pigeon in her hands has no head. But it’s too spongy, giving way, her fingers indenting its sides. That’s because it’s the comforter twisted up in her fist, not a dead bird, and Pip was awake now. In bed.

  She’d fallen asleep. She’d actually fallen asleep. It was dead-of-night dark and she’d been asleep.

  Why was she awake now, then? She woke up like this all the time, sleep so shallow that she dipped in and out. But this felt different. Something had pulled her out.

  A noise.

  It was there now.

  What was that?

  Pip sat up, comforter falling to her waist.

  A hissing sound, but a gentle one.

  She rubbed her eyes.

  A sputt-sputt-sputt, like a slow-moving train, nudging her back to sleep.

  No, not a train.

  Pip blinked again, the room taking shape with a ghostly glow. She got out of bed, the air stinging her bare feet.

  The hiss was coming from over there, by her desk.

  Pip stopped, focused her gaze.

  It was her printer.

  Something was coming out of the wireless printer on her desk, LEDs blinking from its panel.

  Sputt-sputt-sputt.

  A piece of paper emerged from the bottom, fresh black ink printed upon it.

  But…

  That was impossible. She hadn’t sent anything to print today.

  Her sleep-fogged head could not follow. Was she still dreaming?

  No, the pigeon was the dream. This was real.

  The printer finished, spitting out the piece of paper with a final clunk.

  Pip hesitated.

  Something pushed her forward. A ghost at her back. Maybe Andie Bell.

  She walked over to the printer and reached out, like she was taking someone’s hand. Or someone was taking hers.

  The page was printed upside down; she couldn’t read it from here.

  Her fingers closed around it, and the page fluttered in her grip like the wings of a headless pig
eon.

  She turned it around, the words righting themselves.

  And part of her knew before she read them. Part of her knew.

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

  p.s. I learned this trick from you, season 1 episode 5.

  Ready for my next trick?

  The page was covered in Stanley’s not-there blood, leaking from Pip’s not-there hands. No, the hands were there. But her heart had gone, throwing itself down the ladder of her spine, curdling in the acid of her gut.

  Nononononononononononono.

  How?

  Pip swung around, her eyes wild, her breath wilder, taking in every shadow. Each one was DT before it was not. She was alone. He wasn’t here. But how…

  Her frantic gaze landed back on the printer. Wireless printer. Anyone within range could send something through.

  Which meant he had to be close by.

  DT.

  He was here.

  Outside or inside the house?

  Pip checked the screwed-up page in her hand. Ready for my next trick? What did he mean by that? What was the trick—make her disappear?

  She should look out the window. He might be there, on the drive. DT standing in a ring of dead birds and chalk figures.

  Pip turned and—

  A metallic scream filled the room.

  Loud.

  So impossibly loud.

  Pip clasped her hands to her ears, dropping the page.

  No, not a scream. Guitars, screeching and crying, up and down too fast while a drumbeat hammered alongside them, shaking the room, implanting its pulse down into the floor and up her heels.

  Now came the screaming. Voices. Deep and demonic, barking behind her in an inhuman surge.

  Pip cried out and she could not hear herself. She was sure it was there, but her voice was lost. Buried.

  She turned to where the screaming was loudest, listening through her hands. It was her desk. The other side this time.

  LEDs blinking at her.