As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  Pip clicked the green button and held the small phone to her ear.

  It rang. Only through the phone this time. Three chimes and then a click. Rustling.

  “Hello, Singh residence,” said a bright, high voice. It was Ravi’s mom.

  “Hi, Nisha, it’s Pip,” she said, her voice rasping at the edges.

  “Oh, there you are, Pip. Ravi’s been looking for you. Over-worrying as usual, my little sensitive boy.” She laughed. “I hear you’re coming over for dinner tonight? Mohan’s insisting we play Articulate; he’s already reserved you for his team, apparently.”

  “Um.” Pip cleared her throat. “I’m actually not sure I’m going to be able to make it tonight. Something’s come up. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh no, that’s a shame. Are you OK, Pip? You sound a little strange.”

  “Ah, yeah, no, I’m fine. Just have a bit of a cold, that’s all.” She sniffed. “Um, is he there? Ravi?”

  “Yes, yes, he is. Two seconds.”

  Pip heard her calling his name.

  And in the background, she heard the distant sound of his voice. Pip sank down into the gravel, her eyes glazing. It wasn’t so long ago she thought she’d never hear his voice again.

  “It’s Pip!” She heard Nisha shout, and Ravi’s voice grew nearer: nearer and frantic.

  Rustling as the phone changed hands.

  “Pip?” he said down the line, like he didn’t believe it. And Pip hesitated a moment, refilling herself with his voice, welcoming it home. She’d never take it for granted, never again. “Pip?” he said, louder.

  “Y-yes, it’s me. I’m here.” It was hard to push the words out, around the lump in her throat.

  “Oh my god,” Ravi said, and she could hear him thundering up the stairs to his room. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours. Your phone’s been going straight to voice mail. You were supposed to keep checking in.” He sounded angry. “I called Nat and she said you didn’t even go round there. I’ve just got back from yours, seeing if you were at home, and your car was at home but you weren’t, so your parents are probably worried now because they thought you were with me. I was literally minutes from calling the police, Pip. Where the fuck have you been?”

  He was angry, but Pip couldn’t help smiling, holding the phone tighter to her ear, to bring him closer. She had disappeared and he had…he had looked for her.

  “Pip?!”

  She could imagine the look on his face: stern eyes and a cocked eyebrow, waiting for her to explain herself.

  “I—I love you,” she said, because she never said it enough and it was important. She didn’t know when she’d last said it, and if she said it again, that wouldn’t be the last time either. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

  Ravi hesitated, and his breath changed. “Pip,” he said, the hard edge gone from his voice. “Are you OK? What is it? Something’s wrong, I can tell. What’s wrong?”

  “I just didn’t know when I last told you.” She wiped her eyes. “It’s important.”

  “Pip,” he said, steadying her. “Where are you? Tell me where you are right now.”

  “Can you come here?” she asked. “I need you. I need help.”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “I will come right now. Just tell me where you are. What’s happened? Is it something to do with DT? Do you know who he is?”

  Pip stared back at Jason’s feet, hanging out the doorway. She sniffed and she focused, turning back.

  “It’s…I’m at Green Scene. Jason Bell’s company, in Weston. Do you know where it is?”

  “Why are you there?” His voice higher now, confused.

  “Just—Ravi, I don’t know how long the battery lasts on this phone. Do you know where it is?”

  “What phone are you using?”

  “Ravi!”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, shouting now too, though he didn’t know why. “I know where it is, I can look it up.”

  “No no no,” Pip said quickly. She needed him to understand without her saying it. Not on the phone. “No, Ravi, you can’t use your phone to get here. You need to leave your phone at home, OK? Do not bring it with you. Do not bring it.”

  “Pip, wh—”

  “You have to leave your phone at home. Look at the way on Google Maps now, but do not type Green Scene into your search browser, whatever you do. Just search on the map.”

  “Pip, what’s going—”

  She interrupted him, something else occurring to her. “No, wait. Ravi, you can’t drive on any highways. Not any. You have to take the back roads, small roads only. Highways have traffic cams. You can’t be seen on any traffic cams. Residential and back roads only. Ravi, do you understand?” Her voice was urgent now, the shock gone, left behind in that room with the dead body.

  She heard the click of his trackpad in the background.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m just looking now. Yep, that way. Up Brookside, toward New Canaan,” he muttered under his breath. “Avoid Route 15, take these residential roads instead. Then…Yeah,” he said to her. “Yeah, I can find it. I’ll write all this down. Back roads only, leave phone at home. I’ve got it.”

  “Good,” she said, exhaling, and even the effort of that made her feel weak, sinking farther into the gravel.

  “Are you OK?” he said, taking charge again, because that’s what teammates did. “Are you in danger?”

  “No,” she said quietly. “Not anymore. Not really.”

  Did he know? Could he hear it in her voice, raw and scratchy, marked forever by the last three hours?

  “OK, hold tight. I’m on my way, Pip. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “No, wait, don’t speed, you can’t get—”

  But he was already gone, three loud beeps in her ear. He was gone, but he was on his way.

  “I love you,” she said to the empty phone, because she never wanted there to be a last time again.

  * * *

  —

  Another crunch of gravel. Step after step after step. Pacing up and down, counting her steps, to count the seconds, to count the minutes. And though she told herself not to look, her eyes always found their way back to the body, convincing herself each time that he had shifted. He hadn’t; he was dead.

  Pacing up and down, the early stirrings of a plan seeding in her brain, now that the shock had passed. But it was missing something. It was missing Ravi. She needed him, the team, their back-and-forth that always showed her the right way, the middle road between her and him.

  Headlights broke open the deepening sky, a car pulling into the drive just before the Green Scene gate, hanging wide open. Pip held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the low sun, and then she waved for Ravi to stop. The car stopped in front of the gate, and the headlights blinked out.

  The car door opened and a Ravi-shaped silhouette stepped out. He didn’t even wait to shut the door, running over to her, scattering gravel.

  Pip stopped and studied him, like it was the very first time again. Something tightened in her gut, another thing loosening in her chest, releasing, breaking open. He’d promised she would see him again, and here he was, getting closer and closer.

  Pip held up her hand again to keep him back from her. “Did you leave your phone at home?” she said, voice quavering.

  “Yes,” Ravi said, his eyes wide with fear. Widening farther as he studied her in return. “You’re hurt,” he said, moving forward. “What happened?”

  Pip stepped away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she said. “It’s…I’m fine. It’s not my blood. Not most of it. It’s…” She forgot what she was trying to say.

  Ravi steadied his face, held up his hands to steady her too. “Pip, look at me,” he said calmly, though she could tell he was anything but. “Tell me what happened. What are you doing here?”
/>   Pip glanced behind her, at Jason’s feet hanging out the doorway.

  Ravi must have followed her eyes.

  “Fuck, who is— Are they OK—”

  “He’s dead,” Pip said, turning back. “It’s Jason Bell. It was Jason Bell, he was the DT Killer.”

  Ravi blinked for a moment, shuffling through her words, trying to find the sense in them.

  “He’s…What? How did he…” Ravi shook his head. “How do you know?”

  Pip couldn’t tell which answer he needed to hear first. “How do I know he was the DT Killer? Because he took me. Abducted me from Cross Lane, tied me up in the trunk of his car. Brought me here. Wrapped my face up in duct tape, bound me to a shelf. Exactly like he did to the rest of them. They died here. And he was going to kill me.” It didn’t sound real, now that she was saying it out loud. Like all of that had happened to a different person, separate from her. “He was going to kill me, Ravi.” Her voice snagged in her worn-out throat. “I thought I was dead and…and I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again, see anyone. And I thought about you finding out I was dead and—”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he said quickly, taking one careful step toward her. “You’re OK, Pip. I’m here, OK? I’m here now.” He glanced back over at Jason’s body, eyes lingering too long. “Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I can’t believe it. You shouldn’t have been out on your own. I shouldn’t have let you be out on your own. Fuck,” he said again, hitting his palm against his forehead. “Fuck. Are you OK? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, I’m…I’m fine,” she said, that small, cavernous word again, hiding all sorts of dark things. “Just from the tape. I’m fine.”

  “So how did…?” Ravi began, his eyes abandoning her again, slipping back over to the dead man twelve feet away.

  “He left me. Tied up.” Pip sniffed. “I don’t know where we he went, or for how long. But I managed to push over the shelves, get free, and take off the tape. There’s a window, I broke out of it. And—”

  “OK, OK.” He cut her off. “OK, that’s OK, Pip. It’s going to be OK. Fuck,” he said again, more to himself than to her. “Whatever you did, it was in self-defense, OK? Self-defense. He was going to kill you so you had to kill him. That’s what this is. Self-defense, and that’s OK, Pip. We just need to call the police, OK? Tell them what happened, what he did to you and that it was self-defense.”

  Pip shook her head.

  “No?” Ravi lowered his eyebrows. “What do you mean no, Pip? We have to call the police. There’s a dead man on the ground over there.”

  “It wasn’t self-defense,” she said quietly. “I had escaped. I was free. I could have walked away. But I saw him return, and I went back. I killed him, Ravi. Snuck up behind him and hit him with a hammer. I chose to kill him. It wasn’t self-defense. I had a choice.”

  Ravi was shaking his head now; he still couldn’t see it, the full picture. “No, no, no. He was going to kill you, that’s why you killed him. That’s self-defense, Pip. It’s OK.”

  “I killed him.”

  “Because he was going to kill you,” Ravi said, his voice rising.

  “How do you know that?” Pip said. She had to make him see, make him see that self-defense wasn’t an option here, as she’d already realized, pacing up and down.

  “How do I know that?” Ravi asked, incredulous. “Because he took you. Because he’s the DT Killer.”

  “The DT Killer has been in prison for more than six years,” Pip said, not in her own voice. “He confessed. There have been no killings since.”

  “What? B-but—”

  “He pleaded guilty in court. There was evidence. Forensic and circumstantial. The DT Killer is already in prison. So why did I kill this man?”

  Ravi’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Because he was the real DT Killer!”

  “The DT Killer is already in prison,” Pip repeated, watching his eyes, waiting for him to understand. “Jason Bell was a respectable man. A managing director of a midsize company, and no one has a bad word to say about him. Acquaintances—friends, even—with Detective Richard Hawkins. Jason has already been through a tragedy, a tragedy—you might argue—that I made much worse. So, why did I have a fixation on Jason Bell? Why was I trespassing on his private property on a Saturday evening? Why did I sneak up behind him and hit him with a hammer? Not just once. I don’t know how many times. Go look at him, Ravi. Go look. I didn’t just kill him. ‘Overkill,’ that’s the term, isn’t it? And that is incompatible with self-defense. So, why did I kill this nice, respectable man?”

  “Because he was the DT Killer?” Ravi said, less certain now.

  “The DT Killer is already in prison. He confessed,” she said, and she saw the shift in Ravi’s eyes as he understood what she was telling him.

  “That’s what you think the police will say.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Pip said. “What matters is a narrative they will find acceptable. Believable. And they won’t believe my narrative. What evidence do I have other than my word? Jason got away with this for years. There might not be any evidence that he was DT.” She deflated. “I don’t trust them, Ravi. I trusted the police before and they’ve let me down every single time. If we call them, the most likely outcome is that I’m going away for the rest of my life for murder. Hawkins already thinks I’m unhinged. And maybe I am. I killed him, Ravi. I knew what I was doing. And I don’t even think I regret it.”

  “Because he was going to kill you. Because he’s a monster,” Ravi said, reaching for her hand, before remembering the blood and letting his arm fall to his side. “The world is better off without him. Safer.”

  “It is,” she agreed, looking back again, checking Jason hadn’t moved, wasn’t listening in. “But no one else will understand that.”

  “Well, what the fuck are we going to do?” Ravi asked, shifting his weight from foot to foot, a quiver in his lip. “You can’t go down for murder. That’s not fair, that’s not what this was. You…I don’t know if we can say it was the right thing, but it wasn’t wrong. It’s not like what he did to those women. He deserved it. And I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. That’s your whole life, Pip. Our whole life.”

  “I know,” she said, a new kind of terror making its home in her head. But there was something else there too, keeping it back. A plan. They just needed a plan.

  “Can’t we go to the police and explain th—” Ravi drew off, chewing his lip, another glance at those disembodied feet. He was silent for a moment, and another, eyes flickering, his mind busy behind them. “We can’t go to the police. They got it wrong with Sal, didn’t they? And Jamie Reynolds. And do I trust a jury of twelve peers with your life? Like the jury that decided Max Hastings was innocent? No, no way. Not you, you’re too important.”

  Pip wished she could take his hand, feel his warmth on her skin as their fingers intertwined in the way that they did. Team Ravi and Pip. Home. They looked into each other’s eyes, a silent conversation in their shifting glances. Ravi finally blinked.

  “So what do we…how would we get away with this?” he said, the question almost ridiculous enough for a smile. How to get away with murder. “Just, theoretically. Do we…I don’t know, bury him somewhere so no one ever finds him?”

  Pip shook her head. “No. They always find them eventually. Like Andie.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve studied a lot of murder cases, as have you, listened to hundreds of true crime podcasts. There’s only one way to get away with it.”

  “Which is?”

  “To not leave any evidence and to not be here at the time of death. To have an ironclad alibi somewhere far away during the time-of-death window.”

  “But, you were here?” Ravi stared at her. “What time did it…what time did you…?”

  Pip checked the time on Jason’s burner phone. “I think it was around six-t
hirty that it happened. So, coming up to an hour ago now.”

  “Whose phone is that?” Ravi nodded to it. “You didn’t call me from his phone, did you?”

  “No, no, it’s a burner phone. Not mine, it’s his, Jason’s, but it…” Her voice escaped from her as she saw the question forming in Ravi’s eyes. And Pip knew, she’d finally have to tell him. They had bigger secrets now, no room for this anymore. “I have a burner phone I never told you about. At home.”

  There was movement in Ravi’s lips, almost close to a smile. “I always said you’d end up with your own burner phone,” he said. “Wh-why do you have one?”

  “I have six, actually,” Pip sighed, and somehow this felt harder to say than telling him that she’d killed a man. “It’s, um…I haven’t been coping well, with what happened to Stanley. I said I was fine, but I wasn’t fine. I’m sorry. I, um, I’ve been buying Xanax from Luke Eaton, after the doctor wouldn’t prescribe me any more. I just wanted to be able to sleep. I’m sorry.” She dropped his gaze, staring down at her sneakers. There were flecks of blood on those too.

  Ravi looked hurt, taken aback. “I’m sorry too,” he said quietly. “I knew you weren’t fine, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I thought you just needed time, change of scenery.” He sighed. “You should have told me, Pip. I don’t care what it is, whatever it is.” He glanced quickly over at Jason’s body. “But no secrets between us, OK? We’re a team. We’re a team, you and me, and we will fix this. Together. I promise we’re going to get through this.”

  Pip wanted to fall into him, let him wrap her up in his arms and disappear down into them. But she couldn’t. Her body, her clothes, were a crime scene, and she couldn’t contaminate him. It was like he knew, somehow, had read it in her eyes. He stepped forward and reached out, carefully stroking one finger under her chin, in a place without blood, and it was just the same.

  “So, if he died at six-thirty p.m.,” Ravi said, locking back onto her eyes, “how do we give you an ironclad alibi for six-thirty p.m., when you were here?”

  “We can’t, not that way,” she said, looking inside, into that growing idea in her head. It should be impossible, but maybe…maybe it wasn’t. “But I was thinking, when I was waiting for you, I was thinking about it. Time of death is an estimate, and the medical examiner uses three main factors in that estimation: rigor mortis—that’s how the muscles stiffen after death; livor mortis—that’s when the blood pools inside the body; and body temperature. Those are the three factors they use to narrow down the time of death. And so, I was thinking, if we can manipulate those three factors, if we can delay them, we can make the medical examiner think he died hours after he did. And in that time window, you and I can have solid alibis, separately, with people and cameras and an undeniable evidence trail.”