As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  “I mean, you didn’t get us into this, he did,” Ravi said, gesturing with his thumb back toward Jason’s body. “You sure you can do it?”

  “If Max can drag Jason’s body through the trees, then so can I.” Pip unsealed the bag with Max’s hoodie and pulled it on over her own. Ravi helped her, careful not to disturb the hat covering her head, making sure she left none of her hairs behind on its collar.

  “You’re good,” Ravi said, taking a step back to look at her. “I can at least help you get him out of the car.”

  Yes, he could at least help with that. Pip nodded, walking over to the back door of the car, on the side where Jason’s head was. Ravi looped around her to the other side.

  They opened the doors at the same time.

  “Whoa,” Ravi said, doubling back. “It’s getting hot in here.”

  “Don’t!” Pip said firmly, across the backseat.

  “What?” He glared at her, over the tarp. “I wasn’t going to sing the song. Even I know when it’s stepping over a line.”

  “Sure.”

  “What I meant is that it’s really hot in here,” he said. “Higher than a hundred, I’d say. That was almost opening-the-oven-and-the-heat-slaps-you-in-the-face hot.”

  “Right.” Pip sniffed. “You push him this way, I’ll drag him out.”

  Pip managed to pull him out of the car using Ravi’s momentum from the other side. Jason’s tarp-wrapped feet landed on the gravel with a crash.

  “Got him?” Ravi asked, coming around.

  “Yeah.” Pip laid him gently down. She stepped back to her backpack, opened the front pocket, and pulled out the sandwich bag with the small clump of Max’s hair sealed inside. “Need this,” she explained to Ravi, shoving it in the front pocket of Max’s hoodie.

  “You gonna keep him in the tarp?” Ravi watched her as she returned to the body, struggling to pick Jason up beneath the shoulders again, his arms now stiff and unyielding.

  “Yeah, he can stay in the tarp,” Pip said, grunting with the effort as she tried to drag Jason’s trailing feet through the stones, glad the tarp was there so Jason’s facedown dead face wasn’t watching her as she did. “Max could have tried to cover him too.”

  Pip took a step back and she hauled.

  She tried to not think about what she was doing. Building a barrier inside her mind, a fence to keep it out. It was just one of the boxes to check, that’s what she told herself. Focus on that. Just a task to check off in the plan, like all the plans she’d ever made, even the small ones, even the mundane. This was no different.

  Except it was, that dark voice reminded her, the one that hid at the back beside the shame, unpicking her barrier piece by piece. Because it was late at night, in that in-between time when too-late became too-early, and Pip Fitz-Amobi was dragging a dead body.

  Dead Jason was heavy and Pip’s progress was slow, her mind trying to distance itself from the thing in her hands, from her hands themselves.

  It was a little easier as she moved from small stones to grass, checking behind her every two steps so she didn’t trip.

  Ravi remained behind on the gravel. “I’ll start on the trunk of the car, then,” he said. “Vacuum every inch.”

  “Wipe down the plastic sides too,” Pip called, the breath struggling in her chest. “I touched those.”

  He shot her a thumbs-up and turned away.

  Pip leaned Jason against her leg for a moment, to take the weight, give her arms a break. The muscles in her shoulders were already screaming. But she had to keep going. This was her job, her burden.

  She dragged him to the trees, Max’s sneakers crunching in the dry mud. Pip laid him down for two minutes, stretched out her aching arms, moved her head from side to side to crack her neck. Stared up at the moon to ask it what the fuck she was doing. Then she picked him up again.

  Hauled him between those trees and around that one. Leaves bunching up around Jason’s feet as he dragged them with him, collecting them for his final resting place.

  Pip didn’t go in far. She didn’t need to. They were about fifty feet into the woodland, where the trees started to bunch close together, barring the way. A distant hum of Ravi and the vacuum. Pip checked behind her, spotting the trunk of a larger tree, old and gnarled. That would do.

  She dragged Jason around that tree, and then laid him down. The plastic tarp rustled and the grass whispered dark threats to Pip as he settled into the ground, facedown in the tarp.

  She bent to one side of him and pushed, rolling his stiffening body over. Now he was faceup, and the blood inside would settle along his back once again.

  The tarp shifted slightly as she’d flipped him over, one corner slipping down to show her his dead face one last time. To etch that image into the underside of her eyelids forever, a new horror waiting for her in the dark whenever she blinked. Jason Bell. The Stratford Strangler. The DT Killer. The monster who had chased Andie Bell away, creating this jagged circle, this awful carousel they were all stuck on.

  But at least Pip was still alive, to be haunted by his face. If it were the other way around, as it should have been, Jason wouldn’t have cared enough to be haunted by hers. He’d tried to take it away from her. He would have enjoyed seeing her like this, face wrapped up in tape, skin mottling to the color of bruise, body hard like it was made from concrete and not flesh. A wrapped-up doll, and a trophy to always remember how the sight of dead-her had made him feel. Elated. Excited. Powerful.

  So, yes, Pip would remember his dead face, and she would be glad to. Because it meant she didn’t have to be afraid of him anymore. She had won and he was dead, and the sight of it, the proof, that was her trophy, whether she wanted it or not.

  She unfolded that same side of tarp, uncovering half of him, from his face to his legs, and pulled out the sandwich bag from Max’s pocket.

  She pulled open the seal and dipped her gloved hands inside, pinching some of the dark blond hairs. Crouching low, she dropped them, sprinkled them over Jason’s shirt, two tucked under his collar. His dead hand was rigid and wouldn’t open, but Pip slid a couple hairs in through the gap between his thumb and forefinger, coming to rest against his palm. There were only a few left in the bag now, the weak moonlight showed her. She pulled out just one more, tucking it in under the nail of Jason’s right thumb.

  She straightened up, resealing the bag to put it away. She studied him, creating the scene in that dark place in her mind, bringing the plan to life behind her eyes. They’d tussled, fought. Knocked over a row of shelves in the storeroom. Jason had punched Max in the face, giving him a black eye, maybe pulling some of his hair out at the same time. Look, there it was, stuck under one nail, and in the creases of his fingers, snagging on his clothes. Max had walked away angry and come back even angrier, creeping up on Jason in the storeroom, a hammer gripped in his hand. Undone Jason’s head. A rage kill. Heat of the moment. Calmed down and realized what he’d done. Covered him and dragged him through the trees. Should have covered your hair, Max, while you were attempting to clear up a murder scene. He’d managed to clear up his prints from the weapon, and the room he killed Jason in, but he’d forgotten about his hair, hadn’t he? Too fair, too fine to see it. Too panicked after killing a man.

  Pip flicked the tarp back over Jason with her shoe. Max’s shoe. Max would have made some effort to cover the body, at least, to hide it. But not too well, and not too far, because Pip wanted the police to find Jason right away, on their first search of the property.

  She walked around Jason, pressing the zigzag imprint of Max’s shoes into the soft mud around him, old rotten leaves bunching around the shoeprints.

  Shouldn’t have worn a pair of sneakers with such a unique tread pattern, either, should you, Max? And you certainly shouldn’t have left your phone on while you were here, killing a man and cleaning up after yourself.

  Pip
turned and walked away. Dead Jason didn’t call her back as she left him, laying another set of Max’s tracks, back through the trees and grass, onto the gravel.

  She walked through the door into the chemical storeroom, kicking mud from Max’s shoes over the concrete.

  “Hey, I just vacuumed in there,” Ravi said with mock annoyance, a hidden smile on his face, standing in the doorway at the other end. Trying to calm her, Pip knew, make her feel normal again after what she’d just done. But she was too focused to break her chain of thought, following the unchecked boxes in her head, not many left now.

  “Max brought it in, on his way back from dumping the body,” she said quietly, her voice trancelike, stepping forward. Closer and closer to that river of drying blood. She planted one heel and laid down the toe of the shoe, pressing it into the blood.

  “What are you doing?” Ravi said.

  “Max accidentally stepped in the blood on his way back in,” she answered, crouching down and dabbing the end of Max’s sleeve in the river too, coming away with a small red swipe against the gray. “And he got some on his clothes. He’ll try to wash this stain off at home, but he won’t do a very good job.”

  She pulled out the sandwich bag again and scraped out the last remaining hairs, dropping them into the pool of sticky, drying blood.

  Pip carried on toward Ravi, Max’s left shoe leaving a tacky red zigzag mark on the concrete, fading by the third step.

  “OK, OK,” Ravi said gently. “Can I have Pip back now? Not Max Hastings.”

  Pip shook him out of her head, breaking her faraway stare, softening her eyes as she glanced across at Ravi. “Yeah, done,” she said.

  “Right. I’ve done the trunk. Vacuumed it like four times. Did the ceiling too, and that pullout cover thing. Wiped down all the plastic parts with antibacterial spray. Turned the car off and wiped his keys too. And I’ve put the cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner back where I found them. The cloths we used are in your backpack. Should have removed all traces of you. Of us.”

  Pip nodded. “Fire will do the rest.”

  “Speaking of.” Ravi finally showed her what was in his hands: the gas can. He shook it to show her it was half-full. “I’ve managed to siphon gas out of the lawn mowers. I found this little tube thing on the shelves. You just insert it into the tank, blow into it, and the gas starts running out.”

  “We’ll have to dispose of that tube then,” Pip said, creating another item on the list in her head.

  “Yeah, I thought you could do it the same way as your clothes. How much more do you think we’ll need?” he asked, shaking the can again.

  Pip thought about it. “Maybe three.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. Come on, there’s loads in those ride-on mowers.”

  Ravi led her back into the huge storeroom, the machines winking under the buzzy industrial lights. He walked them over to a mower and Pip helped him as he guided the small tube into the tank, creating a seal around the opening with his gloved hand before blowing into the tube.

  A strong smell of gasoline as the yellowy-brown liquid flowed through the tube, tinkling into the gas can Pip held. When it was filled, they moved on to another can and another mower.

  Pip started to feel dizzy from the fumes, from the lack of sleep, from her trip to and back from death, she wasn’t sure which. It was the fumes that ignited, she knew, not the liquid, and if those were inside her then maybe she’d burn up too.

  “Nearly there,” Ravi said, to her or to the gas can, she couldn’t quite tell.

  He stood up and clapped his hands when the third can was near-full. “Need something to start the fires with too, something that will catch.”

  Pip looked around the cavernous room, scanning the shelves.

  “Here,” she said, walking over to a cardboard box filled with small plastic plant pots. She ripped several lengths of cardboard away, stuffing them in Max’s pocket.

  “Perfect,” Ravi said, picking up two gas cans so she only had to carry one. It felt heavier than it should, the weight of the dead body still in her muscles somehow.

  “We should lead the fire in here too,” Pip said, dousing a row of still-full mowers in the gasoline, pouring a trail behind her as they walked back toward the chemical storeroom. “We want things to go boom. Blow out the windows to cover up the one I broke.”

  “Lots of things to go boom in here,” Ravi said, flicking the lights off with his elbow as he followed her. He tilted one of his cans, pouring a thick trail of gas alongside Pip’s as they stepped together. She doused the workbench and Ravi continued on to the shelving unit, lifting the can high to splash gasoline all over it, spattering against the plastic vats and dripping down the metal shelves.

  They coated the room, the walls, the floor, a new river along the concrete, beside the weed killer in the gutter. Pip’s can was almost empty, the final drops splattering out onto the ground as she avoided the pool of blood; they didn’t want that to burn. The fire was to bring the police here, the blood was to send them out to Jason. That’s how this night would finally end, in fire and blood, and a sweep of the trees to find what Pip had left for them.

  Ravi finished his can too, threw it behind his shoulder back into the room.

  Pip stepped outside and let the night breeze play across her face, breathing it in until she felt steady again. She didn’t, not until Ravi was standing beside her, holding her gloved hand in his, that small gesture anchoring her. The final gas can was in his other hand.

  There was a question in his eyes and Pip nodded.

  Ravi turned to Jason’s SUV. He started in the trunk, soaking the carpet floor and the plastic sides. Over the retractable cover and on to the soft material of the ceiling. Covering the backseats and the footwells, and into the front too. He left the can on the backseat where Jason had laid, some gas still sloshing around inside it.

  Boom, he mimed with his hands.

  Pip had pulled on Max’s baseball cap now, over the beanie she already wore, so it would never touch her, never pick up a trace. And one last thing from the backpack before she pulled the straps over her shoulders: in went the rubber tube that Ravi had pressed his mouth to, out came the lighter that her mom used to light their Autumn Spice candle every evening.

  Pip readied the lighter in her hand, pulling out the strips of cardboard.

  She clicked it, and a small bluish flame emerged at the end. Pip held it to the corner of the cardboard, waiting for it to catch. She let the fire grow, whispering to it, welcoming it to the world.

  “Step back,” she told Ravi as she leaned forward and threw it into the trunk of Jason’s car.

  A whirl of bright yellow flames erupted with a loud roar, growing and spreading, licking out toward her face.

  Hot, so incredibly hot, drying out her eyes, cleaving at her throat.

  “Nothing cleans like fire,” Pip said, handing the lighter and another strip of cardboard to Ravi as he walked back toward the storeroom.

  The click of the lighter, the flame eating up the cardboard, adolescent and slow. Until Ravi threw it onto their new river, and that small flame exploded into an inferno, high and angry. The screaming of ghosts as it melted plastic and began to twist metal.

  “I’ve always secretly wanted to set fire to something,” Ravi said, returning to her, retaking her hand, fingers fusing together as the gravel crunched under their feet and the flames flickered at their backs.

  “Well,” Pip said, her voice rough and scorched, “arson is another crime we can check off the list tonight.”

  “Think we’ve probably got a full house by now,” he replied. “Bingo.”

  They walked toward Max’s car.

  Back out the waiting gates of Green Scene Ltd., those spiked metal posts like an open jaw, spitting them out as its body withered and burned.

  Pip blinked as they stepped th
rough, picturing these gates in a few hours, yellow-and-black crime-scene tape wrapped across them, barring the way, the buzz of murmured voices and police radios in the smoky aftermath. A body bag and the squeaking wheels of a gurney.

  Follow the fire, follow the blood, follow her story. That’s all they had to do. It was out of her hands now.

  Their fingers broke apart as Pip dropped into the driver’s seat and shut herself in. Ravi opened the back door, climbing inside and lying down across the footwell, to hide. He couldn’t be seen. They were taking the highway back to Fairview, through as many traffic cameras as they could. Because it wasn’t Pip driving, it was Max this time, driving home after breaking a man’s head open and setting fire to the scene. Here he was, in his hoodie and his hat, if any of those cameras had a view through the windows. Pressing his shoes into the pedals, leaving behind traces of blood.

  Max started the engine and reversed. Pulling away just as the explosions began behind them. Those rows and rows of mowers blowing up, firing into the night like gunshots. Six holes in Stanley’s chest.

  A yellow flare that set the sky ablaze, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. Someone would hear that, Pip told herself as Max drove, another blast cracking the earth around them, much louder than a thousand screams. A billowing column of smoke smothering the low moon.

  Max Hastings got home at 3:27 a.m. after killing Jason Bell.

  Pip pulled up into the drive outside the Hastings house, parking the car exactly where it had been before, at the beginning of the night. She switched off the engine; the headlights blinked off and the darkness crept in.

  Ravi pulled himself up from the backseat, stretched out his neck. “Glad the gas light came on, just to give this night one last jolt of adrenaline. Really needed one last hit.”

  “Yeah.” Pip exhaled. “That was a fun little plot twist.”

  They couldn’t have stopped to fill up the car, of course; they were supposed to be Max Hastings, and gas stations were covered in security cameras. But they’d made it home—Pip’s eyes constantly flicking to the warning light—and now it didn’t matter anymore.