As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  “No no no no.” Pip stepped back. “No, Ravi! What have you done?”

  “It’s OK, it’s going to be OK.” Ravi walked forward, reached for her.

  Pip batted his hand away. “What did you do?” she said, her throat tightening around her words, breaking them in half. “What exactly did you say to him?”

  “I told him that I borrow your headphones all the time, sometimes without you knowing. That I must have had them with me when I went round to the Bells’ house to see Jason one evening a couple weeks ago. The twelfth, I said. Accidentally left the headphones there.”

  “Why the fuck would you have gone round to see Jason?” Pip whisper-shouted, and her mind was reeling away from him, pushing her feet back, almost against the gate. No, no, no, what had he done?

  “Because I was talking to Jason about an idea I had, to set up some kind of scholarship scheme in Andie’s and Sal’s names, a charity thing. I went to discuss ideas with Jason, showed him some printouts, and that’s when the headphones must have fallen out of my bag. We were in the living room, sitting on the sofas.”

  “No, no, no,” Pip said quietly.

  “Jason liked the idea but said he didn’t have time to be involved. That’s how we left things, but I must have also left the headphones there. I’m guessing Jason later found them and didn’t realize they belonged to me. That’s what I said to Hawkins.”

  Pip clamped her hands to her ears, like she could make this go away if she couldn’t hear him anymore.

  “No,” she said quietly, the word just a vibration against the back of her teeth.

  Ravi finally reached her. He pulled her arms away from her face, held her hands in his. Grip tight, like he was anchoring her to him. “It’s OK, I fixed it. The plan is still in play. You didn’t kill Jason. Max did. There’s no direct link to you anymore. You haven’t had contact with Jason since April, and Hawkins didn’t catch you in a lie. It was me; I left your headphones there. You knew nothing about it. You told me about your interview today, and that’s when I realized it was me who had had contact with Jason, who left the headphones there. So I went down to the station to clear things up. That’s what happened. Hawkins believed me, he will believe me. He asked me where I was on the evening of the fifteenth and I told him: I was in Stamford with my cousin, listed all the places I went. Got home just before midnight. Airtight, ironclad, just like we planned. And no connection to you. It’s going to be OK.”

  “I didn’t want you to do that, Ravi,” she cried. “I didn’t want you to ever talk to him, ever to have to use your alibi.”

  “But you’re safe,” he said, eyes flashing at her in the dark. “Now you don’t have to go.”

  “But you aren’t!” she said. “You’ve just directly implicated yourself in the whole thing. Before we could keep you separate, you were separate from it all, but now…What if Dawn Bell was home on the twelfth? What if she tells them you’re lying?”

  “I can’t lose you,” Ravi said. “I wasn’t going to let you do this. I sat on my bed after you called and I did that thing I do when I’m nervous or scared or unsure about something. I asked myself, What would Pip do? What would she do in this situation? So, that’s what I did. I came up with a plan. Was it reckless? Probably. Bravery to the point of stupidity, that’s you. But I thought it through and I didn’t overthink it. I acted, like you do. It’s what you would have done, Pip.” He breathed, shoulders rising and falling with it. “It’s what you would have done, and you would have done it for me, you know you would. We’re a team, remember? You and me. And no one’s taking you away from me, not even you.”

  “Fuck!” Pip shouted into the wind, because he was right and he was wrong and she was happy and she was devastated.

  “It’s going to be OK.” Ravi wrapped her up into him, inside his jacket, warm even when he had no business being so. “It was my choice and I chose you. You’re not going anywhere,” he said, his breath in her hair, along her scalp.

  Pip held on, watching the road over Ravi’s shoulder. Blinking slowly, the black hole in her chest trying to catch up. She didn’t have to go. She didn’t have to be that woman in her fifties, looking up at her old family home after decades, thinking it was somehow smaller than she remembered it, because she had forgotten it, or it had forgotten her. She didn’t have to watch everyone she cared about live a life without her, catching her up across a metal table every few weeks, visits growing fewer and further between as their lives got in the way and her edges got fainter and fainter until she disappeared at last.

  A life, a real one, a normal one: it was still possible. Ravi had saved her, he had, and by doing so he had damned himself.

  Now there was no choice, no backing down.

  She had to bare her teeth and see this through to the end.

  No doubt.

  No mercy.

  Blood on her hands and a gun in her heart and the plan.

  Four corners. She and Ravi standing in one. The DT Killer in another. Max Hastings opposite them, and Detective Hawkins opposite him.

  One last fight, somewhere in the middle, and they had to win. They had to, now that Ravi was on the line too.

  Pip pushed herself into him, closer, harder, her ear to his chest to listen to his heart, because she was still here, and she still could.

  She closed her eyes and made a new silent promise to him, because he had chosen her and she had chosen him: they were going to get away with it.

  The town buzzed with talk, fizzled with it. The hushed kind, but the kind of hush meant to be overheard, particularly loud in Pip’s ears.

  Isn’t it just terrible?

  —Gail Yardley, walking her dog

  There’s something very wrong with this town. I can’t wait to leave.

  —Adam Clark, near the train station

  Have there been any arrests yet? Your cousin knows someone at the police, doesn’t he?

  —Mrs. Morgan, outside the library

  Dawn Bell came into the store last week and she doesn’t seem too upset. You don’t think she had anything to do with it?

  —Leslie, from the Stop & Shop

  Pip had two hushed conversations of her own, not out in the open for everyone to hear. Behind closed doors and whispered all the same.

  The first was with Nat, on the Wednesday, both sitting on Pip’s bed.

  “Someone from the police called me. A Detective Hawkins. In relation to their inquiries into the death of Jason Bell. He asked me if I’d knocked on Max Hastings’s door on the night of the fifteenth. If I’d hit him in the face.”

  “And?” Pip asked.

  “I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, and why on earth he would insinuate that I would willingly go to the house of someone who assaulted me, put myself in a situation where I was alone with him.”

  “Good, that’s good.”

  “I told him I was at my brother’s house from around eight that night. Dan was already drunk and basically asleep on the sofa, so he will verify that too.”

  “Good.” It was good. That meant Hawkins must have interviewed Max at least once already, probably again after securing his cell phone data, asking once more for him to explain his whereabouts on the evening Jason died. Max told him he was home alone all night, fell asleep early, and that Nat da Silva had knocked on his door. But Hawkins already had the data from his phone, could see that Max wasn’t at home, could see the calls that pinged a cell tower placing him at the scene, and now he’d caught Max in a lie, several of them.

  There was another unsaid thing hovering between Pip and Nat. And that was a dead Jason Bell. Nat could never ask and Pip could never tell, but Nat must know, the look in her eyes told Pip that. And yet she didn’t look away, she didn’t, she held Pip’s eyes and Pip held hers and though it could never be said, it was understood. Max killed Jason, not her. Another secret
bond that held the two of them together.

  Her second conversation was with Cara, the next day, sitting at the table in the Wards’ kitchen after Pip had received a text: can you come over?

  “The detective, he asked me and Naomi where we were on the night of the fifteenth, if we were with you. So, we told him yes, and what times we left and arrived, where we went. That it was just a normal night, and we were hungry, that was it. Showed him the photos and videos on my phone too. He asked me to send them in.”

  “Thank you,” Pip said, the words inadequate and frail. There was that same look in Cara’s eyes too. She must have known, when the news broke about Jason; what else could it be? She and Naomi must have looked at each other and known, whether they said it out loud or not. But there was something unshakable in Cara’s eyes too, a trust between them, and even if this tested it, it had not broken it. Cara Ward, more a sister than a friend, her constant, her crutch, and that familiar look on her face helped loosen the knot in Pip’s gut. She didn’t know if she could have taken it, if Cara had looked at her any differently.

  And that was another good thing. Hawkins was now looking into her alibi, verifying it. He’d checked with the witnesses, and he must be following up, requesting the traffic camera footage, searching for the journey her car had made that night. Maybe he’d already seen the tapes from McDonald’s, seen the charges on her card and the times they were made. See, Hawkins, she was exactly where she said she was, miles and miles away at the time Jason was killed.

  Another conversation—which was probably more of an argument than a conversation—with her parents:

  “What do you mean you’re not going on Sunday?” Her mom gaped.

  “I mean I’m not going. I can skip the first week of college, classes don’t actually start until the week after. I can’t go yet, I have to see this through. I’m on to something here.”

  Her dad, who rarely shouted, had shouted. For hours. This was, apparently, the worst thing she’d ever done to him.

  “I think they need me, to find the killer for them, and you’re saying a week of getting drunk is more important than that?”

  A glare in answer.

  “If I miss anything, I’ll catch up. I always do. Please trust me. I need you to trust me.”

  Just as Ravi had trusted her, and she couldn’t leave town without knowing they’d done it. No mercy, no holding back, this was the final fight. Pip had given the police everything: she’d placed Max at the scene during the time-of-death window using the cell phone tower, she’d left Max’s hair at the scene, his shoeprints, traffic cam footage of his car driving away after burning it down, blood on the sleeve of his hoodie at his house, and in the mud caked under his shoes. Maybe they hadn’t found all that yet, but she was about to give them something else too: episode 1. Tie the narrative together, the motive. The background of this town, what happened to Andie, to Becca. Bad blood between two men, an altercation confirmed by witnesses, a hint at wounded pride, at a fight that maybe went too far. Security cameras at this individual’s home that would surely back him up if he had nothing to hide. The interview with Jackie had already gone some of the way, but Pip had to take it one step further.

  The worst they could do was tell her to take it down, tell her to stop interfering, but the damage would already be done, the seed planted. She couldn’t name the suspect and she wouldn’t have to; Hawkins would know who she was talking about, and this was just for him. He was the only listener who mattered. Build the case against Max for him so he’d never try to build one against her.

  41:29 MB of 41:29 MB uploaded

  A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: Who Killed Jason Bell?

  Season 3 Episode 1 successfully uploaded to SoundCloud.

  Another game, another race, between her heart and the pounding of her sneakers pattering out of time. Pip filled herself with the sound, just one foot in front of the other, to take herself out of her head. Maybe, if she ran fast enough, she might even sleep tonight. She was supposed to have been in a new bed tonight, in a new city, but Fairview wouldn’t let her go just yet.

  She shouldn’t have been looking down at her feet, she should have been watching where she was going. She hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t needed to think; it was just one of her regular routes, her circuit. One road flowing into another, and her mindlessly following.

  It wasn’t until she heard the commotion of voices and vehicles that she glanced up and realized where she was running to. Courtland, about halfway up, on the way to the Hastings house.

  The house was just up there, but there was something new that didn’t belong, catching her eye. Parked outside the house, jutting out onto the road, were three police cars and two marked trucks with blue lines along their sides.

  Pip kept going, her eyes dragging her closer and closer, until she could see a gathering of people moving in and out of the front door. Dressed in white plastic suits that covered the bottoms of their feet to the tops of their heads. Masks across their faces and blue latex gloves for hands. One carrying a large brown paper bag out of the house and into the waiting van, followed by another.

  A forensics team.

  A forensics team searching Max’s house.

  Pip slowed to a stop, her heart winning out against her feet, throwing itself against her ribs as she watched the orderly chaos of the plastic-wrapped people. She wasn’t the only one. Neighbors were standing at the edges of their drives, eyes wide, murmuring behind their hands to each other. A white van was parked on the other side of the street and milling around it were more people, one taking photographs of the scene, another man with a large camera propped on one shoulder, pointing it across the road.

  This was it. This was it. She couldn’t smile, she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t let any reaction play out on her face other than faint curiosity, but this was it. The beginning of the end. Her heart beat back that black hole in her chest as she watched.

  A uniformed officer was standing beside one of the police cars, talking with two people, a man and a woman. The man was spraying clipped, heated words at the officer, his voice carrying on the wind. They were Max’s parents, back from Santa Barbara, huddled with their deep, expensive tans. Pip searched him out, but Max wasn’t here. Neither was Detective Hawkins.

  “Ridiculous!” Max’s dad shouted, pulling his phone out, his movements rough and angry.

  “Mr. Hastings, you have already been shown the signed search warrant. It shouldn’t be too much longer, if you could just calm down.”

  Mr. Hastings spun on his heels, ramming the phone up to his ear.

  “Epps!” he barked down into it.

  The officer was pivoting too, keeping his eye on Mr. Hastings. Pip turned before he could see her down the street, her hair whipping out behind her, shoes scraping on the pavement.

  The officer might recognize her and she shouldn’t be seen here. Keep herself on the periphery.

  She picked up her heels and started running, back the way she’d come. Another game, another race, and she was winning now.

  It wouldn’t be long, it couldn’t be. They’d issued a search warrant for the house. They’d comb through it and they’d find that bloodstained hoodie and the sneakers with the zigzag soles in Max’s room; maybe Pip had even seen them being carried out, inside two of those large brown bags. If they had a warrant to search the house, it was likely they also had one to take DNA samples from Max, see if he was a match for those blond hairs found in dead Jason’s hand and in his river of blood. Maybe that’s where Max was right now.

  She rounded the corner, her eyes no longer on her feet but on the gray churning sky. The results of the DNA testing could take several days to come through from the lab, verifying the blood on Max’s clothes and the hairs found on Jason’s body. But once they did, Hawkins would have no choice. The evidence was overwhelming. Pieces shifting on a board, players staring out at ea
ch other from their own corners.

  Pip picked up her pace, faster and harder, and she could feel it, the end, catching up behind her.

  Subject: some news!

  Hi Pippa,

  I hope you are keeping well! I see from the episode you just released that you have found the case for your third season, or rather it found you. Such a tragedy, and poor Mr. Bell! I really hope you find who did this to him.

  I understand totally why this case had to take priority over looking into Billy and the DT Killer case, but I had some news this morning and I thought you would like to know. Apparently, Billy’s case is under review! There is some new evidence that has come to light, I don’t know all the details yet, but it sounds like it’s big—new DNA or fingerprint evidence. That’s why everyone is suddenly taking an interest. I wonder if they’ve finally identified the unknown fingerprint that was found on Melissa Denny, the second victim.

  These things take time, I’m sure, but a lawyer from The Innocence Project has been in touch with Billy about filing a writ of habeus corpus to try to overturn his conviction. So, it seems as though the police may think they’ve found the real DT Killer, or at least they’ve found enough evidence to start looking into whether Billy was wrongfully convicted.

  Anyway, all very exciting here and I will of course keep you updated. I may even have my boy home for Christmas, who knows!

  Thank you for believing in me and Billy.

  Best wishes,

  Maria Karras

  Pip stroked her finger down the computer screen, stalling over the last line of the email.

  Thank you for believing in me and Billy.

  She had believed in them, because Pip was supposed to be the sixth victim of the DT Killer and, in a way, she always would be. From the moment Jason grabbed her, there was no doubt that an innocent man was sitting in prison. But the plan had forgotten Billy. Survival had taken over, survival and revenge, and protecting Ravi and the others from the plan. But Billy needed to be saved from Jason Bell as much as she did, and Pip had left him behind, made him secondary. She could have done something, couldn’t she? The plan only worked if she didn’t know Jason Bell was the DT Killer, had nothing to do with him, but she could have thought of something.