As Good as Dead

by Holly Jackson

  Another realization, stone-cold and stone-hard in her gut: Pip thought there wouldn’t be any significant evidence that Jason Bell was the DT Killer. Which meant two things: she was always going to leave Billy Karras behind, save herself, and bury him away at the back of her mind. And the second: none of this had to happen. Maybe Pip could have kept walking through those trees, Jason’s car pulling up to Green Scene behind her. She could have kept going, found a road, found a house, found a person and a phone. Maybe Hawkins wouldn’t have believed her still, but he might have looked into it. Maybe he would have found the same evidence they’d found now to back up her word, acted before Jason had a chance to act again. Jason behind bars and Billy free, on the strength of Pip’s firsthand account.

  But that’s not what happened. A fork in a path she hadn’t taken.

  Pip had made a different choice, standing in the shadows of those trees. It wasn’t an accident, or instinct, or fight or flight. She saw both paths and she’d made a choice. She went back.

  And maybe that other Pip in that other life would say she’d made the right choice. She’d trusted in those who’d never trusted in her and it had worked out. Saved herself to save herself; maybe she was already fixed, Team Ravi and Pip moving on, living a normal life. But this Pip could also say hers was the right choice. Dead was the only way she could be sure the DT Killer would never hurt anyone again. And on this path, Max Hastings was going to go down too. Two birds, one stone. Two monsters and a ring of dead and dead-eyed girls of their making. One dead, one locked away for thirty to life, if it worked. Gone. Disappeared, and no one left to look for them. Maybe this way was better, who could say?

  Anyway, there was something Pip could do now to rewrite that mistake, to un-forget Billy Karras. His mom was probably right; when they’d processed Jason’s body and entered his fingerprint information into the database, it had pinged with that remaining question mark from the DT Killer case. Maybe other DNA hits to the DT Killer crime scenes that they’d previously written off. And there were the trophies. Pip had found three of them herself now, two more by looking at an old, printed photo of the Bell family, one she’d had pinned on her murder board a year ago. A gold necklace with a coin pendant that had belonged to Phillipa Brockfield, wrapped around Dawn Bell’s neck. Two glints of light by Becca’s ears: rose-gold earrings with pale green stones. The same earrings she still wore now. They belonged to Julia Hunter. Pip wished she could get a message to Becca somehow, tell her everything that happened, tell her about those earrings, because DT still had a hold over her as long as they were in her ears. Reliving the moment he’d killed these women whenever he saw his wife and his daughters.

  The police had searched Jason’s house; if they’d found and collected Pip’s headphones, maybe they’d found the trophies from the other victims. Andie’s purple hairbrush, the necklace Dawn wore, Bethany Ingham’s Casio watch, Tara Yates’s key rings.

  And if they hadn’t yet found the trophies, Pip could lead Hawkins to them, she just had to show him this photo.

  Not only that, she had Andie’s secret email account and that unsent draft. That email—Andie’s words that weren’t her last but felt like it—would be the nail in Jason Bell’s coffin. Lead the police to Andie’s connection with HH too. Pip would need to change the password on the account to something less conspicuous than her temporary DTKiller6. She did that now, swapping it out for TeamAndieAndBecca; she thought Andie would like that best.

  The police might have a fingerprint, but Pip could give them everything else, shore up the case against Jason Bell to beyond reasonable doubt. So when Billy’s conviction was overturned, they wouldn’t have to take it to a retrial with this new exculpatory evidence, but they’d dismiss the charges outright. Let Billy finally go home. Pip owed him that much.

  And if everyone knew who Jason Bell really was, Pip would no longer have to listen to people say how fucking awful it was that someone killed him.

  Pip practiced in the mirror, her voice dry and unused all day. “Hi, Detective Hawkins, sorry, I know you must be extraordinarily busy. It’s just…well, as you know, I’ve been looking into Jason Bell’s background as part of my research into who might have killed him. Looking into his company, personal relationships, et cetera. And, I don’t know”—she paused, an apologetic look on her face, teeth gritted—“I’ve found some troubling connections to another case. I didn’t want to bother you with them, but I really think you should take a look.”

  The duct tape and rope taken from Green Scene Ltd., and the company’s connection with the dump sites. The recording of her old interview with Jess Walker about a security alarm set off on the premises on the same night Tara Yates and Andie died. The username for Andie’s secret second email address, and the just-reset password. A photo of the school planner on Andie’s desk, the purple paddle hairbrush beside it. And this family photo, with the necklace and the earrings.

  “Becca’s still wearing them. I know because I’ve been visiting her. Maybe it’s just me, but don’t these look just like the earrings the DT Killer took from Julia Hunter as a trophy?”

  The voice in her head that sounded like Ravi told her not to. The real one would probably agree, that she should try not to bring any more attention to herself. But Pip had to do this, for Billy, for his mom, and so that the other Pip in that other life—the one who made the other choice—wasn’t right.

  Pip collected everything she needed to free a man, and she left.

  * * *

  —

  That same journey again, to the Fairview Police Station, but this time Pip completed it. And there was no black hole in her chest anymore, only determination, only rage and fear and determination. Her final chance to set everything right. Save Billy, take on Hawkins, take down Jason Bell and Max Hastings, save Ravi, save herself, live a normal life. The end was the beginning and both were running out.

  She pulled into an empty space in the parking lot, checked her eyes in the rearview mirror, and opened the door.

  Pip shouldered her backpack with everything inside and slammed the door, the sound clapping through the quiet Thursday afternoon.

  But it wasn’t quiet, not anymore, as Pip walked up to the brick building and the bad, bad place. A rush of tires on concrete behind her, lots of them, peeling to a stop.

  Pip stopped short of the automatic doors, looked over her shoulder.

  Three cars had just pulled up outside the entrance. A white-and-black squad car in front, followed by an unmarked SUV and another squad car at the rear.

  Two uniformed officers who Pip didn’t know climbed out of the first vehicle, one speaking into the radio clipped to his shoulder. The doors of the squad car at the back opened, and out stepped officers Daniel da Silva and Soraya Bouzidi. Daniel’s mouth tensed in a grim line as he caught Pip’s eye.

  The driver’s-side door of the unmarked black car opened, and Detective Hawkins emerged, his green padded jacket zipped up to his neck. He didn’t notice Pip standing there, twenty feet from him, as he stepped to the back door of his car, opened it, and leaned in.

  Pip saw his legs first, then his feet swinging out onto the concrete, then his hands, cuffed in front of him as Hawkins pulled him out of the car.

  Max Hastings.

  Max Hastings under arrest.

  “I’m telling you, you’ve made a huge mistake,” he said to Hawkins. His voice was shaking, and in that moment Pip couldn’t tell whether it was with rage or fear. She hoped it was the latter. “I had nothing to do with this, I don’t understand—”

  Max cut off, his pale eyes trailing toward the police station, finding Pip standing there, latching on. His breathing grew heavier, his eyes widening, darkening.

  Hawkins didn’t notice, gesturing for Soraya and one of the other officers to come over.

  They didn’t see it coming. Pip didn’t see it coming. In one quick, shuddering movement,
Max wrenched his arm free of Hawkins, shoving him to the ground. He broke away, flying across the parking lot, too fast she didn’t have time to blink.

  Max collided into Pip, cuffed hands against her neck, shoving her backward into the brick building. Her head connected with a crack.

  Shouts and scuffles behind, but Pip could only see one thing: the flash of Max’s eyes, inches from hers. His hands tightened around her neck, the points of his fingers burning through her skin.

  He bared his teeth and she bared hers back.

  “You did this!” he screamed in her face, spit flying. “You did this somehow!”

  He pushed harder, grating Pip’s head against the brick.

  She didn’t fight him off; her hands were free but she didn’t push him away. She flashed her eyes back and whispered quietly, so only Max could hear:

  “You’re lucky I didn’t put you in the ground too.”

  Max roared at her, the scream of a cornered animal, his face patchy and red, ugly veins sticking out by his eyes. “You fucking bitch!” he screamed, slamming her head just as Hawkins and Daniel caught up behind, dragging him off her. A scuffle, Max down on the ground kicking out at them as the other officers rushed over.

  “She did this!” Max screamed. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent!”

  Pip felt the back of her head: no blood. No blood on her hands.

  “I didn’t do it!”

  They hauled him up to his feet again.

  Max threw his head in her direction, and for a fleeting moment he looked just as he should: eyes narrow and violent, mouth gaping open hideous and wide, face inflamed and misshapen. There he was, the danger, ripped of all pretense, all disguise.

  “She did this somehow!” he screamed. “She did! She’s fucking crazy!”

  “Get him inside!” Detective Hawkins shouted over Max, directing Soraya and the other two officers as they half dragged, half carried a writhing Max through the automatic doors into the station. Before he followed them in, Hawkins turned back to Pip, pointing at her. “You OK?” he asked, out of breath.

  “Fine.” She nodded.

  “OK.” He nodded too, then hurried inside the building, following the sound of Max’s wild screams.

  Someone sniffed behind her and Pip wheeled around, snapping her eyes to them. It was Daniel da Silva, righting his uniform, ruffled and askew where Max had pulled at it.

  “Sorry,” he said breathily. “You all right? Looked like he got you pretty hard there?”

  “Yeah, no, fine,” she said. “Just a bump on the head, it’ll be fine. My dad says I have a few too many brain cells anyway, could afford to lose a few.”

  “Right.” Dan sniffed with a small, sad smile.

  “Max Hastings,” Pip said quietly, a question hiding behind his name.

  “Yeah,” Dan said.

  “They charging him?” she asked, both of them watching the entrance doors, the muffled sounds of Max’s voice filtering through. “With murder?”

  Daniel nodded.

  Something had been pressing down on Pip, a shadow heavy on her shoulders, constricting her chest. But as she watched Daniel’s head move up and down, it finally let her go, it released her. They were charging Max with Jason’s murder. Her heart beat wing-fast against her ribs, but it wasn’t the terror, it was something else, something closer to hope.

  It was over, she had won. Four against four and here she was, still standing.

  “Piece of shit,” Dan hissed, pulling Pip back into the moment, here at the bad, bad place, watching those doors. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, but…Jason Bell was like a father to me, and he”—Daniel broke off, staring at the glass doors that had swallowed Max whole—“he…” Daniel wiped at his eyes, coughed into his fist.

  “I’m sorry,” Pip said, and it wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t sorry that Jason was dead, not one bit, not sorry that she had killed him, but she did feel sorry for Daniel. Pip had thought him capable of violence three separate times now, convinced beyond a doubt he had to have been the DT Killer. He wasn’t, he was just another one of those souls floating out in that expanse of gray area, in the wrong places at the wrong times. And another realization, hard and cold as they always seemed to be these days: Jason Bell had used Daniel. He was the reason Dan joined the police force at all; Jason convinced him to do it, supported him through training. Becca had told Pip all this last year, and now she saw it for what it really was. It wasn’t because Jason saw Daniel as the son he’d never had. No, it was because he wanted a way to get information on the DT Killer case. An in with the police and the investigation. And all of Daniel’s red-flag questions about DT had really been Jason’s. His interest in the case, through Daniel. That’s what it was, that’s what Andie had meant when she said her dad was “practically one of them.” He’d used him. Jason Bell hadn’t been like a father to Daniel, just as he wasn’t a father to Andie and Becca.

  Pip could tell Daniel. She could warn him about the information that might come out about Jason soon, his links to the DT Killer. But she looked at the sad smile on his face, the red skin by his eyes, and she couldn’t, she didn’t want to be the one to take that away from him. She’d taken enough.

  “Yeah,” Daniel said absently, watching the entrance as someone walked through it, the doors hissing against their frames.

  It was Detective Hawkins. “Daniel,” he said, “could you…?” He gestured back toward the station with his thumb.

  “Yes sir,” Daniel said with a quick shake of his head, picking up his feet and disappearing inside through the automatic doors.

  Hawkins walked over to her.

  “You OK?” he asked again. “Do I need to call in any medical assistance? Your head…?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” she insisted.

  “I’m sorry.” He coughed awkwardly. “That was my fault. He wasn’t resisting before then, I didn’t expect him to…I should have been paying attention. My fault.”

  “That’s OK.” Pip gave him a tense closed-mouth smile. “No worries.”

  The silence between them was thick and teeming.

  “What are you doing here?” Hawkins asked her.

  “Oh, I came to talk to you. About something.”

  “Right?” He looked at her.

  “I know you’re busy, clearly.” She glanced at the doors into the station. “But I think we should talk inside. I have some things I need to show you, something I’ve found in my research. It’s important, I think.”

  Hawkins’s eyes alighted on hers. Pip stared back; she wouldn’t be the one to break it.

  “Yeah, sure, OK,” he said, looking quickly behind him. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” she said. “I’ll wait out here.”

  Hawkins bowed his head as he turned away from her.

  “So he did it, then?” Pip directed the question to the back of Hawkins’s head. “Max killed Jason Bell?”

  He halted, turned back around, his polished black shoes hissing against the concrete.

  A small movement of his head, not quite a nod. “The evidence is overwhelming,” he said. His eyes flicked back to hers, circling, like he was studying her for a reaction. She didn’t give him one, her face stayed the same. What was he expecting her to do: smile? Remind him that she had been right from the start, ahead of him once again?

  “That’s good, then,” she said. “The evidence, I mean. No doubt…”

  “There’ll be a press conference, later today,” he said.

  “OK.”

  Hawkins sniffed. “I need to…” He took one step back toward the automatic doors, tripping the sensors.

  “Sure, I’ll wait out here,” she said.

  Hawkins took another step, then paused, shaking his head with a tiny outward
laugh.

  “I suppose if you were ever involved in anything like this,” he said, the after-laugh smile still on his face, “you’d know exactly how to get away with it.”

  He watched her and something fell, down into Pip’s stomach, but it kept going, further and further, dragging her down with it. Hairs standing up across the back of her neck.

  A flicker of a smile on her face, to match his. “Well,” she said with a shrug, “I have listened to a lot of true crime podcasts.”

  “Right,” Hawkins laughed quickly, looking down at his shoes again. “Right,” with a nod, “I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

  He walked back inside the station and Pip watched him go, and was that the hiss of the closing doors or was the sound coming from inside her own head?

  His voice was all Pip heard, for the second night in a row, staring up at the dark shadows on her ceiling, molding them into shapes with her mind while Hawkins spoke. Eyes wide open, so they couldn’t be taped shut. The gun firing in her heart.

  I suppose if you were ever involved in anything like this, you’d know exactly how to get away with it.

  In her head, Pip lifted and dipped the words, just as he had, laid the same pressure on the same syllables.

  Hawkins hadn’t brought it up again, when he and Pip sat in Interview Room 1 and she showed him her research into Jason, handed over the photos and the login details for Andie’s email account. He told her, indirectly, that they had already found this connection to the DT Killer and it was being looked into, but that her information was helpful, thank you. He’d shaken her hand before seeing her out. Had his hand lingered over hers just a little too long, though? Like he was trying to feel for something?