As Good as Dead Read online

“It’s something else, really, that I thought I should tell you…report to you.” Pip shifted awkwardly, pulled her sleeves down to cover her naked wrists. Leave nothing bare or exposed, not in this place.

  “Report something? What is it? What happened?” Hawkins face rearranged, all sharp lines from his raised eyebrow to his tightened lips.

  “It’s…well, it’s possible I have a stalker,” Pip said, the final syllable clicking in her throat. She was only imagining it, but it felt like she could hear that click bounding around the room, ricocheting off the plain walls and the dull metal table.

  “A stalker?” Hawkins said, and the click had gotten into his throat too somehow. His face shifted again, new lines and a new curve to his mouth.

  “A stalker,” Pip repeated, reclaiming the click as her own. “I think.”

  “OK.” Hawkins sounded unsure too, scratching his graying hair to buy him some time. “Well, in order for us to look into this, there needs to have been—”

  “A pattern of two or more behaviors,” Pip interrupted him. “Yes, I know. I’ve done my research. And there have been. More than that, in fact. Both online and…in real life.”

  Hawkins coughed into his hand. He pushed off the wall and crossed the room, his shoes sliding across the floor, hissing like they had a secret message just for Pip. He perched against the metal table and crossed his legs.

  “OK. What were these incidents?” he asked.

  “Here,” Pip said, reaching for her bag. Hawkins watched her as she opened it and dug inside. She shifted her bulky headphones out of the way and pulled out the folded sheets of paper. “I made a spreadsheet of all the potential incidents. And a graph. A-and there’s a photo,” she added, opening the pages and handing them to Hawkins.

  Now was her turn to watch him, studying his downturned eyes as they flicked across the spreadsheet, up and down and up again.

  “There’s quite a lot here,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?” Hawkins read out the burning question, and the hairs rose up the back of Pip’s neck, hearing it out loud in his voice. “So, it started online, did it?”

  “Yes,” she said pointing at the top half of the page. “It started with just that question online, and quite infrequently. And then, as you can see, the incidents have become more regular, and then things started happening offline. And if they are connected, then it is escalating: first the flowers on my car, and it has progressed to the—”

  “Dead pigeons,” Hawkins finished for her, running his finger across the graph.

  “Yes. Two of them,” Pip said.

  “What’s this severity scale here?” He glanced up from the column.

  “It’s a rating, of how severe each possible incident is,” she said plainly.

  “Yes, I understand that. Where did you get it from?”

  “I made it up,” Pip said, her feet heavy through the bottoms of her shoes, sinking into the floor. “I did my research and there isn’t a lot of official information about stalking, probably as it isn’t seen as a policing priority despite it often being a gateway to more violent crimes. I wanted a method of cataloging the potential incidents to see if there’s a progression of threat and implied violence. So I made one up. I can explain to you how I did it; there’s a three-point difference between online and offline behavior and—”

  Hawkins waved his hand to cut her off, the pages fluttering in his grip. “But how do you know these are all connected?” he asked. “The person online asking you that question and these…other incidents?”

  “Well, of course I don’t know for sure. But the thing that made me consider it was the ‘kill two birds with one stone’ message, the day the second pigeon was left on my drive. Without a head,” she added.

  Hawkins’s throat made a sound, a new and different click. “Well, it’s a very common expression,” he said.

  “But the two dead pigeons?” Pip said, straightening up. She knew, she already knew where this was going, where it was always destined to go. The look in Hawkins’s eyes against the look in hers. He wasn’t sure and she wasn’t either, but Pip could feel something shifting inside her, changing, heat sliding around under her skin, starting by her neck, claiming her one vertebra at a time.

  Hawkins sighed, attempted a smile. “You know, I have a cat, and sometimes I come home to two dead things in one day. Often without heads. One left in my bed just last week.”

  Pip felt defensive, tightening a fist behind her back.

  “We don’t have a cat.” She hardened her voice, sharpened it at the edges, readying to cut him with it.

  “No, but one of your neighbors probably does. I can’t really open an investigation because of two dead pigeons.”

  Was he wrong? That’s exactly what she’d told herself too.

  “What about the chalk figures? Twice now, getting closer to the house.”

  Hawkins flicked through the pages.

  “Do you have a photograph of them?” He looked up at her.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “They disappeared before I could.”

  “Disappeared?” He narrowed his eyes.

  And the worst thing was, she knew exactly how this all sounded. How unhinged she must seem. But that’s what she had wanted too, preferred to think of herself as broken, seeing danger where there wasn’t. And yet, a fire was starting in her head, lighting up behind her eyes.

  “Washed away before I had a chance,” she said. “But I do have a photo of something that might be a direct threat.” Pip controlled her voice. “Written on the sidewalk on my running route. ‘Dead Girl Walking.’ ”

  “Well, yes, I understand your concern.” Hawkins shuffled the pages. “But that message wasn’t left at your house, it was on a public street. You can’t know that you were its intended target.”

  That’s exactly what Pip had first told herself. But that’s not what she said now:

  “But I do know. I know it was left for me.” She didn’t before, but standing across from Hawkins now, listening to him say the same things she’d said to herself, it pushed her the other way, splintering off to the same side as instinct. She knew now, with bone-deep certainty, that all these things were connected. That she had a stalker and, more than that, this person meant her harm. This was personal. This was someone who hated her, someone close by.

  “And, of course, these online messages from trolls are very unfortunate,” Hawkins said. “But this is the kind of thing that happens when you make yourself a public figure.”

  “Make myself a public figure?” Pip stood a step back, to keep the fire away from Hawkins. “I didn’t make myself a public figure, Hawkins, that happened because I had to do your job for you. You would’ve been happy to let Sal Singh carry the guilt for killing Andie Bell forever. That’s why everything has happened the way it has. And this person clearly isn’t just someone who’s listened to the podcast, an online troll. They’re close by. They know where I live. This is more than that.” It was. It was.

  “I understand that’s what you believe,” Hawkins said, holding up his palms, trying to placate her. “And it must be very scary to be an online figure and have strangers think it’s their right to have access to you. To send you hurtful messages. But you must have expected that, on some level? And I know you aren’t the only one to have received hurtful messages from the public because of your podcast. I know Jason Bell has too, after you released season one. He told me in an unofficial capacity; we play tennis sometimes,” he said in explanation. “But anyway, I’m sorry, I’m just not seeing a clear connection between these online messages and these other incidents.” He said that last word differently, leaned on it a little too hard so that it came out of his mouth sideways.

  He didn’t believe her.
Even after everything, Hawkins didn’t believe her. Pip had known this was how it would be—she’d warned Ravi—but faced with it now, in the moment, she couldn’t believe he didn’t believe her, now that she believed herself. And the heat under her skin became something else: the cold, heavy downward pull of betrayal.

  Hawkins lowered the papers to the table. “Pip,” he said, his voice softer, gentler, like how he might talk to a lost child. “I think that, after everything you’ve been through and…I truly am sorry for my part in that, that you had to take all this on, alone. But I think you might be seeing a pattern that isn’t here, and it’s completely understandable after everything you’ve been through, that you might see danger around every corner, but…”

  She’d thought the same thing about herself not so long ago, and yet his words still felt like a punch to the gut. Why had she allowed herself even a shred of hope that this would go another way? Stupid, stupid.

  “You think I’m making it up,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “No, no, no,” he said quickly. “I think that you are dealing with a lot, and still processing the trauma you went through, and maybe that’s affecting how you are looking at this. You know”—he paused, pinched the skin on his knuckles—“when I first saw someone die in front of me, I wasn’t OK for a long, long time. It was a stabbing victim, young woman. That sort of thing, it stays with you.” His eyes softened as he glanced up finally and held Pip’s gaze. “Are you getting help? Talking to someone?”

  “I’m talking to you right now,” Pip said, her voice rising. “I was asking you for help. My mistake, I should have known better. It wasn’t so long ago that we were standing in a room just like this and I asked you for help, to find Jamie Reynolds. You said no then too, and look where we all are now.”

  “I’m not saying no,” Hawkins said, a small cough into his balled-up fist. “And I am trying to help you, Pip, I really am. But a couple of dead pigeons and a message written on a public sidewalk…there’s not a lot I can do with that, you must be able to understand that. Of course, if you think you know who might be responsible, we can look into issuing them a warn—”

  “I don’t know who it is, that’s why I’m here.”

  “OK, OK,” he said, his words starting loud and ending quiet, as though he were trying to hook onto Pip’s voice and bring it back down too. “Well, perhaps you can go and have a little think of anyone you know who might be responsible for something like this. Anyone who might have a grudge against you or—”

  “You mean a list of enemies?” Pip gave an amused sniff.

  “No, not enemies. Again, I don’t see anything here that indicates these events are necessarily connected, or that someone is targeting you specifically, or that they wish you harm. But if you have any thoughts on someone you know who might pull something like this, to mess with you, I can certainly look into having a chat with them.”

  “Fantastic,” Pip barked with an empty laugh. “I’m so glad that you’ll look into looking into it.” She clapped her hands, once, making Hawkins flinch. “You know, this is exactly why more than fifty percent of stalking crimes go unreported, this exact conversation we’ve had here. Congratulations on another episode of excellent police work.” She darted forward to snatch her papers from the table beside him, the pages ripping at the air between them, cutting the room into his side against hers.

  She did have a stalker. And now that she thought it through, maybe this could be it: exactly what she needed. Not Jane Doe, but this. One more case, the right one, and opportunity had handed it right to her. The universe might have aligned, for once, in her favor. This stalker could be the one. A case without that suffocating gray area, one with a clear moral right and a clear moral wrong. Someone out there hated her, wanted to hurt her, and that made them bad. On the other side was her, and maybe she wasn’t all good, but she couldn’t be all bad. Two opposing sides, as clean as she could hope for. And this time, she was the subject. If she got things wrong again, there would be no collateral, no blood on her hands. Only hers. But if she got it right, maybe this could be the thing to fix her.

  It couldn’t hurt to try.

  Pip felt a little more room inside her chest as it loosened around her heart, a feeling of resolve steel-cold in her stomach. She welcomed it back like an old friend.

  “Now, Pip, don’t be like that—” Hawkins said, the words too careful and too soft.

  “I will be however I am,” she spat, stuffing the papers back into her bag, the angry-wasp sound of her pulling up the zip. “And you”—she stopped to wipe her nose across her sleeve, the breath heavy in her chest—“I have you to thank for that too.” She shouldered her bag, pausing at the door out of Interview Room 3. “You know,” she said, her hand stalling above the handle, “Charlie Green taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned. He told me that sometimes justice must be found outside of the law. And he was right.” She glanced back at Hawkins, his arms wrapped around his chest to protect it from her eyes. “But, actually, I think he didn’t go far enough. Maybe justice can only ever be found outside of the law, outside of police stations like this, outside of people like you who say you understand but you never do.”

  Hawkins unwrapped his arms and opened his mouth to answer, but Pip didn’t let him.

  “He was right, Charlie Green,” she said. “And I hope you never find him.”

  “Pip.” There was a bite to Hawkins’s voice now, a hard edge that she’d goaded to the surface. “That’s not helpf—”

  “Oh, and,” she cut him off, her fingers gripping the handle too hard, like she might just bend the metal, leave her prints in it forever, “do me a favor. If I disappear, don’t look for me. Don’t even bother.”

  “Pi—”

  But the door slamming behind her cut off the end of her name, filling the corridor outside with the sound of old gunshots. Six of them, burrowing down past her skin and her ribs, rebounding around her chest, exactly where they belonged.

  A new sound joined in, tapping in between the echoes of the gun. Footsteps. Someone walking up the hallway toward her, in a dark uniform, his long brown hair pushed back from his face, and his eyes widening as he spotted her.

  “Are you OK?” Dan da Silva asked as she stormed past, the tunnels of their disturbed air colliding as she did. Pip barely caught the concerned look on his face before she was moving on. There wasn’t time to answer, to stop, or nod, or to say she was fine when it was clear she wasn’t.

  She just needed to get out of here. Out of the belly of this station where the gun first decided to follow her home. This very corridor where she’d walked the other way, wearing the blood of a dead man she couldn’t save. There was no help for her here and she was on her own, again. But she had herself now, and Ravi. She just needed to get out of this bad, bad place, and never, ever come back.

  File Name:

  List of potential enemies.docx

  Max Hastings—Has the most reason to hate me = number one suspect. He is dangerous, we all know this. I didn’t know I could hate anyone as much as I hate him. But if it is Max and he is planning to get me I WILL GET HIM FIRST.

  Max’s parents—?

  Ant Lowe—Definitely hates me. Only attempted to speak to him once since I got suspended for shoving him up against the lockers. He was always the prankster in the group, even when it crossed the line. Could this be him? Revenge for when I snapped on him? But the first Who will look for you message was sent before we all fell out?

  Lauren Gibson—Same reasons as above. She’s definitely petty enough to do something like this, especially if it was something Ant suggested. Dead birds aren’t her style, though. Connor, Cara, and Zach don’t speak to Ant or Lauren anymore and Lauren blames me for that. Her fucking boyfriend shouldn’t have called me a liar, then. Liar liar lair liar li ala li la r lar />
  Tom Nowak—Lauren’s ex-boyfriend. Gave me false information about Jamie Reynolds just to get on the podcast. Used me and I fell for it. In return, I humiliated him in front of the entire school, and online. He deleted his socials after season 2 aired. Definite reason to hate me. He’s still in town; Cara has seen him in the café.

  Daniel da Silva—Even though Nat and I are close now, her brother has been a suspect of mine twice before, in both Andie’s case and Jamie’s case. I admitted this publicly on the podcast, so he definitely knows. I might have caused trouble between him and his wife for revealing that he was talking to Layla.

  Leslie from the Stop & Shop—Don’t even know her last name. But she hates me after the incident with Ravi. And she was one of the protestors at Stanley’s funeral. I screamed at her. Why were they there? Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

  Mary Scythe—another protestor. And she was one of Stanley’s friends, volunteered with him at the Fairview Mail. She said this was “our town” and he shouldn’t be buried in it. Maybe she’d want me out of her town too.

  Jason Bell—I found the truth of what really happened to Andie Bell, and yet it only caused more pain for the Bell family, to learn that their younger daughter, Becca, had been involved all along. Plus, it brought a huge amount of press and media attention back into their lives five years after Andie died. Jason and Detective Hawkins play tennis together, apparently, and Jason complained to Hawkins about harassment he’d received because of the podcast, because of me. Jason’s second marriage broke down—was that because of my podcast too? He’s now back living with Andie’s mom, Dawn, in the house where Andie died.

  Dawn Bell—Same reasoning as above. Maybe she didn’t want Jason back in the house. My investigation indicated that Jason isn’t a good man: he was controlling and emotionally abusive to his wife and daughters. Becca won’t really talk about him. Could Dawn blame me for having him back in her life? Did I do that to her? I didn’t mean to.