As Good As Dead (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3)

by Holly Jackson

She stepped into the room and his face was the first thing she saw. Sitting on the opposite side of the long table, his angular cheekbones in a downward point to his mouth, his messy swept-back blond hair. He glanced up and met her eyes, a hint of something dark and gloating in his. Max Hastings.

If you don't get the fuck out of her face

She hated him too, but the feeling was lost, subsumed by her hatred for the person sitting opposite her.

Oh, poor little serial rapist, Pip thought, speaking the words with her eyes.

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Just this. Normal life. People you could count on your fingers who cared about you as much as you cared about them. The people who would look for you if you disappeared.

“What are you do—” he begins to ask. She doesn’t let him finish. Pip closes the gap between them and her elbow crashes into Max’s face. She hears a crack, but it isn’t Stanley’s ribs this time, it’s Max’s nose.

but I think you should go to the police.” “Wh— And they’ll do what, Ravi? Nothing, as usual.”

Hawkins sighed, attempted a smile. “You know, I have a cat,

And the award to the WORST police station goes too

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.

“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.

He didn’t believe her. Even after everything, Hawkins didn’t believe her.

“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.

I hope you get kidnapped and pip refuses to solve who kidnapped you

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.

But if it is Max and he is planning to get me I WILL GET HIM FIRST.

Detective Richard Hawkins—Fuck him.

I understand why they all hate me. I might hate me too.

These past months had been filled with one last times and just one mores. They weren’t lies; she’d truly meant them at the time. But she always lost in the end.

“I see,” he said, “not even a glance back, or one of your scornful looks. Not a hug, not a kiss. Not an Oh, Ravi, darling, you look devilishly handsome today and you smell like a spring dream. Oh, Pip, my dear, you are too kind to notice. It’s a new deodorant I’m trying.”

“He didn’t believe me,” she said quietly. “Hawkins didn’t believe me. No one believes me.” Not even her sometimes, a new wave of doubts after her dream last night, wondering again whether it was possible she was doing this to herself.

“We’re going out for a walk. Oh, what a fantastic idea, Ravi, you’re so smart and handsome. Oh, Pip, I know I am, but do try to keep it in your pants, your father is downstairs.”

You’re my person. My little one. My Sarge. And I’m supposed to protect you.”

“You know brains always beat brawn, any day of the week.”

This leads me to believe that our killer lives in a different nearby location, one that hasn’t yet come up in the investigation, his untouched buffer zone.

I think what we have here is something that underpins a lot of serial killings: misogyny, essentially. This man has very strong feelings about women—he hates them. These victims are all attractive, educated, intelligent young women, and there is something there that this killer finds utterly intolerable.

he’s actually a police officer now.

Someone saw you, Billy.

Dan..

I got this email out of the blue from Andie. I didn’t know her before then. We were the same age, at different schools, but we had a few mutual friends. I think she got my email from my Facebook profile, back when everyone was on Facebook. Anyway, it was a really sweet message, saying how sorry she was about Julia, and if I ever needed someone to talk to, I could talk to her.” “Andie said that?” Pip asked.

Why would Andie have reached out to Harriet out of the blue?

Hey HH, would you want to talk on the phone instead of emailing, or even meet up some time…. Something stirred at the back of Pip’s mind, pushing her eyes back to those two letters: HH. She asked her mind what she was supposed to be seeing here; it was just Harriet’s initials.

them. Of course he’d find out. He’s practically one of them.

And we asked the friends and family of the previous victims, but they’d never heard anything of the sort.

Two different killers

What would you tell me to do, if you were here with me? Ravi answered. He would tell her not to give up, even if that’s what the statistics and logic told her to do. “Fuck that less than one percent. You’re Pippa Fricking Fitz-Amobi. My little Sarge. Pippus Maximus. And there’s nothing you can’t do.”

It wasn’t the face she thought she’d see. It was Jason Bell.

Andie flashed into her mind, her ghost sitting beside her, holding Pip’s hand. Poor Andie. She’d known what her father was. Had to come home every day to a house where a monster lived. Died trying to get away from him, to protect her sister from him.

And that’s when two separate memories jumped like static across Pip’s brain. Fusing, to become one. A hairbrush. But not just a hairbrush. The purple paddle hairbrush on Andie’s desk—the one in the corner of the photos Pip and Ravi took—it had belonged to Melissa Denny, Jason’s second victim. The trophy he took from her, to relive her death. He’d given it to his teenage daughter; probably got a dark thrill from watching her use it. Sick fuck.

that’s why she chose to go to prison. It was to stay away from you.”

It doesn’t hurt me, you know. You can’t hurt me. It only proves I was right. About her. Becca too. All of you. Something badly wrong with all of you. Dangerous.”

Imagine feeinv so threatend by teenage girls, thats a you problem

“It was a golden retriever.”

DT had taken her face, but she had taken it back.

She could even call Detective Hawkins directly; he’d understand. She faltered, one foot hovering above the ground. Wait. Would he understand? He never understood. Not any of

“What the—” he said. Her arm knew what to do. Pip pulled it back and swung the hammer. It found the base of his skull. A sickening crunch of metal on bone. He staggered. He even dared to gasp. Pip swung again. A crack.

“I love you. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t trust them, Ravi. I trusted the police before and they’ve let me down every single time.

“I know who the killer is. I know who’s going to have killed Jason Bell.” “What?” Ravi stared at her. “Who?” It was inevitable. Full circle. The end was the beginning and the beginning was the end. Back to the very start, to the origin, to set it all right. “Max Hastings,” she said.

Pip felt her eyes prickle, a catch in her throat. She thought she’d never see them again. Never smile with them, or cry, or laugh, never grow old as her parents grew older, their traditions becoming hers, like the way her dad made mashed potatoes, or the way her mom decorated the tree at Christmas. Never see Josh grow into a man, or know what his forever-voice sounded like, or what made him happy. All those moments, a lifetime of them, big and small. Pip had lost them, and now she hadn’t. Not if she could pull this off.

Hey Sarge, remember me?