As Good as Dead — Chapter no 41

The gates of Green Scene Ltd. glared at them, open but not welcoming, throwing the harsh light of the headlights back in their eyes.

Ravi pulled up just outside them, flicking the car off, and when it was quiet, they could hear the sound of another engine idling through the night. Jason Bell’s car up ahead, beyond the gates, keeping their body cold for them.

Pip stepped out, shutting the door behind her, the sound like a clap of thunder in the night. But if no one could hear her screams, no one would hear that either.

“Hold on,” she told Ravi as he climbed out and headed toward the open gate. “The phone,” she reminded him, walking along the boulders that lined the drive, connecting road to gate. She stopped at the large rock closest to the road and stepped around it, crouching low. A sigh of relief. There, waiting for her, was Max’s phone in the sealed- up sandwich bag.

Pip said another thank you in her head, sent it Jamie and Connor’s way, as she reached down and picked up the phone. Through her gloves, and the plastic bag, she pressed the side button and the lock screen lit up. Her eyes jumped across it, the white light so bright that Pip saw a ghostly silver halo around it, creeping toward her like a fog. And maybe it was: there were many ghosts here now, Jason added to the five women he’d killed, and the ghost of Pip herself, untethered from time, stalking up and down the road on a computer screen. Pip narrowed her eyes and looked beyond the bright light.

“Yes,” she hissed, turning to give Ravi a gloved thumbs-up.

“What’ve we got?” he asked, hurrying over.

“One missed call from Christopher Epps at nine forty-six. A missed call from ‘Mommy’ at nine-fifty-seven, and another at ten-oh-nine. And, finally, one from Dad at ten-forty-eight.”

“Perfect.” Ravi’s mouth stretched into a smile, teeth glowing in the night.

“Perfect,” Pip agreed, sliding the bagged-up phone safely inside her backpack.

They thought they were calling Max to tell him the good news, that Pip would be accepting the deal and recanting her statement. But that wasn’t what they’d done; they’d fallen right into the trap Pip and Ravi had planned for them. Those calls to Max’s phone had routed through the local cell phone tower here. Which meant they placed Max, and his phone, right here at a crime scene, where the police would find a dead man. At the crime scene, right in the middle of the manipulated time-of-death window.

Because Max Hastings killed Jason Bell, not Pip. And his parents and his lawyer had just helped her pull it off.

Pip stood up and Ravi reached for her hand, intertwined his fingers through hers, the plastic gloves snagging together. He gave it a squeeze.

“Almost there, Sarge,” he said, pressing his lips into her eyebrow, sore from where the tape had ripped it.

“Last push.”

Pip inspected his hat, made sure none of his long, dark hair was poking through.

Ravi dropped her hand to clap his together. “OK, let’s do it,” he said.

They walked through the gates, their steps crunching alternately in the gravel. Heading for the deep red eyes glowing in the night: the taillights of Jason’s car, and the quiet sigh of the running engine.

Pip stared at her reflection in the rear passenger window again, this long night etched all over her face, and she opened the door.

It was cold inside, very cold, her fingers prickling with it through the gloves as they crossed the threshold.

She leaned inside and could even see her own breath, fogging out in front.

Ravi opened the back door opposite her.

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” he said, bending down and readying his arms, grabbing Jason’s ankles through the black tarp. He glanced up, watching as Pip positioned her hands under Jason’s shoulders. “Ready?” he asked. “Three, two, one, go.”

They lifted him up and then Pip raised one knee to brace the body, her foot on the seat.

“OK,” she said, her arms weaker now, struggling with the weight, but the promise of survival kept them going. Gently, using her knee to guide them, they twisted the roll of tarp, flipping the body over and then resting him back down on the seat. Facedown again, the same way he had died.

“How’s he looking?” Ravi asked as Pip unwrapped one side of the tarp, trying to ignore the mess of the back of Jason’s head. She felt detached from the person who had done that, separate somehow, because she’d lived a hundred lifetimes in the hours since. Pip prodded his neck, feeling the muscles beneath his skin, moving down his shoulders over his bloodstained shirt.

“Rigor has started,” she said. “It begins in the jaw and neck, but it hasn’t gotten much farther than that.”

Ravi stared at her, a question in his eyes.

“That’s good,” Pip said, answering the unasked thing. “That means we managed to delay the onset…by quite a lot. It hasn’t even reached his lower arms yet. Rigor mortis is normally complete within six to twelve hours. He died over six hours ago now, and it’s still only in the upper part of his body. That’s good,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Ravi.

“OK, good,” Ravi said, the word escaping his mouth as a wisp of cloud in the cold air. “And the other thing?”

“Lividity,” Pip said. She gritted her teeth and unwrapped a little more of the tarp. She leaned forward and carefully peeled up the back of Jason’s shirt by an inch, peering in closer at the skin underneath.

It looked bruised, a mottled, purple-red tinge from the blood that had pooled inside.

“Yeah, it’s started,” Pip said, stepping one leg inside the footwell of the car to get closer. She reached over and pressed her gloved thumb into the skin of Jason’s back. When she pulled it away, the mark of her thumb stayed behind, one small, white half circle, an island surrounded by discolored skin. “Yes, it’s not fixed. Still blanchable.”

“Which means…?”

“Which means that now we’ve flipped him, the blood will move again, start to settle on the other side. Make it look like he hasn’t already been lying in this position for almost five hours. Buy us time.”

“Thanks, gravity,” Ravi said with a thoughtful nod. “The real MVP.”

“Right, well.” Pip ducked her head and moved back out the car door. “Now those two processes are really going to kick into high gear because it’s time to—”

“Microwave him.”

“Will you stop saying ‘microwave him’?”

“Just supplying the comic relief,” Ravi said seriously, holding up his gloved hands. “That’s my job in the team.”

“You undersell yourself,” Pip said, and then pointed to the ice packs dotted around the inside of the car. “Can you grab those?”

Ravi did, collecting them in his arms. “Still frozen solid. We got it really cold in here.”

“Yeah, we did well,” Pip said, moving to the front of the car and opening the driver’s-side door.

“Just going to take these back.” Ravi gestured at the ice packs.

“OK, rinse them off, in case they smell like—you know,” Pip called. “Oh, and Ravi, see if you can find cleaning supplies in there. Antibacterial spray, some cloths. A broom, maybe, so we can do a sweep for any hairs.”

“Yeah, I’ll have a look,” he said, running off toward the office building, kicking up the gravel around him.

Pip lowered herself into the driver’s seat, a glance over her shoulder at Jason Bell, keeping her eyes on him.

Alone again. Just the two of them in this small, confined space. And even though he was dead, Pip didn’t trust him not to grab her when her back was turned. Don’t be silly. He was dead, six hours dead, even though he only looked like he’d been gone for two. Dead, and helpless, not that he ever deserved any help.

“Don’t try to make me feel bad for you,” Pip told him quietly, turning away to study the buttons and dials on the control panel. “You evil piece of shit.”

She grabbed the dial—currently on the coldest setting—and turned it all the way to the other side, the notch pointing to a bright-red triangle. The system was already on the highest number, a five, the incoming air hissing loudly through the vents. Pip held her gloved hand out in front of one and kept it there as the air went from cool to warm to hot. Like a hair dryer held close to her fingers. This wasn’t an exact science; she didn’t know by how much this would be able to raise Jason’s body temperature. But the air felt hot enough to her, and they had some time to heat him up while they dealt with the rest of the scene. But not too long, because the heat would start to accelerate the rigor and the livor mortis. It was a balancing act between the three factors.

“Happy heating,” Pip said, stepping out of the car, shutting the door behind her. She closed the other doors too, sealing Jason back up inside the warming car, his temporary tomb.

A rattling sound behind her. Footsteps.

Pip turned, a gasp ready in her throat. But it was only Ravi, returning from the office.

She told him off with her eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “Look what I found.” In one hand he was holding a reusable Walmart bag filled with assorted antibacterial-spray bottles, bleach, and dusting cloths. On top of the pile was a wrapped-up extension cord, black and industrial. And in his other arm, clasped in the nook of his elbow and draped around his neck, was a vacuum cleaner. Red, with two googly eyes stuck to it, just above the hose. “I found a friend,” he said, giving the machine a little shake, making it say hello. The printed brand name along the bottom looked like a toothy smile.

“Yes, I can see that,” Pip said.

“And this long-ass extension cord, so we can go over any places you were, in case any hairs are left behind.

The trunk too.” He nodded at Jason’s car.

“Yeah,” Pip said, unnerved by the innocent smile on the vacuum cleaner’s face, a forever-grin, just as happy to help them clear up a crime scene. “I’m afraid he’s stolen your job, though.”

“What, the comic relief?” Ravi asked. “That’s fine, he’s better suited to it, and I’m in more of a leadership role anyway. Co-CEO of Team Ravi and Pip.”

“Ravi?”

“Yeah, right, sorry, nervous rambling. Still not used to seeing a dead body up close. Let’s get going.”

They started in the chemical storeroom, carefully stepping over and around the pool of blood. They didn’t need to clean that, they would leave the blood there, untouched; Max had to have killed Jason somewhere, after all.

And they needed the blood as a signal, to tell the first people on the scene that something bad—very bad—had happened here, so they’d look for a body, and find it, while Jason was still warm and stiff. That was important.

Ravi plugged the extension cord into an outlet in the larger storage room—where the machines were kept— and started vacuuming. He went over and over the places Pip pointed out to him. Everywhere she’d been dragged, everywhere she’d walked and run in a blind panic. Everywhere he’d been, too. Careful to keep a margin around the spot where Jason died, and the river of blood.

Pip worked on the shelves, a spray bottle in one hand, a cloth in the other. She went up and down the upturned shelves, the metal poles, spraying and wiping everywhere she’d touched or brushed up against. Every side, every angle. Finding the screw and nut she’d removed from the shelf and wiping those down too. Her fingerprints were already on file; she couldn’t leave even a partial behind.

She climbed up the collapsed shelves again like a ladder, painstakingly wiping anywhere she might have touched—the lip of the metal shelves, the plastic vats of weed killer and fertilizer. Up to the wall and around the smashed window, even polishing the pieces of jagged glass left in the frame, in case she’d touched those.

Clambering back down carefully, avoiding Ravi as he vacuumed back and forth, and over to the toolbox on the workbench at the far end. Pip removed everything from inside it; she could have touched anything as her hand burrowed through. One by one she wiped down every single tool, even the individual drill heads and fittings. She used up one of the spray bottles and had to fetch another, carrying on. She’d touched the Post-it note about the Blue team’s tools; she remembered doing it. She peeled the note off, crumpled it, and shoved it in the front pocket of her backpack to take home.

The blood had almost dried on the hammer as Pip picked it up from its resting place, clumps of Jason’s hair stuck in the gore. Pip left that end as it was, wiping up and down the handle, again and again, removing any traces

of herself. Replacing it close to the river of blood, staging it.

Door handles, locks, Jason’s large ring of Green Scene keys, light switches, the cupboard in the office building that Ravi touched. All of it, wiped and wiped again. Once more over the shelves to be sure.

When Pip finally looked up, checking off another box in her head, she checked the time on the burner phone.

It had just ticked past 2:30 a.m.; they’d been cleaning for close to two hours, and Pip was warm with sweat inside her hoodie.

“I think I’m done,” Ravi said, reemerging from the larger storeroom, an empty gas can in his hands.

“Yeah.” Pip nodded, slightly breathless. “Just the car to do. Mostly the trunk. And his car keys. But it’s been almost two hours now,” she said, glancing through the open storeroom door, back into the dark night. “I think it’s

time.”

“To take him out?” Ravi checked.

Pip could tell he’d been about to make an oven-ready type joke but had reconsidered.

“Yes. We’re going to flip him again, but I don’t want the rigor to be too advanced, he needs to still be stiff when they find him. I feel like it must be over a hundred degrees in there now, maybe even higher. Hopefully it’s brought his temperature back up to somewhere in the low nineties. He’ll start to cool again once he’s outside, one and a half degrees every hour until he reaches ambient temperature.”

“Explain that to me in ‘getting away with murder’ terms?” Ravi said, fiddling with the top of the gas can.

“Well, if he’s found and the ME initially examines him at the scene around six a.m.—in three and a half hours’ time—working the one-and-a-half-degree rule backward, it should show that he died at more like nine o’clock, ten o’clock. The rate of rigor and lividity should support that too.”

“OK,” Ravi said. “Let’s take him out, then.”

He followed her outside to Jason’s car, peering in the window.

“Hold on.” Pip dropped to her knees beside her open backpack. “I need the things I took from Max’s.”

She pulled out the freezer bag containing Max’s gray hoodie, and the one with his white sneakers and cap.

Ravi reached for the bag with the shoes.

“What are you doing?” Pip said, harder than she meant to, making him flinch and retract his hand.

“Putting on Max’s shoes?” he said uncertainly. “I thought we wanted to leave track marks through the mud, where we dump the body. The tread pattern of the shoes.”

“Yes, we do,” Pip said, pulling something else out of her bag. The five balled-up pairs of socks. “That’s why I brought these. I’m putting on the sneakers. I’m dragging him out there.” She untied her Converse and started pulling on the socks, a pair at a time, padding out her feet.

“I can help,” Ravi said, watching her.

“No, you can’t.” Pip slid her first bulked-up foot into Max’s sneaker, doing the laces up tight. “There can only be one set of tracks. Just Max’s. And you’re not dumping the body, I’m not letting you do that. It should be me. I killed him, I got us into this.” She tied the second shoe and stood up, testing out her grip against the gravel. Her feet budged a little up and down as she stepped, but it would be fine.

“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.