Ravi must have reached the end first, a sharp intake of breath right by her ear, like a windstorm trapped inside her head. Pip held up one finger to put him on pause, until she was done, reached the very last word.
And then: ‘Oh,’ she said.
Ravi jerked away from her, standing up to his full height. ‘Oh?’ he said, voice higher and scratchier than it should be. ‘Is that all you have to say about that? Oh?’
‘What are you…’ She spun her chair to watch him. His hands were dancing nervously, tucked under his chin. ‘What are you freaking out about?’
‘What are you not freaking out about?’ He tried not to raise his voice, but he should have tried harder. ‘A serial killer, Pip.’
‘Ravi.’ His name broke apart in her mouth, into a small laugh. His eyes flashed angrily at her. ‘This is from six and a half years ago. The DT Killer confessed. I’m pretty sure he pleaded guilty in court too. He’s been in prison all this time, and there were no more murders after his arrest. The DT Killer is gone.’
‘Yeah, well, what about the dead pigeons?’ Ravi said, his arm in a straight and quivering line, pointing back to the screen. ‘And the chalk lines, Pip? Those two exact things in the weeks before he killed Julia.’ Ravi dropped to his knees in front of her, holding one hand up to her face, thumb and little finger folded down. ‘Three,’ he hissed, bringing his three raised fingers even closer. ‘Three chalk stick figures. Julia was the fourth victim, Pip. Three before her. And now there have been five women killed, and there are five little stick figures out on your drive right fucking now.’
‘Look, calm down,’ she said, taking his raised hand, tucking it between her knees to hold it still. ‘I’ve never heard of those things Julia Hunter’s sister said there, not in any articles or podcasts. Maybe the police decided they weren’t relevant in the end.’
‘But they are relevant to you.’
‘I know, I know, I’m not saying that.’ She locked on to his eyes, tilted her chin. ‘Obviously there’s a connection, between what Harriet Hunter said and what’s happening to me. Well, I haven’t had any mysterious phone calls –’
‘Yet,’ Ravi cut across her, his hand trying to escape.
‘But the DT Killer is in prison. Look.’ She released his hand, and turned back to the laptop, typing DT Killer into a new search page and pressing enter.
‘Ah, Billy Karras, yes, that’s his name,’ she said, scrolling down the page of results to show Ravi. ‘See. Age thirty when he was arrested. He confessed in a police interview and – see – yep, he also pleaded guilty to all five murders. No need for a trial. He’s in prison and will be for the rest of his life.’
‘Doesn’t really look like the police sketch,’ Ravi sniffed, his hand finding its own way back between her knees.
‘Well, kind of.’ She squinted at Billy Karras’ mugshot. Greasy dark brown hair pushed back from his face, green eyes that almost jumped right out of his face, startled by the camera. ‘No one ever really does anyway.’
That seemed to help Ravi a little, putting a face to the name, the proof unrolling before his eyes as Pip clicked on to the second page of results.
She stopped, scrolled back up. Something had caught her eye. A number. A month.
‘What?’ Ravi asked her, a tremor in his hand that passed through to her.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said, shaking her head so he knew she meant it. ‘Nothing really. Just… I never realized before. The final victim of the DT Killer, Tara Yates, she was killed on the 20th April 2012.’
He looked at her, the same glint of recognition in his eyes, mirroring back her own. She watched herself, the warped version of her trapped in the darks of his eyes. Well, one of them had to say it out loud.
‘The same night Andie Bell died,’ she said.
‘That is weird,’ he said, dropping his gaze, and the Pip that lived in there slipped away. ‘This is all weird, all of it. OK, he’s in prison, but so why is someone doing the exact same to you as happened to Julia Hunter before she died? To all of the victims, potentially. And don’t tell me it’s a coincidence because that’s a lie: you don’t believe in coincidences.’
He had her there.
‘No, I know. I don’t know.’ She stopped to laugh at herself, unsure why she had; it didn’t belong here. ‘Obviously that can’t be a coincidence. Maybe someone wants me to think I’m being stalked by the DT Killer.’
‘Why would someone want that?’
‘Ravi, I don’t know.’ She felt defensive all of a sudden, hot, the fence going up again, but this time to keep Ravi out. ‘Maybe someone wants to drive me crazy. Push me over the edge.’
They wouldn’t have to push very hard at all. She’d walked herself right up to the edge, toes hanging over the drop. One sharp breath to the back of her neck would probably do it. Just one question between her and that long fall down: who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?
‘And no one has been killed since this Billy guy was arrested?’ Ravi double-checked.
‘No,’ Pip said. ‘And it’s a very distinctive MO, the duct tape around the face.’
‘Budge over a sec,’ Ravi said, rolling her chair away from the desk, her hands falling from the laptop.
‘Hey.’
‘I’m just seeing something,’ he said, kneeling down in front of the screen. He flicked to the top of the page, deleted the current search items and typed in Billy Karras Innocent?
Pip sighed, watching him scroll quickly through the results. ‘Ravi. He confessed and he pleaded guilty. The DT Killer is behind bars, not outside my house.’
There was a crackling sound in Ravi’s throat, somewhere between a gasp and a cough. ‘There’s a Facebook page,’ he said.
‘For what?’ Pip dug in her heels to scoot the chair back.
‘A page called Billy Karras Is Innocent.’ He clicked on it, and Billy Karras’ mugshot filled the screen as the banner image. His face looked softer the second time, somehow. Younger.
‘Well, of course there is,’ Pip said, pulling up at Ravi’s side. ‘I bet there’s a Facebook page proclaiming the innocence of every single serial killer. I’d bet there’s even one for Ted Bundy.’
Ravi hovered the arrow above the About tab, pressed his thumb into the trackpad to bring it up. ‘Oh shit,’ he said, scanning the page. ‘It’s run by his mum. Look. Maria Karras.’
‘Poor woman,’ Pip said quietly.
‘On 18th May 2012, after sitting in a police interview room for nine hours without a break, my son gave a false confession to crimes he did not commit, a confession coerced by intense – and illegal – police interrogation tactics,’ Ravi read from the screen. ‘He immediately recanted the next morning, after some sleep, but it was already too late. The police had what they needed.’
‘A false confession?’ Pip said, looking into Billy Karras’ eyes, as though the question were for him. No, it couldn’t be. Those were the eyes of the DT Killer staring back at her… they had to be. Otherwise –
‘Serious systemic failings in our criminal justice system…’ Ravi started skipping, on to the next paragraph. ‘Need three thousand signatures on the petition to local MP, oh man, she only has twenty-nine signatures so far… trying to bring Billy’s case to the attention of the Innocence Project so we can appeal the conviction…’ He stopped. ‘Oh look, she’s even put her phone number in the contact info section. Please contact me if you have any legal experience or media connections and think you can help me with Billy’s case, or would like to help collect signatures. Please note: prank callers will be reported to the police.’ He turned from the screen, locked eyes with Pip.
‘What?’ she said, reading the answer in the downturn of his mouth. ‘Well, of course she thinks he’s innocent. She’s his mum. That’s not proof.’
‘But it’s a question mark,’ he said firmly, dragging Pip and the chair closer. ‘You should call her. Talk to her. See what her reasons are.’
Pip shook her head. ‘I don’t want to disturb her. Give her false hope for no reason. She’s clearly been through enough.’
‘Yeah.’ Ravi ran his hand up her leg. ‘The very same thing my mum went through, that I went through, when everyone thought Sal killed Andie Bell. And how did that come to an end again?’ he said, tapping a finger to his chin while he pretended to grapple for the memory. ‘Oh yeah, with an unsolicited knock at the door from an overly persistent Pippus Maximus.’
‘That was entirely different,’ she said, turning away from him, because she knew if she looked at him any longer, he’d convince her to do it. And she couldn’t do it. Could not.
Because if she called that poor woman, that would be admitting there was a chance. A possibility. That the wrong man was sitting in prison. And the right man? He was outside her house, drawing headless stick figures of the women he’d already killed, coming for her, beckoning her to join them. Number six. And that would be a game she wasn’t ready for. A stalker was one thing, but this…
‘OK, never mind,’ Ravi shrugged. ‘How about we sit here twiddling our thumbs instead, just wait and see how this whole stalker thing pans out? The passive approach. Never thought I’d see you opt for a passive anything but we’ll just hang tight, kick back. No biggie.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ She rolled her eyes at him.
‘But what you did just say,’ he said, ‘was that this was for you, that you can do this alone. This is what you are good at, investigating.’
He was right, she had just said that. Her test. Her trial. Her final judgement. Save herself to save herself. That was all still true. Even more so if there was that chance, that possibility, that there was a right man and a wrong man.
‘I know,’ she said quietly, conceding with a long outward breath. She’d known as soon as she’d finished reading the article what she had to do, had only needed Ravi to draw it out.
‘So…’ He smiled the little smile that always got her and dropped her phone into her hand. ‘Investigate it.’
