The next day, after school, Pip was in the living room with Josh, teaching him how to play chess.
Someone knocked on the front door, and the absence of Barney was an immediate punch to the gut. No skittering claws on the polished wood racing to stand and greet.
Her mom pattered down the hall and opened the door.
Her voice floated into the living room, “Oh, hello, Ravi.”
Pip’s stomach leaped into her throat.
Confused, she put her knight back down and walked toward the front hall, her unease ramping into panic. Why would he come back after yesterday? How could he bear to look at her ever again? Unless he was desperate enough to come and ambush her parents, tell them everything and try to force Pip to go to the police. She wouldn’t do it. Who else would die if she did?
She looked toward the front door to see Ravi unzipping a large sports bag and dipping his hands inside.
“My mom sends her condolences,” he said, pulling out two large Tupperware boxes. “She made you a chicken curry, you know, in case you didn’t feel like cooking.”
“Oh,” Pip’s mom said, taking the boxes from Ravi. “That’s very thoughtful. Thank you. Come in, come in. You must give me her number so I can thank her.”
“Ravi?” Pip said.
“Hello, trouble,” he said softly. “Can I talk to you?”
In Pip’s room, Ravi closed the door and dropped his bag onto the carpet.
“Um…I—I,” Pip stuttered, looking for clues in his face. “I don’t understand why you came back.”
He took a small step toward her. “I thought about it all night; literally, all night. It was light outside when I finally slept. And there’s only one reason I can think of, only one thing that makes sense. Because I do know you; I wasn’t wrong about you.”
“I don’t—”
“Someone took Barney, didn’t they?” he said. “Someone threatened you, and they took your dog and killed him so you would stay quiet about Sal and Andie.”
The silence in the room was buzzy and thick.
She nodded and her face cracked.
“Don’t cry,” Ravi said, closing the distance between them in one swift step. He pulled her into him, locking his arms round her. “I’m here,” he said, “I’m here.”
Pip leaned into him, and everything—all the pain, all the secrets she’d caged inside—came free, radiating out of her like heat. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to hold in the tears.
“Tell me what happened,” he said when he finally let her go.
But the words got lost and tangled in her throat. She pulled out her phone and clicked to the messages from Unknown, handing the phone to him. She watched Ravi’s eyes darken as he read through.
“Oh, Pip,” he said, looking at her wide-eyed. “This is sick.”
“They lied,” she sniffed. “They said I’d get him back, and then they killed him.”
“That wasn’t the first time they contacted you,” he said, scrolling up. “The first text here is from October eighth.”
“That wasn’t the first.” She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk and handed Ravi the two sheets of printer paper, pointing at the one on the left. “That one was left in my sleeping bag when I camped in the woods with my friends at the end of August. I saw someone watching us. That one”—she pointed to the other—“was in my locker last Friday. I ignored it and kept going. That’s why Barney’s dead. Because of my arrogance. Because I thought I was invincible and I’m not. We have to stop. Yesterday…I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to get you to stop, other than to make you hate me so you stayed away and dropped this.”
“I’m hard to get rid of,” he said, looking up from the notes. “And this isn’t over.”
“Yes, it is.” She took them back and dropped them onto the desk. “Barney’s dead, Ravi. And who will be next? You? Me? The killer’s been here, in my house, in my room. They read my research and typed a warning on my computer. Here, Ravi, in the same house as my nine-year-old brother. We’d be putting too many people in danger. Your parents could lose the only son they have left.” She broke off, an image of Ravi dead in the autumn leaves behind her eyes, Josh beside him. “The killer knows everything we know. They’ve beaten us, and we have too much to lose. I’m sorry that it means I have to abandon Sal. I’m so sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the threats?” he said.
“At first I thought it might just be a prank,” she said, shrugging. “But I didn’t want you to know, in case you made me stop. And then I just got stuck, keeping it a secret. I thought they were just threats. I thought I could beat them. I was so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid; you were right all along about Sal,” he said. “He’s innocent. We know that, but it’s not enough. He deserves for everyone to know that he was good and kind until the end. My parents deserve that. And now we don’t even have the photo that proved it.”
“I still have the photo,” Pip said quietly, taking the printout from the bottom drawer and handing it to him. “Of course I’d never destroy it. But it can’t help us now.”
“Why?”
“The killer is watching me, Ravi. Watching us. If we take that photo to the police and they don’t believe us, if they think we Photoshopped it or something, then it’s too late. We would have played our final hand, and it’s not strong enough. Then what happens? Josh gets taken? You do? People could die here.” She sat on her bed, picking at her socks. “We don’t have our smoking gun. The photo isn’t enough proof; it relies on massive interpretive leaps, and it’s not online anymore. Why would they believe us? Sal’s brother and a seventeen-year-old girl. I hardly believe us. We just have stories about a murdered girl, and you know what the police here think of Sal, just like the rest of Fairview. We can’t risk our lives on that photo alone.”
“No,” Ravi said, laying the picture on the desk and nodding. “You’re right. And one of our main suspects is a police officer. It’s not the right move. Even if the police did somehow believe us and reopen the case, it would take them a long time to find the actual killer that way. Time we don’t have.” He wheeled the desk chair over to face her on the bed and straddled it. “So I guess our only option is to find them ourselves.”
“We can’t—” Pip started.
“Do you seriously think walking away is the best move here? How would you ever feel safe again in Fairview, knowing the person that killed Andie and Sal and Barney is still out there? Knowing they’re watching you? How could you live like that?”
“I have to.”
“For such a clever person, you’re being a real idiot right now.” He leaned his elbows on the back of the chair, chin against his knuckles.
“They murdered my dog,” she said.
“They murdered my brother. And what are we going to do about it?” He straightened up, a daring glint in his eyes. “Are we going to forget everything and hide? Live our lives knowing a killer is out there watching us? Or do we fight? Find them and punish them for what they’ve done to us. Put them away so they can’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“They’ll know we haven’t stopped,” she said.
“No they won’t, not if we’re careful. No more talking to the people on your list, no more talking to anyone. The answer must be somewhere in everything we’ve learned. You’ll say you’ve given up your project. Only you and I will know.”
Pip didn’t say anything.
“If you need more persuasion,” Ravi said, walking over to his backpack, “I brought my laptop for you. It’s yours until this is done.” He pulled it free and held it out.
“But—”
“It’s yours,” he said. “You can use it to finish your application and type up what you remember of your log, your interviews. I took some notes myself on there. I know you’ve lost all your research, but—”
“I haven’t lost my research,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I always email everything to myself, just in case,” she said, watching Ravi’s face twitch into a smile. “Who do you think I am, an amateur?”
“Sorry, Sarge, I should’ve known even your backups would have backups. So are you saying yes, or should I have brought some bribery muffins too?”
Pip reached out for the laptop.
“Come on, then,” she said. “We have a double homicide to solve.”
They printed everything: every entry from her capstone project log, every page from Andie’s planner, a photo of each suspect, the train station leverage photos of Howie with Stanley Forbes, Jason Bell and his new wife, the Ivy House Inn, Max Hastings’s house, the newspapers’ favorite photo of Andie, a picture of the Bell family dressed up in black tie, Sal smiling and waving at the camera, Pip’s catfish texts to Emma Hutton, her emails as a CNN reporter about drink-spiking, a printout of the effects of Rohypnol, a map of Fairview High School, the photo of Daniel da Silva going into the Bell house, Stanley Forbes’s articles about Sal, Nat da Silva and information about aggravated assault, a picture of a white Honda Civic beside a map of Monroe and Howie’s house, newspaper reports of a hit-and-run on New Year’s Eve 2013, screen grabs of the texts from Unknown and scans of the threat notes with their dates and locations.
They looked down together at the reams of paper on the carpet.
“It’s not environmentally friendly,” Ravi said, “but I’ve always wanted to make a murder board.”
“Me too,” Pip said. “And I’m well prepared, supplies-wise.” From the drawers in her desk, she pulled out a pot of colored pushpins and a fresh bundle of red string.
“You just happen to have red string ready to go?” Ravi said.
“I have every color of string.”
“Of course you do.”
Pip took down the corkboard hanging over her desk. The one covered with photos of her and her friends, Josh and Barney and her school schedule. She removed it all, and they started sorting on the floor.
They fastened the pages to the board with flat silver pins, organizing each page around the relevant person in huge colliding orbits. Andie’s and Sal’s faces in the middle of it all. They had just started making the connection lines with the string and multicolored thumbtacks when Pip’s phone rang. A number not saved in her phone.
She pressed the green button. “Hello?”
“Hi, Pip, it’s Naomi.”
“Hi. That’s weird—you’re not saved in my phone.”
“Oh, it’s ’cause I smashed mine,” Naomi said. “I’m using a temp until it’s fixed.”
“Oh yeah, Cara said. What’s up?”
“I was at my friend’s house this weekend, so Cara only just told me about Barns. I’m really sorry, Pip. I hope you’re OK.”
“Not yet,” Pip said. “I’ll get there.”
“And I know you may not want to think about this right now,” she said, “but I found out my friend’s cousin studied English at Columbia. I thought maybe I could see if he’d email you about the school and interview and stuff, if you wanted.”
“Actually, yeah, yes, please,” Pip said. “That would help. I’m still struggling with my essay a little.”
“OK, cool. I’ll ask her to reach out. Early decision deadline is soon, right?”
“Yep, in three days.”
“You’ll get it done, I know you.”
“Ok,” Ravi said when Pip had hung up the phone, “our open leads right now are the Ivy House Inn, the phone number scribbled out of Andie’s planner”—he pointed to its page—“and the burner phone. As well as knowledge of the hit-and-run, and access to Sal’s friends’ phone numbers and yours. Pip, maybe we are overcomplicating this.” He stared up at her. “As I see it these are all pointing to one person.”
“Max?”
“Let’s just focus on the definites here,” he said. “No ifs or maybes. He’s the only one with direct knowledge of the hit-and-run.”
“True.”
“He’s the only one here who had access to Naomi’s, Millie’s, and Jake’s phone numbers. And his own.”
“Nat and Howie could have.”
“Yeah, ‘could’ have. We’re looking at definites.” He shuffled over to the Max side of the board. “He says he just found it, but he has a naked picture of Andie from the Ivy House, so he was probably the one meeting her there. He bought Rohypnol from Andie, and girls were getting spiked at calamities; he probably assaulted them. He’s clearly messed up, Pip.”
Ravi was going through the very same thoughts she’d struggled with, and Pip knew he was about to run into a wall.
“Also,” he carried on, “he’s the only one here we know definitely has your phone number.”
“Actually, no,” she said. “Nat has it from when I tried to phone-interview her. Howie has it too. I rang him when trying to identify him and forgot to withhold my number. I got Unknown’s first text soon after.”
“Oh.”
“And we know that Max was at school giving a statement to the police at the time when Sal disappeared.”
Ravi slumped back. “We must be missing something.”
“Let’s go back to the connections.” Pip shook the pot of pins at him. He took them and cut off a length of red string.
“OK,” he said. “The two da Silvas are obviously connected. And Daniel da Silva with Andie’s dad. And Daniel also with Max, because he filed the report on Max’s crashed car and might have known about the hit-and-run.”
“Yes,” she said, “and maybe covered up drink-spiking.”
Ravi wrapped the string round a pin and then pressed it in, hissing when he stabbed himself in the thumb and a tiny bubble of blood burst through.
“Can you stop bleeding all over the murder board, please,” Pip said.
Ravi pretended to throw a pin at her. “So Max also knows Howie, and they were both involved in Andie’s drug dealing,” he said, circling his finger round their three faces.
“Yep. And Max knew Nat from school,” Pip said, pointing, “and there’s a rumor she had her drink spiked as well.”
Lines of red fraying string covered the board now, webbing and crisscrossing each other.
“So basically”—Ravi looked up at her—“they are all indirectly connected with each other, starting with Howie at one end and Jason Bell at the other. Maybe they all did it together, all five of them.”
“Next you’ll be saying someone has an evil twin.”