A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #3
As Good As Dead
by Holly Jackson
Contents
Forty-Seven
Overview
Hawkins reveals Pip’s headphones were found in Jason Bell’s bedroom, creating a direct link and shattering her cover story. Pip realizes Jason kept them as a trophy, recognizes Hawkins no longer believes her, and terminates the voluntary interview. After a brief attempt to erase evidence, she accepts defeat and resolves to confess to protect her friends.
Summary
Pip is confronted by Detective Hawkins with an evidence bag containing her headphones, found in Jason Bell’s house. Panic sets in as Pip recalls last having them the day Jason abducted her. She deduces Jason took the headphones from her rucksack as a trophy, a symbol of the victim he intended her to be.
Hawkins presses on inconsistencies: Pip claimed she uses the headphones daily but hasn’t seen Jason since April. Pip stalls, offering vague timelines and denying knowledge, but recognizes from Hawkins’s tone that he no longer believes her and has found a direct link tying her to Jason beyond her planted narrative.
Ending the voluntary interview to avoid further slips, Pip leaves the station in a rising panic. At home, she considers destroying her laptop hard drive to erase searches connecting her to Jason and the DT Killer investigation, but stops as the realization hits: the plan is unraveling and Hawkins won’t follow her constructed path.
Accepting that continuing would endanger those who helped her, Pip acknowledges her love for Ravi and her friends and decides the only way to protect them is to remove them from the story. She resolves to confess, sacrificing her own future to shield them.
Who Appears
- Pip (Pippa Fitz-Amobi)Protagonist; confronted with her headphones found at Jason’s house, panics, ends the interview, and decides to confess to protect her friends.
- Detective HawkinsInterrogator; presents Pip’s headphones as evidence linking her to Jason, signaling disbelief in her alibi.
- Jason BellDeceased abductor; kept Pip’s headphones as a trophy, creating the incriminating link that collapses her cover.