I understand totally why this case had to take priority over looking into Billy and the DT Killer case, but I had some news this morning and I thought you would like to know. Apparently, Billy’s case is under review! There is some new evidence that has come to light. I don’t know all the details yet but it sounds like it’s big – new DNA or fingerprint evidence. That’s why everyone is suddenly taking an interest. I wonder if they’ve finally identified the unknown fingerprint that was found on Melissa Denny, the second victim.
These things take time, I’m sure, but a lawyer from the Innocence Project has been in touch with Billy about filing a motion to the CCRC to overturn his conviction. So, it seems as though the police may think they’ve found the real DT Killer, or at least they’ve found enough evidence that Billy’s conviction is no longer ‘safe’ – that’s the terminology, I looked it up.
Anyway, all very exciting here and I will of course keep you updated. I may even have my boy home for Christmas, who knows!
Thank you for believing in me and Billy.
Best wishes, Maria Karras
Pip stroked her finger down the computer screen, stalling over the last line of the email.
Thank you for believing in me and Billy.
She had believed in them, because Pip was supposed to be the sixth victim of the DT Killer and, in a way, she always would be. From the moment Jason grabbed her, there was no doubt that an innocent man was sitting in prison. But the plan had forgotten Billy. Survival had taken over, survival and revenge, and protecting Ravi and the others from the plan. But Billy needed to be saved from Jason Bell as much as she did, and Pip had left him behind, made him secondary. She could have done something, couldn’t she? The plan only worked if she didn’t know Jason Bell was the DT Killer, had nothing to do with him, but she could have thought of something.
Another realization, stone-cold and stone-hard in her gut: Pip thought there wouldn’t be any significant evidence that Jason Bell was the DT Killer. Which meant two things: she was always going to leave Billy Karras behind, save herself and bury him away at the back of her mind. And the second: none of this had to happen. Maybe Pip could have kept walking through those trees, Jason’s car pulling up to Green Scene behind her. She could have kept going, found a road, found a house, found a person and a phone. Maybe Hawkins wouldn’t have believed her still, but he might have looked into it. Maybe he would have found the same evidence they’d found now to back up her word, acted before Jason had a chance to act again. Jason behind bars and Billy free, on the strength of Pip’s first-hand account.
But that’s not what happened. A fork in a path she hadn’t taken.
Pip had made a different choice, standing in the dark of those trees. It wasn’t an accident, or instinct, or fight or flight. She saw both paths and she’d made a choice. She went back.
And maybe that other Pip in that other life would say she’d made the right choice. She’d trusted in those who’d never trusted in her and it had worked out. Saved herself to save herself; maybe she was already fixed, Team Ravi and Pip moving on, living a normal life. But this Pip could also say hers was the right choice. Dead was the only way she could be sure the DT Killer would never hurt anyone again. And on this path, Max Hastings was going to go down too. Two birds, one stone. Two monsters and a ring of dead and dead-eyed girls of their making. One dead, one locked away for thirty-to-life, if it worked. Gone. Disappeared, and no one left to look for them. Maybe this way was better, who could say?
Anyway, there was something Pip could do now to rewrite that mistake, to un-forget Billy Karras. His mum was probably right; when they’d processed Jason’s body and entered his fingerprint information into the database, it had pinged with that remaining question mark from the DT Killer case. Maybe other DNA hits to the DT Killer crime scenes that they’d previously written off. And there was the trophies. Pip had found three of them herself now, two more by looking at an old, printed photo of the Bell family, one she’d had pinned on her murder board a year ago. A gold necklace with a coin pendant that had belonged to Phillipa Brockfield, wrapped around Dawn Bell’s neck. Two glints of light by Becca’s ears: rose gold earrings with pale green stones. The same earrings she still wore now. They belonged to Julia Hunter. Pip wished she could get a message to Becca somehow; tell her everything that happened, tell her about those earrings, because DT still had a hold over her as long as they were in her ears. Reliving the moment he’d killed these women whenever he saw his wife and his daughters.