Instead of shifting all the list elements up or down, I would prefer to just delete a node an update a pointer.

How big is your list?

I ask for two reasons:

1. If your list is large, using hashes or arrays to create your linked list will cost you lots of memory.
2. Despite it's O(N) credentials, splice is remarkably adept at inserting things into the middle of even fairly long ( < ~ 20,000 elements ) lists.

And sometimes, the easy option is good enough. If your list is long enough for the cost of spliceing to become a problem, then you will also be approaching that point at which contructing linked lists from either hashes or arrays starts to consume very large volumes of memory.

Using a heap, or even a string-based list may prove to be fast enough whilst keeping your memory consumption with the range of sanity.