An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel (14 page)

1

Sam took two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and returned to the living room. He handed one of the bottles to Jeff, dropped onto the couch, and put a spicy tuna roll in his mouth. Jeff sat in a chair with a plate of sushi in his lap, his feet on the ottoman.

“That detective I told you about the other day came again yesterday,” Jeff said.

“Why?”

“He checked my credit card records. When we were in Austin, we stopped at Burger King, remember?”

Sam nodded. If memory served, he had ordered a Double Whopper meal.

“I used my credit card to pay for the food. He asked me what I was doing in Austin.”

Now the cops knew that Jeff had been in Austin on August twenty-third. Did that mean Jeff was in trouble?

Sam didn’t think so. The police would never find proof that Jeff was involved in Laura Sumner’s murder: such proof simply did not exist.

“What did you tell him?” Sam asked.

Jeff recounted the one-night stand story that he had given to Detective Aguero.

It was true that Jeff could think on his feet, but he hadn’t used this ability to concoct his salacious tale: he had come up with it the morning after Detective Aguero’s first visit. He was sitting on the toilet in his bathroom, reading the back of the toothpaste tube, when he suddenly remembered that he had used his credit card at a Burger King in Austin on August twenty-third. It took him half an hour to think up the one-night stand story and answers to the likely questions Aguero might have about it. What Jeff had told the detective was partly true: he did pick up women in bars every once in a while.

“Good job,” Sam said. “Do you think he believed you?”

“Cops believe no one but other cops.”

Sam’s disposable phone rang. It was Leticia.

“It’s Leticia,” he said to Jeff, and then tapped the Answer button.

“Hi, Leticia. How is it going?”

“I’m fine. Can you talk?”

“Yes, I can.”

“I’ve got another one for you. His name’s Paul Pruitt. He has an inoperable brain tumor. His father is Eric Pruitt, the president of Pruitt Private Capital.”

Sam grabbed a pen and notepad and wrote down the names of the patient and his father. “How old is Paul?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Where does he live?”

“Dallas. I have his father’s phone number.”

Leticia told Sam Eric Pruitt’s number and Paul Pruitt’s address and number.

“Are you home?” Sam asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring you the money around nine.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.” Sam hung up and said to Jeff, “Good news, Dad. We have another prospect.”

They looked up Eric Pruitt and his company on the Internet and discovered that his net worth was estimated to be between one hundred and three hundred million dollars. The main office of Pruitt Private Capital was located in downtown Dallas.

They drank to success, and then Jeff said, “I wonder if that Hinton woman turned the knife over to the cops.”

It was Sam’s idea to send the knife he had used to murder Helen Hinton to Joan Hinton so she would give it to the police. The reason for relinquishing the knife was simple: Sam wanted to ruin Edward Phillips’s chances of winning the appeal and thus ensure that he stayed behind bars until he died. By the way, his desire for Edward’s appeal to fail was why he had killed Leonard Barlow (public defenders were worse than private attorneys at preparing and arguing appeals, and Sam doubted that Edward would be able to find another private lawyer who would agree to work for him pro bono). 

Sam had begun to worry about Edward’s conviction being overturned on appeal last September, after he watched a documentary about exonerated death row inmates. He was surprised that it hadn’t required a superhuman effort to get the people featured in the documentary released; the task was challenging, for sure, but it was very doable. This made him realize there was a small but real chance that Edward would get his freedom back, and Sam knew that as soon as he left prison, Edward would start looking for the man who had stolen his body to exact revenge. Although he thought Edward was not going to succeed in killing him, he had figured it was best to avoid this problem altogether. He would have wasted Edward in the county jail if he could have escaped the consequences.

Speaking of the swap, it was a good trade. Sam liked his new body: his new face was rather handsome, and his new penis was half an inch longer than the old one.

“I’m sure she did,” Sam said.

“I hope she didn’t mess up the fingerprints.”

Why hadn’t he gotten rid of the knife right after slaying Helen Hinton?

After leaving the building where the killing had taken place, Sam (his name had been Edward Phillips then as he had still been in his old body) had given the knife to Jeff so he would dispose of it (he had put it in a plastic bag before going outside), and when Jeff came home, he had locked it in the safe in his study, intending to get rid of it the next night. Shortly after he learned of Sam’s arrest, it occurred to Jeff that his son could avoid going to prison for Helen Hinton’s murder by switching bodies with his cellmate. There was no longer a need to ditch the knife, and he decided to keep it as a souvenir, which just went to show that he was a little crazy.

“There’s been no mention of the knife in the papers,” Jeff said.

“Maybe nobody cares about this case anymore.”

Jeff ate a salmon roll and said, “Do you think Edward told Aguero about the body switch?”

Sam shook his head. “If he did, he’s an idiot. Would you believe him if you were Aguero?”

“No.” Jeff took a sip from his bottle. “I wonder if he told anyone about it.”

“He might have told his cellmate.”

2

The next day, Sam called Eric Pruitt’s office and made an appointment for Wednesday morning.

He arrived at the headquarters of Pruitt Private Capital fifteen minutes before the scheduled time, wearing a suit and a tie. At 10:03 a.m. Pruitt’s secretary, a black woman in her forties with big earrings, told Sam that Pruitt was ready to see him.

After they shook hands, Pruitt said, “You have ten minutes, Jake.”

Eric Pruitt was forty-nine years old. He had deep-set brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and thin lips.

“My company would like to help your son, Paul, get rid of his cancer,” Sam said. “We’ve developed a procedure that can permanently cure anaplastic astrocytoma.”

Anaplastic astrocytoma was the scientific name of Paul Pruitt’s tumor.

Pruitt looked at Sam for a long moment, and then said, “What’s your company’s name?”

“New Horizons. It’s an experimental, highly effective procedure. It doesn’t involve surgery, drugs, or radiation. So far the success rate’s been one hundred percent. This is a totally risk-free offer. If we don’t deliver, you don’t pay.”

“No drugs and no radiation? Is it a homeopathic treatment?”

“No. We will transfer Paul’s consciousness to another body. A healthy body.”

“Transfer his consciousness to another body? How are you going to do that?”

“As you may know, consciousness arises from the electrical activity of nerve cells. We found a way to record human consciousness and then place it in another brain.”

“Where are you going to get the healthy body?”

“We have a pool of people who are willing to do a body swap for a fee. It’s going to be a white man between eighteen and twenty-five.”

Although Sam didn’t think Pruitt was racist, he was sure the millionaire would prefer his son’s new body to be the same race as the old one.

“How many patients have you treated?” Pruitt asked.

“Ten.”

“Can I talk to them?”

“No. Our clients’ names are confidential. I’m sorry.”

Judging by the skeptical look in his eyes, Pruitt did not trust him, and Sam expected the millionaire to think it was a scam until he got proof that his precious son’s consciousness had actually been moved to a different body.

“How much is the procedure?”

“Twenty million.”

The twenty-million-dollar price wasn’t set in stone. Sam was willing to negotiate.

“Did you say twenty million?”

“Yes. You don’t have to pay anything upfront. You pay only if the procedure is successful.”

Pruitt sat back in his chair. “Can I see your facility?”

“Sure. I can show it to you today.”

New Horizons’ office didn’t look like a high-tech scientific facility, but Sam thought that terminally ill folks and their parents and children wouldn’t care about that. Desperate people were eager to be fooled.

“Where is it located?”

“Dallas.”

Pruitt thought for a long time and then said, “This is an interesting proposal, Jake. Let me sleep on it.”

Sam nodded. “Here’s my card.” He laid his card on the desk in front of Pruitt. “If you have any questions, give me a call.”

1

Mark spied on Sam Curtis from eight p.m. to midnight on Wednesday. He saw nothing suspicious. Curtis came home at half past eight, and Mark waited three and a half hours for him to leave the house, but he never did.

Was Curtis going to kill again?

Curtis had killed Laura Sumner because the body swap ritual required human sacrifice. Obviously, Curtis or Jeff Phillips planned to switch bodies. Both of them were still in the bodies they had been in before Laura’s murder, so they didn’t need to make another sacrifice. They might kill again after one of them got a new body.

What was Mark going to do next?

His objective was to punish the man who had murdered his daughter. Since that man’s soul currently occupied Sam Curtis’s body, his objective was to punish Sam Curtis. The easiest and quickest way to do it was to kill him. Did Mark need a confession? It would be nice if Curtis confessed to swapping bodies and murdering Helen but not necessary. If Curtis told him that Jeff Phillips was his accomplice, Mark would waste Jeff, too.

Putting Curtis in prison wasn’t a good option because he would switch bodies with his cellmate while in jail awaiting trial.

Should he help Edward Phillips gain his freedom? At the present time, Edward Phillips was an innocent man, who’d had nothing to do with Helen’s murder. He had robbed a convenience store, but he didn’t deserve to be executed or remain in prison for the rest of his life. Mark had to do his best to set him free. After all, if it hadn’t been for Phillips, he wouldn’t have known that his daughter’s killer was on the loose.

He could hire a good appeals attorney for Phillips. The problem was, the case was going to cost tens of thousands of dollars. He would have to find a way to raise the money.

Could the swap be reversed? Mark searched the Internet for a body switch ritual involving human sacrifice but found nothing useful.

Anna Wesley’s cellphone company informed Mark that she had never received any calls or messages from Sam Curtis. Evidently, Curtis had chosen to dump his girlfriend. Mark reviewed the text messages Curtis had sent to Sandra Chandler and found that he had broken up with her shortly after his release from the Dallas County Jail.

On Friday, as Mark browsed websites dedicated to black magic, he recalled the murder of Walter Kindred, who had been killed the same way as Helen and Laura (he had read about it in late October, when he was looking for cases similar to his daughter’s). Had Kindred’s murder been part of a body switch ritual?

The man convicted of killing Walter Kindred knew the answer to that question. Mark realized that he wanted to talk to him. The fact that the guy was in Massachusetts, eighteen hundred miles from Dallas, didn’t discourage Mark. He decided to visit Kindred’s killer next Thursday.

2

Edward Phillips’s face lit up when he saw Mark. He sat down, picked up the phone, and said, “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Mark replied.

What was going on in Phillips’s head? He must be constantly on edge, angry, and anguished, with no alcohol or drugs or cigarettes to dull the pain.

Did Phillips have nightmares every night?

I may be the only person who can give him hope, Mark thought.

“I did some digging and came to the conclusion that you’re telling the truth,” he said.

“Thank you, Mark. You made my year.” Phillips smiled. “Did you talk to my parents?”

“I talked to your father.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine. Is he from Australia?”

“Yes, he is. Can you check on my mom, please? Just give her a call.”

“Sure. Have you thought about telling your parents about the body switch?”

“They’re not going to believe me. Do you know how often Phillips visits my dad?”

“Your father said that he hadn’t talked to him since March.”

“That’s good.”

“I checked Jeff Phillips’s credit card records and found out that he was in Austin the day Laura Sumner was killed. I suspect he helped his son murder Laura.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I also suspect Jeff helped his son kill Helen.”

“Are you going to follow Edward every day?”

“I’ll try.”

“Whatever you do, don’t kill him. After you arrest him, please make sure they put him in solitary confinement.”

If Phillips thought that Mark could arrange for Curtis to be held in solitary confinement until he was transferred to the state prison system, he was badly mistaken. In county jails, well-behaved adults without mental health issues were not supposed to be kept in segregation for long periods of time. His lawyer would get Curtis released into the general population within a month of his arrest.

“You think he’ll confess to killing Helen?”

“I hope he will. You’ll have to tell the police that he killed Helen and Laura Sumner.”

“I will.”

“Remember I told you there was a full moon on the night he switched bodies with me? I’m beginning to think it wasn’t a coincidence. It’s possible that the ritual works only on full-moon nights. You see, if Edward could switch bodies whenever he wanted, he would have done it the day we first met. Why did he wait twenty-five days?”

That was a good point.

If Curtis could swap bodies only on full-moon nights, he’d need to be placed in solitary confinement just once a month.

“When did he switch bodies with you?” Mark asked.

“January eleventh.”

“Maybe the ritual works only on the eleventh day of the month.”

“That’s possible, too. Please follow Edward on the next full-moon night. If he switches bodies, you should find out who he switched bodies with. The next full moon is on December second.”

“Okay.”

“Today is eleventh. Please follow him tonight, too.”

Mark nodded. “Okay.”

“Have you told Detective Aguero about the body switch?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell him. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I’ve already told my wife.”

“What did she say?”

“She thinks it’s bullshit.”

“Does Aguero have any new leads?”

“He knows that Jeff Phillips was in Austin the day Laura Sumner was killed, and he suspects that Jeff was involved in her murder.”

“Does Jeff know he’s a suspect?”

“I don’t know.”

“He might get a new body. Keep an eye on him.”

Maybe he should follow Jeff Phillips tonight instead of Curtis?

“How is your appeal going?” Mark asked.

“My lawyer’s working on the brief.”

“When is he going to file it?”

“Next month.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Not very well.” Phillips paused. “I think it’s partly my fault. If I hadn’t gotten behind the wheel that night, I wouldn’t have been arrested and I wouldn’t have met Edward Phillips. I think about this every day.” He sighed. “Every day. My lawyer advised me to plead guilty. He said I’d get a suspended sentence. Edward told me that I shouldn’t listen to him because he was a public defender. Edward said he knew a good lawyer, who would help me for free. And I believed him. If I’d done what my lawyer told me to do, I’d be home now. God, I was such an idiot.”

“Don’t think about what you could have done. It’s going to drive you crazy.”

“Easier said than done.”

Phillips lowered his head and wiped his eyes.

“Did Barlow tell you about Walter Kindred?”

“No. Who is he?”

“He lived in Massachusetts. He was killed the same way as Helen.”

“When?”

“October of last year. I’m going to visit his killer in prison next Thursday.”

Phillips thought for a long moment and then said, “If he knows how to perform the ritual, ask him how to reverse the switch.”

“That’s why I want to talk to him.”

“Thank you, Mark. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me.”

“No problem.”

“Ask him where he learned how to perform the ritual.”

“Okay.”

“Did you find any information about the ritual on the Internet?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Looking over Mark’s shoulder, Phillips said dreamily, “It would be great if there was a way to get my body back.”

3

When Mark got home, he called Edward Phillips’s mother and she told him that she was doing fine. He spied on Sam Curtis from seven to twelve that night. When he arrived at Curtis’s house, he saw Jeff Phillips’s Cadillac parked in front of it. At eight o’clock Curtis and Jeff Phillips got in Curtis’s car and went to Pistons Bar and Grill, where they stayed until eleven-forty. In the bar, Mark watched them from a distance, being careful not to attract their attention. When they returned to Curtis’s house, Jeff got in his Cadillac and drove home (Mark followed him to his place, waited twenty minutes, and then left).