An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel (15 page)

1

Eric Pruitt called Sam two days after their first meeting and said that he had a couple of questions for him.

“Can you meet me today?” Pruitt asked.

“I can meet you in two hours,” Sam said. He wasn’t busy and could get to Pruitt Private Capital’s headquarters in less than an hour, but if he did that, Pruitt might think he had a lot of free time on his hands, and that wasn’t the image Sam wanted to project.

“Sounds good.”

Sam walked into Pruitt’s office one hour and fifty minutes later. They sat down on the leather sofa, and Pruitt said that he was very interested in the consciousness transfer procedure.

“How do you record consciousness?” Pruitt asked. “And how do you put it in another brain?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s a trade secret.”

“You said you’d put my son’s consciousness in a different body. How will I know that the consciousness in that body belongs to my son?”

“That’s a very good question. We thought over this problem and came up with a solution. Are there things that only you and your son know?”

“I suppose so.”

“After the procedure, you’re going to quiz him on those things. You’ll know it’s your son’s consciousness in that body if he gives you correct answers. Am I right?”

Pruitt made no reply. He was probably trying to figure out if there was a flaw in the method suggested by Sam that would allow a fake Paul Pruitt to be passed off as the real one.

“If I were you, I’d think up a password and give it to Paul,” Sam said. “Ask him to memorize it, and don’t share it with anyone else.” 

“Can his mind get scrambled during the procedure?”

“No. Your son’s mind is guaranteed to remain intact.”

“I don’t have to pay anything upfront, right?”

“That’s right. You’ll pay us after verifying that Paul’s consciousness has been successfully transferred to a new body.”

“How do you want me to pay you?”

“We prefer wire transfers.”

“All right. And the price is twenty million?”

“Yes.”

Sam’s heart began to pound harder. He had a feeling Pruitt had decided to try the procedure.

“I did some research and found no mention of your company on the Internet,” Pruitt said.

“We prefer to stay under the radar. Very few people can afford our service, so we don’t do any marketing.”

“Do you have a website?”

“No.”

“I found no mention of a technology that allows to transfer consciousness from one body to another. Science says that it’s still impossible to transfer consciousness.”

Sam smiled. “We keep our technology secret, and we have no plans to let the public know about it.”

“Why?”

“Let me ask you this. Suppose scientists discover a serum that allows people to live forever or several hundred years. Do you think they’ll tell the press about it?”

“Yes, I think they will.”

“You’re wrong. You can’t let people live forever. The earth can barely sustain the population it has now. Can you imagine what will happen if people stopped dying from old age? The global economy will collapse, countries will fight for resources, the world will be in chaos. And if they tell the public that only the elite will be permitted to live forever, there will be rebellions. So, when an immortality serum is discovered, only a select few will be told about it. Our technology is in the same league as the immortality serum.”

“You could win a Novel prize for this.”

“We don’t care for fame or recognition.”

“Are you going to drill holes in Paul’s skull?”

“No. The procedure doesn’t involve surgery and is completely safe.”

“How long is the recovery period?”

“One hour.”

“Will the consciousness of the original owner of the body stay in that body?”

“No. We’ll transfer it to Paul’s old body.”

“Are you going to tell him that my son has inoperable brain cancer?”

“Yes, we are.”

“And you think he’ll agree to trade bodies with Paul?”

“Yes. We’re going to pay him a million dollars for that.”

Pruitt’s cellphone rang. Pruitt stood up, picked up his phone from his desk, looked at the screen, and then tapped the Decline button.

“I’d like to see your facility,” he said. “When can I do it?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s fine. Can we do it at noon?”

“Sure.”

Sam gave Pruitt New Horizons’ address.

2

Sam and Jeff had been in the office of their fake company for two and a half hours when Eric Pruitt came at a quarter past noon. Sam introduced Jeff as a technician named Peter Grayson.

After taking a tour of the office, which consisted of two rooms—one was three hundred square feet and the other two hundred—Pruitt sat in a chair in the larger room and said, “Where’s your main office?”

“This is our main and only office. We’re a very lean company.”

“Do you perform the procedure here?”

“Yes. There.” Sam pointed to the door to the smaller room. “I know this place isn’t as fancy as those research labs you see on TV, but I promise you we will save your son’s life. We don’t need expensive furniture to transfer his consciousness to a new healthy body.”

Pruitt didn’t walk out of the office, which meant that he still thought New Horizons might be able to help his son.

“Can I watch the procedure?”

Sam shook his head. “No. But you can wait in this room while we perform it.”

“How long does the procedure take?”

“About two hours.”

Pruitt turned to Jeff, who was sitting to his right, stared at him for a few seconds and then tilted his head back.

“How long does Paul have to live?” Sam asked.

“One year.”

The ritual worked only on full moon nights, and the next full moon was on the night of December 2. Sam needed Paul Pruitt to remain alive for twenty-one more days, and although doctors’ predictions weren’t completely reliable, it was safe to say Paul had more than three weeks to live.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Pruitt turned to Sam and asked, “How long has your company been doing this?”

“A little over a year.”

It was a risk-free proposition, so why the hell was Pruitt hesitating? It wasn’t as if his son had any other options.

Perhaps Pruitt wasn’t desperate.

“Are you sure I can’t talk to your previous customers?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m sorry, Mister Pruitt.” Sam smiled. “So what do you say? Would you like us to help your son?”

“I need to think about it.”

“All right. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call me.”

Sam hoped Pruitt wasn’t going to take several months to make the decision.

3

On the way home Sam thought about his grand plan.

By trading an old body for a young one, he could live forever. The thought of being immortal made him shiver with excitement. Eternal life was the holy grail of holy grails, every human being in history had dreamed of achieving it, major religions were based on the promise of it.

Was he the first person ever to use this ritual to live forever? He doubted it. There were probably a number of people who had been hopping from body to body for centuries or even millennia.

Sam believed a man was in his prime between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, so he was going to get a new body about every twenty-seven years.

He wondered why it hadn’t occurred to Gordon Stryker that he could use the consciousness transfer technology to live forever. Was Eric Pruitt smart enough to think of that? He would charge Pruitt at least twenty-five percent of his net worth to transfer his mind to a young body.

Sam wanted not only to live forever but also to live in luxury (immortality was much more fun when you were rich), and the ritual was going to help him attain this goal, too. He and Jeff planned to make thirty million dollars a year providing consciousness transfer services to wealthy people.

He thought it would be nice to swap bodies with a movie star or Prince Charles of the United Kingdom. The downside of being Prince Charles was that the guy was too old, and Sam didn’t want to live in an old body. The downside of taking over the body of a movie star was that you had to be able to act, and Sam didn’t consider himself a good actor.

His favorite idea was to switch bodies with a billionaire, transfer all of the billionaire’s assets to his father, and then move into the body of an eighteen-year-old guy. There were plenty of potential targets: almost six hundred billionaires lived in the United States and Canada. The problem was that billionaires had bodyguards, who might kill him while he tried to kidnap their client. However, Sam believed he would eventually be able to carry out this plan. When he became a multimillionaire, he might be able to stay overnight at a billionaire’s house or to get a billionaire to stay overnight at his place.

1

Walter Kindred had been murdered in Newton, a Boston suburb, on October 10 of last year. He was nineteen years old at the time of his death. His killer’s name was Douglas Fleming. Fleming was arrested on October 12. At the time, he was a resident of Waltham, a city ten miles west of Boston. At his trial, he had been found guilty of murder in the first degree and then sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Fleming was serving his sentence at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Lancaster, about forty miles from Boston. He was twenty-nine years old.

Mark arrived in Boston at eight-fifteen p.m. on Wednesday, November 15. He had told Joan he was going to Boston to visit a friend. After he checked into the hotel, Mark walked around the block for an hour thinking about Douglas Fleming.

If Walter Kindred’s murder had been part of a body switch ritual, would Fleming tell him how the ritual worked and how to reverse the switch? Because Mark thought that Fleming would be reluctant to share information with a cop, he was going to pose as a writer working on a book about a serial killer. Mark believed he had a good chance of getting Fleming to tell him what he wanted to know.

Did Edward Phillips—the Edward Phillips whose soul occupied Sam Curtis’s body—and Douglas Fleming know each other? Had Phillips learned about the ritual from Fleming? Had it been the other way around?

What if Fleming had switched bodies with his cellmate before the trial and was on the loose? If that was the case, Mark would have to hope Fleming hadn’t made another switch after getting out of jail.

2

Mark set out for the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center at eleven o’clock in the morning. About half an hour after he left the hotel, it began to rain. Soon it was pouring so hard the windshield wipers could barely keep up. The cold dampness seeping into the car was refreshing, the steady drumming of raindrops on the roof soothing. As thunder cracked in the distance, Mark remembered that when they drove through a heavy rain, Helen used to say she felt as if she were in a submarine. At the thought of Helen, tears came to his eyes, and he wiped them away with the heel of his hand.

He turned up the heater and then tuned the radio to a sports station.

If it had rained that night, Helen would have stayed home and would still be alive.

Mark pulled into the parking lot of the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center at ten past noon, fifty minutes before the first visiting period began. After killing the engine, he sat for a while, looking at the sprawling building behind the fence, and then got out of the car. His hair was soaked by the time he reached the prison entrance.

In the visiting room, Mark was instructed to keep both of his feet on the floor and both of his hands in front of him during the visit. He was told he was allowed to give the inmate a brief welcoming and departing hug and a kiss. Mark waited ten minutes before Douglas Fleming came into the room. A guard told Fleming where his visitor was sitting, and he walked over to Mark.

“How are you doing, Douglas?” Mark said without getting up.

Fleming was about five ten and slim. A five o’clock shadow darkened his square, dimpled chin. He looked ten years older than his age, probably thanks to the stress of being in prison and knowing that he would remain behind bars for the rest of his life. Staring at Mark with great curiosity, Fleming took the seat to his right and said, “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

He’s lucky Massachusetts abolished the death penalty, Mark thought. He’ll die in prison, but he’ll die an old man.

“My name is Mark Hinton. I’m a writer.”

Fleming smiled, revealing yellow teeth. “A writer? What brings you here, Mister Writer?”

“I want to talk to you about Walter Kindred.”

“Are you writing a book about me?”

“I’m writing a book, but it’s not about you.”

Mark brushed his hair back; it was still wet.

“What is it about?”

“It’s about a serial killer. The story is told from his point of view.”

“So you came here to find out what makes serial killers tick?”

“Yes, that’s exactly why I’m here.”

“But I’m not a serial killer. I’ve only killed one person.”

Mark was surprised Fleming hadn’t told him he was innocent.

“That’s true, but I’d really like to know more about you, nevertheless.”

“All right. Let’s talk.”

“You have a logical mind, Douglas. I like that.”

“Where are you from?”

“Dallas.”

“I’ve never been to Dallas. Is it a beautiful city?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you a famous writer?”

“No. Not yet. This book could be the one that will make me famous.”

“Are you going to acknowledge my help in your book?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Send me the book when it comes out.”

“Okay.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“Why did you kill Walter Kindred?”

“I snapped. I bumped into him on the street, he called me an asshole, I snapped and killed him.”

“Why did you snap? I get called an asshole all the time, and it doesn’t bother me, at least not enough to kill someone.”

“I was in a bad place mentally then. Walter calling me an asshole was, as they say, the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Fleming sounded as if he believed what he was saying.

Maybe he was telling the truth? Maybe he was just another psycho with a very short fuse?

“Were you depressed?” Mark asked.

“Yeah.”

“What were you depressed about?”

“Life in general. I was broke, I hated my job, I had no girlfriend. I think most people are depressed about life, they just don’t want to admit it. You can’t be happy if you’re not a millionaire. Or a billionaire.”

“There are plenty of rich people who are depressed.”

Fleming sneered. “You know what my dad says about people like that? They’re too well off for their own good.”

“Where did you get the knife you used to kill Walter?”

“I killed him with the knife I carried for protection.”

“Why did you need protection? Did you live in a dangerous neighborhood?”

“No, I wouldn’t say it was dangerous. The thing is, there are a lot of crazies out there, and you never know when you’ll run into one. Look what happened to Walter. If he’d had a knife on him that night, he might be alive today.” Fleming grinned.

“What kind of knife was it?”

“A kitchen knife.”

“Did you stab Walter in the chest before or after you ripped open his stomach?”

“Before. Does the guy in your book kill with a knife?”

“Yes. Why did you cut open his stomach? I’m sure stabbing him in the chest would have been enough to kill him.”

“I was very angry.” Fleming smiled. “A few years ago, I read about a woman who stabbed her ex-boyfriend twenty-seven times, then slit his throat, and then shot him. Talk about overkill.”

“Did you try an insanity defense?”

“No. I wasn’t insane, I just lost my temper.”

“Did you take any drugs the day you killed Walter?”

“No. I don’t do drugs. They’re bad for your health. Is your serial killer a sex maniac?”

“No.”

“Why does he kill?”

“He just likes to do it.”

“Does he kill both women and men?”

“He kills only men.”

“Do they catch him in the end?”

“Yes.”

“Does he die?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Mark crossed his legs, and a moment later a guard came up to him and told him to keep both of his feet on the floor. Mark quickly complied.

“Did your father abuse you?” he asked Fleming.

“No. My dad’s a cool guy. He yelled at me sometimes, but he never abused me.”

“Were you bullied when you were a kid?”

“No. They tried, but I kicked their asses.”

“Were you a bully?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Did you torture animals when you were a child?”

“No. I loved animals. And I still do.”

“Are you religious?”

“I believe in God, but I’m not a fanatic. I’ve never read the Bible.”

“Have you ever been interested in black magic?”

Fleming’s lips curved in a small smile. “That’s a… an odd question.”

“It’s for the book.”

“Is the guy in your book into black magic?”

“Yes.”

“Well… I think black magic is cool.”

“Did you ever study it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Have you ever played with a Ouija board?”

“No.”

“I’m going to ask you another odd question. And I want you to be completely honest with me, Douglas. I want you to tell me the truth no matter how crazy it sounds.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Did anyone switch bodies with you?”

He’s going to think I’m a kook.

“Switch bodies? What do you mean?” Fleming’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes were serious, probing.

“Did anyone trade bodies with you? Did you have this body before you were arrested for killing Walter Kindred?”

His smile evaporated, and Fleming said, “That’s a strange question. Are you joking?”

“In my book, the main character swaps bodies with other people by means of black magic. The ritual he uses requires human sacrifice.”

“Sounds interesting, but what does that have to do with your question?”

“When I read the description of Walter Kindred’s wounds, I wondered if it was a ritual killing.”

“Oh, I see. That’s why you asked me about black magic.”

“So was it a ritual killing?”

Fleming shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Please tell me the truth, Douglas.”

“It wasn’t a ritual killing. I simply snapped.”

“Okay.”

“Do you really think there’s a black magic ritual that lets you switch bodies with other people?”

“Yes. I heard about it from a friend.”

“Is he an expert in black magic?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Did he tell how it’s done?”

“No. He doesn’t know how it’s done.”

“No one switched bodies with me,” Fleming said, looking away from Mark.

“I want you to teach me how to do it, Douglas.”

“Do what?”

“Switch bodies with other people.”

Fleming smiled. “I’m sorry, man. I can’t help you. I don’t know how to switch bodies with other people.”

“Edward Phillips told me that you do.”

“Who’s Edward Phillips?”

“You know who he is.”

“I’ve never heard this name before. Do you have any more questions, Mister Writer?”

“That’s all for now. Are you allowed to make phone calls?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me give you my phone number. In case you change your mind.”

“Okay.”

Mark told Fleming his cell number and then repeated it twice.

“It was nice talking to you, Douglas.” Mark stood up, and shook Fleming’s hand. “Goodbye.”

“Take care, man.”

3

He had no way of knowing whether or not Fleming had lied about his reason for killing Walter Kindred, and he had no way of making Fleming tell the truth, so all he could do was move on. He was going to stay in Boston until Sunday because he wanted to do some sightseeing. Considering that he got to see one of the most interesting cities in the country, this trip wasn’t a waste of time.

It was still raining when Mark came out of the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. He covered his head with his jacket and ran to his car. He got back to the hotel at three o’clock. As he rode the elevator up to his floor, a thought occurred to him: if Jeff Phillips and Sam Curtis intend to switch bodies on the same day, they’ll need to make one more human sacrifice.

Mark was changing his socks when his phone rang. It was Detective Aguero.