An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel (17 page)

“Yeah.” Jeff closed his eyes. “He pissed in a cup.”

“Did you uncuff him?”

“No.”

“Did you hold his dick?”

“No.”

Sam took the bag with blood supplies out of the duffel and put it on the table. His stomach was churning. What if Pruitt changed his mind? What if he got in a terrible car accident this morning? What if he died in that accident?

He wasn’t worried about the blood test. He was pretty sure the test wouldn’t reveal anything that would make Pruitt demand a different body: ninety-five percent of twenty-one-year-old men were in fairly good health.

At nine-thirty Sam injected Luke with one hundred milligrams of chlorpromazine. Then he put on his suit and tie, removed the handcuffs, and woke up Jeff. They took the jacket off Luke and laid him on the bed. Sam put the wheelchair in the closet. At a quarter to ten Eric Pruitt called and told Sam that he was on his way to the Sheraton. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. It was Pruitt.

“Is that him?” Pruitt asked, pointing at Luke.

“Yes,” Sam replied.

“Is he asleep?”

“Yes.”

Sam washed his hands and then sat down in the chair next to the bed. The blood collection supplies lay on the nightstand, which he had covered with a towel.

“Can you wake him up?” Pruitt stood beside Sam.

“Let him sleep. Sleep relaxes the brain, which will help the transfer process.” Sam put on latex gloves.

“What’s his name?”

“Luke.” Sam tied a tourniquet around Luke’s right arm. “He’s as healthy as a horse. He goes to the gym three times a week.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-one.” Sam found a vein in Luke’s forearm and tapped it with his fingers.

“Is he an American?”

“Yes.”

“Can I take his picture?”

Sam wiped Luke’s forearm with an alcohol swab. He looked as if he was experienced in drawing venous blood, although he’d practiced the procedure only twice before, on Jeff, using the instructions he’d found on the Internet.

“Sure.”

He’s afraid we’ll switch Luke with someone sick, Sam thought as he attached a needle to the syringe.

Pruitt pulled out his phone and snapped Luke’s picture. Then he went to the foot of the bed, lifted Luke’s pant legs, and said to Jeff, “Can you take off his socks, please?”

Would you like to check his dick and balls, too? Sam thought.

Jeff stripped off Luke’s socks, and Pruitt bent down and examined Luke’s feet. He seemed to be pleased with what he saw.

“Take the sample to the lab right away, please,” Sam said, drawing blood into the syringe.

“Okay.”

“If we don’t do it this Saturday, you’ll have to wait another month.”

As Sam transferred the blood to a blood collection tube, Pruitt asked, “Can I talk to Luke today or tomorrow?”

“Yes. If he agrees to talk to you.”

Why did Pruitt want to talk to Luke? Did he suspect they were forcing Luke to trade bodies with his son?

If Pruitt loved his son, he shouldn’t care how they had gotten Luke to swap bodies with Paul.

Sam put the collection tube in a zipper bag and handed the bag to Pruitt. “Bring your son to our office this Saturday at eight p.m. Please don’t be late.” He stood up.

“Eight p.m. Okay.” Pruitt looked at the collection tube for a moment and then pocketed it.

“Have a nice day, Eric.”

“Have a nice day, Mister Pruitt,” Jeff said.

Pruitt shook Sam’s hand and left the room.

1

“Do you remember me?” Aguero asked.

Edward Phillips nodded. “Yeah, I remember you.”

It was December 1. Seven weeks had passed since he made Phillips an offer, and Aguero was hoping he had changed his mind.

“I’m Detective Carlos Aguero with the Austin Police Department. I’m investigating the murder of Laura Sumner.”

“I remember that.”

“My offer still stands. Do you know who killed Laura Sumner?”

Phillips shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“If you help us catch Laura Sumner’s killer, the governor will commute your death sentence. Do you understand that?”

“Yes. I don’t know who killed her.”

Aguero felt a prickle of disappointment. He had driven two hundred miles for nothing. “Did you have a partner?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did anyone help you kill Helen Hinton?”

“I didn’t kill that girl.”

Aguero stared at his notepad for a moment, and then said, “I talked to your mother. She wants you to cooperate with us. She wants you to help us find Laura’s killer.”

Phillips said nothing.

“Your mother loves you very much, Edward. She doesn’t want you to die.”

“I love her, too.”

“Why are you protecting this person?”

“I’m not protecting anyone.”

Perhaps he would change his mind after all his appeals failed.

“Laura was killed by someone you know. Tell us his name.”

“I don’t know who killed Laura.”

“Your death’s going to break your mother’s heart. There’s nothing worse for a mother than to bury her child.”

“I miss my mom. Can you ask the warden to let me call her? I haven’t heard her voice in a year.”

“Sure. I’ll do my best.”

His boss should be able to persuade the Warden of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit to let Edward Phillips give his mother a call.

“Do you have her cellphone number? Phillips asked.

“Yes. Let me write it down for you.” Aguero pulled out his phone, found Emily Phillips’s number, and wrote it on his pad. Then he ripped out the page with the number and gave it to Phillips.

“Do you miss your dad?” Aguero asked.

After a brief hesitation, Phillips said, “Yes, I do.”

Aguero made a mental note of Phillips’s hesitation, but he didn’t want to read too much into it.

“Have you gotten used to this place?”

“I don’t think you can get used to this place.”

“Let me help you get out of here, Edward. Tell me who killed Laura Sumner.”

“Can you get the governor to pardon me?”

“We’ll try.”

“You think I had a partner.”

“Yes.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say my partner killed Laura Sumner. Will you ask the governor to commute my sentence if he’s acquitted? Guilty people go free all the time, you know.”

“This is Texas. If there’s evidence, he’s going to be convicted.” Aguero leaned forward. “What’s his name?”

“I didn’t say I had a partner.”

Aguero closed his pad. “Think about your mother, Edward. Don’t break her heart.”

1

“Do you think he believes we’re paying Luke a million bucks to switch bodies with his son?” Jeff said, opening a bottle of Diet Coke.

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked at Luke, who was sleeping peacefully on the sofa.

They had arrived at New Horizons’ office at half past six in the evening. Luke’s face was concealed from the building’s security cameras by the same sunglasses and baseball cap he’d worn at the Sheraton two days ago.

Luke had been a good boy: he had never called for help or tried to escape. Since neither of them wanted to wipe his ass, they let Luke defecate without handcuffs. On Thursday, to make their lie believable, Sam took a picture of Luke holding Thursday’s issue of USA Today. They told Luke they’d email the photo to his parents to prove he was alive. After taking the picture, Sam drove five miles from the Vagabond Motel, parked the car, and switched on Luke’s phone. He discovered that Luke’s mother had called him four times and sent him three text messages since the abduction. Sam sent Luke’s mother a message saying, “I’m OK. I’m at my friend’s place.” On Friday night, he sent her another message, which read: “I’m fine. I’m still at my friend’s place.”

This morning Luke had showered for the first time since Wednesday night and put on new underwear, socks, and T-shirt.

“Tomorrow we’ll become millionaires.” Jeff smiled.

“As soon as we get the money, I’ll buy a Ferrari.”

Sam wore a dark suit and tie, and Jeff brown khakis and a blue long-sleeved shirt.

Jeff glanced at his watch. “It’s time for another shot.”

He got up, grabbed the syringe, and gave Luke an injection of chlorpromazine.

Sam’s burner phone rang. It was Eric Pruitt.

“We’re on our way,” Pruitt said. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Excellent.”

Pruitt brought two people with him: his son and his assistant Ryan.

“Ryan will wait in the hallway,” Pruitt said.

Ryan was clean-shaven, in his late thirties, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a suit and tie. When Sam had first seen him, he had thought he was Pruitt’s bodyguard.

Maybe he was Pruitt’s assistant-slash-bodyguard?

“He can wait here, if he wants,” Sam said.

Ryan accepted the invitation and sat down in a chair in the larger room.

Paul Pruitt was tall and skinny, with a gaunt face and short brown hair. Sam motioned him and Eric Pruitt to follow him into the smaller room.

He led Paul to the sofa and said, “This is Luke. We’re going to transfer your consciousness to his brain. Do you like his body?”

“Yeah, he looks good,” Paul said, his eyes fixed on Luke.

Sam turned to Eric and asked, “Is Paul allergic to Ambien?”

“No. Are you going to give him Ambien?”

“Yes. The procedure requires that the subject be asleep.”

Paul sat down in a chair.

“Did you and your son agree on a password?” Sam said.

“Yes, we did.”

“Have you thought up the questions you’re going to ask to verify your son’s identity?”

“Yes.”

“How long is the procedure going to take?” Paul asked.

“About two hours,” Sam replied. “Are you nervous?”

“A little.”

“There’s no need to be nervous. We have a one hundred percent success rate.”

Sam picked a bottle of Ambien and a bottle of water up from the desk, handed them to Paul, and said, “This is Ambien. Please take two pills.”

Paul put two tablets in his mouth and washed them down with water.

“Now sit back and relax,” Sam said. He closed the door and then said to Eric in a low voice, “Just to remind you, Eric, the procedure costs twenty million dollars.”

“I remember that.”

“Of course. If you verify your son’s identity tonight, we’d like you to wire the money tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll wire the money on Monday.”

When Paul fell asleep, Sam asked Eric to leave the room. He locked the door behind Eric and checked his watch. It was 8:43.

The instructions did not specify the time at which the ritual had to be performed. They just said that it had to done on a full moon night, so Sam figured they were good to go as soon as it got dark. It had been over two hours since night had fallen.

At first he had planned to wait until midnight: he had started the ritual at ten minutes past midnight when he performed it in the Dallas County Jail last January. Then he had decided to do it when it got dark; if he failed, he would try again after midnight. 

Sam opened the file drawer and retrieved the surveillance monitor, which received the video signal from the hidden camera in the larger room. Both men sat in chairs. Eric Pruitt was reading a magazine, and Ryan was doing nothing.

“When are we going to do it?” Jeff whispered.

“Now,” Sam whispered back, and placed the monitor on the desk.

They lifted Luke from the sofa and laid him on the floor. Luke stirred, let out a low groan, and smacked his lips. His eyes remained shut. Jeff pushed Paul’s chair to the sofa, grabbed Paul under the armpits, and with a grunt pulled him up.

“Need help?” Sam asked.

“No, I got this.” Jeff put Paul on the floor beside Luke.

Sam turned Paul on his right side and bent his legs at the knees so he wouldn’t roll onto his stomach or back. Jeff pushed Luke close to Paul, turned him on his side so he was facing Paul, and then pressed his face against the back of Paul’s head. Sam took an adjustable nylon belt out of the bag and bound the young men’s heads together with it. To stabilize Luke’s position, Jeff put his left arm over Paul’s body.

“Look at them. They’re spooning.” Jeff laughed.

Sam smiled. As he stared at Luke and Paul, he remembered lying behind Sam Curtis on Sam’s bed in the Dallas County Jail on the night of January eleventh, breathing in the smells of his hair and sweat, whispering the incantation, with his face pressed to the back of Sam’s head and his left arm wrapped around him. If a guard had seen them, he would have thought they were having sex.

Although he was not gay or bisexual, spooning his cellmate had not made Sam feel uncomfortable.

Has Edward been raped yet? Sam wondered. Edward wasn’t a muscleman, so there must be plenty of inmates in his unit who were strong enough to force him into submission.

Did rape take place in death row prisons?

Sam looked at the surveillance monitor. Eric Pruitt was still reading the magazine, and Ryan was gazing at the ceiling.

From his pants pocket, Sam pulled the piece of paper on which he had written the incantation, and unfolded it.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Jeff stepped a few feet away from Luke and Paul and folded his arms across his chest.

“Naiz orod imat semas tauni mopela tus,” Sam read aloud.

The incantation had to be said by Sam because it worked only if it was said by the person who had performed the sacrifice.

“Naiz orod imat semas tauni mopela tus.”

Sam’s heart was pounding as hard as it had when he performed the ritual in the Dallas County Jail.

“Naiz orod imat semas tauni mopela tus.”

In his imagination, Sam saw lightning streak the sky and heard thunder roar.

Sam removed the belt from Luke’s and Paul’s heads and put it in the bag. Then they sat Luke and Paul down on the sofa.

“Let’s wake him up,” Jeff suggested.

“Okay.” Sam shook Luke’s shoulder. “Wake up! Wake up!”

No reaction.

Sam shook him for about fifteen seconds before giving up. He figured Luke still had a significant amount of chlorpromazine in his system.

He tried to wake Luke up again half an hour later. After Sam shook his shoulder a few times, Luke opened his eyes and looked around. When he saw Paul, he raised his eyebrows and said, “Is it over?”

“What’s your name?” Sam asked.

“Paul Pruitt.” Luke pointed at Paul. “Is this my body? My old body?”

“When is your birthday?”

“July nineteenth.”

Paul Pruitt’s birthday was July 19.

“What’s your father’s name?”

“Eric Pruitt.” Luke was staring at his hands with disbelief.

“What illness did you have?”

“Brain tumor. Is the procedure over?”

“Yes, it is.” Grinning from ear to ear, Sam turned to Jeff and said, “It worked.”

Sam was euphoric. He was glowing with excitement. Everything was going according to plan, and in two days he would be twenty million dollars richer. 

Jeff clapped Luke on the shoulder and said, “Congratulations, son.”

Luke stood up and looked closely at Paul’s face.

“How are you feeling?” Sam asked.

“I’m feeling great,” Luke replied.

Sam patted Paul’s jeans pockets. “Did you have anything in your pockets?”

“No.”

“Would you like to get your clothes back?”

“No. Do you have a mirror?”

“Yes, we do.”

Sam opened the file drawer, took out a handheld mirror, and gave it to Luke.

Luke examined his face for half a minute, and then said to Sam, “Thank you, Jake. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. Come with me.”

Sam and Luke walked out of the room, and Sam said to Eric, “The procedure’s over. We’ve successfully transferred your son’s consciousness to Luke’s brain.”

Eric got up from the chair.

“Dad, it worked,” Luke said to him with a smile.

Looking fixedly at Luke, Eric asked, “What’s the password?”

“Godfather and shenanigans.”

“What movie did we watch last night?”

“Inception and Skyfall.”

Eric’s serious expression softened.

“Is that correct?” Sam asked.

“Yes.” Eric nodded. To Luke, he said, “Tell me the joke you told me this morning.”

“What's the difference between a bull and a cow? A bull smiles when you milk it.”

“What’s the name of the girl that gave you your first blowjob?”

“Julia Burns.”

“What’s the name of your cousin in Seattle?”

“Adam Browning.”

“I put something in my pants pocket before we left the house. What was it?”

“A Japanese coin. Fifty yen. It’s me, Dad. Are you going to ask me all the questions we prepared?”

“Yes. Who did we meet in Vegas last May?”

“Robert Downey Junior.”

“What happened in Hawaii last August?”

“I lost my phone.”

“What’s the name of your uncle in Houston?”

“James Pruitt.”

“What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

“Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a lettuce salad.”

“What happened in the great room two weeks ago?”

“I broke a vase.”

“Who’s Jordan Duggan?”

“He was my classmate. When I was seventeen, he asked if he could suck my dick. I said no.” Luke smiled. “Dad, it’s me.”

“Are his answers correct?” Sam asked Eric.

Eric nodded. “Yes.” His eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around Luke, and said, “This is amazing. This is amazing.”

“I don’t have a tumor anymore.” Luke’s eyes were swimming with tears.

Eric shook Sam’s hand, and said, “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Sam replied.

To Luke, Eric said, “I need to talk to Jake. Will you please wait in the hallway?”

Then he asked his assistant to wait in the hallway, and when Ryan and Luke stepped out of the office, he said to Sam, “Can I talk to Luke?”

“Why? Do you still have doubts?”

“I’ll feel better if I talk to him.”

“What do you want to talk to him about?”

“I’ll ask him the questions I asked Paul.”

Would Pruitt refuse to pay if they didn’t let him speak to Luke?

Sam thought for a moment and then said, holding up five fingers, “Five questions. You can ask him five questions.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell him you’re the father of the guy he traded bodies with.”

“Why?”

“He might try to pretend he’s still your son. It’s happened before.”

They went into the smaller room, and Sam asked Jeff to wake Paul up.

It took Jeff less than a minute to rouse Paul from sleep.

“What’s going on?” Paul said when he awoke. He looked at Jeff and then at Eric, who was standing next to Jeff.

“What’s your name?” Eric asked.

“Luke,” Paul said.

“What’s your last name?”

“Gannon.” Paul frowned.

“Do you know who I am?”