An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel (9 page)

1

Sam squatted down and peered at the video receiver that sat on the bottom shelf of the TV stand next to the cable box. The tiny ball of paper Sam had placed on the device was exactly where it had been when he left the house; that meant no one had tampered with the receiver.

Sam sat down in a chair and switched on the monitor.

There were surveillance cameras in the living room and bedrooms, which were hidden in wall clocks. Sam had bought them shortly after he was released from the Dallas County Jail in January. It was not burglars that he wanted to catch on video. It was cops and FBI agents. He feared that one day the cops or the Feds would sneak into his house to look for evidence or install eavesdropping devices. His fear was not baseless.

The cameras were motion- and body-heat-activated, so it didn’t take him long to review the security footage. The receiver had a battery backup which allowed it to operate for up to ten hours without external power supply.

Sam checked the footage religiously every day. So far not one burglar or law enforcement agent had broken into his house.

Monitoring his abode was not the only thing Sam did to detect the activities of the police and the FBI that were directed at him. Every night he put his car in the garage and swept it for GPS tracking devices. So far he hadn’t found any trackers on his vehicle.

There had been no intruders today.

Sam switched off the monitor and said, “We’re good.”

Jeff Phillips grinned. “Excellent.”

Jeff had hidden surveillance cameras in his house, too, and, like Sam, he regularly checked his car for GPS trackers.

Sam grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

“Looks like we got away with it,” he said.

He was talking about the murder of Leonard Barlow. It had been five days since he had killed the lawyer, and no one from the Dallas Police Department had paid him a visit yet.

Sam wasn’t worried: there was no connection between him and Barlow, and therefore he wasn’t going to get on the cops’ radar.

“I hope you’re right,” Jeff said.

Sam went to the kitchen, got two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, and returned to the living room. He gave Jeff a bottle and said, “I talked to Leticia today. They have a woman with Stage Four ovarian cancer. Her son is worth at least a hundred million.”

“What’s his name?”

“Gordon Stryker.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you have his contact information?”

“Yes. Leticia gave me his number.”

“When are you going to call him?”

“As soon as we get an office. I called the company that runs that building by Parkland Hospital, and they said they still had space available.”

“How much do they want?”

“A dollar thirty per square foot.”

“Not bad. Let’s take it.”

“Okay. I’ll go to their office on Monday.”

“Five hundred square feet. That’s all we need.”

“I know.”

“Use the fake ID.”

“I know.”

Tapping his foot on the floor, Jeff said, “How long has it been since we did that girl in Austin?”

“Two months. We have plenty of time.”

1

At one o’clock on Monday afternoon, as he was leaving Dallas PD headquarters, Mark ran into Robert Blanco, the lead detective on the Edward Phillips case. They had known each other since Blanco joined the Homicide Unit four years ago, but they weren’t friends. Before coming to work at the Dallas PD Homicide Unit, Blanco had been a homicide detective with the San Antonio PD. He was married and had a six-year-old daughter.

“Do you have a minute?” Mark said after shaking Blanco’s hand. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Is it going to take more than a minute?” Blanco asked.

“Yes. Fifteen minutes tops.”

Blanco glanced at his watch and said, “I’m on my way to Hugo’s. Let’s talk there.”

Hugo’s was a Mexican restaurant about a mile from the Dallas Police Department. Mark had lunch there once every two weeks.

“Okay,” Mark replied.

They arrived at the restaurant at the same time. Blanco ordered a grilled steak fajita and a Coke, and Mark three chicken enchiladas and lemonade.

“How are you?” Blanco said, looking at Mark solemnly. His shaved head gleamed in the lamplight.

“I’m fine,” Mark said.

“How’s Joan?”

“She’s okay. How’s your family?”

“They’re fine. So what do you want to talk about?”

“The Phillips case.”

Blanco nodded. “Okay, I’m all ears.”

“Was Edward Phillips the only suspect in the case?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Was there any evidence that he had an accomplice?”

“No. Have you heard what happened to his lawyer?” 

“Yes, I have. Poor guy.”

The waitress came back and set down their drinks.

“Did the name Christopher Novak ever come up during the investigation?” Mark asked.

Blanco thought for a long moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think it did. Who is he?”

“A friend of Phillips’s. Did the name Sam Curtis ever come up?”

If he asked Blanco whether he had planted evidence in the Edward Phillips case, he would probably get really mad. He might even throw the soda in his face. Mark doubted Blanco would punch him in the face, though.

“No, it didn’t. Do you think Phillips had an accomplice?”

“I believe that he might. Did you talk to his parents?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What are they like?”

“They seem to be nice people.”

To his neighbors John Wayne Gacy had seemed to be a nice guy, too.

“Did either of them strike you as violent or psychotic?”

“No.”

The waitress set their plates on the table, and Blanco thanked her.

Mark took a bite of his enchilada and then said, “When you looked for the murder weapon, did you search Phillips’s parents’ house?”

“No.”

“Did you ever consider the possibility that his father was involved?”

“Involved how?”

“His father might have helped him kill Helen.”

“No, we never considered this possibility.”

Mark hesitated, and then said, “Did you do everything by the book in the Phillips case?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have to bend the rules to prove that Phillips was guilty, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“I talked to Edward Phillips two weeks ago. He said he didn’t kill Helen.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“So there’s no chance he’s innocent?”

Blanco shook his head. “He did it. Trust me, Mark.”

“But he passed a lie detector test.”

“So what? All it tells me is that he learned how to beat a lie detector.”

“He said he was framed.”

“And who framed him?”

“Police.”

Blanco laughed. “How original.”

“Is it possible that Helen’s blood was planted on his clothes?”

“Who could have done it? I know it wasn’t me.” Blanco smiled. “Maybe the CIA did it?”

“I’m not saying you had anything to do with it.”

“Let me ask you, Mark. Have you ever framed anyone? Have you ever bent the rules?”

“I’m sorry, Rob. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s all right.” Blanco took a sip from his glass. “For a second I thought you believed that son of a bitch. Why did you talk to him in the first place?”

“I don’t care about Phillips. I just want to be sure Helen’s killer isn’t still out there enjoying life.”

Blanco speared a piece of steak with his fork and said, “You know, it’s entirely possible that Phillips had an accomplice. But unless Phillips gives him up, we’ll never find out who it is.”

Mark nodded. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Can you give me a copy of Helen’s DNA profile?”

“What do you need it for?”

“I just want to have it.”

“All right. I’ll send it to you.”

“Thank you.”

Blanco kept his word and emailed Helen’s DNA profile to Mark shortly after five o’clock.

2

At three p.m., Mark went to Thomas Shaw, a homicide squad supervisor, and asked him if there had been any unsolved stabbing murders in the last two months. Shaw said they had two cases: Albert Estes, a forty-eight-year-old homeless man, who was killed on September 5, and Elvira Herrera, a thirty-six-year-old woman, who was killed on October 12. Albert Estes had been stabbed in the leg and Elvira Herrera in the stomach.

Mark was relieved to learn that there had been no cases similar to Helen’s in Dallas since Edward Phillips had first told him about Sam Curtis.

A few minutes later he sent Detective Aguero an email asking if there had been any cases similar to Laura Sumner’s in Austin since Laura’s murder. Aguero emailed back saying that none of the murders that had occurred in Austin this year resembled Laura Sumner’s.

At four-thirty Mark received a list of Jeff Phillips’s Visa transactions. He opened the document and scrolled down until he saw the date “08/23.” On August 23, at 6:07 p.m., Jeff Phillips had made an $18.56 purchase at a Burger King in Austin. The next transaction had taken place on August 25.

At Burger King, two people could eat for eighteen dollars. Jeff had either had a traveling companion or been very hungry.

Staring at the computer screen, Mark leaned back in his chair.

The fact that Jeff Phillips had been in Austin on August 23 supported the theory that he had killed Laura Sumner.

Sam Curtis was in Austin on August 23, too. Maybe they went there together.

Why would Jeff Phillips go to Austin with Curtis?

To make sure that Curtis killed his victim the same way his son had killed Helen.

He could try to find out if Jeff and Curtis had gone to Austin together by reading the text messages they had sent each other on August 23 and 24.

There was a third possibility, which was consistent with Edward Phillips’s story. Maybe Jeff had followed Curtis to Austin to see what he was up to.

Why didn’t Jeff stop Curtis from killing Laura Sumner?

Perhaps Jeff had lost Curtis before he attacked Laura.

After writing a report on an interview he had conducted today, Mark prepared an application for a search warrant for Sam Curtis’s text messages from August 22 to 24.

When Mark got home, he spent an hour searching the Internet for new cases in which the victim had been killed the same way as Helen. All he managed to find was the case of Walter Kindred, who had been murdered in Newton, Massachusetts, in October of last year. Kindred’s murder had been solved, so Sam Curtis had nothing to do with it.

1

As the door closed behind him, Mark looked toward the corner where Detective Nelson Coogan’s cubicle was. Coogan, the lead detective on the Barlow case, was at his desk, talking on the phone. Approaching Coogan’s cubicle, Mark waved to him, and he waved back. The detective’s fingers were so hairy that from a distance it seemed as though they were smeared with soot.

Two minutes later Coogan hung up the phone, then swiveled in his chair to face Mark and said, “What’s up?”

“Leonard Barlow’s murder is your case, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you have a suspect yet?”

“No, we don’t.”

“Did the killer leave any fingerprints?”

“No. The fingerprints we found belong to Barlow and his wife. Why do you ask?”

“I knew him. Not well, though.”

“He was Edward Phillips’s lawyer.”

“Yes, he was. Were there any witnesses?”

“No witnesses. And the part of the parking lot where Barlow was killed wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras. It’s a tough case. His family announced a fifty thousand dollar reward, but so far no one has come forward.”

“Did you find a murder weapon?”

“No.”

Phillips said that Sam Curtis would disappear if he was confronted about Helen’s murder. Would he disappear if the police questioned him in connection with Leonard Barlow’s murder? Mark had no idea.

He would ask Phillips about it.

“Why do you think he was killed?”

“It could be a robbery gone wrong. Or a carjacking. He had a very nice car. It might have been premeditated.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“His wife says he had no enemies and he never received any threats. But she could be wrong. We started reading his emails yesterday; we might find something useful there. By the way, do you know anything that can help us?”

“No, I don’t.”

Suppose Sam Curtis was Barlow’s killer. How would the police prove that he had murdered the lawyer if there were no witnesses and no physical evidence?

“Have you met Barlow’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think she could be involved?”

“I doubt it. Did she take a polygraph test?”

“No. I’m going to ask her to take it this week. Do you think Barlow was cheating on his wife?”

Mark shrugged. “I have no idea.” He held out his hand. “I’ll leave you alone now.” They shook hands. “Let me know when you make an arrest.”

“Sure, man.”

2

At five-fifteen, Mark received a text message from Joan saying that the knife sent by Chuck had arrived. The message also said that Joan hadn’t touched the knife.

As he pocketed his phone, Mark thought about his parents’ house at Lake Ray Hubbard. He wasn’t going to spy on the person whose prints were on the knife and try to catch him committing murder. He would torture this bastard until he confessed to killing Helen. And then he would kill him.

When Mark came home, Joan was in the living room reading a book.

“Hi, honey,” Mark said.

“Hi.”

“Where’s the knife?”

“In the study.” Joan put the book on the coffee table and rose from the couch.

“Did Chuck call today?”

“No.”

When they went into the study, Joan pointed at the yellow bubble mailer on the desk and said, “It’s in the envelope.”

Mark took a pair of latex gloves from the bottom desk drawer, slipped them on, and looked inside the mailer. Joan stood beside him, watching. He could smell her perfume; it was Paloma Picasso, her favorite fragrance. There was a plastic zipper bag in the envelope, which contained a kitchen knife with a black handle. He got the bag out, opened it, and pulled out the knife.

There were brown stains on both sides of the blade. The thought that it might be his daughter’s blood turned Mark’s stomach.

“Is it blood?” Joan asked.

“It could be blood.”

Mark stared at the knife as if hypnotized.

This knife might be the knife that had pierced Helen’s heart. The knife that had cut open her stomach.

His arms broke out in gooseflesh.

Mark measured the blade with a ruler and found that it was six inches long. The deepest wound in Helen’s body was six inches deep.

It’s not a hoax. This is the knife used to kill Helen.

From the top drawer, he retrieved a DNA collection swab, which he had brought from work two days ago. He dampened the swab with tap water, then rubbed it over one of the larger stains on the blade and placed it in a storage envelope.

“Are you taking the swab to a lab tomorrow?” Joan laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“When will the results be ready?”

“Thursday.”

Joan watched him for a few more seconds and then walked out of the room.

Mark put the knife in a plastic evidence bag and then examined the bubble mailer. The sender’s name was Chuck Smith, and the sender’s address was 1094 Lakeland Drive, Dallas, TX 75218. Mark entered the address into Google Maps and discovered that it was bogus. That did not surprise him at all. The name was probably bogus, too. Both the sender’s and the recipient’s names and both of their addresses were printed, not handwritten.

“Chuck” had taken all the usual precautions to protect his anonymity. And he might even have made sure to leave no fingerprints on the mailer and the plastic bag the knife had been in.

Mark picked up the knife and studied it for about three minutes before admitting to himself that he had no idea how to prove that the fingerprints—assuming there were any—had gotten on the knife during Helen’s murder.

As they sat in the living room watching TV, Joan asked him if he was going to turn the knife over to the police.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Mark said.

“Are you going to dust it for prints yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t give it to the police if the fingerprints don’t belong to Phillips. I think it will be impossible to get a conviction.”

Their eyes met.

“We have to take care of this ourselves,” Joan said.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Mark said, “Do you want me to kill him?”

“Yes. And I’ll help you.”

Mark nodded. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

He felt a surge of adrenaline. He couldn’t wait to beat Helen’s killer to death, to see terror in his eyes, to hear him scream in pain.