An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel
Page 21
On December 19, Aguero called to give Mark an update.
The police had searched Jeff Phillips’s house for over five hours and found no blood-stained objects and nothing that belonged to Helen Hinton or Laura Sumner.
No traces of blood were found in the Phillipses’ cars, and none of the fingerprints in the vehicles matched those of Helen or Laura. The hairs collected from the cars could not be tested for DNA because none of them had a follicle. Jeff’s clothes did not have any blood on them.
The examination of the images on the Phillipses’ laptops and Jeff’s cellphone and university computer revealed no pictures of Helen or Laura. There were no search terms in Jeff’s online search history indicating that he had looked for information on how to kill someone or how to destroy evidence of murder (they were able to recover all Jeff’s and his wife’s Internet history deleted in the last year and a half). The only time Jeff had searched for something that could be considered suspicious was on November 17 of last year when he looked for information on sedatives and sleeping pills.
Aguero said that Jeff Phillips had hidden surveillance cameras in his house, and Mark thanked God that he hadn’t broken into Jeff’s place last Friday.
Chapter 43
1
Aguero put on a headset and said, “Go ahead.”
Edward Phillips picked up the phone and dialed his father’s cellphone number. Jeff answered on the third ring.
“Hello, Dad,” Edward said.
“Who’s this?”
“Edward. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Jeff said in a toneless voice.
“How’s Mom?”
“She’s fine.”
“It’s been a long time since we talked.”
“Yeah.”
After learning that the police had found no evidence against his father during the search of his house, university office, and car, Edward Phillips had asked Aguero to let him call Jeff and try to get him to incriminate himself. Aguero had agreed to his suggestion. Jeff probably knew that prison phone calls were recorded, but it didn’t hurt to try.
“Listen, Dad. I decided to tell them the truth. I’m sorry. The cops know it was you who killed Helen Hinton. I’m really sorry, but I had to tell them the truth.”
“What are you talking about? Are you insane?”
“The cops know you killed Laura Sumner. You shouldn’t have killed those girls, Dad.”
“Goodbye, Edward.” Jeff hung up.
Aguero took off the headset and put it on the table. “That was short.”
“He knows these calls are recorded,” Phillips said.
“Yeah.”
“Please don’t let him get away with it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
2
“Was it Edward?” Sam asked when Jeff pocketed his phone.
“Yes.” Jeff grabbed his bottle of beer from the table and crossed his legs.
“What did he want?”
Sam unmuted the TV.
“Nothing.”
“Where did he get your number?”
Jeff shrugged. “Maybe Emily gave it to him.”
Jeff stood up and went to the bathroom, where he evacuated his bowels. When he returned to the living room, he said, “My dad used to say that a good dump is the next best thing to sex.” He laughed.
Sam smiled.
“Is Mom going to visit this motherfucker again?” he said.
“She said she’ll go there again this Saturday. By the way, when are we going to tell her about the switch?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
“She’s not going to believe it.”
“You could prove to her that you’re Edward.”
“Are you going to tell her about the ritual? About the human sacrifices?”
Jeff said nothing.
“Why do you want to tell her about the switch, anyway?”
“Her only son is on death row, and it makes her miserable. I want her to know that that guy in prison isn’t her son anymore.”
Sam shook his head. “She’s not going to believe it. Is she really miserable?”
“Yes.”
Emily had been talking about Edward every day since last Saturday, and each time she cried. He supposed that the anguish over Edward’s plight had been accumulating in her all these months, and now the spigots were open. It broke Jeff’s heart to see her cry.
“Maybe she’ll feel better if you buy her a diamond ring.”
“She won’t. She wants to hire a lawyer for him.”
“Let her do it. You’ll be gone in two weeks, anyway.”
Jeff sighed. “I’m going to miss her.”
Did Emily believe Edward’s accusations?
Jeff had no idea. When the cops left last Saturday, she had asked him if he had murdered those two girls, and he had said no. He had said Edward had accused him of the murders because he was mad at him for disowning him. She hadn’t brought up the subject since, but that didn’t mean she’d bought his explanation.
“I’ll miss her, too.”
“I think we should give her some money.”
“I agree. Let’s give her five percent of everything we make.”
Jeff nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
Chapter 44
1
Sam Curtis wasn’t home on the night of December 21. And he wasn’t home on the night of December 23, either.
On Thursday, December 28, thinking that Curtis might be asleep, Mark rang his doorbell. There was no answer; the windows remained dark.
Had Sam Curtis skipped town?
Maybe he’s at Jeff Phillips’s place?
Mark got in the car and drove to Jeff Phillips’s house. Emily Phillips opened the door.
“Good evening. Can I talk to Jeff?” Mark said.
“He’s not home. He’s in Houston.”
There were dark circles around Emily’s eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept well.
“When did he leave?”
“A week ago.”
“When is he coming back?”
“Next week.”
Maybe Curtis and Jeff Phillips had skipped town together? After all, they were a team.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Mark said. “Goodnight.”
Were they going to get new bodies? It was a strong possibility.
He needed to find Curtis by the next full moon, which was on the night of January 1.
On Friday, Mark requested geolocation information for Jeff Phillips’s and Sam Curtis’s phones. He was informed that the phones had been off since December 21. Nobody named Jeff Phillips or Sam Curtis had boarded any planes or trains in the United States in the last ten days. There had been no activity on the two men’s credit and bank cards since December 21. On December 20, Jeff had withdrawn twenty-five thousand dollars from his bank account.
Mark called Detective Aguero and told him that Jeff Phillips seemed to have gone on the run.
“Why would he go on the run?” Aguero said. “We have nothing on him.”
He promised Mark to help him find Jeff.
At five o’clock, Mark put out an APB on Sam Curtis and Jeff Phillips.
On Saturday, Mark told Emily Phillips that he was a police detective and asked her when Jeff had last contacted her.
“I haven’t heard from him since he left for Houston,” Emily said.
“What if something bad happened to him?”
“I’m sure he’s fine. He’s done this before. Are you still investigating him?”
“No. I just want to ask him a few questions. Do you know what hotel he’s staying at?”
“No.”
“Did he go to Houston in his car?”
“No. He went there with his friend in his friend’s car.”
“What’s the friend’s name?”
“Peter. I don’t know his last name.”
“Is Jeff’s car in the garage?”
“Yes.”
Mark asked E
mily to show him Jeff’s car, and she did.
2
On Sunday night, Mark drilled a hole in Sam Curtis’s garage door, looked inside, and saw Curtis’s Mazda. He rang Curtis’s doorbell. No one answered.
No one answered the door on Monday, January 1, either. The Mazda was still in the garage. Furious, Mark kicked the door a few times and then slammed his fist against it.
This cocksucker was going to get away with it, and Helen would not be avenged.
It was his fault. He should have killed Sam Curtis a month ago.
What would Sam and Jeff do with the people that were going to get their old bodies?
They would kill them so no one would find out who they had switched bodies with.
They would probably kill their old bodies shortly after the swap. Because they wanted the police to think they were dead, they would leave the bodies where they could be easily found.
The bodies would be taken to the morgue.
Suddenly Mark realized he had an opportunity to help Edward Phillips regain his freedom.
What he needed to do was go to the morgue and plant Jeff Phillips’s prints on the knife used to kill Helen. The murder weapon with a suspect’s prints on it was a powerful piece of evidence. It might be powerful enough to help Edward get a retrial and then win an acquittal.
3
On Tuesday morning, Mark searched the databases of the medical examiner’s offices of Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, El Paso, Travis, Harris, McLennan, Hidalgo, and Bexar counties for Jeff Phillips and Sam Curtis and found no matches.
He hoped to God Jeff and Sam hadn’t gone out of state to get new bodies.
Mark searched the database of the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office again at three-thirty and was thrilled to find out that the body of a man named Jeffrey Phillips had been delivered to the county morgue an hour earlier. The man’s date of birth was the same as Jeff Phillips’s. The place of death was the Sun Motel in Grand Prairie.
Mark drove to the medical examiner’s office, flashed his badge to the morgue attendant, and said that he wanted to see Jeffrey Phillips’s body. As they walked to the cold room, Mark put on the latex gloves he had brought with him.
When the attendant unzipped the body bag, Mark saw that it was the right Jeff Phillips. He pulled out his phone and said, “I need ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
The attendant left the room. Mark rubbed some lotion on Jeff’s right palm, took the knife out of the plastic bag, and closed Jeff’s hand tightly around its handle. Jeff’s fingers were stiff as rigor mortis had already set in. There was a long, deep cut caked with blood on his wrist. It appeared they had killed Jeff by slashing his wrists.
Mark put the knife in the plastic bag, then pocketed the bag and wiped Jeff’s hand with his handkerchief.
Now he needed to find a way to plant the knife in Jeff Phillips’s house.
Mark went to the Sun Motel and asked the front desk clerk when Jeff had checked into his room. The clerk was a stocky man with a buzz cut named Gabriel.
“December twenty-eight,” the clerk said.
“Did he stay there alone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he pay cash?”
“Yeah.”
“What name did he check in under?”
“John Wells.”
Mark showed Gabriel Sam Curtis’s photo and asked, “Have you seen this man?”
Gabriel shook his head. “No.”
“Does your motel have security cameras?”
“No.”
An hour later, Mark read the police reports filed by the first two officers to arrive at the scene of Jeff’s death. Jeff’s body had been discovered by a maid in Room 118 of the Sun Motel around eleven-thirty this morning. He lay on a bed fully clothed, with his wrists slashed. There was a bloody razor blade on the nightstand. Jeff left no suicide note. No signs of foul play had been found.
Jeff and Sam had made Jeff’s death look like suicide so there would be no investigation. Smart move.
The fact that Jeff’s death looked like suicide could work in Edward’s favor. Edward’s lawyer could say that Jeff Phillips had killed himself because he felt remorse for murdering Helen Hinton.
Chapter 45
1
The next day Mark searched the databases of all medical examiner’s offices in Texas for Sam Curtis and found nothing. There was no mention of Sam Curtis in the reports of the Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Plano, Irving, Arlington, El Paso, Corpus Christi, or San Antonio police departments. Mark googled “found dead body Sam Curtis” and got no relevant hits.
Was Sam’s body going to pop up later?
Or maybe Sam hadn’t gotten a new body? He wasn’t a suspect or a person of interest, so he didn’t need to get a new body.
Detective Aguero called at two o’clock and told Mark that the Grand Prairie Police Department had found Jeff Phillips.
“He’s dead,” Aguero said.
“Yes, I heard that. He killed himself.”
“Why do you think he did it?”
“I believe he was overwhelmed by guilt. It seems we were right about him.”
2
Toxicology tests showed that Jeff had zolpidem (also known as Ambien) in his system. They had put Jeff to sleep and then killed him.
Sam Curtis’s cellphone was still off and there was still no activity on his cards on January 4.
At five p.m. on January 4, Aguero called and said, “Are you sitting down?”
“Yes. What happened?”
“You’re not going to believe this. I received a video from Jeff Phillips where he confesses to killing your daughter and Laura Sumner.”
Mark was so surprised he almost dropped his phone.
“Did you say Jeff Phillips confessed to killing Helen and Laura?” he asked disbelievingly.
“Yes, I did.”
“Can I see the video?”
“I’ll mail you a copy. I can email you a transcript, if you want.”
“Yes, please email it.”
Aguero sent the transcript of Jeff’s video a few minutes after terminating the call. It read: “Hi, my name is Jeffrey Phillips. I live at 1506 Sandwood Street, Carrollton, Texas. I’m making this video for Detective Carlos Aguero of the Austin Police Department. I want to confess to murdering Helen Hinton and Laura Sumner.
I killed Helen Hinton in Dallas on the night of December 11 of last year. My son, Edward Phillips, had nothing to do with this murder. He tried to stop me from killing Helen. I’m very sorry I caused him so much pain by letting him get convicted of the crime committed by me. Edward, if you’re watching this, I’m asking you to forgive me. I’m very very sorry. I also want to apologize to Helen Hinton’s family. I’m very sorry I took your daughter’s life.
I killed Laura Sumner in Austin on the night of August 23 of this year. I’d like to apologize to Laura’s family. I’m very sorry I murdered your daughter.
You probably want to know why I committed these murders. I… I’m a sick man. A very sick man. I have these strange urges I can’t control.
Emily, if you’re watching this, I’m sorry I let you down.
I’ll be gone in a few days, and before I go, I want to tell the world the truth. My son is innocent. He did not kill Helen Hinton. I did. I know I deserve to die for my crimes, and that’s what I’m going to do.
Ed, Emily, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I love you both very much. Goodbye.”
Why had Jeff made his confession video? Did he feel sorry for Edward?
Did he feel sorry for his wife?
3
On Saturday, January 6, Mark met with Edward Phillips and told him about Jeff and Sam’s disappearance, Jeff’s death, and Jeff’s confession video.
“Will they let me go?” Phillips asked, smiling.
“I hope so. What’s your lawyer’s name?”
“Paul Carlin.”
“I’ll give him a copy of the video.”
“Thank you, Mark.�
��
“I have no doubt Jeff got a new body. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made that video.”
“What about Sam?”
“His body hasn’t been found yet. Maybe he didn’t get a new body.”
“Maybe they buried his body.”
As he glanced around the visiting room, Mark thought about Douglas Fleming. Then he remembered something Fleming had said to him: “I would switch bodies with a billionaire.”
When they were at Pistons Bar and Grill, Jeff Phillips had asked if he knew any billionaires.
Perhaps Jeff had traded bodies with a wealthy guy.
Andrew Broder, a hedge fund manager, was a wealthy guy. Sam Curtis had paid him a visit on December 17.
Maybe Jeff, or Sam Curtis, had switched bodies with Broder?
“You know what I think?” Mark said. “I think at least one of them swapped bodies with a rich guy.”
Phillips nodded. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”
Chapter 46
1
Mark checked his watch. 2:13 p.m.
It had been two hours since Mark arrived at Andrew Broder’s house, and no one had left or entered the mansion yet.
If Jeff had switched bodies with Broder, Sam Curtis would sooner or later show up at his mansion. He probably lived here; this place was several orders of magnitude better than his old house.
There was a silver Mercedes coupe in Broder’s driveway. Mark had run the license plate number and found that the car belonged to a twenty-two-year-old man named Taylor Cowley, who lived in Dallas.
There were very few twenty-two-year-olds who owned ninety-thousand-dollar cars. Where had Taylor Cowley gotten the money to buy the Mercedes? Was he Andrew Broder’s son?
Mark googled “Andrew Broder son” and discovered that Andrew Broder’s son’s name was Logan Broder.
Why would a twenty-two-year-old guy hang out with a man thirty years older than him?
Cowley could be Broder’s nephew or illegitimate son.
They could be lovers.
Or maybe Cowley’s parents were Broder’s friends.
Mark googled “Taylor Cowley Dallas.” The fourth search result was a news story about a Dallas man named Taylor Cowley returning home safely on January 3 after being missing for five days. The Taylor Cowley from the news story was twenty-two years old.