An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel Read online

  TIM KIZER

  AN EVIL MIND

  Also by Tim Kizer

  The Vanished

  Spellbound

  Mania

  The Mindbender

  Days of Vengeance

  Deception

  Copyright 2016 Tim Kizer

  Click here to subscribe to the newsletter

  CONTENTS

  An Evil Mind

  Sample chapters from The Vanished

  Other titles by Tim Kizer

  TIM KIZER

  AN EVIL MIND

  Description

  How do you stop a serial killer who can escape from any prison?

  On December 11, 15-year-old Helen Hinton is brutally murdered in an abandoned house in Dallas.

  Her killer, Edward Phillips, is caught and sentenced to death. Helen's blood was on Edward's clothes and shoes. The murder weapon has his fingerprints on it.

  Edward claims he's innocent.

  He's telling the truth.

  On an October morning, Mark Hinton, Helen's father, visits Edward in prison at his request. Edward tells him that he knows the real killer's name.

  What he doesn't tell Mark is that the real killer is the most dangerous criminal on the planet.

  Chapter 1

  1

  She had a tender face with a small pimple on her left cheek. Her lipstick was a mess; he had smeared it when he pressed a chloroform-soaked rag against her mouth and nose forty minutes ago. Her blue puffer jacket was open, revealing a white T-shirt that read: “They Hate Us Cause They Ain’t Us.”

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “Helen.”

  The girl’s eyes were bulging with terror.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “If you scream, I’ll kill you.”

  Helen lay on the floor with trash strewn around her, and he was hunkered down beside her, his elbows on his knees. Lit only by a lantern, the room was dim. The cold breath of the winter night flowed into the house through a broken window in the kitchen.

  The girl couldn’t put up much resistance as her wrists were bound behind her back with rope.

  “Are you going to rape me?” Helen whimpered.

  He liked the girl’s straightforwardness. And he found it amusing that Helen thought she could get an honest answer. Grinning, he said, “Yes. Yes, I am. I’ll be very gentle, I promise.”

  It was a lie; this was not about sex. He lied to put the girl at ease. (He would love to have sex with Helen, but it was not why he had brought her here.)

  “Please don’t kill me,” the girl pleaded. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  The girl was breathing rapidly, tears running down her thin cheeks, her face scrunched up, her upper lip wet with snot.

  “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Good.”

  He pulled Helen’s T-shirt up to her neck and pressed his hand against the girl’s chest. He could feel Helen’s heart hammering wildly under his fingers.

  Helen wasn’t flat-chested, but her tits were too small for his taste.

  “Don’t be scared. Everything will be all right.”

  “Don’t kill me, please.”

  “Have you ever done anything with a boy?”

  “No.”

  He slid his hand into her panties and rubbed her pubes. Her crotch was smooth.

  “You shave down there,” he said.

  His penis was as hard as a rock. The urge to fuck Helen grew stronger by the second.

  It would only take a few minutes.

  No, he couldn’t have sex with her. He didn’t have a condom with him. You should never rape without a condom unless you want the police to have your DNA.

  He reached behind him and picked up the knife from the floor.

  “Please don’t kill me,” Helen whined. When she shifted her eyes to the knife, she had seen the barbwire tattoo that circled the man’s wrist.

  He slipped the blade under the front strap of Helen’s bra and cut it in two.

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  The girl seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

  He raised the knife and plunged it into the girl’s left breast, piercing the heart. When he pulled out the blade, two drops of blood splattered on Helen’s face. He looked at the wound in Helen’s chest for a moment and then stabbed the girl in the right breast.

  He shivered with excitement. The young bitch was dead.

  I did it again, and I didn’t falter.

  He sank the blade into the girl’s abdomen, just below the sternum, and ripped it open. He stopped cutting when the knife reached Helen’s groin.

  After he yanked the knife out of Helen’s belly, he saw that a thin stream of water had trickled out from under the girl’s thigh. His eyes fell on the large dark stain on the crotch of the girl’s pants, and he realized that Helen had peed herself.

  He stood up, placed the knife in a plastic bag, and picked up the lantern from the floor.

  “They hate us cause they ain’t us,” he muttered under his breath as he walked to the car.

  Chapter 2

  1

  The visiting room was cold. Mark Hinton felt that he would be able to see his breath if the temperature dropped just one degree.

  He lifted the receiver off the hook, wiped it on his suit coat, and put it to his ear. Then he propped his elbows on the metal counter.

  “Did you read my letter?” Edward Phillips asked.

  The fluorescent lights gave Phillips’s skin a greenish-gray cast. His shoulders hunched, his face haggard, with dark circles under his eyes, Phillips looked broken and hopeless, which made Mark feel satisfied, even gleeful. It was great that his daughter’s killer was miserable. Murderers didn’t deserve to be happy; they deserved to suffer the same fate as their victims had.

  The thing that angered Mark the most was that it was going to be a long time before the appeal process was completed and Edward Phillips was executed—probably over ten years.

  “Yes,” Mark said.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “Why did you kill my daughter?”

  “I didn’t kill your daughter.”

  “Was she alive when you cut open her stomach?”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Did you cut open her stomach before or after you stabbed her in the heart?”

  “Mark, I didn’t kill your daughter. I swear.”

  Mark pictured himself pulling a gun from the holster and shooting Phillips in the forehead. He had been fantasizing about killing Phillips every day since Phillips was charged with Helen’s murder. Sometimes he imagined himself strangling the bastard with his bare hands, sometimes beating him to death with a baseball bat, and sometimes disemboweling him.

  If he was ever going to shoot Edward Phillips, it would not take place here. Although Mark was a cop (he was a detective with the Robbery Unit of the Dallas Police Department), he was not allowed to bring a firearm into the visiting room.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Do you know how many death row inmates have been exonerated in the last forty years? One hundred and fifty.”

  “They were exonerated because they were innocent. You are not innocent.”

  “Let’s talk about Laura Sumner.”

  “Okay.”

  Mark had received a letter from Phillips a week ago. He recognized the sender’s name as soon as he saw it, and his first impulse was to throw the letter away without reading it. Then he changed his mind and, wondering if Phillips wrote to ask forgiveness for killing Helen, opened the envelope. The letter read:

  “Dear Mark,

  I have imp
ortant information about the murder of your daughter, Helen. Six weeks ago, a woman by the name of Laura Sumner was murdered in Austin. She was killed the same way as your daughter. I think it would be a good idea for you to talk to your colleagues in Austin about this case. Why? I’ll tell you why: the man who killed Helen killed Laura Sumner.

  Please verify that what I told you about Laura Sumner is true. You can’t take my word for it, can you? After you talk to your colleagues in Austin, come see me. I know who killed Laura Sumner. You can find me at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas. My inmate ID number is 01999593.

  Regards,

  Edward Phillips.”

  The next day Mark logged into the Austin Police Department’s crime database and searched for homicide cases in which the victim’s name was Laura Sumner (he limited the search to cases opened after July 31).

  There was one match. The victim was eighteen years old at the time of her death. She had been killed on August 23; the time of death was estimated to be between eight p.m. and midnight. The police believed the murder had taken place in the abandoned house on Felix Avenue where Laura Sumner’s body had been discovered. Helen had been murdered in an abandoned house, too.

  Mark’s arms broke out in gooseflesh as he looked at the pictures of Laura’s body. There were two stab wounds on the young woman’s chest: one in the right breast and one in the left. Her abdomen had been cut open from the sternum to the groin.

  What Edward Phillips had said was true: Laura Sumner had been killed the same way as Helen.

  An image rose in his mind of Helen’s dead body lying on a morgue slab, and his heart twisted with pain.

  Mark scanned the autopsy report and saw that no evidence of sexual assault had been found. Helen’s postmortem examination had revealed no evidence of rape, either.

  Laura Sumner’s case was still open. The police had no suspects.

  “Did you talk to Austin cops about the Sumner case?” Phillips asked.

  “No. I looked through the case file.”

  “Good. Did you verify that Laura was killed the same way as your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you agree that Laura was killed by the man who murdered your daughter?”

  “I know who killed Helen—you.”

  Phillips shook his head. “How well do you sleep, Mark?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Do you have nightmares?”

  Mark nodded.

  Although it had been ten months since Helen’s murder, Mark still had nightmares. They were vivid, terrifying, and hard to wake up from. He had thought they would stop after Edward Phillips was sentenced to death, but he had been wrong.

  His wife, Joan, still had nightmares, too.

  “Do you see your daughter in your dreams?”

  “Yes.”

  Phillips leaned forward and said, “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I knew that the man who killed my daughter was walking free.”

  “The man who killed my daughter is on death row.”

  “I can’t expect you to believe me. But what I want you to do is ask yourself: what if Ed Phillips is telling the truth? What if the real killer is out there enjoying life?”

  “You are the real killer.”

  “I swear on my mother’s life that I did not kill your daughter.”

  If Edward Phillips was executed in ten years, he would have lived twenty-seven years longer than Helen. That was unfair.

  Mark glanced at his watch. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “I know who killed Laura Sumner.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I’ll give you the name after you admit that there’s a chance Laura Sumner was killed by the man who murdered your daughter.”

  “All right. I think there’s a chance Laura Sumner was killed by the man who murdered Helen. Now give me the name.”

  “His name’s Sam Curtis. We shared a cell for a month in the county jail last winter.”

  “How do you know he killed Laura Sumner?”

  “Sam told me he killed your daughter, and we know that Laura and Helen were killed by the same person.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Okay. They were probably killed by the same person.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe Sam Curtis told me he killed Helen?”

  “Would you believe that if you were me?”

  “I wouldn’t dismiss that out of hand, that’s for sure.”

  Phillips must be lying, but what did he have to gain? It was the appellate court that he needed to convince of his innocence not the victim’s father.

  “Why didn’t you tell the prosecutor that Curtis confessed to killing Helen?”

  “Because no one would have believed me. You don’t believe me.”

  “What am I supposed to do with this information?”

  “I’m sure Sam will kill again. You could follow him and catch him in the act.”

  “Suppose I catch him in the act. How does that help you? Do you think he’ll confess to killing Helen?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s in this for you?”

  “I want Sam Curtis to pay for his crimes.” Phillips paused. “Please don’t confront him or tell the police about him. If he finds out the cops are onto him, he’ll disappear and change his identity.”

  “When did Curtis tell you that he killed Helen?”

  “The day he was released from jail.”

  “Did he know you were accused of killing my daughter?”

  “No.”

  Mark tilted his head to one side and saw a handprint on the glass that separated him from Phillips. He pictured an inmate pressing his palm against the window and his visitor aligning her hand with his on the other side.

  “You know why Curtis told me that he murdered Helen?” Phillips said.

  “Why?”

  “He trusted me. And I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “He told me that he robbed a convenience store in Garland in April of last year. The name of the store was Eddie’s Mini Mart. Sam hid the gun he’d used in the robbery in the air vent in his master bedroom. He said it was a nine-millimeter Heckler & Koch.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get the gun and see if it was used in that robbery. Sam said he fired his gun at the ceiling to scare the store clerk. Your guys must have extracted the bullet.”

  Inside every pistol barrel there were spiral grooves (also known as rifling) that gave the bullet a spin, which increased its accuracy. The marks left by the rifling (ballistics examiners called them “striations”) allowed a bullet to be traced to the gun it had been shot from because each barrel had a unique set of grooves.

  Would the jury find Curtis guilty of robbery if the pistol was the only evidence against him? Mark supposed it was going to depend on the skill of his lawyer.

  “You think he’ll let me search the air vent in his bedroom?”

  “You can do it when he’s not home.”

  “You want me to break into his place?”

  “If you get caught, you can say you heard screams inside.”

  “Do you want him to go to prison for robbing that convenience store?”

  “No. I told you about this robbery to prove that Sam trusted me, that he shared his secrets with me.”

  There was a desperate, imploring look in Phillips’s deep-set gray eyes, and for a moment it seemed as if he was going to tear up.

  “All right. Let me think about it.”

  “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Can you give me your cellphone number?”

  “Are you going to call me?”

  “Is it okay if I call you? I’ll do it only when I have something important to tell you, I promise.”

  “Okay, you can call.”

  Mark told Phillips his cellphone number and then, at Phillips’s request, repeated i
t twice.

  “Is it okay if I write you letters?” Phillips asked. “I’m allowed to make only one phone call every ninety days.”

  “Okay, you can write me letters.”

  2

  On the way home Mark thought about the things Helen had not done and would never be able to do because of Edward Phillips. His daughter would never graduate high school, go to college, drive her own car, or get married and have kids.

  When Mark learned of Helen’s murder, the life had gone out of him, and he had not felt happy since. Many people drowned their sorrows in booze. Mark didn’t enjoy alcohol, so he couldn’t use it to ease the pain caused by Helen’s death.

  He parked in front of his house, took out his wallet, and pulled Helen’s photo from it. As he looked at the picture, sorrow squeezed his heart with its thorny hand.

  They shouldn’t have given Helen so much freedom. If Helen had had an eight p.m. curfew, she wouldn’t have been murdered by Edward Phillips.

  Mark got out of the car and went into the house. The delicious smell of baked chicken permeated the air, making Mark remember that he hadn’t eaten since this morning.

  Joan sat on the couch in the living room, watching something on her laptop. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying.

  “What are you watching?” Mark sat down next to her.

  On the screen, Helen, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, was guzzling milk from a bottle. Her friend Dennis, clad only in shorts, was standing a few feet from her, doing the same thing.

  Joan was watching a video of Helen and Dennis competing to see who could drink a gallon of milk the fastest without vomiting. Helen had filmed the video, which was forty-two minutes long, in August of last year in their backyard. Neither Helen nor Dennis had managed to finish their bottles, and both of them had puked.

  Helen had posted the video on the Internet the day she had made it, and Joan had found it two days after her death.

  Mark had watched the milk video at least fifty times, and Joan probably at least twice that many.

  He felt tears well in his eyes, and he blinked them back.

  “Why did this happen to us?” Joan sniffled.

  Mark wrapped his arms around Joan and kissed her on the cheek.