An Evil Mind--A Suspense Novel Read Free

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.
    “Are you hungry?” Joan asked.
    “A little.”
    In the kitchen, Mark put two pieces of chicken and some rice on a plate and sat down at the table. When he began to eat, Joan asked, “Where have you been?”
    “Livingston.”
    “Where is it?”
    “About two hundred miles from Dallas. I went there to see Edward Phillips.”
    “Why?”
    “I got a letter from him last week. He said he had something important to tell me.”
    “You never told me he sent you a letter.”
    “I didn’t think it was important.”
    “So what did he tell you?”
    “He said that he’s innocent and that he knows who killed Helen.”
    “When are they going to execute this son of a bitch?”
    They were silent for half a minute, and then Joan said, “Phillips said he knows who killed Helen. Did he tell you who it was?”
    “Last August, a young woman was killed in Austin in the same manner as Helen. Phillips said she was murdered by the guy who killed Helen.”
    “Does he know his name?”
    “No.”
    “What’s that woman’s name?”
    “Laura Sumner.”
    Joan stood up, put a tea bag in a cup, filled the cup with hot water from the kettle, and said, “He’s lying. I’m sure of it.”
    Mark nodded.
    “I hate him so much,” Joan said.
    They both thanked God that their daughter’s killer had been caught so quickly.
    The police had gotten their first lead just hours after they arrived at the crime scene: there was a fingerprint on Helen’s belt buckle that didn’t belong to her. They ran the print through the database and found that it belonged to Edward Phillips. Phillips’s fingerprints were in the system because he had been arrested for driving while intoxicated two years before (Phillips must be really pissed about that arrest).
    Phillips was arrested at home at seven p.m. the day after Helen’s murder.
    The police discovered three small blood stains on Phillips’s Levi’s jeans and traces of blood on the soles of his Timberland boots. DNA tests revealed that the blood belonged to Helen. They searched Phillips’s house for the murder weapon and didn’t find it.
    Phillips had no drugs in his system on the day of Helen’s murder, so it wasn’t mind-altering substances that made him kill her. The police suggested two possible motives for the murder. According to one theory, Phillips killed Helen to cover up a rape he’d been unable to complete. According to the other, he was a psychopath who enjoyed killing.
     
    3
    Joan was staring at the TV remote as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
    “We should have bought her a Taser,” Joan said, running her thumb along the side of the TV remote.
    “Who?”
    Helen used to say that when she put batteries in the remote, she felt as if she were loading a shotgun.
    “Helen. If she’d had a Taser, she’d still be alive. She would have tased Phillips and run away.”
    If Helen had been home with the flu that day, she would still be alive, Mark thought.
    Mark took Joan’s hand and squeezed it lightly. Sighing heavily, Joan put the remote on the coffee table.
    The more Mark thought about what Edward Phillips had said, the more convinced