Body Switch (A Sam Rader Thriller Book 2)

by Simon King

  He moved with surprising speed for a fat guy, swinging his boot into her middle and winding the already-helpless victim. She gasped for breath as the man first stood above her, licking his lips again, then unzipped his pants and dropped down on top of her.

  With his weight on top of her, Lee struggled for breath, desperately gasping for what little she could. She could feel one hand grabbing at her skirt, his other working her panties aside. She tried to scream, but her lungs were far from that point, instead gasping for breath. His eyes stared at her excitedly as she finally felt his cock, stumpy and hard find its mark.

  “There you are,” he whispered.

  His sweat dripped down onto her face as he began to pump furiously, Lee just desperate for him to finish his thing. Her wind was slowly returning, despite the throbbing pain in her nose. The man dug his fingers into her back as he began to moan with each thrust, building himself into a climax that would shortly end his life.

  He came like a man winning the lottery and Lee felt him thrust into her one final time as his groan turned from ecstasy to terror in a second. He tried to get up, briefly clutched at his chest, then fell forward onto his victim, trapping Lee beneath his mass.

  At first she screamed, desperately needing to get the piece of shit off her. His cum was flowing uncomfortably down her leg and Lee was desperate to fight herself free. But with the full weight of the dead man on top of her, nothing was going to happen quickly.

  It took all of her strength to finally work herself free and when she did, Lee kicked the guy repeatedly in a fit of anger. Her nose had finally stopped bleeding and she cleaned the blood off as best she could, her tears helping to loosen the dried streaks.

  She stood and stared at the corpse lying in the middle of the office as panic gripped her. What if the cops thought she killed him on purpose? How could she prove he’d raped her?

  “Because he damn-well hit you,” a voice suddenly spoke inside her mind. The familiar voice of logic she hated so much sounded almost pompous, the one that always spoke when she least wanted it to.

  She had to get out; get as far from the scene as possible. As she stood above the body, Lee spotted the familiar bulge in his back pocket. She reached in and pulled out a wallet, then nearly dropped it as a wad of fifties stared back at her. Once her fingers finally calmed enough to count it, Lee found herself almost six hundred bucks richer.

  She gave the prick a final kick, then headed for the door. Once outside, she considered her options again and this time may have chosen a foolish one. The man’s car was still parked in the drive and after going back inside to retrieve his keys, hopped into it and made her escape.

  It wasn’t until she stopped to get gas that she made the discovery. There was a sports bag in the back seat and when Lee opened it, found another thousand in cash, as well as two well-packed bundles of crystal meth. Having never used it herself, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure that’s what it was, but after taking a photo of the packages and sending it to her brother, Rob, he quickly confirmed her suspicion.

  Scared beyond shitless, Lee decided to drive out of the city and find a quiet place to sit and think. She needed to clear things in her mind and knew that would only be possible if far enough away from her problems.

  The diner seemed like the perfect spot and after parking the car around the back and securing the bag in the trunk, Lee headed inside. After ordering herself a burger and coke, she messaged Rob again, positive he’d know what to do.

  Her instincts proved correct and Rob soon sent back a plan. His connections were interested in buying the meth and he would arrange the deal if she was willing to split the cash. Knowing she had limited choices, Lee agreed. The meeting was set down for eight that evening and with a good four hours to kill, Lee passed the time by hanging out on her cell.

  It wasn’t long before she found her self talking to a man she’d been conversing with for the better part of a year. She had found Paul Sheldon appear in the “suggested friends” section of her profile and found his picture appealing. After checking out some of his interests, Lee had sent a friend request.

  It didn’t take long for the pair to chat regularly. With a common interest in Sci-fi, Lee found herself chatting to her new friend for hours at a time, sometimes until the dawn of a new day. Despite having never met in person, Lee felt an instant connection and quickly considered Paul one of her closest confidents.

  As she found herself sitting at the diner in a panicked state, it didn’t surprise Lee that it was Paul’s profile she headed to first, initiating a conversation that would hopefully take her mind off things. He always seemed to know just what to say and part of her was hoping for more of the same.

  Paul didn’t disappoint, sensing something off the moment the messages went back and forth. While she may not have initially wanted to share the specific details of her problems with Paul at the onset of conversation, she was soon sharing the most intimate details with him. Within the first dozen or so messages, Lee had shared the events of the day, right down to the rape, the drugs and the car now parked behind the diner.

  That was when Paul made the suggestion of picking her up and taking her to Houston himself. She could leave the car at the diner while they made the trip and he knew someone that could effectively dispose of the vehicle the following day, maybe even offering her a couple of hundred for the scrap metal. Lee felt it was the perfect solution to her problems and quickly agreed.

  The only issue was that Paul was a couple of hours away and if she was prepared to wait, he could get there as fast as he could. Lee agreed, finding herself sitting at a table alone, unknowingly the subject of a nearby couple’s “fake story” game.

  Lee saw the van pull up in the parking lot and a moment later felt her cell vibrate. She checked the notification and found Paul’s message staring back at her. She felt nerves grip her tightly as she left a twenty under her empty glass, then headed out into the night. The van looked as mysterious as she now felt about the man driving it, having never met face-to-face before.

  He wound down the window as Lee approached and despite his face hidden in the shadows, could make out his warm smile.

  “Meet me at the car?” he suggested and Lee, suddenly remembering the meth, agreed. She quickly walked back around the side of the diner, looked over her shoulder to make sure Paul was following, then hurried to where the Lincoln was still parked.

  Paul parked the van next to the car and left the engine running as he hopped out, looking around to make sure they weren’t being watched. Lee pointed at the trunk and opened it with the key, then leaned inside as she reached for the bag. The explosion of pain that suddenly hit the side of her head stole the strength from her legs as she collapsed over the trunk’s lip. As the darkness consumed her, Lee had a single thought, one she knew to be the voice of logic. “Wasn’t the money in the wallet enough to get you back on track?”

  With all sense of time gone, Lee woke up lying in the back of the van. At first she thought there was a bright light streaming in, but after a few moments she realized that it was sunlight. That meant she had been tied up throughout the night. Her head throbbed excruciatingly, as did her wrists. She was tied with her hands behind her back and her ankles were taped together.

  There were no sounds other than the steady groan of tires on hardtop. The radio was silent and as Lee tried to get a handle on her situation, felt the van slow before stopping completely. The man sitting in the driver’s seat turned back to look at her, his previous warm smile now completely gone, replaced by a stare as vacant as a dessert landscape.

  He reached across to something on the passenger seat, then climbed through to the back. Without a word, he slid what looked like a pillowcase over Lee’s head as she tried to swing her head wildly from side to side. But her effort was in vain and once the hood was secured, she listened as he returned to his previous spot. A moment later they were driving again, the faint sound of other traffic barely audible.

  Despite fallin
g asleep again, Lee woke to find her bladder painfully full. After trying to listen to the sounds around her and confirming the van as still moving, she began to kick her heels into the floor. The sound was both metallic and loud as she continued to try and get her abductor’s attention.

  There were still no other sounds and Lee began to wonder whether the man was wearing headphones, maybe to keep her as isolated as possible from himself. The urge to pee only seemed to intensify with the effort to get his attention and Lee soon stopped, her tears now free-falling.

  The voice of logic continued to torment her as she considered the options she chose that led her to this position. If only she hadn’t gone to that party; if only she didn’t follow that guy home; if only she offered a blowjob; if only she took the wallet and caught a bus, the way it was supposed to originally happen.

  But hindsight is a bitch, and as Lee’s terror continued to build, she began to wonder whether this really was the end. Is this how her life would reach its finale? Unable to control her emotions any longer, the floodgates opened, both in her eyes, as well as down below. And as the hot urine ran down her legs, Lee understood that her fate had finally been sealed.

  The drive from Texas to Iowa took a little over 20 hours, the van making two very brief stops for gas along the way, as well as one while the driver caught some much needed shuteye. Lee’s captor made no effort to ease her mind, nor offered her any kind of sustenance. By the time they pulled into Dyersville’s St. Francis Xavier Cemetery, she was exhausted and in an almost catatonic state of fear.

  The moon sat high in the sky as the man pulled up in front of a side gate, used a bolt cutter to snip the tiny padlock, then crawled along the narrow path to where the cemetery’s most recent addition had been laid to rest.

  After killing the engine, he climbed out, grabbed a shovel from the van’s rear and walked the several yards to where his intended destination lay, a man he’d been specifically waiting for. After shining his flashlight on the headstone and confirming the identity of the corpse lying a few feet beneath him, the man began to dig.

  The dirt was still packed loose enough to make the effort of digging the coffin up a little easier. But as this was his fourth time, the job became somewhat simpler. The first coffin he’d almost dug up entirely, before realizing that it was only the head he needed exposed, just enough to open the half-lid and pull out the stiff.

  Once out, it was easy getting his victim to slide in to take the place of the corpse. And by the time they reached the point of needing to climb in, they were so scared that none remotely considered fighting back.

  The man continued to dig, with only the moon above watching him. The van sat in silence and he was sure his passenger lay asleep inside. Just enough time for a final dream. The bitch had pissed herself and he knew he’d have to give the van a decent clean before heading to his next location. If he didn’t, the stink would be overwhelming and he’d rather avoid exposing himself to it.

  His shovel finally struck something solid and a quick check with the flashlight revealed the glossy white lid of the coffin. After climbing back out of his hard work, he returned to the van, grabbed the body bag he kept under the seat and brought it back to the grave, taking a couple of deep breaths before cracking the lid.

  Henry Simpson stared back at him with an expression that looked almost peaceful. He’d only been buried three days ago and time had not yet taken a hold of him completely, the smell just slightly musty. He appeared much younger than his 57 years, the crouched figure remembering the picture that had accompanied the newspaper article announcing the corpse’s passing.

  He’d been a civil engineer for the better part of his life, a caring husband, as well as a grandfather to two boys. But what had given him fame was his relentless pursuit for adrenalin. The townsfolk described him as someone who never forgot their youth; Henry either skydiving, abseiling, bungee jumping or searching for the next great rollercoaster ride.

  Now, lying in his coffin, the man wondered whether that’s what he should be given as a final experience, one last hoorah to cap it all off. He knelt down, reached in and grabbed hold of Henry’s shoulders before pulling with all his might. The body was limp the rigor subsided, which made for an easy extraction. Once he pulled the corpse out completely, the man wrapped the body bag around him, tied one end and began to haul it out of the grave.

  The process wasn’t easy, but his anger and determination kept him going, driven by the memories that now filled his world. He climbed half out of the grave, reached down for the bag and began to pull. Henry Simpson had only been a slight man, much smaller than George Andrews. The latter required him to tow the body from the grave using the van and a rope. This time, the corpse was light enough to remove by hand.

  Once he had the bag out completely, the man dragged it back to the side of the van, pausing briefly to catch his breath. But time was of the essence, his next destination already waiting for him and good old Henry in New Mexico.

  He finally walked to the van’s side door, opened it and looked down at the woman, the stink of piss burning his nostrils. She was awake and very much aware of him. But the way her body was shaking uncontrollably, he knew she was lost in her own terror that had consumed her during the trip here.

  Grabbing her legs, he snipped her ankle bindings with his knife, then pulled her to her feet. She was sobbing as she stood in the moonlight, her body limp with complete surrender to whatever fate lay in store.

  Leading her slowly towards the hole now waiting for her, the woman shuffled towards her temporary resting place, the man barely needing to hold her. He’d discovered that it was better leaving the hood on until the end. It was mostly easier on him, not needing to see the eyes of his victims.

  After helping the woman sit and slide down the edge of the grave, he followed her down, then guided her feet into the open coffin. After a little manipulating, she laid down, finally feeling the last pillow she would ever rest her living head on. She was till weeping gently as he pulled the pistol from his pocket. She shivered a final time, as if cold from the chilly air, as he held the barrel an inch from her forehead. And then, as she whispered a final word into the night, he pulled the trigger, cutting off the ‘please’ that had only half-left her trembling lips.

  Reburying the coffin was always the easy part of his job and as he slowly filled the hole again, a thought suddenly crossed his mind. There were three distinct steps in each murder he carried out. It reminded him of an old western with Clint Eastwood. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Only in his version it was the Good, the Difficult and the Damn Funny.

  The good he considered to be the brains of his cat-and-mouse game, locating the victims, like a private investigator needing to find just the right people to answer the call. The difficult was the change-over, the part where he needed to switch the bodies. The damn funny was what he did with the corpse he dug up, like the poor bitch he took halfway across the country and sat on the edge of someone’s swimming pool. How he wished he could have waited and watched as the homeowners came to find their unexpected visitor.

  But that was the catch. He couldn’t remain, constantly trying to meet his own deadline. Because there was a timeline he needed to follow and unless everything happened to fall into place, it will have all been for nothing.

  He continued to shovel, dragging the dirt back into the hole. It had to look perfect, almost as pristine as when he first arrived. Because that was part of the ruse, wasn’t it? To keep people guessing until the very moment they opened the lid and found a new face staring back at them, one that would give them yet another mystery to solve.

  Once the hole was filled and the man had restored the grave to its prior state, he took his shovel back to the van, tossed it inside and proceeded to help his new passenger aboard.

  The drive to Artesia took almost as long as it had taken him to drive the woman to Dyersville. But just as before, the trip was spent entirely in silence. He felt a little easier with his passenger not prone
to too much conversation. The radio had been broken since he purchased the van and hadn’t been fussed to fix it.

  The silence served its own purpose and it was one he needed to keep at the forefront. Because this was a job he needed to finish just as he’d planned. No distractions to steer him away from his goal. And that’s what radios did, they distracted. Their entire existence was based around distraction.

  Apart from the standard gas stops, this time there was no sleep break. Somehow, he felt he owed the corpse the dignity of completing the task as quickly as possible. He imagined them finding their last journey as the opportunity for a final laugh, as if they could slap their friends on the back and cry, “You’ll never guess where I went.”

  The journey between his destinations always happened without interruptions. He drove an inconspicuous van with legitimate plates and details. His driver’s license was current, as was his insurance. Apart from his concealed cargo, there was no reason to pull him over and apart from a single random traffic stop during his first corpse transportation, he had no other incidents to date.

  The only thing that truly mattered to him were the miles he laid down. They had to continue if he was to succeed. Without the miles, there would be no endgame, no final retribution. And that’s what drove him the most. The final act that would give him the ending he lived for.

  7

  After returning to the room and diving back into their research until almost two in the morning, Sam woke a little after 8. This time, there was no sunshine streaming in through the window. It was the sound of thunder that had jolted her from sleep and as she sat up in bed, felt a little panicked as the dream she’d been having already dispersed into the fog.