Officer Jack Ballinger receives a phone call from the chief of police in the early morning hours regarding a dead body at an apartment building in a quiet neighborhood in the small upstate New York town of Black Falls. A female student lies in a pentagram outlined in her own blood, clutching a rosary. Ballinger and his former partner Officer Cory Ryan interview tenants in the building about the girl’s death, but are met with more questions than answers.<br><br>When another body is found in the same apartment building a few hours later, Jack knows something is wrong. As he ciphers through a patchwork of unexplainable clues, the investigation detours when Ryan disappears from the case and cannot be found.<br><br>With his future as an officer in question, will Ballinger be able to deal with the truth of these crimes once he dscovers everything he thought he knew was a lie?

Past Sins

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be free of all it by the end of the year, Chief.”


“After tonight, retirement couldn’t come sooner.”


“You’re going to be missed,” I say, hoping he can’t see through my thin veneer of lies. In retrospect, he and I got along like a house on fire. But that isn’t always the case. Barton has a prickly personality and, at times, can be two-faced and untrustworthy. Other rookies would attest.


“Stella will be happy to have you at home more,” I say, talking about his model-thin wife


“She wishes I’d keep working,” Barton says. “She thinks I’ll become a homebody or slob, and sit around the house watching television.”


I follow the chief around the glass partition to the living room where the body of a young woman—early twenties—lies in a cross-like position. Her arms are outspread and feet bound together in heavy-duty cord.


Chapter 3