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

Ryan is at my side; his cologne is overpowering. My olfactory senses are aggravated by the heady scent of whatever name brand he is wearing.


In the hallway, I hear Barton talking about a missing Jeep Cherokee, his walkie-talkie crackling with static.


Ryan and I start at the head of the hallway where Ryan ended before I got here, and I rap on an apartment door belonging to an elderly woman named Cora Findings. Our presence elicits the gunfire barks of a small dog somewhere behind a closed door in the apartment.


Ryan starts to back away from the door, sliding up behind me. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Where are you going?”


“I was bitten by a dog when I was young,” he says. “I don’t like them.”


I turn to the pale, weathered face of Ms. Findings, shadowed in the hall’s dim light. “We’re police officers, ma’am. And we’re asking everyone in the building if they heard or saw anything unusual this evening.”


Chapter 4