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 turn the key in the ignition and scan through the radio stations, pleased to hear other voices beside my father’s.


I pull away from the curb, reaching down for the mysterious note in my lap, and heading to my apartment, driving slowly through hard rain.


Twenty minutes later, I sit outside the townhouse building of my apartment with the car still running.


The dark scrim of night is opaque like thick soup. I look to where the bottle of Russian Standard Vodka sits in a brown paper bag on the passenger seat.


I turn off the car and grab the paper bag next to me. I open the door and step out into the empty street. The air is moist and fragrant and I smell lavender, jasmine, and honeysuckle wafting past me from a neighboring garden.


I slam the car door shut, lock it, and run up the cobblestone walkway to the apartment’s front door.


Inside, I shake off the rain and notice that the elevator is out of service.


Chapter 8