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

Ravages of dehydration and drugs, I surmise, but I am the last person who should cast blame


I hear my father in my head, heckling like the sound a long-ago neighbor: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”


I clench my hands into fists, wincing at my father’s degrading choice of words.


I am unsteady, my brain disoriented and drowning in a haunting, humiliating past. “We’re like day and night,” I say.


He scowls, almost snarling, his gums lifting over his teeth, a rabid animal on the verge of drawing blood.


“This is why I left you, Sheridan. Your rage.”


I do not want to stoke those unspoken memories from our past, but Sheridan gives me no choice.


He is shaking so hard the veins in his neck and forehead are visibly clear and pulsing, as he gets angrier, his wild eyes unblinking, and the bone-white complexion of his cheeks redden to dark crimson.


“Sheridan, you’re going to have to leave if you can’t control yourself.”


Chapter 11