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

She hangs up without a thank you or goodbye.


I feel my shoulders tighten after I end the call, and place the phone back in its base. As I stare at the blank computer screen, an idea hits me like a sledgehammer, and I shut off my laptop and head to my car in the parking lot out back.


It is something the victim Cora Findings’ neighbor, Mrs. Jackson, said to me during her interview that sends me back to the scene of the crime at Firewood Road.


I track down the apartment building’s landlord, Dick Redding, a Mr. Magoo type: craggy-old and aided with a cane, in the back room of his outhouse size garage-turned-office behind the apartment building.


All he is missing is his four-legged doggy companion.


He is getting behind the wheel of his canary-yellow punch buggy, and mumbling.


I wave at him and knock on the driver’s side window, but he ignores me and shifts the car into reverse.


Chapter 23