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 pull the key out from my pocket and slide it into the door slot, turning it and waiting for it to click before I grip the cold handle and swing the door open.


My arrival interrupts somebody already inside the apartment, and I reach for my gun in my holster, hearing movement coming from somewhere in the curtain-drawn room, blocking out the morning light.


I yell, “Police,” then hear shuffling and a door sliding open. I race into the dark apartment, running my hand over the wall for a light switch. “Police! Stay where you are.”


A long shadow falls across the back wall as I bump into the edge of a table and knock something to the floor. The carpet muffles the sound of the crash, and breaks the fall.


I run to the balcony window, the floor-length curtain dancing in the summer breeze like a flailing ghost. I run outside and notice a shadowy figure climbing down to the ground and landing with a thud, moaning as he jumps into a rhododendron bush.


Chapter 24