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

He will have to tell his story publically.


I say, “It’s time. Stand up. Turn around. Put both hands behind your back.”


“You’re making a big mistake, Ballinger.”


“Danny.” Stella is crying into her hands and pleading with me not to take her husband, even when she discovers a pair of red Milanos overturned on the hardwood floor next to the stone hearth.


She looks to Barton and asks the inevitable question, “Whose are these? And why does it smell like smoke in here?”


He doesn’t answer, and I walk him out the front door to a block of gawking neighbors and police officers waiting for him in the street.


Before I leave, I want to tell Stella about the young brunette woman who I saw driving away from the house in a blue Honda when I arrived at the house earlier.


She’s known about his infidelity for a long time.12


Police Chief Charged in Double Homicide.


Chapter 34