A Deadly Sin: An epic dark thriller that will have you wanting to leave the lights on.

by Tracie Podger

  “Samuel is being interviewed,” he called out.

  “And the team outside?” I asked.

  “A couple of footprints, no fingerprints as of yet. There’s a tire track just across the way, we’ve taken molds.” He consulted his notebook as he spoke. “CCTV is back at the station, waiting to be analyzed, I’ll get someone on that straight away. Oh, the window? Smashed from the inside.”

  “Inside?” I asked.

  “Yeah, shards of glass on the ground outside. So someone came in, and then smashed a window. Fuck knows why.”

  “To get her in?” Dan asked.

  I looked at him. “If they came in, they’d have brought her with them. Why break in, then smash a window?”

  “And that, my friend, is why you are my assistant and he is the detective,” Eddie said. “Let’s get her back to the office.”

  As slight as Eddie was in stature, it didn’t stop her from helping to haul the cross onto a cart that had been brought into the room. She was a strong, powerful woman. My bruised body was testament to that sometimes. She kept fit, she rode a fucking Harley, and she refused to commit to a normal relationship with me. She pissed me off sometimes, most times. Then there were other days, like that day, when my admiration and respect for her were through the roof.

  “I’ll expect you at about three o’clock?” Eddie said, as they wheeled the cross, with Casey still attached, to the back of the van.

  “Sure. We’ll be there.” Dean rolled his eyes at my statement; he hated attending autopsies about as much as I did.

  A tunnel of plastic had been erected from the back of the van to the entrance of the school. I watched as the tarp-covered body was slid into the back, amazed that it actually fit. The doors were closed and the tenting removed. Eddie stripped off her coveralls and booties, threw the gloves into the side of the van, and without a backward glance, strode for her bike.

  Once again, I watched as heads turned, following her every move. I wasn’t scanning faces because I was jealous though. I was scanning to see if anyone gave any indication that they were more involved than helping to solve a crime. In my experience, it was often the case that the perpetrator turned up at a crime scene with some sick satisfaction at watching the police trying to decipher their handiwork. I knew everyone here, and there was not one person I’d have the slightest suspicion of.

  Once Eddie and her team had gone, Dean and I headed back to the hall. We now had full access and met with our forensic guys at the door. I gave them my initial thoughts; dust the bench, the inside of the window, the wall. I wanted ultraviolet scans of the floor to see if we could pick up any specks of unobvious blood. Until I had a time of death, I would need to treat the hall as the murder scene. Eddie had thought Casey hadn’t been murdered at the hall but elsewhere. That threw in way more complications than I was happy about. I’d need reinforcements to start a search. I hoped some clues would be given up on the body as to where I needed to start that search.

  I stood in the middle of the room and tuned out. Once again, I tried to absorb every scent, every creak of wood; I allowed the crime scene to be soaked up by my mind. I wanted to be able to recall every crack, crevice, and corner without being there. I wanted to be able to stand in my office or my home, and perfectly picture the hall. I closed my eyes, seeing the room in my mind, satisfied that I’d met my objective.

  Whereas Dean took copious notes, I had a picture perfect memory. I’d recall every word spoken and every detail, which I’d then write up when I got back to the station. I guessed it was one reason I’d been transferred to the FBI for a year. I’d learned a lot from my time with the Bureau, least of all, the ability to look beyond the obvious, to get inside the mind of a killer. Eddie thought I was fucked up by that, I believed she used that as an excuse not to get close.

  “Mich?” Dean brought me out of my thoughts.

  I checked my watch and noticed we’d been at the school over three hours. Dean and I headed to the parking lot and our car, leaving the rest of the team to carry on with forensics. I wanted to coordinate, but before I could do that, there was the matter of informing the parents. I didn’t need them to make a formal identification; we had a recent photograph, there was no mistake that the girl on the cross was Casey Long.

  I grabbed my phone and called for a family liaison officer to meet me. As much as I wanted to be the one to deliver the news, I also needed to get back to the station as quickly as possible.

  “Oh, no. God, please, no!” Sally Long had her hands covering her mouth and tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Long. I really wish I had better news for you.”

  The minute Sally opened the to door to me, I imagined the look on my face had given away that I wasn’t coming with good news. She’d collapsed to her knees before I’d even spoken. I’d helped her to her feet and sat her on the couch. The liaison officer sat beside her. She’d peppered me with questions that I was unwilling to answer immediately. I explained that we needed to do further investigations before we could answer cause of death, but that I’d wanted her to hear from me before the rumor mill got to her door.

  I sat for a further ten minutes before excusing myself and joining Dean in the car waiting outside.

  “Shit part of the job, huh?” he said, as he turned the car around and we headed back to the station.

  “Yep.”

  I rested back in the seat and closed my eyes for a moment. We continued the journey in silence with just the purr of the engine for company. I tried to calculate in my mind the number of murders I’d investigated. Thankfully it wasn’t as many as I’d thought. Other than my time in the FBI, where I’d been on the trail of a cult that had decided to silence its ex-members, the sleepy town I lived in was pretty safe, or so I thought.

  “Lust,” I whispered.

  “Huh?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Dean. “Lust. I wonder why he chose that word specifically.”

  “He wanted her, she wanted him?”

  “Possibly, and I think that’s what we’re initially led to accept, but I don’t believe he wants to make it easy for us. Casey Long, everyone’s friend, nice girl, so why her?”

  “Wrong place, wrong time?”

  “No. My gut tells me she was selected for some reason. Right place, right time, we just need to know why.”

  The one thing I enjoyed the most about working with Dean was the bouncing of ideas. He asked the questions which prompted me to think hard and dig deep into my psyche. Transform myself from cop to killer. And that wasn’t hard. Maybe that’s what made me a great cop—I’d been a killer, too.

  I kept my attention on Mich as he watched all eyes follow the woman to her motorcycle. Jealousy. It should be added to our list of deadly sins. Maybe I should rewrite them, or add another. But I had a plan and there was no time to deviate from that plan. I was but a mere servant, there were far more important people waiting on my plan to come to fruition. I wanted to bounce on the balls of my feet, or clap my hands at the activity, the urgency, that surrounded me. I could smell their fear, their anxiety that a killer had invaded their small town. It excited me; it had my heart pumping fast. I’d watched the van take the girl away. I’d listened to the sobs of silly schoolgirls, who had no idea what had happened but wanted to be part of the fun, to gain some attention from the doped up jocks comforting them. Fucking idiots, the lot of them.

  The station was a hive of activity. An incident room had been set up and I strode in, calling all available staff together. The chief was waiting for an update, but he usually left me alone in the first stages of an investigation. Patrick was waiting on retirement, I was supposed to be next in line, but being chief of police wasn’t a job I was seeking. It reminded me of my FBI days: paper pushing, statistic balancing; reporting to senior officials, instead of doing my job, wasn’t what I’d signed up for.

  “People!” I shouted, to quiet down the hum.

  I turned to the whiteboard that had a photograph of C
asey, smiling in her cheerleader outfit, and next to it, a naked one, bloodied and dead. Underneath we had date, location, and what we had going on at that time. I checked my watch as colleagues took to seats.

  Samantha handed me a coffee, black, strong, just as I liked it. I needed the kick start after so little sleep.

  “Casey Long’s mother has been informed, she has a liaison with her now, waiting on family to arrive and sit with her. Doc has the body, still attached to the cross. There were five wounds, most likely stab wounds, in the shape of a cross down her body. I’m not a medical examiner, but I don’t see the stab wounds as cause of death, more symbolic.” I studied the photograph as I spoke.

  “There was a word scratched into the wall, faintly, above the cross. Lust. I also suspect our perp sat on a bench on the opposite side of the room to admire his handy work. When forensics come back, we’ll have more details. There was a smashed window but we don’t believe that to be our entry method. How are we getting on with CCTV?”

  “We have vehicle lights that set off an outdoor motion sensor, all I can make out, at the moment, is it’s a truck. The unfortunate thing is, that motion sensor was attached to some high-powered lighting, which distorts and blurs the recording.”

  I followed the voice to one of the newest members of the team, Pete. He was a young and very enthusiastic guy. I had high hopes for him. He happened to also be a shit hot computer wizard.

  “Can you do anything with the images?” I asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can run them through some programs to clean them up a little, but the glare pretty much wipes out anything useful at the moment.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Makes me laugh. People spend all this fucking money on CCTV but then blind it with high-powered lighting. Anyway, the truck backs up to the edge of the parking lot and bounces up over the curb. I can’t see into the back of the truck, but I can see an arm resting on the opened window, driver’s side. I’ve zoomed in, and it’s safe to say, unless our perp has some serious hormonal issues, it’s a guy.”

  I didn’t react to the snickering that followed Pete’s statement. I accepted that, for some to cope with investigating the murder of a young woman, they had to inject some humor into it. It wasn’t personal, it didn’t mean they couldn’t do their jobs or that they disrespected the dead, it was just their way.

  “Tell me more,” I said.

  “Hairy arm and a strange tattoo that I’ll need to enhance before I can get a decent image of it.”

  My heart raced a little and it wasn’t from the coffee. A bare arm with a tattoo was fucking great news so early on in an investigation. But then Pete shattered my excitement.

  “The bad news is, the truck doesn’t hang around. I calculate that less than a minute later, it drives off.”

  A murmur spread around the room. “Okay, okay, quiet down. That doesn’t mean this truck isn’t involved. We don’t know yet what time Casey was taken to the hall. He may have gotten spooked by the lights, just keep on that CCTV, right until the point you see us arriving, okay?”

  “Samantha, I want you back at the school, I want to know any blind spots for those cameras. Could our man have come at a different angle? Dean, what do you have?”

  Dean stood and walked toward the whiteboard. He picked up a pen and as he spoke, he wrote a synopsis.

  “We have two footprints, one directly under the window and one a little further back, facing the opposite direction. It rained heavily during the night, so I’m not expecting fingerprinting on the outside to be successful.”

  “How did you get footprints if it rained?” The question came from the back of the room.

  “The one under the window, he stood in a flower bed, mud in other words. And the one on the grassy area? Luckily for us, this part of the school is being renovated and grass replanted, by the looks of it. There was a bare patch. The soil around the school is mostly clay. Perfect molds,” Dean said.

  “Okay, here’s what I need. Pete, you keep on that CCTV. Samantha, back to the school; check for blind spots. I want the forensics rushed through, no fucking me around. Call in favors, do whatever you have to. I want a house to house, see if anyone can remember seeing that truck, involved or not, it shouldn’t have been on the premises at that time; Carl, you organize that. No talking outside this building, I hear one piece of information, and I’ll fucking nail whoever shared it, understand?”

  Heads nodded and chairs scraped against the tiled floor. The sound grated on me, it should be carpeted but budgets didn’t allow for that kind of luxury.

  “Dean, we need to head over to the doc’s.”

  It was closing on three o’clock and I wanted to see the autopsy. I had no desire to watch Casey being cut open, organs removed and weighed, measurements taken, and discussions on her last meal. I wanted to know exactly what had killed her and if there was any indication of where.

  I gestured for the car keys as we approached our vehicle. Dean threw them over the roof to me. It was often a battle as to who would drive. High speed was Dean’s thing, but we weren’t in a rush right then.

  “You gonna take the job then?” Dean asked, as I started the car.

  “The job?”

  “Chief of Police.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Who else would do it?”

  “You? You’re as qualified as me.”

  “No! Can you imagine me having to suck up to the mayor, and all that paperwork? No chance.”

  “Maybe they’ll get someone in from outside.”

  “So, you and the doc? Any further on?”

  We drove the short journey toward the Medical Examiner’s office, stopping briefly at a set of lights and watched a TV newsroom van pull a U-turn. Hopefully they hadn’t caught wind of our murder just yet.

  “No, she likes us just the way we are.”

  Dean was the only one who knew about Eddie and me. He’d stumbled across us one night in a teenage make-out session in my car.

  “And you don’t?”

  I looked over to him with raised eyebrows. “I like it just fine, but it might be nice to be a little more ‘formal’ I guess.”

  I might only be mid-thirties but I liked my traditional relationships. I wasn’t about to turn away the ‘fuck buddy,’ but I felt something for Eddie. It was hard to form a relationship with the jobs that we had, so in my mind, we’d be perfect together. I guessed she just didn’t feel the same way. She had commitment issues, for sure.

  “Anyway, no time for that now. Let’s get this over with,” I added, as we pulled into the parking lot.

  Eddie’s bike was parked to one side, and the van would be around the back. I pushed the buzzer at the front door and waited to be granted entrance into a place not many of the living visited. We passed the administration office and I caught the wave Louise, Eddie’s secretary, gave. I smiled back, not wanting to encourage any more. Louise had a thing for me. Many times I’d had to make an excuse as to why I couldn’t go out with her. She was a nice woman, but I didn’t do non-exclusive. Whatever it was that Eddie and I had, I stayed faithful to it.

  I could see Eddie through the glass panel in the door. I knocked, waiting for her to look over. She nodded, that was her invitation to enter her sacred domain. She had already started and it looked to me like the worst part, the initial ‘opening up’ had already been done. Casey had been removed from the cross, which lay on its own table. To one side were the ropes that had bound her to it.

  “She wasn’t just tied to the cross,” Eddie said, I guessed she’s seen me looking.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was impaled. I should have noticed that her body hadn’t slumped, the weight of her hadn’t been taken by the ropes alone.”

  Eddie rolled Casey over slightly to show me a fairly small hole in her back, between her shoulder blades. Sticking up from the cross was a crossbow bolt.

  “Do you think he shot her through the wood?”

  “I think he di
d, yes. And I think she was alive when he did that.”

  Eddie went on to explain the blood staining to prove her theory. As much as I didn’t want to listen, I had no choice. It seemed the sick fuck had drilled a hole first, secured Casey to the cross then shot her.

  “Did that cause her death?” Dean asked.

  “No. I’m afraid it’s worse than that. She died of internal bleeding; an object was inserted, roughly, and frequently inside her vagina. It ruptured her womb causing her to bleed out.”

  “Come again?” I asked.

  “Do I need to?” she said.

  “No, fuck!”

  “There are splinters of wood inside her. It appears she had been repeatedly raped, both vaginally and anally.”

  “And this didn’t happen at the school?” Dean asked.

  “No way. There would have been an extensive amount of blood loss. If you look closely, she died on her back, not in an upright position.”

  I could see purple bruising that I knew was post-mortem lividity. Although faded, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it at the scene. However, I’d been concentrating on the room as a whole.

  “Even though she was tied down, maybe to the cross, while some of this was happening. There’s bruising and chaffing on her wrists and ankles. I suspect her legs were parted but she fought against her restraints. She has wood splinters under her fingernails and there are scratch marks on the cross.”

  “Please tell me there something else, DNA, anything to help us identify where this happened?” I said, knowing there was a level of desperation in my voice.

  Eddie gently shook her head. “No DNA as yet. He didn’t penetrate her at all. Whoever this is, he’s a clever man. The wood splinters and the cross? Just a common oak. Could be bought anywhere that sells fencing, building materials even.”