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

by Tracie Podger

  I let Corey shower first and I sat at the kitchen table. I stared at Eddie’s clothes that I’d piled on a seat. I picked up her tank and held it to my face. It smelled of her perfume, the same perfume whose name I never knew, that she wore every day. Tears pricked at my eyes. I knew so little about her. I’d been happy to fuck her. I’d been happy to start our non-relationship, yet I hadn’t taken the time to really get to know her. I mentally corrected myself; she hadn’t allowed me to get too close. My memories were clouded with the current situation. I’d been frustrated with her. I’d been planning on walking away, but sitting in my kitchen, in semi-darkness, I realized I loved her. I knew I felt something, and I’d wanted to explore that more. But I fucking loved her, flaws, faults, annoyances, everything that made her the feisty woman she was. I only hoped she was fighting, I prayed she was surviving.

  I wiped the backs of my hands over my eyes when I heard the bedroom door scrape open.

  “Coffee?” I said, as Corey joined me. He nodded, and I rose to pour him a cup.

  I stood and looked around my kitchen, resting my back against the countertop. There was fingerprint dust everywhere, it was going to take some cleaning up, but I couldn’t think about that.

  “He’s not going to give up her location,” I whispered.

  Corey knew better than to correct me. “Don’t give up hope yet, Mich,” was all he said.

  I took a sip of my coffee. Despite wanting to fight my instinct, I knew, deep down, I was right. I wouldn’t give up wanting to know where she was, whether she was dead or alive, but wanting and achieving that were two different things. My mind wandered back to Gabriel. He’d spent nearly a year trying to find answers, and although he didn’t get them all, he got enough. That’s all I wanted—I just wanted to know enough.

  I placed my mug in the sink and silently walked to my bedroom. I stripped out of my clothes and turned on the shower, waiting for it to warm before I stepped in. The last time I’d been in the shower, Eddie had been with me. Although it was only a few days ago, it felt like a lifetime. I pictured her hands on my body, mine on hers. I recalled the expressions on her face and the frustration I’d feel at her lack of emotion. Something hit me. Maybe I was wrong; maybe it had nothing to do with a heart condition that stopped her from committing to a relationship. She liked to fuck, to be fucked, but it was always with a little aggression. What had caused that? What stopped her wanting to make love, to accept a tender embrace without stiffening? A thought started to creep into my mind.

  I quickly dressed and found Corey rinsing his cup. I switched off the coffee machine and we locked up the house.

  “How easily can you get Eddie’s medical records?” I asked, as we drove back to the station.

  “It’s about as easy as cutting my own arm off with a blunt knife, why?”

  “Just something that’s niggling me.”

  “A niggle isn’t enough to get a doctor to break his confidence.”

  “Okay, let me rephrase it. How much shit would I be in if I managed to get her medical records?”

  Corey turned in his seat to look at me. I kept my gaze on the road ahead.

  “Bearing in mind the amount of shit you’re already in, I’d say you would just about finish off your career, if you were caught. Mich, what’s this all about?”

  “Eddie was the one who didn’t want to commit to a relationship. She was so closed and emotionally stunted. I thought that might be because of her heart condition but now I don’t know.”

  “And invading her privacy is going to give you answers she clearly didn’t want you to know?”

  I sighed. “Yes, and no. I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”

  “Mich, don’t do anything fucking stupid. You can recover from this Canada thing, but go hacking into computers just to satisfy a niggle, you’ll be hung out to dry.”

  “I’m trying to get to know her, Corey. I fucked her, loads, but I never really knew her. I love her, she didn’t love me back, and I wonder why.” My voice tailed off to a whisper.

  Corey didn’t reply, I guess there wasn’t much he could say to that.

  “How’s he doing?” Corey asked, as we approached Dean.

  “Still laying on his bunk, hands behind his head, a smirk on his face.”

  “Okay, let’s get him up,” Corey said, as he squirted some drops into his eyes.

  It was part of the program, Corey looked refreshed, ready for hours of questioning. We’d break Thomas down at some point; we had to.

  I took my place behind the one-way glass and waited. Thomas was brought in and the first thing he did was to look at the tinted panel and smile. Although his hands were cuffed behind his back, he pulled one arm to his side and gave a little wave of his hand. He waited for the officer to uncuff him and rubbed his wrists before taking his seat, still with the smirk on his face.

  He sat for a full five minutes before Corey joined him.

  “Are you comfortable, Thomas?” Corey asked after he’d switched on the recording machine and given the formal speech.

  “Do you care?”

  “Not really, but I’m duty bound to ask.”

  “I’d actually like a nice cup of coffee, please. And hot would be good this time.”

  Corey nodded to the officer beside the door. Another replaced him.

  “So, where were we?” Corey said, consulting his notes.

  “I’d just confessed to killing Casey and Dale, you thought you’d coerced a confession from me, which isn’t true. I’m a little more intelligent that you appear to give me credit for. So, let’s get the rest out of the way, quickly, then I can speak to Mich.”

  Thomas rested back in his chair; he crossed his leg, resting one ankle on this thigh.

  “I’ll have my coffee first though,” he added.

  A black coffee was placed in front of him. I knew our officer would have given him high-octane. We wanted his heart racing, we wanted him buzzing, and then we wanted him to crash from exhaustion.

  “Vicky Bell. I’m quite proud of that one. Do you know what greed is? Excessive love of money, Mr. Lowe. I thought it genius that I gave her what she wanted, what she craved. Gold and jewelry. Did you see those earrings?” Thomas shook his head in disgust.

  “Did you rape her?” Corey asked.

  Thomas looked at him, wide-eyed. “You think I’d rape a child?” It seemed an incredulous question to ask him.

  “You raped a minor in Canada, so why not? You raped Eddie and Casey.”

  “Did I rape Eddie? I said I fucked her. You have no idea if that was consensual or not. And as for Canada, mistaken identity, Mr. Lowe. I paid the price for a fucked up penal system. Mich can testify to how shoddy your counterparts are. And as for Casey? What’s the technical term…I did not penetrate her.”

  “Mistaken identity? How, considering you were convicted of it?”

  “I had a shit lawyer, Mr. Lowe. Of course, I dealt with that.”

  “Webster,” I whispered, knowing Corey would have connected that as well.

  “Back to Eddie, then. Did she consent? Did she come, Thomas?” Corey asked, ignoring Thomas’ plea of innocence.

  Corey leaned a little toward him. He stroked his fingers over his lips as if excited to learn the answer. “I mean, she is pretty hot,” he added.

  Thomas leaned forward. I held my breath. “I’ll tell Mich just how hot, or not, she was.” He rested back in this chair, turned to the tinted panel and smiled.

  “Fucking cunt,” I whispered.

  “Now, the lawyer, what was his name?” Thomas asked.

  “Patrick Webster,” Corey answered.

  “Ah, yeah, Mr. Webster. That was a bit of botched job. I got disturbed so had to settle for a simple stabbing. I’m sorry about that. I thought wrath was a nice sin for him, don’t you agree?”

  “Why?”

  Thomas sighed. “Do you actually get why these people were allocated their sin?”

  “Not really. They were just people doing what people do.�
�

  Thomas tutted. “Wrath, Mr. Lowe, failure to forgive, love of justice perverted to revenge and spite.”

  “So how did that apply to Patrick? He was a lawyer doing his job.”

  “He was a lawyer who helped a murderer get off. He was a lawyer that helped an innocent person lose ten fucking years of his life! He abused his position regularly, lied in court many times. Do you actually know Patrick?”

  “Not personally.”

  “Then before you comment, perhaps you should.”

  “Can you tell me what happened to his tongue?” Corey asked.

  “No tongue, can’t speak. Really, I’d have thought you’d have understood that!” Thomas was getting agitated.

  I watched Corey relax back into his chair, give him a small smile as if to diffuse the situation a little.

  I made a note to investigate Mr. Webster further.

  Now, Mother…” Thomas chuckled.

  “How did you obtain the body, Thomas?” Corey asked.

  “Oh, that was easy. The dumb fuck that was Dan helped with that one. You obviously knew he worked at the local funeral home, didn’t you?”

  “Of course,” Corey lied.

  “Switching a body in a closed casket funeral is a simple procedure.”

  “Okay, but why?”

  “I wanted to get to know her.” Thomas shrugged his shoulders as if stealing a dead body to get to know it was the most obvious thing in the world. The guy was madder than I’d originally thought.

  “You wanted to get to know a dead woman? A woman you murdered!”

  “Yes, when Mich finally has the balls to sit where you are, I’ll tell him all about our mother. And did I murder her? That’s quite a bold statement. Maybe math isn’t your strongest subject, I wasn’t around when our mother died.”

  “Okay, Mich is at home, asleep I imagine…” Thomas cut him off.

  “Really? Oh, Mr. Lowe. If you continue to insult my intelligence, you know this interview will be terminated.”

  “I apologize. Mich is there; you know he is. So tell him. Tell him who murdered his mother, and how you came to have her,” Corey said, looking toward the tinted panel.

  “Face-to-face, Mr. Lowe. And she was our mother.” His voice rose on the word ‘our.’

  “Can I ask one thing, then? Why envy?”

  “Love of ones own good, perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs. She deprived me of a mother, of a normal family. Simple. She fucked, she abandoned. She left me to be abused, so I abused her.”

  “How?”

  The look on Thomas’ face turned my stomach. “I fucked her.”

  If I had been in the room, not only would I have heard Corey swallow the bile that I imagined had risen to his throat, but I couldn’t have been held back from killing the sick fuck.

  “I don’t believe you, Thomas. There’s no evidence to support that. Your cum was over her dress, as was Mich’s, but we know how that got there. I don’t believe you’re actually capable of fucking anyone.”

  Corey was trying to rile him.

  “So I’m lying? Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. Maybe there isn’t a shred of truth in anything I’ve said so far. Maybe I did kill those kids, maybe I didn’t. I mean, do you actually have any DNA, on any victim, to support a word I’ve said?”

  “What the fuck…” I whispered as the chief entered the viewing room.

  “Maybe I’m just a twisted, sad fuck, who has made all this up for the notoriety. You know you have to back up a confession with some form of evidence, don’t you?”

  “He’s playing with us,” I said to the chief.

  “I know. He’s a clever bastard, for sure.”

  Corey decided to change tact. “So, Louis Chapman. You gave him sloth, why?”

  “Lazy fucker, Louis was. You know he was the one that sent Dale to collect his drugs. He liked to watch Casey get fucked because he was too lazy to do it himself. I used to watch him, watching her. He’d masturbate. Did you know that is a sin? Quite funny that he lost his cock, the tool he used to sin, don’t you think?”

  “Yet you’ve masturbated yourself.”

  “We are all sinners, Mr. Lowe.” Thomas leaned forward a little. “Can I call you Corey?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Corey, we are all sinners. You, me, Mich, those kids. Him by the door. We can’t actually survive this world without sinning. But we have to be punished for it.”

  “Who made you judge and jury? God is the only one with the right to punish, isn’t he?”

  “Are you religious, Corey? Do you believe?”

  “I am, and I do.”

  “Well I do, too, just not your God. You see, religion evolves, gods come and go. My religion is powerful; my religion will ensure my seat next to my god when the time comes. You, and him, are familiar with my religion.” He looked straight at me.

  My legs buckled, my heart physically stopped in my chest and I had a need to pummel on it, to restart it. The chief was looking at me, his eyebrows furrowed in question as I gasped for breath.

  “Mich!” he said.

  “I know who he is!” My words were strangled in my throat.

  I watched Corey stiffen slightly, his eyes flicked to the one-way glass. Had he picked up on that as well? I prayed he had.

  “Why did you kill Dan?” Corey asked.

  “Surplus to requirements now. He got me in and out of the morgue, as you probably already know. I wanted to tie up any loose ends. He had no place, he wasn’t a pure blood, just a servant.”

  Corey looked at the clock on the wall, he wrote on his pad.

  “A pure blood?” he asked, without looking up.

  For a moment there was silence. Thomas looked at me, not seeing me, but knowing I was there.

  “And that’s why you’ll never find her, Mich, she’s long gone. She’s not a Divine Child, though. She was sent here. You, brother, disrupted our activities; you’ll pay for that. Or rather, right now, she’ll be paying for your sins and her failure.”

  I ran from the room, kicking open the viewing room door. I heard it splinter as its hinges gave way.

  Before anyone could react, I was pushing open the interview room door. Corey rose; the officer by the wall tried to block my entrance. Thomas smiled.

  “Pride, Mich. Pride. Lucifer’s downfall; the greatest sin of all. Love of self, perverted to hatred and contempt to one’s neighbor. You couldn’t just let us be, could you?” Thomas said.

  “Where the fuck is she?” I slammed my hands down on the desk so hard every piece of paper, every plastic cup and pencil, jumped from it.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Would you trade places with her, Mich?” he asked.

  I stared at him. “Yes. Without a shred of doubt I would.”

  “Even as damaged as she is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know her? Did you know where she came from?” He was talking about her as if she was already in the past tense. “Sit, Mich, this is about to get interesting.”

  My heart raced and I took a couple of deep, subtle breaths to calm it. Finally, Mich, my brother, the object of my obsession for years, was sitting in front of me. I felt my cock harden. I ran my tongue over my lower lip to moisten it. He smelled so good. His hair was slightly mussed, his eyes dark with anger. A vein bulged on his forehead as blood pumped hard around his taut body. He held himself rigid as wave after wave of hatred poured from him.

  I didn’t care that he hated me.

  I watched Corey stare at him, as if trying to give some silent communication. But Mich’s focus was solely on me. His stare sent an icy shiver up my spine, caused the hairs on my arms to stand to attention. He was intense. I searched his features, wanting to see what was similar, what traits we shared. We had the same colored eyes, but I knew that already. He was more muscular up close. The sleeves of his t-shirt were tight against his biceps, which bulged with pent up aggression.

  “How did it feel when you killed my father?” I asked.
/>
  I watched him try to regulate his breathing. His nostrils flared with every intake of air. His chest expanded as his lungs filled.

  “How did it feel, brother, when you snuck up on him, when you placed the rifle to the back of his head and pulled the trigger? Did his blood, did his bone, splatter over you? Did you lick the hot liquid from your lips?”

  I wanted to tap into his basic needs. He was a killer, just like me. “I bet your heart raced; did you get that surge of excitement, of adrenalin? It’s like a drug, isn’t it? You got the high, didn’t you? The rush as you watch someone take their last breath is like nothing on this earth.”

  He hadn’t answered any of my questions and I didn’t expect him to. The fact he had bitten down hard on his lower lip had me thinking that he’d wanted to.

  I slid my free hand across the desk; our fingertips were a mere fingerbreadth apart. I wanted to touch him. He stared at our hands before raising his gaze back to mine.

  “The only time my skin touches yours is when my hands are around your neck, Thomas. And yes, that high as you take your last breath will live with me forever,” he said, then straightened up and left the room.

  I was fucked, my body crashed as soon as I closed the interview room door behind me. I leaned against the wall and gently slid down. I rested my head on my knees. I wanted to sleep; I wanted to keep going.

  The interview room door opened and I looked up as Thomas was led back to his cell. He stared at me, smiled, pleased with what he’d achieved.

  “You know she called out your name when I fucked her, Mich,” he said, as he was led away.

  I shot to my feet, I was two paces away from him and had lost my mind when strong arms wrapped around me, stopping my assault. Thomas laughed.