Past Sins
By Thomas Grant Bruso
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2019 Thomas Grant Bruso
ISBN 9781646560233
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
For Paul and Beth, my support team.
* * * *
Past Sins
By Thomas Grant Bruso
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 1
The jagged ring of the landline next to my bed startles me, and I shudder awake, my heart pounding like a scared rabbit.
Half asleep, I fumble in the dark for my phone. “Yeah,” I say into the wrong end of it, and flip it upright so my mouth is connected with the mouthpiece. I mumble, “Fuck,” but I can hear my superior rattling on in my ear about a dead body.
“Ballinger?” the chief of police, Danny Barton, says.
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m here.” I knuckle my eyes and squint through the hazy shroud of sleepiness to the time clock radio on my nightstand.
Two A.M.
“Where?” I ask my boss who sounds chipper, as if he’s slept for ten hours. I hear voices from other officers and radios squawking in the background.
“Twelve Firewood Road. Apartment two. By the railroad tracks.”
I want to tell him I know where it is; I’ve lived in this backwoods town for five years. But I let the chief ramble. He likes to hear his own voice: a tough-as-nails narcissist, and womanizer.
As the chief talks, I hear the guy I met at Luscious’ bar last night sitting next to me, and I feel the ends of his sandpaper fingers brushing my naked back.
I lean forward and close my eyes, and the incessant nattering of Chief Barton’s explanation of tonight’s grisly crime scene makes me edgy. I knead my sweaty forehead.
I can feel the oscillating draft of cool air from the floor fan blowing across the swampy-damp room. My skin prickles.
Chief Barton’s deep voice drills the facts of the case: The killer’s M.O., religion motivated. A dead girl, post-adolescence, her body positioned on the hardwood floor inside a pentagram, outlined in blood.
He tells me she’s clutching a rosary. He says, “I’ve tried to pry it from her hands and bag it for evidence, but it’s affixed with glue.”
My head is still fuzzy with sleep, and I want to pull the bed sheet over my head and forget about my job and the crazy people in it.
I feel the bed sheet slipping from around my waist as my night visitor curls his body up against mine.
My body tenses from his touch.
Rain slashes the glass doors leading outside to the balcony.
I can smell the musky heat of my one-night stand behind me, and feel his moist mouth on my lower back. His kisses are gentle, but he is making me increasingly anxious.
I shift, sigh, and reach out to put a hand between us as if I’ve got an itch to scratch. He recoils back onto his side, and I hear him moaning and complaining.
Chief Barton is still talking, warning me not to eat before I arrive at the scene. I tell him I don’t usually eat until the sun comes up. I’m grumpy, and hate being woken in the early hours.
But murder never takes a fucking holiday. “I’ll be there within the hour,” I say.
I hang up before he begins to protest, and I stay hunched over on the edge of the bed, my head hanging in my hands.
The gears of the fan rattle in the corner of the room, rain spraying in from the opened balcony doors. I hear raccoons in the trees, and a bicycle circling down the street.
Then Scott breaks the silence next to me. “Another nightmare?”
I let out a long sigh and shake my head. But he doesn’t see me answering him in the dark. So when he repeats the question, his tone edgy and annoyed as if I’ve ignored him, I say, “No, it’s work.”
After a long pause, he asks, “Thanks for letting me stay here last night.”
I reach for my water glass on the nightstand. There is just enough tepid fluid to wet my dry lips. “I need to go,” I say, flipping on the lamp next to the bed, globing our faces in honey light.
I walk across the room for my uniform pants and shirt. My Glock is in the bottom drawer where I keep my socks and underwear. “You’ve got to go,” I say, half turning to him in the amber pool of light.
“Now?” he says, annoyed. “It’s two o’ clock in the morning.”
I bend down to pick up his muscle shirt and pink frilly shorts from the floor and toss them to him on the bed.
He sighs, deeply frustrated.
I sit on the footstool to tie my boots.
“Can I see you again?” he asks, pulling his T-shirt over the grooves of his swimmer’s build.
I pretend I don’t hear him.
When he stands to get into his shorts, he says, “I really like you, Jack.”
I swallow back ingrained images of my deadbeat father, the man responsible for my dismal childhood. “Listen, Scott. I’m not somebody you want to be with.”
“It’s Steve, and I don’t agree.”
I clench my hands together until my knuckles pop. “It was a one-night stand. That’s all.”
“Then why did you let me spend the night?”
Anger swells inside me, and my father’s bearded face flashes across the veil of my thoughts.
I don’t answer him.
“Your generosity is overwhelming,” he says, grunting.
I hear the sarcasm in his biting tone, as I stand and head to the closet for my raincoat. “We both need to go.”
“Is it because of my pink hair?” Steve says, coming up behind me, puncturing my safe space with a hand on my back.
I turn and gaze in his direction, trying not to make eye contact. “What?”
“My hair? Is it too weird?”
“No. Your hair isn’t the problem.”
Steve fingers his Justin Bieber bangs. He is young enough to be my nephew. “It’s my favorite asset,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?” A pause, then, “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me in public?”
I hear my father whispering in the back of my mind, spewing his venomous hate and ignorance. Faggot. Loser. Waste of life. You won’t amount to anything.
I grab my raincoat and climb into it.
Turning to leave, grabbing m
y car keys on the kitchenette counter, I feel Steve’s hand on my arm. “Please, Jack. Give us a chance.”
“I’m going to be late,” I say, pulling away from him and shutting off the fan and closing and locking the balcony doors.
On my way past Steve, I turn off the light and show him the way out of my apartment.
I lock the door and head down the carpeted corridor to the stairwell, Steve following a mile behind me, his footfalls heavy.
Chapter 2
There is no warning when the charcoal-gray sky crackles to life with thunder, and a drumbeat of rain thrashes me in the face.
I park in the gravel driveway of the apartment complex, next to the chief’s SUV, and jog up the steep ramp to the front door where I notice a group of college-aged girls standing on the sidewalk crying and hugging each other.
Deputy Alan Hawkins, on the wrong side of fifty, looks cold and tired, his clothes damp from the rain. He is manning the door as I approach the building. He nods at me. He is bulky around the middle, and most of the hair on his head is white, but he dyes his mustache black.
“Prepare yourself before you go in there,” he says, standing statue still like a window-dressed mannequin.
We make brief eye contact, but my vision is hazy and glossy with rain and sleep; I hunker against the driving elements as I continue through the door he holds open for me.
Water sprays everywhere as I shake my head like a dog in the bright foyer and wipe my hands dry on my uniform pants underneath my raincoat.
The climb up to the second floor feels long, and I’m breathing heavily when I reach the landing where I follow the chatter of voices of my superior and another rookie standing outside the last door at the end of the hallway.
Chief Barton is ordering the CSI photographer to photograph the room from a different angle.
When I poke my head around the corner, I see the gargoyle silhouette of the chief of police behind a frosted glass screen dividing the living and dining area as if he were directing a photo shoot for Home Design magazine.
I clear my throat to steal his attention.
He turns, wide-eyed, as if my presence is a surprise and he isn’t expecting me. I watch him limp toward me, and holding out a pair of rubber booties for me to slip on over my work boots. “Watch out for the trail of blood splatter,” he says, gesturing at the breadcrumb dots of dark fluid on the hardwood floor.
“What happened here?” I ask, observing the claustrophobic five hundred square foot apartment. I don’t like being in small spaces with other people. Everybody makes me nervous, and the noise of the camera clicking over and over drills inside me like a chattering of teeth. Sweat trickles in the warm spot beneath my uniform collar, and my palms are clammy.
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he says, and as I step further into the apartment, I can detect tobacco smoke in the air. The sharp smell tickles my nostrils. “We’ve already spoken to the landlord. He didn’t know anything.”
“Who called it in?” I ask.
“A friend of the victim. Sorority girl named Callie. Redhead. Pretty little thing.”
“I passed a group of young girls outside on my way in.”
“They’re still here?” The chief sighs. “I told them I’d check in with them at the sorority later today. There’s nothing else they can do right now.”
“Have you notified the vic’s parents?” I ask.
“We’re working on it.”
“What did the girl’s friend have to say?”
“Callie told me she tried calling the victim but couldn’t get through to her. So she walked over here from the sorority house to check on her. When she arrived, she came across her friend dead on the floor.” He sighs, shakes his head, visibly shaken.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be free of all it by the end of the year, Chief.”
“After tonight, retirement couldn’t come sooner.”
“You’re going to be missed,” I say, hoping he can’t see through my thin veneer of lies. In retrospect, he and I got along like a house on fire. But that isn’t always the case. Barton has a prickly personality and, at times, can be two-faced and untrustworthy. Other rookies would attest.
“Stella will be happy to have you at home more,” I say, talking about his model-thin wife.
“She wishes I’d keep working,” Barton says. “She thinks I’ll become a homebody or slob, and sit around the house watching television.”
“Not a bad idea,” I say.
“This way.”
I follow the chief around the glass partition to the living room where the body of a young woman—early twenties—lies in a cross-like position. Her arms are outspread and feet bound together in heavy-duty cord.
The deceased is half dressed in a bra and panties and clutching a rosary in her right hand. I bend down, making sure I don’t break the bloody circle of the meticulously drawn pentagram outlined in the middle of the room.
I ask the chief for a pen. He digs into the inside of his coat pocket and hands me an expensive fountain pen. “Didn’t you bring your own?” he asks.
Ignoring him, I try to wedge the tip of the pen into her clenched right hand.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his tone heavy and high.
He’s right: the plastic rosary is gorilla glued to the victim’s right palm.
“Jesus Christ, Ballinger.” He swipes his shiny white pen out of my hand and examines it as if it is evidence.
His roving gaze is wild as rage boils behind his eyes and he looks at me squarely as if he wants to wallop me on the nose.
Tucking my hands in my coat pockets, I step around the body to an east side window to get a better look at the dead girl and notice the broken skin on what used to be a porcelain smooth face. It looks like she has been stabbed in the forehead, the deep gash between her eyes, a black wound of clotted blood and brain.
Chief Barton holds up a plastic evidence bag with the bloody pocketknife inside it.
I turn to my former partner Officer Cory Ryan, twenty-nine, bisexual, dark-skinned and a Patriots fan, writing furiously in his notebook ten feet from me in the far corner.
A falling out between us last year led us to working with different partners on separate cases. I blame Ryan’s mood swings and lack of patience and professionalism, and the way he handles cases, walking away from interviews and not speaking to me for days later.
Six years separate us, and I miss the time we spent together, drinking beer and watching college and professional football games at a bar after work. I stop thinking about our past, as a booming crash of thunder shifts my position, and I jump, startled, and let out a soft yelp.
“Jumpy?” Barton asks, and I hear the bite in his authoritative voice that he is still upset about his pen.
“What’s with the religious arrangement?” I ask.
The chief shakes his head. “We don’t know yet.”
“Have you talked to the other tenants?”
“Some. Not all.” Ryan joins us around the pentagram.
I look at him. “What are they saying?”
“Nothing. They didn’t see or hear anything.”
After a long pause, I stare down at the victim. “What’s her name?”
“Kimberly Block,” Barton answers.
I can smell the chief’s breath. He is chewing bubble gum. “She’s so young,” I say.
“She had her whole life to look forward to,” the chief says. “It’s a tragedy.”
“Did she smoke?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. We didn’t find a pack of cigarettes or a butt on the premises,” Ryan says.
I meet his stare. I never noticed his gray-green eyes. They’re almost hypnotizing. I nod and pull my gaze away from him. “It’s not from cigarettes,” I say. “It’s pipe smoke.”
All our gazes fall across the young girl’s face.
“She doesn’t look like a pipe smoker to me,” Ryan says.
“A rookie mistake,” Barton says, l
ooking up at Ryan and me. “You should know better than to make any assumptions.”
“Where’d the killer enter from?” I ask, looking around the room.
“We don’t know,” the chief says, pointing at the plate glass window behind him. “It was locked, as was the front door, which suggests—”
“That the victim might have known the killer,” I say, “and let him or her in.”
Barton nods. “Exactly.”
I look to Ryan and the chief and head in the direction from which I had come. “Where are you going?” Barton asks.
“To knock on some doors.”
Ryan is at my side; his cologne is overpowering. My olfactory senses are aggravated by the heady scent of whatever name brand he is wearing.
In the hallway, I hear Barton talking about a missing Jeep Cherokee, his walkie-talkie crackling with static.
Ryan and I start at the head of the hallway where Ryan ended before I got here, and I rap on an apartment door belonging to an elderly woman named Cora Findings. Our presence elicits the gunfire barks of a small dog somewhere behind a closed door in the apartment.
Ryan starts to back away from the door, sliding up behind me. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Where are you going?”
“I was bitten by a dog when I was young,” he says. “I don’t like them.”
I turn to the pale, weathered face of Ms. Findings, shadowed in the hall’s dim light. “We’re police officers, ma’am. And we’re asking everyone in the building if they heard or saw anything unusual this evening.”
She squints through glasses clouded with dust, but doesn’t speak.
“There’s been a break-in across the hall,” I say.
“Dear God.” She is shaking. Parkinson’s controls the erratic movements of her hands and head.
“Have you heard anything at all?” Ryan sounds impatient behind me.
I’m not sure how much she tells us is true. She looks confused, looking from me to Officer Scaredy Pants standing behind me breathing warm air on my neck.
I’d think being awakened out of a deep sleep in the wee early hours would make anyone groggy.
Sinking into my inner thoughts, I dream of a place where I’ve felt the exact same feelings. Since I joined the police force five years ago: the phone would ring in the middle of the night or a rap of knuckles on the apartment door would arouse me from deep sleep, and I’d have to crawl out from between the warm sheets of my bed, and head out to work a case.
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