Past Sins by Thomas Grant Bruso
For Paul and Beth, my support team.
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, “f**k,” 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
