Past Sins

Chapter 2

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, looking 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.

Domestic disputes. Automobile accidents. Missing children. Barroom brawls. Murder.

I am glad for the occasional murder, or testosterone-fueled fistfight at the local watering hole, or a drunk driver crashing his vehicle into a telephone poll. They remind me how lucky I am to be alive.

I accept anything but the abusive, haunted life I had come out of during my childhood. I’d see my father’s bearded face and hear him hissing at me when I closed my eyes at night: Sissy Boy. Mama’s boy. Queer.

I fight to put people like him behind bars where they belong.

Ms. Findings yanks me out of my trance, a muffling discord of jumbled words.

I nod and blink a few times, inhaling deeply, pretending that I’ve heard and comprehended every word. She sounds sleepy when I hear her say, “A door slammed shut. I heard footsteps. But after Killer stopped growling, it went dead quiet. I rolled onto my side and went back to sleep.”

“Killer?” I say.

She looks at me strangely. “My dog.”

I smell the sweet peppermint Lifesaver Ryan is sucking on. He is making a racket with that tiny piece of candy, clicking it back and forth between his teeth.

I look down at my notepad. It is blank. I have not written a single word.

My mouth tastes bitter, acidic. I ask the elderly woman, “What time did you hear all of this?”

Another look, her pencil-lined eyebrows furrowing. “Did you not hear me?” She stops talking as if she’s lost her breath, and her expression changes.

I hear footsteps behind and turn to see Barton standing in the doorway across the hall from the victim’s apartment. “Fellows,” he says, “you need to hurry it up.”

Ryan nudges me. “Let’s go,” he says, nodding at me. To Ms. Findings: “Thanks for your time, ma’am.”

Her eyes are wide and spooked, and her head is shaking like one of those bobblehead toys.

She slinks back into her dark apartment, shutting the door in our faces. I hear the chain lock slide into place and her small footsteps pad away, receding into the apartment.

“You all right?” Ryan asks me.

I look at my blank notepad and then up at my former partner, nodding. His jaw is working overtime, chomping another peppermint to smithereens.

We knock on a handful of other doors and talk to more tenants, but our inquiries come up empty. Nobody heard or saw anything.

Everyone was asleep.

We meet up with the police chief in the victim’s apartment to exchange our minimal list of notes, but when we’re all standing around talking and strategizing, the county coroner arrives, followed by the flashing red and blue lights and screeching siren of a Black Hills ambulance.

Dr. Alfred Stully stands five-six feet and carries his trusty medical handbag. He rakes a liver-spotted hand over the Trump comb-over strands of hair left on his receding hairline.

“Wicked weather,” he says, his breathing labored and wheezy as he waddles over to us standing around the dead girl. He clicks his tongue, emitting a tsk-tsk sound and circles us like a shark. His jowly chin jostles as he shifts around the room, examining the corpse.

“Poor girl,” he whispers, mostly to himself.

But the chief hears him, and says, “How soon will we know a time of death?”

Dr. Stully moans as he crouches and kneels by the body, reaching a hand out to the armchair for support. He stops and asks, “Has this been dusted for fingerprints?”

Barton nods, folding his arms across his barrel chest.

We watch the coroner work his magic, staring intently at the dark bruising around the vic’s doll-like neck. “The strangle marks are deep,” he says, touching the blue skin with a gloved hand. “Boy,” he adds, groaning and wincing and protesting aloud about his arthritic knees as he pulls himself up and stands, wiping his sweaty face with the crook of his arm.

After a few more minutes with the deceased, he conjures up a short answer. “I’ll know more about time of death during my autopsy.”

I yank on the chief’s coat sleeve, and gesture him away from the eyes and ears of everybody else in the room, as the CSI team in white suits continue to dust and photograph the scene.

Ryan joins us by the door, hovering over the chief’s shoulder. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind, Ballinger,” he says, waiting for me to talk.

“Our killer may still be in the area,” I say, feeling the tiny follicles of hair prickling on the back of my neck.

“We canvassed the area before I called you,” Barton says. “I’m sure the killer is far from here by now.”

I nod, but the look in my buddy Ryan’s doe-like gaze when I notice him staring back at me, weaves a dark, different tale. He watches me assuredly, his head c****d to the side, gesturing me out into the hall.

I turn to the chief. “How do you want us to proceed?”

He shrugs. “Not much more we can do here tonight. Head home. Get some sleep. I’ll call if I hear anything. Thanks for your help.”

I know I won’t sleep. After working a case, I’m usually wide-awake for a few hours. Decompression comes later when I’m sitting in front of the TV, watching football and struggling to keep my eyes open.

“Thanks, Chief,” I say and walk out into the hall.

Ryan catches up to me and stops me when I’m descending the staircase.

I watch him running toward me in slow motion like one of the “Baywatch” lifeguards.

I wonder what he looks like in a speedo, and I fight the urge to dispel the thought.

He catches me off guard. “Do you want to grab a beer?”

“I’m beat, man,” I say, gripping the railing and turning to go down.

He blows a stream of air out from between his bleached white teeth and a knee-buckling smile. “Suit yourself.”

We’re just friends, I tell myself. Two guys who work together.

Nothing more.

He says, “Maybe we can catch a game. Shoot the s**t. Get our minds off this shitty job.”

“Maybe another time.”

He nods. “All right. Fine. See you tomorrow. Drive safe.” He turns to leave.

I yell, “Ryan, wait,” and step up onto the landing.

He ambles back down the hall, his long arms swinging at his sides. His expression is piqued with curiosity, waiting for me to speak.

I glance down at the bottom of the dark staircase then up at my ex-partner’s face, highlighted by a light fixture on the wall. “I’m sorry if I was an asshole.”

He squints at me, and his lips start to move, but I can see he is struggling to find the right words.

It’s been a long time, I recall, since Ryan and I hung out.

“I don’t like to commit to anything,” I say. “Not even a beer. I’m going through some stuff right now.”

“You like to be alone,” he says. “I get it. My sister is the same way. She likes to keep to herself. There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember it.” He scrunches his nose, and looks upward, thinking. “Intel…Intro…Invoice.”

I laugh. “Introvert.”

He points at me, wagging a finger. “Yeah. That’s it. It’s cool. I understand. I’m like that sometimes.”

“Have a good night, man.”

“Yeah.” It is a short, snappish response.

As he turns and heads back to the commotion down the hall, high-pitched voices and heavy footfalls, a bar of light from the harsh white fluorescence flashes across his soft features. But something changes in his expression.

As our gazes lock and I glimpse his hard stare, a cold shiver crawls down my back.