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

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  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 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Copyright 2016 © Tracie Podger

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents, either, are products of the author’s imagination or they are used factiously. Any reference to actual locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, to include, by not exclusive to audio or visual recordings of any description without permission from the copyright owner.

  Cover designed by Margreet Asslebergs

  Rebel Edit & Design

  Cover Model – Jase Dean

  Cover Model shot by – Wander Aguir

  Formatting by Irish Ink – Formatting & Graphics

  Acknowledgements

  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 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  My heartfelt thanks to the best beta readers a girl could want, Karen Shenton, Alison Parkins, and Rebecca Sherwin - your input is invaluable.

  Thank you to Margreet Asslebergs from Rebel Edit & Design for yet another wonderful cover, this makes our ninth collaboration!

  I’d also like to give a huge thank you to my editor, Karen Hrdlicka, and proofreader, Joanne Thompson.

  A big hug goes to the ladies in my team. These ladies give up their time to support and promote my books. Alison ‘Awesome’ Parkins, Karen Shenton, Karen Atkinson-Lingham, Marina Marinova, Ann Batty, Fran Brisland, Elaine Turner, Kerry-Ann Bell and Louise White, Catherine Bibby & Ellie Aspill, – otherwise known as the Twisted Angels.

  To all the wonderful bloggers that have been involved in promoting my books and joining tours, thank you and I appreciate your support. There are too many to name individually – you know who you are.

  If you wish to keep up to date with information on this series and future releases - and have the chance to enter monthly competitions, feel free to sign up for my newsletter. You can find the details on my web site:

  www.TraciePodger.com

  Success if not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  Winston Churchill

  Cover design – Rebel Edit & Design

  Model – Jase Dean

  Photographer – Wander Aguiar

  Formatting – Irish Ink – Formatting & Graphics

  Capital Vices. Cardinal Sins. Which one is the worst? Is it pride, greed, or lust? Maybe it’s envy, gluttony, or even wrath. As for sloth? What does that actually mean?

  I guess we’ve all been guilty of these sins but no more than the man I have been watching for years. I know every thing he does. I know the time he leaves his house each morning. I know the speed he drives his car to work, the exact moment he will turn on the indicator when he makes that right turn into the parking lot.

  I know the friends he meets with a slap to the back, a high five, or a shoulder bump. I know the women that fawn over him. He, they, made me feel sick to my stomach.

  They don’t know me; I doubt they’ve ever noticed me. They will, though, soon. I’ve waited a long time for this, a long time to turn his comfortable life on its head, to destroy him.

  My palms were sweaty as I walked the stone floor corridor. My footsteps echoed, and in my head I could hear my heart beat a frantic rhythm. I took a few deep breaths as I reached the double oak doors, intricately carved with figures. I was thankful that the hand I reached out to turn the large brass handle, was steady. My other hand held a revolver down beside my thigh. I wasn’t sure what I was going to be faced with when I gently turned the handle and slowly pushed the door open. It creaked as the old rusting hinges protested, reminding me of a scary movie.

  Sunlight blazed into the empty room through a broken glass window. It picked out every speck of dust that floated around. Immediately, my senses were assaulted by a metallic tang, it filled my nostrils and coated my taste buds as I took a breath in through my mouth. Then I saw her.

  Against the back wall was my missing girl. Crucified.

  My stomach lurched; I swallowed down the bile that rose to burn my throat. I closed my eyes briefly. Casey Long: blonde-haired, cheerleader, straight A student, naked and covered in blood, was tied to a cross against the back wall.

  “Fuck!” I whispered. “Fuck!”

  For five days I’d been searching for her after her mother had called in a missing person’s report. Five days of having no idea she was practically on my doorstep. I holstered my gun and made a call.

  “Dean, she’s in here,” I said.

  I took care to retreat only in the places I had already stepped. Making sure not to further disturb any forensic evidence, until I made my way back out of the room and gently closed the door behind me. There was no need to check for signs of life; Casey was very clearly dead.

  Within seconds, the corridor was filled with activity. Dean, my partner for the past five years, strode toward me. His size ten feet clomped on the polished floor.

  “Is it definitely her?” he asked. I nodded.

  “Dead?” Again, I nodded.

  “Fuck!” He echoed my sentiments.

  “Detective?” I turned toward the voice behind me.

  “Samuel, I think you best step outside,” I said to the caretaker of Montford High School.

  No matter how many times I’d told him to call me by my name, he never did. Samuel was an old guy; he’d been the caretaker when I’d been a student at Montford some years ago. He was as old as the school back then.

  I watched as he nodded and backed down the corridor, wringing his hands together. I imagined the sight of what he’d discovered on his morning rounds would finish him where working at the school was concerned. How do you recover from seeing something like that? It was bad enough for me and Dean, and we’d seen our fair share of murder.

  “I’ve called in the doc, she’s on her way,” Dean said.

  “Okay, we need to seal this off, close this wing down. You want to call it in?”

  Dean fished his mobile from his pocket and called through to the station.
As he walked a little way down the corridor for a better reception, I took a deep breath, I knew at some point that day I’d be delivering the worst news possible to the parent of a missing child.

  I’d always wanted to be a cop, ever since receiving a costume for Halloween one year. Despite growing out of it, I’d kept that badge for years. I loved my job, normally. I just hated knowing what I would have to do soon. I could send someone else, but I’d grown up in this town, I knew most of its occupants, and I wanted to be the one to break the news to Sally Long.

  I scrubbed my hand over my face, feeling the two-day-old stubble around my jaw. Dean would take a statement from Samuel while I waited for Doc, or Eddie, as she was called.

  Our state medical examiner had, only a few hours prior, been naked in my bed after we'd spent the night fucking. Neither of us had gotten any sleep, but I knew that as soon as she arrived, there would be no evidence of that.

  Within a few minutes of Dean calling the crime in, the parking lot was flooded with blue and red flashing lights. Groups of teens hung around, trying to find out why part of their school was closed the first day back from break. Teachers were questioning the sheriff, who I’d positioned at the front door, blocking the entrance. I decided to speak to the principal while I waited for Eddie to arrive.

  “A death?” Mr. Turner asked.

  “Yes, and until we can process the scene and remove the body, this wing is closed off,” I replied.

  I was standing just inside the main entrance with the principal of Montford School. I was reluctant to give too many details, but I imagined Samuel would soon be regaling his colleagues. I waved over one of the sheriff’s deputies and instructed him to take Samuel to the station; we’d need to interview him formally, and rule him out as a suspect, of course.

  “I need all the CCTV images you have, covering the last twelve hours. I’ll ask one of my team to accompany you,” I said.

  Mr. Turner nodded his head. “Do you know who it is?”

  “I’m not able to give any more details right now.”

  “Is it Casey?” His voice broke as he spoke.

  I didn’t answer and I guess that was confirmation enough. Tears welled in his eyes. He gently shook his head and placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “I don't envy you your job, Mich. You should have stayed with the FBI,” he said.

  “Wasn’t solving crimes, Mr. Turner,” I replied.

  I’d left the FBI some months prior, exhausted by the bureaucracy and taken a backward, some might say, step to where I’d started and what I loved the most: solving crimes within the community I’d grown up in.

  I motioned to an officer to accompany Mr. Turner and retrieve as much CCTV as he could. I had a team scouring the outside, looking for evidence. As I made my way outside, the medical examiner’s black, unmarked van arrived. It reversed up close to the doors in preparation. A few seconds later, I heard the throaty roar of a large, black motorcycle as it joined us. Eddie was about the most unconventional medical examiner I’d come across. She killed the engine, unfastened her helmet, and hooked it over the handlebars before swinging a long, jean-clad leg over the seat. Despite the severity that had brought nearly twenty police officers and sheriff’s deputies together, I watched as heads turned and lips curled into lustful smirks, following her as she walked toward me.

  “Mich,” she said, showing no recognition of the night we’d spent together.

  “Eddie. She’s in here.”

  Eddie stopped at the side of the van and slid open the door.

  “Talk to me,” she instructed, as she reached in for her box of tricks.

  “Casey Long has been missing for five days. The caretaker found her crucified in the school hall, this morning.”

  Eddie pulled on white coveralls and threw some gloves and plastic booties at me. At the same time, her two assistants exited from the front of the van. They donned the same clothing. One retrieved a camera and the other, another toolbox.

  “Have you or the caretaker contaminated the body?” Eddie said, staring at me.

  I raised an eyebrow at her in annoyance. “Of course not.” She gave me a small nod.

  Eddie wasn’t just a medical examiner, she was also a forensic pathologist, and about the best I’d ever witnessed when it came to processing a crime scene.

  “Where’s the caretaker?”

  “At the station, being fingerprinted and processed, of course.”

  Eddie nodded and I held out my arm, inviting her to walk ahead of me. We made our way to the hall. Before we entered, Dan, Eddie’s assistant, took photographs of the corridor and the two oak doors, concentrating on the handles that would be dusted for prints by my forensic team.

  I pulled the latex gloves on and covered my shoes with the plastic booties. I opened the door. The sun had shifted slightly. Instead of bathing the center of the room, a beam of light streaked across, highlighting Casey. Had it not been a real person on that wooden cross, we could have been forgiven for thinking there was something angelic or ethereal about the scene. I heard the whispered prayer that Eddie gave at every murder scene she and I had attended.

  “Shit, Mich,” she said. I heard her take a deep breath.

  Casey Long had five obvious stab wounds on her. They mirrored the cross she’d been attached to. Somehow, and as ridiculous as it felt, I was pleased to see her wrists and ankles had been bound with rope and not nailed. Her head lolled to one side, and her eyes, wide open, stared down at us. Dan photographed her from every angle.

  “You’ve detailed the broken window, I take it?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes, my team has taken shots of it and are about to dust outside. I don’t hold much hope for prints, it rained last night.”

  “Was the window broken before?”

  “Not according to the caretaker. Although this room isn’t used at the moment, it was closed off for renovations, something to do with varnishing the floor.”

  Eddie pivoted slowly, taking in every aspect of the room. It was empty, save for a bench on the opposite wall, beside the door. She stared at it.

  “It’s been moved,” I said. She looked up at me.

  “There’s a couple of very faint scratch marks on the floor, they look fresh to me, as if the bench has been dragged in position.”

  “To sit and admire his work?” she asked.

  “Possibly, and that’s an assumption, Doctor,” I said, with a smirk.

  “Not an assumption, Detective. You’d need some strength to haul a cross with a body on it upright, stabilize and fix it into place. I think we’re safe to assume a male perp. And she wasn’t killed here.”

  Dan moved to the bench, having taken all the shots he needed. Eddie and I walked toward Casey.

  “Not enough blood,” she whispered, as she stared up at the young girl. “Let’s get her down.”

  The cross was leaning against the back wall and just a little larger than Casey herself. It looked custom-made. Thick planks of a dark wood, possibly oak, seemed to have been expertly joined together. Someone had taken care to make that cross, its joints were dovetailed. Eddie’s assistants stood on either side and gently lowered the cross to the floor, placing her to one side of her original position, and on a plastic tarp.

  I stood back a little and watched as Eddie did her initial assessment. Most of her determination would be done back at her office. She spoke to Casey as if she were still alive, apologizing for the prodding as she felt her way around the body. I think that was one of the things that endeared Eddie to the folks of our town; she had the utmost respect for the dead, as well as the living.

  While she tended to Casey, I strode around the room, absorbing the scene, hoping it would give up its secrets. I found myself back at the bench, and although I didn’t sit, I stared at the wall where Casey had been. Something caught my eye, something so subtle I’d missed it at first. I walked toward it. Scratched very lightly, in the plaster above where the cross had stood, was one word. It took me a moment to understand; the
letters were widely spaced.

  L U S T

  Detective Mich Curtis, former FBI agent. Just his name, as it rolled off my tongue, brought goosebumps to my skin. He looked so sad; those fine lines across his forehead were deeper as he furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of the scene he’d found. I chuckled. The game had begun; the hunt was on. But who was the hunter, and who was the prey? Which one of us would be the winner? I could see him stare at the word, trying to work out its relationship to the crucifixion of the naughty girl. Lust. I’d love to get inside his head. Hopefully I will, although it wouldn’t be in the psychological sense. You see, Mich Curtis ruined my life, and I intend to repay him for that.

  As for her, I see her. I see the way she looks at him. They were fucking, that much was obvious. I wondered how he fucked her: hard, fast, slow, tenderly? I made a note to watch, to familiarize myself with her body, and how his hands traveled over it. I wanted to see her face when he made her come, when he brought her to the edge of such pleasure, her mind and body giving itself over to him. My mouth watered at the thought, my stomach knotted with desire for them both.

  “What do you think that means?” Eddie asked, as she stood beside me.

  “I have no idea yet. He lusted after her?”

  I called Dan over to take a couple of pictures. Eddie wouldn’t allow any of my team in the room until she had removed the body and handed the scene over to me. It was only our relationship, and my standing in the police force, that had me in there with her as it was. Not that our relationship was common knowledge, and not that we had a relationship beyond fucking, regularly.

  “As soon as you’re ready to move her, I can get my team in,” I said, hoping that might speed things up a little.

  “We’re going to move her as is, I want to examine the cross as well. I’ve asked Dan to erect some tenting around the back of the van. I don’t think we need the spectators to see this.”

  Although the students and teachers had been kept well enough away from the entrance to the school, they could still see across the parking lot. Dean stood at the open door, waiting for permission to come in. He had his protective clothing on. I pointed to the word on the wall and watched him squint as he tried to read it.