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

by Tracie Podger

  “What about Louis?” I asked.

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t angry with him. I mean, you’d gone to all that trouble to protect him. His boredom, his complete disregard for his situation, and for you, Mich, well, that was just plain rude.”

  I sighed, and nodded, as if in agreement. I made a point to look at the cell door and check my watch, as if I was on a time limit.

  “Where did your dad live, Thomas? I think Mom had some photographs of a place; I can’t picture it. But I bet they’re from the days she met your dad. I’ll have to find them and show them to you.”

  “Sandford, and I’d like to see them,” he said, not realizing he’d given me an important piece of information.

  “There’s something that still bothers me, how did the window get broken?” I asked.

  “The window?”

  “In the hall, one window was smashed.”

  “Ah, the window. Dumb fuck that was Dan decided Casey would look better surrounded by light from the window. It didn’t hold the weight of the cross, I guess.”

  I stood and smoothed down my jeans. “I have to go, I shouldn’t have stayed this long.”

  Thomas placed the tray with his long forgotten, congealed meal to one side. He stood, shuffling awkwardly.

  “Will you come and see me, when this is all done?” he asked.

  “I don’t know that the prison will allow that, and like I said, I have to move on now.”

  Again, his lips twitched ever so slightly. He nodded. “It’s a shame really, that it got to this point before we met.”

  “It is, so much heartache. Can I ask one thing?” I took a step toward him and although it killed me to do so, I placed my hands on his biceps.

  I felt him shiver, and my stomach roiled at the thought my touch excited him.

  “Where is she, Thomas?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “I can’t tell you that. They’ll kill her, Mich, if they think you’re coming for her. They’ll kill me.”

  “She is okay?” I whispered.

  For the first time, I saw just a hint of compassion in his eyes. “I don’t know, Mich. She’s alive, or she was when I handed her over. She’s a brave, tough woman. She didn’t cry much. I guess she knew it was always her fate to return. She left so many years ago, ran away, I believe, like a lot of them do. But we track them down, eventually. They have to return home, Mich, they’re needed by the elders.”

  I made a conscious effort not to squeeze my fingers, to gouge flesh from his arms. I knew exactly how the fucking elders needed the women. Instead, I nodded.

  “Take care, Thomas,” I said. Then I walked away.

  The first thing I did was to walk to the bathroom. I scrubbed my hands like a surgeon would, watching the redness spread as my skin protested. I splashed cold water over my face, cupped my hand under the faucet, and filled my mouth as the need to cleanse the vessel that had delivered the bullshit overwhelmed me.

  “There is a building registered to James Romney in Sandford,” Corey said, as he pushed through the door.

  “Where is Sandford?”

  “Couple of hours away, a small town.”

  I nodded as I looked at my reflection in the mirror. That past couple of hours had taken its toll on me.

  “I didn’t get the answer I wanted,” I said, quietly.

  “I know, but you got enough. Mich, he was never going to give up Eddie’s location because he can’t; I don’t believe he actually knows where they are. In time, we will find out, I’m sure of that.”

  I didn’t answer, I wasn’t sure Corey was correct. I’d have loved nothing more than to beat the shit out of him, to have caused him so much pain, but then I remembered what he’d said. What could I inflict that would be worse than what his father had done to him?

  Did I feel sorry for him? No. I had not one ounce of compassion, or empathy, for him. Whatever happened to him as a child, should have no bearing on how he behaved as an adult. He made a choice to kill those kids; he made a choice to kidnap Eddie. If my mother had been brought up in the cult, there was no guarantee that she wasn’t raped, beaten; yet she had grown to be a wonderful human being. I let a tear roll down my cheek as I thought of her.

  I wasn’t someone who sat by a grave; I mourned her internally. I thought of her often. And I was glad she was dead before she got to meet the monster she’d produced. Nurture, not nature. She would have been devastated to learn how Thomas turned out.

  I wiped my face on a paper towel, straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. At least Corey had a new location to work with. I walked from the bathroom and headed to the chief’s office. He was sat behind his desk with his head in his hands. He looked up as I gently tapped on the glass in his office door. He waved me in.

  “I’m going to give you two days, Mich. It’s the maximum I can do.”

  I nodded. My confession in that cell wasn’t something he’d be able to ignore. My saving grace was that my crime was committed in Canada. I’d need to be arrested in the U.S. then extradited. What the chief was offering me was a chance to avoid jail time. A cop in prison was never a good idea.

  “I don’t know how successful extradition will be, your grandma is dead, it was twenty fucking years ago, but I have to report it,” he added, with a sigh.

  “I’ll talk to a lawyer,” I said.

  I held out my hand to the old man I’d worked under for many years. Despite my annoyance at the use of my surname, I had the greatest respect for him. He stood, took my hand in both of his, and just squeezed.

  “Good luck, Mich.”

  I left his office and walked back to the incident room. I stood for a moment, just looking around. Pete was on the phone; Tim was tapping away at his computer. Samantha was running around with a stack of paperwork in her hand. Dean looked up at me.

  “Got time for a coffee?” he asked. I nodded.

  We walked to the diner opposite the police station, and settled into a booth.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, to be honest. I’ll talk to a lawyer; see what the chances of rearrest are. The chief gave me two days before he reports me, I guess.”

  “Two days to do what?”

  “Leave. Get a head start, let’s see how good you are at tracking me.” I added a chuckle.

  “I can’t imagine anyone taking up the case, Mich, if it came to it.”

  “You’d have no choice, and it’s fine. I walked into that cell knowing what I needed to do. If I could connect with him on a murderer’s level, I hoped it might make him open up more. He didn’t, and he did.”

  “How do you feel about him?” It was a strange question for Dean to ask.

  “I don’t feel a thing for him. I’m beyond hate, I think. I’m numb. I know where Eddie is; I just don’t know the location. Want to know something? I hope she’s already dead. I know what that cult is capable of.”

  Dean didn’t reply, I guess there were no words to articulate a response to my statement.

  Two mugs were placed on the table that separated us, a waitress stood with a pot of coffee. She smiled as she poured. Dean and I sat in silence for a while, we sipped on our coffees, and I looked out the window, watching people go about their business. The news that we had a suspect in custody seemed to have brought the town back to life. For a while, people were scared to venture out. If only people realized, someone in custody, is a long way from someone convicted and in prison. I knew Corey would be meeting with the DA that day, discussing, arguing over what charges could be placed on Thomas. What will secure a conviction and the longest jail term.

  “Where will you go?” Dean asked.

  “To get Eddie back.” No matter what, dead or alive, I would bring her home, one day.

  My emotions were all over the place. I wanted to hate Mich, but I loved him. When he’d touched me, my stomach fluttered. Was that normal? Should I love another man? I sat on the bunk, staring at the cell door for ages after he had left. I could smell his c
ologne, I wanted to drag the sheet from the bunk’s mattress and hold it to my face; I wanted to inhale him. My mind was in a whirl. Thoughts of what I’d done, what could have been had I chosen a different path. I’d spent years and years building up that hate and that had dissolved in seconds. I felt lost without it, hollow. It was all I held onto during the dark days and nights. When I looked at Mich, I saw myself. We shared so many features, the same color eyes; the same shaped nose. I guess we got that from our mother.

  His words ran through my mind, over and over. How he felt when he killed my father was similar to how I’d felt killing those kids. I’d meant what I’d said. If he hadn’t killed my father first, I would have. For the first time in my life, I felt sorrow. Sorrow for a non-existent childhood. Sorrow for not knowing my mother, other than the odd distant stare at her. And for the first time, I wanted to know why. Why had she given me up? I knew I’d be able to find those answers. I wondered whether I’d share them with Mich or not.

  Mich, or rather, Michael Curtis, had the life I never did. I’d harbored such resentment for that, for the longest of time. He’d taken his father’s surname. I blinked; he’d taken his father’s surname… Didn’t that make Mich the bastard child? Was I the legitimate one?

  Confusion flooded my brain. Memories became blurred; I suddenly found it hard to distinguish between reality and the fantasy I’d concocted. I stood and banged on the cell door. A small metal panel was slid across.

  “I need to see Mich,” I said.

  “He’s not here,” came the reply, the panel was slid closed.

  I continued to bang until my fists bled.

  “I said, he’s not here. He’s gone,” I heard.

  All my life I’d been told I was a bastard child, born out of legal wedlock. Or was it that I was just a bastard? My hands began to shake, my body convulsed. I hugged my arms around my waist and sat back on the bunk. I could see a shadow move across the spy hole in the door, someone was watching me. Anger rode over me like a tsunami. I stood and screamed. I upturned the bunk, kicking the mattress across the floor. I pulled out my cock and pissed over it, and up the door. I was losing it.

  “We're moving him in a couple of hours. Dean’s going to ride with them,” Corey said, as he walked me to my car.

  The local prison had a holding cell available until his appearance in court. They would send a truck to collect him. Corey would continue to interview him, at the prison, right until the last minute.

  “And the good news is, we found the workshop,” he added.

  “What was in there?”

  “A scythe, wood, tools, a cross.”

  “Enough evidence to back up the confession?”

  “I think so, I hope the DA will agree. He didn’t clean the scythe, Mich,” he said, with a smile.

  I smiled back, and then nodded. If the blood matched Dale’s, at least that was one irrefutable charge. Corey’s phone pinged, alerting him to a text. He looked at it, then back at me.

  “He’s losing it, finally,” he said.

  I furrowed my brows. “He’s freaking out in his cell, screaming out the word bastard.”

  “Reality finally hitting?”

  “Or coming down from the high he’s been on. Didn’t you see his pupils? He had to be doped to the fucking eyeballs.”

  “I hadn’t studied him that hard, pretended to, though.”

  For a moment there was silence. Corey looked around him. He reached into his pants pocket.

  “I want you to take this,” he said. He handed over a small black cell. “Untraceable.”

  I pocketed the cell. “I’ll check in, every now and again, when I have something for you,” I said.

  “You’re going after them?”

  I nodded. “I have to find her, Corey.”

  He looked up to the sky and then sighed. He placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Without another word, he walked back into the station. I stood for a moment, watching the world pass me by. For the first time in my life, I was without a job, without a definite plan. I wouldn’t even hang around to witness the cremation of my mother, the scattering of her ashes. I’d leave instructions; lock up the house and leave. I started my car and drove slowly home. I stopped at an ATM and cleaned out my checking account.

  I pulled off the shirt I’d worn and set about to clean up the house. I washed down all traces of forensics. Why? I wasn’t sure. When I was done, I grabbed the Gabriel file and headed to my bedroom. I pulled out a gym bag and packed a few clothes, some toiletries, and the file. I added Eddie’s revolver and unlocked my gun cabinet. I added another revolver to the bag, my trusted Glock.

  It was as I sat on the bed, I thought. I pictured Thomas in my mind, I heard his words—When this is all over; will you come and see me?

  A shiver ran over me when I recalled the slight smirk, the tilt to his lips as if he had a secret.

  “Fuck!” I screamed and then jumped up. I grabbed the gym bag, my phone, and keys before running for the door. I hadn’t bothered to put on a t-shirt.

  Thomas wasn’t going to jail and he knew it.

  I drove at high speed, running every red light, keeping my hand on the horn to encourage the cars in front to move out of my way. I cursed not having a blue light to aid me. I screeched to a halt at the station, and leaving my door open, I ran into reception.

  “Thomas, has he gone?” I asked. An officer, looking startled behind the counter, nodded.

  I grabbed the clipboard from next to him and ran my eyes down the list.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” I shouted. “Call Corey, now!”

  Thomas James Romney – vehicle T334 – 1700hrs – Driver Richard Midley – Escort, Dean Saunders

  My body froze on one word. Midley.

  Corey came running down the corridor, followed by the chief. I held the clipboard toward him.

  “Fuck! Who knew this?” he shouted. The station silenced.

  “Want to fill me in?” the chief asked. Corey showed him the clipboard.

  “The driver, Richard Midley, he’s a cult member. Half-brother of Thomas’ uncle.”

  “How long ago did they leave?” I asked.

  “Half-hour, no more,” the officer at reception said.

  I turned and ran for my car. “Wait up,” I heard. Corey ran after me.

  We were pulling away before he’d even got his door closed. “Grab a map,” I said, waving at the glove box.

  I knew the route to the prison but wanted to check any side roads, anywhere a diversion could be taken. Thomas was never going to arrive at prison; it had been part of his plan.

  “Take a left,” Corey said. I didn’t have time to indicate, I swerved in front of a car, and the driver honked his horn in protest.

  “This takes us cross-country,” he said, looking up from the map.

  We were banking on Midley needing somewhere discrete to make an exchange from the truck to another vehicle. I prayed for Dean.

  “Why use his real name?” I said, concentrating on the road ahead.

  “Huh?”

  “Midley, why use his real name?”

  “Taunt us, who fucking knows? They think they are above reproach, Mich, there’s no fucking logic with any of them. Right here, this takes us out on Route 50.”

  I spun the steering wheel so violently, the tires screeched and Corey was thrown onto the door. He righted himself and retrieved the map that had fallen to the floor. We were now on the most desolate highway in the U.S. A lonely road: a perfect road for Thomas and Midley.

  Ahead I could see a dark grey truck parked on the roadside. My heart hammered in my chest. I pushed my foot further down on the gas trying to gain as much speed as possible.

  We pulled up behind and already I could see the rear doors slightly open. I grabbed a gun from my bag. Corey released his from his holster and we slowly climbed from the car, using the doors to shield us. There was no sound. Corey crept along the side of the vehicle; I pulled open the rear door.

  I dropped my gun to the floor
and raised my hands to my lips, as if in prayer.

  My friend, my partner for so many years, was sitting on a hard wooden bench staring back at me. Except his eyes didn’t see. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead, along the bridge of his nose and had dripped to his lip and chin. That trickle had come from a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. I wanted to close my eyes, to unsee. I wanted to turn back time and have killed Thomas while I had every chance to. I wanted to do anything other than see Dean dead in the back of that truck.

  “Gone,” I heard. “Fuck!” Corey said as he came to stand beside me.

  “They killed him,” I said, as if the sight in front of us wasn’t obvious enough.

  I hadn’t spoken a word as I was led the rear of the station, still handcuffed, and helped to climb the three metal steps into the back of a prison truck. Dean sat opposite me. I could see the sweat begin to form on his forehead from the heat of the tin can we were locked into.

  “Are you comfortable?” I asked, watching him shuffle.

  “Yep.”

  I leaned back against the wall of the truck and closed my eyes.

  I’d had Corey, and the officers at the station, believe I was totally exhausted by my meltdown. They had found me sobbing on my knees, remorseful words and lies flowed from my mouth. I was a fucking amazing actor and I wanted to chuckle. I had to keep up the pretense. I was a beaten man; terrified of the next step I was about to embark on. I willed my eyes to let more tears flow.

  “I wanted to see Mich, one last time. I wanted to say how sorry I was,” I whispered.

  “The only thing he needs to hear is where Eddie is,” Dean answered.

  “If I tell you, will it help my, you know, sentence?”

  “I can’t promise that, but often, yes it does.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes as if thinking. “Tell him, Richford.”

  I watched Dean nod, a smile formed on his face and his eyes sparkled as if he’d just learned the location of the Holy Grail. But like the Holy Grail, he’d never get to find it.