Hello, Little Sparrow

by Jordan Jones

  The exhaustion crept up again, nearly as subtle as a sack of bricks knocking the wind out of me. I always felt physically tired after talking with Vivian, like I exerted some sort of unseen energy that was pertinent to my way of life.

  I gathered my thoughts and washed up, letting the stale stench of alcohol flow down the drains of the shower. The clock already said 8:20 a.m., but I still wasn’t in any hurry to leave.

  After opening the door, the neighbor’s door from across the hall had a family saying on it that read:

  Home is where the heart is.

  It felt insensitive for them to place that at eye level where I could see it every day.

  ***

  The office was buzzing when I arrived. Everyone was moving in different directions. Uniformed officers were scouring through documents at their desks. Detectives were searching their computers, displaying pictures of the Henson crime scene.

  I had a manila envelope on my desk that said CLOSED in large, red letters.

  It was the Maise case.

  Lieutenant Anderson closed it even though I wasn’t through investigating it. It was the ultimate slap in the face for any detective. It was seen as having your boss clean up after you messed up.

  But, I didn’t mess up. In fact, I was being extremely thorough on a case that I never wanted in the first place. Something more important came along and it’s my job to carry as light of a load as possible so I can maximize my efforts.

  He tried to help. Good for him.

  My ears turned red as I stared at my blank computer screen. My blank reflection looked flat and uncaring, but my mind said something else.

  Harlow gave me a glance from over her screen, but quickly looked back. She knew about the envelope and what it was.

  My fingers raced through my hair several times and I took a deep breath before looking at LT’s office door.

  “Why would he do this?” I asked. It was rhetorical, though I fully expected answers from several people.

  “I think he just wanted you to move on to the Henson case. You’re overworked, John,” Harlow said. Her eyes never left her screen.

  “Taking me into his office and talking to me about it is one thing, but to chastise me in front of my colleagues and partner,” I responded. “This is unacceptable.” My fist slammed down on my desk and I used the momentum to help me stand up. I grabbed the envelope and made my way to Anderson’s office.

  “Hey, Trotter!” Abraham said. “Hey, wait a minute!”

  I forcefully swung Anderson’s door open and slammed it shut behind me. He looked up in shock and answered the person on the phone. “Something just came up. I’ll have to call you back.”

  He abruptly hung up without taking his eyes off me and I held up the envelope, making sure he could see the huge red letters.

  “What the hell is this, Lieutenant?” I asked. My cheeks were on fire and my fingers were trembling.

  “Now, just hold on a second…”

  “No! I wasn’t finished with this case, sir!” The other officers and admins outside could definitely hear.

  “You’re out of line, Trotter,” he said. “That case needed closed the moment it opened and you know it.”

  “There was still work to be done. You weren’t in her room. You didn’t see what Abraham and I saw.”

  “Regardless, John. Unless you think someone pushed her off that bridge, it’s over. It was a case like all the other cases, and this case is closed.”

  I clenched my fist around the envelope, trying to remember what Dr. Allen used to tell me when the anger would rise within me. I closed my eyes and took three breaths and opened them.

  The red that I saw when I entered the room was more of a pink. It was lightening up a bit and it felt appropriate to talk again.

  My voice was more calm and collected as I found peace in the situation that wasn’t there before.

  “That’s what was wrong with this entire situation. About all these cases, sir. This wasn’t just a case to me. It was a kid. A kid struggling so bad that she felt like the only way out was to kill herself. I was looking into why she did it.”

  “But, that’s not our job, John. You know that,” he answered, matching my calmness. “Leave that stuff up to the scholars who write the college textbooks. You’re here to solve cases.”

  I looked over his shoulder to the picture of him and my father in Kuwait. Dad’s grin was infectious. I wished he still smiled like that.

  “Captain Trotter would’ve saw this one through,” I said. “I know that much.”

  I gently tossed the envelope on Anderson’s desk and walked out. The calamity inside caused a stir on the outside, forcing everyone to immediately continue doing whatever it was they were doing when I entered.

  Walking past Abraham’s desk, I motioned for him to follow me to the lab. He didn’t say a word, but put his hand on my back and gave me three small pats on our way.

  Benjamin was looking through a microscope at a piece of fabric taken from Henson’s house. He looked up after hearing his automatic door slide open.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have a little bit of news regarding The Sparrow case.”

  “Really?” Abraham asked. “We’re giving this psycho a name now?”

  He shrugged. “We need something to call him. The ‘Lincolnshire Lurker’ doesn’t have a ring to it.”

  “What did you find?” I asked, ignoring the quarrel.

  He turned and pulled an imaging sheet from out of a drawer and clipped it to the light board on the wall. The ridges from the fingerprint told the story of a man who struggled at the end of his life.

  “This was taken from the letter…or note you found in Henson’s mailbox. You can see the slit right through the center. His finger was cut and left this wonky print.”

  “So, our guy probably has a scar on one of his thumbs?” Abraham asked.

  “That’s what I thought, too. But, I checked the coroner’s report and he said Henson had a cut on his thumb. It’s a match.”

  “Wait — are you saying Henson put this in his own mailbox, or at least touched it before he died?”

  “I don’t think so. I think the killer put Henson’s thumbprint on it. For what reason? I don’t know.”

  “Seems like a lot of work just to add to an already enthralling calling-card,” Abraham added.

  “It does,” I said. “There has to be some meaning behind it. After seeing this, I have no doubt we’re looking at a killer who’s going to strike again.”

  Chapter Twelve

  As the main detective on the Henson case, it was a surprise when LT Anderson gave me the next day off. He did it as subtly as he could, likely feeling awful about how he embarrassed me in front of the other officers.

  I wasn’t holding grudges. If it were up to me, I would’ve added disciplinary action, but he saw the hurt in my eyes.

  I felt like I was crying out, but all that answered were echoes. My own voice…that’s all that answered in the darkness.

  The newspaper already ran articles on the killing on Pinewood Avenue. Certain parts of the article were wrong, and others were strangely right. Somehow the name Sparrow leaked in the local media, and I wasn’t so concerned about the name itself, but more so how it leaked.

  The letter…or note was left in the lab for fingerprinting and DNA extraction, so no one had much access to it.

  The Sparrow.

  Not the most menacing of names, but it had a ring to it. The psychopath would probably be interested in reading about his handiwork, so he would probably begin to mock us from the shadows.

  That’s what Alvin Dugger did.

  Dugger was a man who slaughtered three postal workers on the same day in consecutive years. He wasn’t right, but no identifiable mental illness other than anti-social personality disorder.

  No trauma in his background.

  He just hated postal workers, or so that’s what the media thought.

  I was just a uniform back then, working my beat on the w
est side of Lincolnshire when I pulled him over. Unknowing to me at the time, he was waiting for me inside his car with a sawed-off shotgun.

  When I approached from the passenger side, I left my fingerprint on his taillight and checked my Glock 19 as I always did.

  In nervous anticipation, his finger must’ve slipped on the trigger and shot prematurely, blowing out the passenger side window and knocking me on the ground.

  The concussion of the blast dazed me for several seconds as he sped off, and I reached my squad car and radioed it in.

  The rest was a blur, but it ended with Dugger riddled with bullets and me standing over him near a busy supermarket.

  After it was all said and done, I got my accommodation medal for valor in the line of duty and was promptly promoted to homicide. We took care of a lot of vice work and anything that caused death.

  Initially, I thought I deserved it for catching Dugger, but Captain Trotter needed someone with experience and a degree in criminology — and I had both.

  I was also his son, which only helped. Of course, I dealt with a variety of groans on my first few weeks of work, with people saying, “Treger should have gotten that promotion.”

  Treger soon retired from the force and went on to sell insurance in a rural New York farming town. And, sometimes I thought maybe he would’ve been better at it than I was. He certainly had the heart.

  An accidental catch and having your dad serve as Captain will help your career move in an upwards direction, but I wasn’t always sure it was the right direction.

  Dad always had the knack for finding the strengths in everyone; he learned it from years in the service prior to joining the police force, but, as ironic as it sounded, I wasn’t sure he found the strength of his own son.

  He was a resident of Lincolnshire psychiatric for the past five years, and their gates stood formidable overhead. My Charger buzzed along the long, windy driveway to the small parking lot.

  The building was made of old red brick, weathered with years of harsh Maine winters, blasted by the wind flowing forcefully from the Atlantic.

  I didn’t come enough and for good reason.

  As I stepped out of the car, a large, older woman exited the front doors sobbing into her handkerchief. She passed me as I stepped in.

  The short, wrinkled lady with glasses on the edge of her nose didn’t bother looking up from her computer.

  “Name?”

  “John Trotter.”

  She looked at the computer with obvious confusion. The screen was outdated by ten years and it’s user by many more.

  “We don’t have a John Trotter here. Are you sure you’re at the right place?”

  “No — I’m John Trotter. I’m here to see my father.”

  She sighed and did some clicking. “Oh, yes. I see it here. You’re early. Go sit in the waiting room and we’ll call ya.”

  I narrowed my brows. The appointment was for 10:00 a.m. and the clock read 9:53. I shook my head and sat down next to a younger couple. We exchanged smiles as the dripping from the ceiling landed safely in a bucket placed in the middle of the floor.

  “Trotter,” an orderly called from the door. “You’ll be in the dayroom. Follow me.”

  Entering the dayroom, it was pleasantly calm. Residents played board games with each other and there was a small, skinny man calling out bingo numbers from the corner.

  There were three residents playing along. There was an assistant going around to each of their cards, helping them select the correct space.

  My father sat in the corner looking out the window like he always was. He saw countless cloudy, rainy days sitting in front of the same window. It didn’t matter if he knew I was coming or not.

  The orderly turned and left me with my father.

  I took the seat next to him and looked out the window. My gaze followed his and it was transfixed on a small rosebush blowing in the wind. The ends of his lips were slightly curled up in satisfaction.

  “Dad, I made it. Just like I said I would,” I said. I was always a little uneasy when breaking the ice with him for the first time.

  “Oh, hi son,” he said, giving me a slight pat on the back. He never took his eyes off that bush.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  “I’ve had some good days and some bad ones. Some outweigh others. Just depends on what my mind wants think or do.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured him on the roof again. He screamed at the firefighters below to “let me fly, you demons!”

  “How are they treating you here?” I asked, placing my water bottle on the end table. “The staff seems nice enough.”

  “They’re good to me here. I’m glad I’m here; let’s just put it that way. Who knows what would’ve happened out there. I could hardly take care of myself.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So,” he started. “How’s Detective Trotter doing these days? It’s been a while, son.”

  “It’s going well,” I said, lying through my lips. He could tell, too.

  “No it’s not. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to bring it up in here,” I said, looking around.

  “Come on, John. Just tell me. No one can hear. You struggling with some police work?” He had the knack for reading people.

  “Something like that,” I responded.

  “Then spill it.”

  I cleared my throat and said, “I think a serial killer is about to start in Lincolnshire. Or, he already started. It was a random killing that we all think is about to turn into much more.”

  “Hmm…what makes you think there will be more?” He dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief.

  “He left us a note,” I said, pulling out a copy and handing it to him. “I could get fired for showing you this, but I need your input. I’m losing my mind trying to wrap my head around what I’m dealing with here.”

  He looked at me with a disapproving look on his face. Maybe mentioning losing my mind in a psychiatric facility wasn’t the most sensitive thing I could say.

  “Let me look here,” he said. He read over the note several times, each time giving a new grunt. Could be interpreted as both approving and disapproving.

  It was hard to read him.

  “What do you think?”

  “Sparrow…” he started. “You see I know this type of character.”

  “Really? You know him just by reading this letter.”

  “Oh, sure.” He pointed to different parts of the letter. “It’s a signal. Only my kind can decipher this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Each day, a tiny sparrow flies around the courtyard in the back. It flies around and around and I always found amusement in watching it. We were connected. I felt it’s aura, and it felt mine. It knew what I was thinking at all times and we communicated daily. It felt when I had pain and I felt its pain. Then, one afternoon I watched it fly into the window of my room. Out of all the windows, and there are dozens, it chose mine. Ever since then, I felt like we became one.”

  “Dad, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I am also The Sparrow. You are the spawn of me, so you are also The Sparrow. Thank you for bringing me this letter. It means more to me than you’ll ever know. Somehow in the midst of all the chaos in this world, you knew we were all sparrows, just flying aimlessly into windows. I really hope yours opens soon, son.”

  He cupped my hand inside of his and a tear left his eye. I came to the realization that he was no longer there like he was for the first thirty seconds…or even the first thirty years.

  His struggle was more than he knew, but he reveled in it. Though it was obvious his medications wore off, I found solace in his confusion. I had the overwhelming feeling that he was OK wherever he was.

  But, I struggled more with my own battles than ever before.

  Nepotism was a real thing. It got me the job, and I’ve been skating along with my father’s name in tow. Now, he sat before me a shell of his former self, unable
to care for himself in any way.

  It wasn’t only that I modeled my career after him, but my entire life.

  What was I to do now?

  My safety net was cut with a machete in a hundred different places and a pit of spikes spired below, ready to impale me should I slip.

  All the sudden the pressure overcame me and I stood up.

  “What’s wrong son? Sit down and enjoy this movement with me.”

  “Movement?”

  “You don’t hear it? Bahm’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s so graceful, but it hits you hard when you least expect it, but need it the most.”

  He was hallucinating again, and I was there to watch it unfold. I didn’t know what to do in those situations in the past, and still didn’t during the visit.

  A nurse came by and introduced herself, and I skipped my part.

  “Something is wrong with Dad. He’s not making sense.”

  “Mr. Trotter,” she said to Dad. “Mr. Trotter, how are you doing today, sir?”

  He spoke incoherently about sparrows and Bahm, though his facial expression remained the same from when I walked in.

  She looked down at her chart and back up to me. “Well, it’s three days early for his injection, but I think the psychiatrist would push it up. He’s having fairly significant delusions and hallucinations right now, Mr. Trotter. You might want to schedule around his injections. He’s much more with it around then.”

  I nodded and helped my dad to his feet. She walked him out of the dayroom and down the hallway. He was only sixty-three, but was frail enough to pass for eighty-five.

  I had lost my father the day he was on the roof, and I lost myself much earlier.

  There was nothing left for me to do but to move on without him, though that seemed an impossible task.

  His illness grabbed me by the throat and squeezed, and I lost my breath much like Henson. The Sparrow had ahold of me, but he didn’t know it. I was a lost little boy with nowhere to hide.

  It was the perfect time for The Sparrow to exist in Lincolnshire.

  They were a sleepy little town that relied on me to fix their killer problem.

  It was the perfect time for The Sparrow to strike.