by Jordan Jones
The paper felt heavy in my hand as I placed it down on the counter top. It had grown to weigh as much as several notebooks piled on top of each other. My head began to throb and I rubbed my temple, as the other officers, now including LT and Abraham, stood silent in the kitchen.
I felt dizzy and uncoordinated, so I grabbed the counter.
“What do we make of this?” Abraham said, looking me directly in the eyes. We both knew the other was still slightly intoxicated and our jobs could be on the line.
“It’s obviously from the same perspective,” Harlow said. My stomach was fighting me and it was winning the battle.
“Yeah, but who are these characters?” Abraham said. “Is The Sparrow our killer? Is the writer our killer? Is The Sparrow his child?” My stomach was punching my other organs. The last glass of scotch finally made its way to areas of my bloodstream, giving me a second wave of intoxication. But, this was no ordinary feeling.
My stomach took a turn for the worse.
“I don’t know, DeAngelo,” Harlow said. “I’m not going to just keep guessing here.”
I pushed passed both on my way out the door into the front lawn. Two uniformed officers jumped back as I ran between them and fell to the ground, throwing up everything I consumed from the day before out on Burnley’s front lawn.
After dry heaving for several more seconds my gaze panned up, directly into the local news camera on the street.
“And that’s a cut,” the woman said.
Chapter Fifteen
The dream was too long.
I was falling into a pit of total darkness until I arrived at my destination. My surroundings were typical of a dystopian novel, with armed guards perched on every corner, making their presence known by shouting at each passerby.
Their language was hard to decipher, though it sounded western European. They shouted and hit citizens with the butts of their guns until a huge explosion caught my attention from behind me. I couldn’t turn or move despite screaming at myself from a distance. My feet were stuck in the cobble-made road as I stared at the guards. Their terror stretched across each of their faces, as they looked over my shoulder into the deep dark behind me.
I couldn’t turn around, and I surely didn’t want to. The monster behind me crept closer as I continued to scream at myself through a window several galaxies away. My voice traveled mere inches before it collapsed in the weight of my despair. It was a far cry from the light-years it needed to go, forming only coherent sentences in my mind.
The destruction all around me only shook me more as the creature came closer. The guards dropped their weapons and ran, but they too became frozen in time, unaware that their indecision would lead to a torment they could’ve never imagined.
The guards all burst into flames as I watched in disbelief, acknowledging the sheer unreliability of what my brain was processing. It didn’t seem real, though I somehow knew it was.
I gave one last pathetic scream from the window as the monster closed in the last few meters and then I woke up.
My feet felt swollen from the previous night and my stomach was unsettled. It was nearly three in the afternoon, nearly twelve hours removed from making a complete fool of myself in front of local news cameras. It was a weak showing to the community, and they would no doubt run the footage.
I would be mocked as a seasoned police detective that couldn’t handle a messy crime scene, though they would never know the truth.
LT Anderson confronted me soon after the cameras stopped rolling. He knew I was still drunk from the night before, and he pointed out Abraham was, too. I couldn’t even muster a response, though I recognized how incredibly awkward it was to have two detectives under his command show up inebriated during the most serious investigations in the city’s history.
He gave us a ride home and I staggered into the elevator, scooped a couple sleeping pills in the palm of my hand, and passed out. He dropped my car off soon after.
His anger didn’t affect me so much; that, I was used to. The disappointment in his voice, however, did. It reminded me of my father, whom, without a shadow of a doubt, was disappointed in me more times than I could fathom. His sternness and authoritative demeanor offered little sympathy when I needed it most.
No wonder he got along with LT Anderson so well.
I quickly showered and checked my phone. Although the events of the early morning elicited many thoughts in my head, no one reached out to me during the night, or day.
I still felt sick, so I officially diagnosed myself with a stomach bug mixed with minor alcohol poisoning. I’ve dealt with both simultaneously before, but it didn’t make it any easier.
My first instinct was to just go to the office and act like nothing happened, and then I thought to just call in sick. It was an unspoken rule that if you had an ongoing, and serious, investigation you didn’t call in sick.
It was unheard of.
I needed to be at my desk and face whatever hell awaited me there. I grabbed my coat and took the elevator downstairs and entered the parking garage. After sending Abraham a quick text about leaving for the office, I got in the Charger and started it up.
“Turn it off,” said a voice from behind me. My heart dropped into my stomach, as I froze solid in the driver’s seat. “If you make me say it again, you won’t have the chance to turn it off.”
I quickly turned the car off. My eyes subconsciously panned down to the bottom of my console where I kept my Glock 19, but it was gone.
“Don’t worry,” the voice from the back said. “I also took the gun from the glove box…and the knife under your passenger seat.”
My hands tensed up on the steering wheel. “Who are you?”
“I am exactly who you want me to be, Detective.”
“What do you want?” I said, my words trailing off at the end.
“There’s something special about you, Detective,” he said. “Something I need to know.” I didn’t answer, though my heart was racing in my chest. I was almost certain he could hear it as well. “Do you always desecrate your crime scenes?”
My brows narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I destroyed a poor man’s life without remorse, yes, but I didn’t make a spectacle out of it. Are you always so undignified?”
I kept my mouth closed for several seconds. Was he talking about the news camera crew last night? Did they already air it?
“I want you to answer me,” he said, his voice growing more aggressive with each word.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, hesitantly.
“Let me make it easier for you,” he said, his voice calming down slightly. “You threw up in the front yard of a house of the man I killed. It was caught on camera. That was my work in there. You disrespected everything I’ve worked for.”
“Worked for?” I asked. I blinked a few times before I realized it was The Sparrow in my backseat. “You’re The Sparrow?”
“Like I said, I’m whoever you want me to be.” He repositioned himself in the backseat and pressed something against my back. “You probably noticed Mr. Burnley died from a shotgun blast to the back of the head. I have that same shotgun here with me and it’s aimed at your spine.”
“What do you want?”
“What I want is simple. I want you to call off this investigation…sabotage it, something. Just stop doing what you’re doing and all will be in order.”
“I’m a cop,” I said, more confidently. “I have to investigate crimes, especially homicides. You have to know that.”
“Let’s not play coy here, Detective. It’s obvious by now that my victims, and I do use that term lightly, have a special…history.”
I was silent again. I knew Henson was on the registry, but I wasn’t able to look into Burnley yet. I was certain the office already had him ID’d. I quickly came to the conclusion that we’d find the same about him.
“You’re not this dense…that I know,” he said, mockingly.
“Then, that mean
s you have to spare me,” I said, unconvincingly. “You’re targeting those with a history as sexual abuse perpetrators. That’s not me. Don’t you weirdoes have some set of principles you have to follow?” I clinched my eyes shut, fully expecting the shotgun to rip me in half.
He exhaled heavily through his nose and whispered something under his breath. He then responded to himself a few seconds after.
“You know, Detective, I do hold principles close to my chest. It’s obvious that I kill the vilest known to all of mankind. But know this: you hold my alleged principles much closer to your mind than I do mine. Sometimes its hard to act on what we truly believe through all the fog.” I then felt a sharp pain through my shoulder blade, and looked down to my right to see a blade piercing through my coat.
I cried out in agony as he slowly retracted the blade. I placed my left hand over the wound and screamed out again, unable to stop the immense pain.
“Do not make me come back here,” he said and opened the door, slamming it shut. The blood was pouring out rapidly and I wasn’t able to stop it with just my hand so I started up the car and threw it in reverse, smashing the car behind me.
I swerved through traffic on my way to St. Andrews Hospital, nearly three miles from my home. People honked and tossed up the finger in my general direction. I got the attention of a traffic cop on the side of the road and he quickly pulled behind me as I turned onto the freeway.
I winced and moved my head down to my right side, somehow taking some pressure off the wound. I screamed out once more as I turned onto the off-ramp and quickly in the hospital parking lot. The wound pulsated with a pain so excruciating I almost passed out after slamming on the brakes under the emergency room awning.
The officer jumped out of his car and drew his weapon at me, but when he looked in, he saw my condition and helped me out.
I grabbed my shoulder again, applying as much pressure as my blood-loss would allow. A nurse in scrubs came and sat me on a wheelchair and the blurring of faces was the last I saw before I saw the thing behind me in my dream.
Chapter Sixteen
My body lie numb on the hospital bed for hours.
Although I was conscious, I couldn’t open my eyes. I could hear LT Anderson and Abraham’s voices coming from the shadows behind my eyelids, dancing as silhouettes against the deep black.
A nurse came in twice during my consciousness and checked my vitals. The cold steel of the stethoscope and various other medical instruments pierced through my nerves, helping me feel the world outside my own mind. It took several minutes of this state for me to realize where I was, and several more before figuring out what happened.
I wiggled my toes in an obvious, awkward fashion so as to raise as much suspicion as possible. Abraham made a comment about me moving and the room grew silent.
I wiggled them again.
The commotion grew more and more as LT Anderson called for a nurse. After she arrived, she once again placed the cold metal against my pale, newly sensitive skin.
“Mr. Trotter,” she said softly in my ear. “Mr. Trotter, if you can hear me, can you move your fingers?”
I tried my hardest and got no reaction at first, but that soon changed and the room erupted. It was hard to tell how many, or who, was in the room with me.
I started to gain more and more feeling in my body, as the morphine started to wear off. They had me sedated with some heavy medication that made it difficult to regain my motor skills quickly.
“I think he’s finally waking up,” Abraham’s voice called out. “It’s been three days and he’s with us again.”
The nurse came to my aid and attempted to help me sit up; LT Anderson was on the other side…this distinction was easy to make with the rich Lonsdale cigar stench on his shirt collar.
“There ya go,” he said, sitting me in an upright position. My eyes were fully open and my mind fully clear. The bandage covering my right shoulder was bulky, giving way to the notion that the wound was severe.
“Someone please tell me what’s going on,” I said. My voice was extremely hoarse and dry. The nurse handed me a small plastic cup with water.
“You came in with a knife wound in your right shoulder,” the nurse explained. “It entered your shoulder blade, went through your subscapularis muscle, and out the other side. It was just an inch above your lung. You nearly bled to death.”
“Wait…” I sat and looked at the ceiling. The sky on the other side must’ve been bright blue with clouds intermittently sputtering about. It was a long while since I fully appreciated my surroundings. “The Sparrow did this.”
“What?” Abraham said.
“Miss,” LT Anderson interrupted. “This has turned into official police business. There’s an ongoing investigation and it seems here our boy was a victim. Can you give us privacy so we can talk?” His professionalism trounced any contempt he had holdover from our verbal scuffle in the office.
I appreciated it.
“I’ll go tell the doctor he is awake,” the nurse said, then walked out.
“How do you know it was our guy?” Abraham asked.
“Because he told me,” I said, wincing slightly as the pain began to creep into my shoulder.
“But, how do we know it’s him?”
“Because, who else would do this to an investigating officer on an active case?” I replied.
Abraham put his hand up by his chin. “How in the world does he know you’re the lead detective on the case?”
“The cameras,” LT Anderson said. “They shot live on that night in front of Geoff Burnley’s house. The killer must’ve seen it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did, and he didn’t like me puking all over his scene. He had the audacity to ask me if I was always that undignified.”
“Pretty rich coming from someone who have brutally slaughtered two innocent men,” Abraham said.
“In his eyes, they aren’t innocent,” I replied. “They were both sex offenders on the registry. They signed their death warrant as soon as they committed those crimes, no matter how long ago they were.”
“Why didn’t he kill you?” LT Anderson said. He cleared his throat, “I mean, with you out of the picture, we’d be scrambling to find a new lead detective and that would buy him some more time.”
I sat back softly on the bed. The pillow acted as extra support, though it was slightly pink with blood leaking through the bandage.
“He has a way of doing what he does,” I said. “My hunch is that he can act any certain way for any occasion and only acts like a psychopath when the time is right.”
Abraham sat back and sighed. Everyone deserted the joyful moment quickly.
“And,” I continued. “He now has two extra pistols and a combat knife.” A look of shame fell across my face and I looked down to my feet barely hanging on the bed.
“What did he say to you,” LT Anderson asked, throwing my last comment to the wayside.
“He wants me to sabotage the case somehow. That tells me that somehow we’re getting close.”
Abraham looked at me disapprovingly. “All we have are pages from a notebook written by someone we don’t know. He didn’t kill the victims in any special way, just brutally. He is an impulsive psychopath that can’t control himself or his urges.”
“I think he controlled them pretty well up to this point,” LT Anderson interjected. “These are the first “vigilante” murders I’ve witness here in twenty-seven years on the line.” He straightened his collar. “Now, if you’re telling me that he moved here within the past month and started killing people like this, I don’t know how much of that I’ll believe.”
“No more believable than him waiting until he was a fully grown man acting on these urges,” Abraham struck back.
“We don’t know that,” LT Anderson said, his voice growing more aggressive.
I closed my eyes and saw the blade enter my shoulder once again. The pierce wasn’t just a physical pain anymore, but proof that I wasn’t safe at my h
ome.
“Please believe me when I say this,” I started. “I believe he won’t kill those who haven’t abused children. That was the vibe I was given. It was a tense moment, yes, but I still felt like he didn’t want to kill me.”
“The nurse even said, you could’ve bled out,” LT Anderson said. “Then his principles would be thrown out the window.”
“I don’t think he meant to,” I said. “It would’ve gone against what he’s trying to do.”
“There’s no reasoning with this type of person,” Abraham said. “You of all people should know that.” I remembered firing the shot that killed Dugger, right in the left shoulder blade. The bullet curved slightly upon impact and struck his heart as a few more bullets followed.
Abraham was right, Alvin Dugger was a psychopath and The Sparrow should have been no different.
But, he was…I saw the difference in plain sight.
“There was something different about him,” I said. “I told him that he wouldn’t kill me because I didn’t fit his M.O. He told me that, basically, it was hard to keep principles in difficult situations. I think someone should be writing this down.”
“On it,” LT Anderson said. He was already writing a few sentences before prompted. “What did he say exactly?”
“He told me that ‘it was difficult to act on what we truly believe through all the fog.’” I cleared my throat. It became more hoarse and sore the more I talked.
“That sounds strange,” Abraham said. “So basically, he’s willing to go outside his beliefs at any given moment…if he thinks it’s right?”
I shrugged, causing a sharp pain to reach my lower back. “I don’t know.”
LT Anderson interjected. “It seems like he has a set of guidelines, but is willing to ignore them in a moments notice.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But, he could have stabbed me in the throat and ended it. I don’t think he’d do it.”
LT Anderson finished writing down in his notebook. Abraham contacted the precinct and had a few officers take control of my car for forensics.
