by Jordan Jones
“Then, when my boss gets on my case about it, I’ll have to send these weekly emails about the health of the fish and which ones I think are growing faster and bigger. What breeds are doing better and whatnot. I’m sorry to talk about work on a Sunday like this…ugh.” She spun her fork around on her empty plate, which held the biscuits she raved about. “I feel myself rambling.”
“No, no…it’s OK,” Brooks answered. “I like hearing you talk. I am always confined to my office and greenhouse. I never knew how everything else worked at the plant.”
“It’s not anymore exciting, believe me.”
“Watching fish swim around is much more exciting than watching plants grow. It’s not like I can feed a soybean sprout and watch it wiggle,” Brooks said, letting out a small, almost genuine laugh.
Mae laughed out loud at the joke and it helped Brooks feel more like he belonged more than ever. Madison’s presence was beginning to fade away, so Brooks kept the momentum by telling her more about how he works long hours and doesn’t see any of the results, because Dr. Leggons cuts the plants to be studied and Brooks doesn’t hear about how the studies are going unless the plant was ineffective.
Mae reciprocated and let Brooks talk.
It was strange.
The conversation went on until the food arrived and the waiter set each plate softly on the table in front of them, reminding that each plate was likely hot enough to leave a burn.
“If you need anything else, please let me know,” he said with a smile and left.
“You know, Brooks,” Mae said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when you picked me up, but you’re really easy to talk to.”
It was a surprise to Brooks, too. He hadn’t held a casual conversation lasting longer than three consecutive sentences in several years, and it felt good.
The lobster was formidable on his plate, but the videos showed Brooks how to properly open it up and not tear up the tender meat inside. Ripping apart the shell was the easy part…keeping from stabbing through the meat would pose a problem.
He got flustered and put his fork down, grabbing a hush puppy with his bare hand.
“So, tell me something about yourself, Brooks,” Mae said, breaking a deafening silence. “Tell me something you probably shouldn’t share on a first date.”
First date? As in, first of many? Brooks hadn’t considered it to be anything other than work friends going out and having lunch.
If he became romantically involved, it would only serve to further his cause.
“What do you mean?” Brooks asked, giving the lobster another attempt.
“Like, tell me something you really like, then follow it up with something you really hate. Um, I’ll go first. I really like the feeling of sand beneath my feet and between my toes. Especially Florida sand. It’s super soft and makes me never want to wear shoes. I’ve spent countless hours going to beaches back when I lived there and I’d never touch the water. Just go on strolls on the beach and listen to music.”
“That sounds nice,” Brooks responded. He tried his best to sound like a person engaged.
“OK, you’re turn. What’s something you like?”
He put his silverware down for a second and thought. “I have a lot of memories I like to sit and think about. That’s what I choose to share. Those memories.”
“Anything in particular?” Mae asked.
Brooks wiped his face with a napkin and the waiter came and topped his water off.
“My sister…Jody. She was an angel. Every Saturday morning she would wake me up at dawn and we’d make eggs in the kitchen before Mom and Dad were awake. We’d make a ruckus, banging pans and plates around. I always knew our parents woke as a result, but they never came out of their room to see what was going on. They let us cook eggs.”
“How old were you?”
“I would’ve been five and my sister was eight,” Brooks cleared his throat. “She would make the eggs half runny and half solid, nowhere near cooking them all the way through, but I never cared. I was there with the most important person in my life, having a great time every Saturday. We’d then head outside and play any number of imaginary games. She used me as a knight who had to fight all of her battles…she was just a princess after all.
I’d often have to slay a dragon or two, or defend her castle, which was actually a tree house, from an undead army. She would join me in the fight and dance around the yard, singing as her slain enemies lay at her feet. This went on Saturday after Saturday. I spend a lot of my time in the darkness of my living room thinking back to those times.”
“Are you two still close?” Mae asked, putting her fork down.
“She’s dead,” Brooks said. “I was her knight on many occasions, but she took my place in more battles than I could ever count. I didn’t deserve her. This world didn’t deserve her.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Brooks,” she said, placing her hand over his. “Those memories have to be such a precious thing to you right now, with her death being so fresh in your mind.”
He nodded and picked up his fork. “So, what do you hate?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“We both talked about what we liked. Now, let’s talk about what we hate.”
“Oh!” Mae responded, putting her hand over her mouth. “OK, I hate spiders more than anything. They claim my house as their own all the time and mult — “
“No, Mae…” Brooks interrupted. He could feel his eyes grow dark, though he tried to keep the fire inside lit. “Tell me what you really hate. None of this superficial pseudo-phobia jargon. I want to see your real hate.”
She stopped chewing and sat back in her seat, looking Brooks up and down. Brooks could feel his blood reach the surface of his face.
“Well, it seems like you have something in mind, so how about you go first.”
Brooks took a deep breath, and exhaled before swallowing.
“I have a disdain for people who violate other people in unmistakably and undeniably terrible ways,” he said.
“Like, assaulting them?”
“Like stealing their innocence,” he continued. “Taking away everything someone has built up throughout their entire lives and throwing them in the garbage. Sexual deviants who perpetrate the most disgusting acts against humans just for their own gratification. Especially against children. These perverts are vile and I want them all to die slow and horrific deaths.” Brooks covered his mouth and looked for a reaction, but Mae wasn’t offering one.
His eyes were jet-black and offered no reprieve for either of them.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Mae finally said. “That is something that almost all people don’t like. That’s pretty bad, Brooks.”
He nodded, finding himself out of the trance he was in. He placed his hands back on the table and found the fork.
“Your turn.”
“Is it OK if I skip mine?” She asked, clearly shaken. “I’m just wanting to finish here…and I forgot I have to pick my sister —“
“I said your turn…”
“Um, OK,” she was starting to tremble. “I think much like your answer, I don’t like pedophiles or rapists or anything like that. But, sometimes there’s a silver lining, Brooks. I was a victim to a sexual assault when I was much younger. The guy was a neighbor of mine and he spent almost eight years in prison because of it, but now we talk on a regular basis. His name is Tomas White and he lives in the west side. He is on the registry and everything and hasn’t hurt a fly since. Part of my healing came from forgiving him for what he did to me. Part of his healing did, too. Sometimes beautiful things can arise from smoking ashes.”
“No,” Brooks said. “No, it’s not true. The ashes will stay ashes. Nothing can arise from them after that. You don’t forgive him. You can’t. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I did! I swear I did!” Mae edged towards the end of the booth.
“No, Mae. They’re terrible and everything they do is terrible. If he really did that to y
ou, you’d want him dead. Anyone should!”
“I think it’s time to go,” Mae insisted. “Sir, can we have our check. I’m going to call my friend for a ride. Thanks, Brooks, but I’m going to go.”
Brooks kept from lunging at her as she walked past him and out the door. The waiter came and dropped off the check, but didn’t say a word. The half-eaten meals lay undisturbed on the table and Brooks knew if he didn’t move now, he’d sit there for hours contemplating his next move.
He could feel cold, wet feet walk up from behind him and he closed his eyes. A cold hand touched his left shoulder and a small voice whispered in his ear.
“Are you ready now, Brooks?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
DeAngelo Abraham was lying still in the casket, his face made up to cover the obvious trauma to his face and neck. The mortician had cleverly dressed him in an undershirt with a protruding collar to mask the hole in his throat.
It was a blank stare behind his closed eyelids, one that I knew would reach inside of me and grab my soul, begging for me to turn and rush in as backup.
I wanted to see the last face his eyes had seen only three short nights ago, marking a permanent imprint etched into his pupils. Blood circled around his dying body as the man who shot him, and others before him, had tried so desperately to save his life.
He was just doing his job, after all.
Such a callous stance to take, turning to shoot aimlessly at a hog-tied Philip Maise on his way out. He’d just broke his own rules in killing DeAngelo, but saw no harm in finishing what he’d come there for in the first place. Killing those he deemed as undesirable could’ve been something respected, but he had taken it much too far.
“He looks at peace,” Harlow said, standing beside me. We both stood in silence, gazing the remains of the Lincolnshire detective up and down.
“He looks tired,” I responded.
“That, too. He was always going above and beyond.” Harlow placed her hand on my shoulder.
“One too many times, it seems,” I said, wiping my eyes with a handkerchief. “I’m not sure where to go from here, Kris.”
“Just take it one day at a time. Let yourself grieve this.”
“I mean, with this case. He’s still out there and who knows what he’s doing. I haven’t got the slightest idea what to do next, and this town…New England as a whole is watching us. And, I have no answers to give them right now.”
Harlow wiped something from her eye as well and rubbed my back in a circular motion. “What would DeAngelo tell you to do? Better yet, what would your dad tell you to do?”
I sighed a half-hearted sigh of relief.
“My dad is still in that psych facility. He’s not getting out. Last time I visited him, he was out of his mind. Meds weren’t working, or something.”
“No…John. What would he have told you back then? Right when you were promoted to detective?”
A small pocket watch was placed between DeAngelo’s hands, though I didn’t know the significance. I’d spent some quality time with him outside of work hours, but didn’t know too much about him personally, other than he liked flirting with the ladies as we barhopped.
“He would have told me to go back to the evidence,” I finally said. “He would’ve told me that, unless new evidence presented itself, to go back through the old stuff until something that didn’t make sense, finally does.”
“There you go,” she said, laying her head down on my shoulder.
“Goodbye, good friend,” I said, placing my hand on his chest. On it, I placed a police ribbon for valor that was given to all Maine city, county, and state police officers that were killed in the line of duty. LT Anderson thought I was most appropriate to give it to him.
“Goodbye, good friend,” Harlow repeated.
We took a step back and other officers from around the precinct took their turns in paying respect to their fallen ally.
The preacher stood and told us about salvation, and what we could expect in the afterlife. He stood in front of DeAngelo’s service picture, with him sitting in front of the American flag. The seriousness on his face clashed with his personable personality.
After the preacher was done, three members of the Lincolnshire police force played Taps, and the trumpets made their presence felt; brass instruments exhibiting their powerful, yet poetic noise throughout the large room of the funeral home.
Sobbing, incoherent breaths made by likely family members filled the rest of the service, and we all stood up by row, and exited the building.
A light rain poured down, sending little chilled specks of water down on us.
“Listen, Trotter,” LT said outside on the sidewalk. “This was a bad deal for all of us. Especially you. I want you to take any time off you need. I thought when I saw you in the office yesterday that you were back in it, but if you just want to be at the cabin until you’re mentally back in it, by all means.”
“No, sir…I’m good to go. I’d just be going stir-crazy in there, anyway. It would be worse than when I was rehabbing my shoulder.”
“Then, we’ll see you in the office tomorrow, bright and early,” he said, with a slight smile creeping over his face. He was a difficult person to read, but I knew when he was in a sympathetic mood as opposed to an indifferent one.
“Yes, sir.”
“By the way, Trotter. Harlow is your new partner. Welker will be manning the desk for the life of this case, which hopefully isn’t too much longer.”
Though she wasn’t paying attention, I saw a certain determination on her face. She wanted revenge for Abraham’s death and so did I. LT Anderson told me not to let it cloud my investigation, but who was I kidding?
Nothing would stop me from catching The Sparrow. Nothing was going to keep me from deciphering the evidence.
Harlow gave the person she was talking to a flirtatious smile and walked back over to me.
“Meeting new friends at a funeral of a cop, I see,” I said, giving her a friendly nudge. The weight of the situation was physically holding me down, but I had to make light where there was none.
“He’s an ex, but we are still on good terms. Former state cop. I’ll never date a state cop again, if it’s any consolation.”
“Not really,” I said. I looked back to the funeral home as people continued to funnel out. “You’ve been reassigned to me, to help co-lead this investigation into The Sparrow. LT just gave me the word.”
“Are you serious?” she asked, almost jubilated.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I am ready for this, John. I promise, I’ll do anything I can to catch this guy.”
“You won’t be playing ‘Google girl’ anymore on the home front. You’re leading this thing with me, now. You know that, right?”
“I’m ready,” she said.
I looked across the street into the bustling city where a psychopath was still running free.
“I’m ready, too.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The door opened and Brooks barreled through, taking out an end table on his way.
He walked to his living room and cleared the items on his mantel in one fell swoop, sending all the trinkets and pictures crashing to the floor. The couch upended and lifted upside-down, cushions coming undone, and finding themselves scattered.
He then quickly sat in his chair and buried his head into his arms, rocking himself back and forth, comforting whatever inside of him that caused such madness.
Madison stood in the doorway to the hall unimpressed. He wanted to scream and curse her back to wherever she came from, but he couldn’t find the words.
His life was his for the living, not hers to push and pull the strings attached to his limbs at her beck and call. Brooks wanted his freedom back…he wanted to make is own choices again. He was sick and tired of being manipulated.
He wanted to find his true self.
“This isn’t me,” he said to the apparition in his doorway. After a long silence and her refusal
to talk, he repeated, “This isn’t me!”
Madison glided forward and disappeared into the wall, something he’s never seen her do before. Her body wasn’t transparent; more so like an ashy skin, covered from head to toe in a darkened white pain. Her hair was like he’d seen in the newspaper the day after she died…straight, long, and parted in the middle.
She wasn’t a ghost.
She also wasn’t a figment of his imagination.
She was as real as she could be.
As real as he needed her to be.
The clock on the wall ticked with an uncharacteristically loud chirp, causing him to startle.
“Please, don’t make me do this anymore,” he said, facing the wall. “I stopped on my own. I was building a life for myself.”
“You were building a life inside your head,” the voice in the wall spoke back to him. “None of this is real.”
“How do I know you’re real?”
“You don’t have to imagine me like you did your wife and sister,” the voice said, growing more ominous. “Your nieces and nephew…they don’t exist. I, however, have been here from the beginning.”
Brooks pounded his temples with his fists trying to make the voices stop. They became unrecognizable, nothing like Madison had sounded like before.
“What if I say no?” Brooks asked, trying to sound confident. “What if I refuse to play by your rules?”
The voice growled from behind the outdated wallpaper. “These aren’t my rules. These are rules we both agreed upon, and you are to follow.”
“I can’t do it anymore…I just can’t.” Brooks stood up and went to walk out of the room.
“You can and you will,” the voice said, but Brooks had already left, turning right down the hallway and into his makeshift study. Behind his desk was a replica of the shrine he made in his office at work, though he ignored it. He knew Madison wanted to use it to conjure up some feelings of self-doubt within him.
The computer groaned as it booted up and he put in a disc to play a retro game. It was a mind-numbing adventure game he used to play for hours when he’d experience flashbacks many years ago.
