Hello, Little Sparrow

by Jordan Jones

  He cranked up the speakers on his stereo, playing an unknown rock n’ roll song that was probably popular at some point. The music drowned our Madison’s voice, and the game rendered her manifestation useless.

  The character on screen jumped around until they retrieved enough radishes to expand the farm, but then Brooks saw a notification on the bottom of the screen.

  An email popped up and the subject line read:

  Nightstalkers are back!

  Click the link for a new catch!

  This time it was a doctor!

  His stomach flew up in his throat and he could barely breathe. Without a second thought, Brooks clicked the link to the email, then clicked the blue underlined link inside.

  It took him to a page on the Nightstalkers website, and a very conveniently placed video in the middle of the screen.

  The video was of the vigilantes explaining that they were meeting an older man in the parking lot of a grocery store, though their intentions were unknown.

  Brooks was familiar enough with their past work to know they were there to catch a grown man meeting a child at two o’clock in the morning. That’s how they got their name: The Nightstalkers.

  Though the vigilante crew didn’t mention where they were, the livestream would’ve garnered some attention to locals. Brooks knew they were at a grocery store in Lincolnshire, although the name was blurred out.

  The cameraman had shaky camera work, but the main person running the sting, Evan Crist, was as professional as they came.

  Brooks wanted his autograph. He was handing sexual deviants over to Brooks on a silver platter.

  On camera, Evan said, “Doctor James Montgomery. I’m Evan Crist and I’m with a group called The Nightstalkers. What are you doing out here so late at night?”

  The man was caught completely off guard and came up with a half-hearted excuse, describing wanting to “help” the child overcome her Internet escapades.

  They always tried justifying their actions with something implausible.

  “No…no Doctor. You said some really grotesque things in your chat logs,” Evan responded. The logs were laid out plainly on the website for anyone to see.

  Brooks read through each line and it took well over thirty minutes before he couldn’t anymore. Doctor James Montgomery was another member of the vile; his face was shown well on the screen.

  Tingling sensations crept up both of Brooks’ arms and left the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up. The emotion drained from his face and his eyes became jet black once more.

  He could once again feel nothing.

  “So…let me ask this again,” Madison said from behind him. “Are you ready now?”

  Brooks turned his computer off and leaned back in his chair, letting out a nice, over exaggerated stretch.

  “Point me to where he lives.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  My seat at Humble Barry’s fast food restaurant was warm, as if someone had just gotten up seconds before I arrived. I was alone, though everyone who passed by my seat piqued my interest.

  “I’m whoever you want me to be,” The Sparrow told me from the backseat of my car.

  I wanted him to be anyone and everyone that walked by. His presence was coveted more than he’d ever know, but he wouldn’t come out of hiding on his own…he’d have to be provoked somehow.

  Plans circulated in my head to catch him, though it seemed impossible to bring him out of hiding. It’d already been over a week and we haven’t gotten any more leads. He was gone once again.

  Into the abyss that was Lincolnshire, probably scoping out his next victim among the poor saps walking the streets.

  He’d won many battles over the months of frozen Maine, even though the morning dew began to thaw, giving me hope that a change in season would lead to a change in fortune.

  Harlow was ready to take on the extra responsibility, but her past as a “Google expert” on the force had given her quite the reputation around the precinct.

  However unfair to her it was, she’d taken it lightly and played it off cool. She was often on the front lines, but rarely in the thick of it.

  Now, she’d been assigned to the highest profile case Maine had ever known, and one of the most prolific cases in New England’s history.

  A woman rushed in with a little boy and took a seat in the booth across from mine. I sipped my hot coffee as they downgraded their heavy coats for a more modest jacket, better suited for the heated fast food joint.

  They both appeared disheveled with both jackets and coats appearing unwashed and unkempt. Their clothes and shoes looked like they were worn out long ago.

  Anxiety crept across her face, though the boy looked unfazed. He was used to it. His mom struggled to provide and they wondered to open business to open business looking for heat on an unseasonably cold early-spring day.

  She looked around nervously for their next move, though nothing in sight caught her eye. It was only a matter of time until restaurant staff would make them either order or leave so I stood to my feet and made my way to the counter, leaving my coat and fedora on the table.

  I ordered several food items off the menu and told them to deliver it anonymously to the booth numbered eleven as quickly as they could.

  I took my seat again across from the woman and waited for the staff to bring out the tray loaded for bear. The woman looked cautiously at the tray and back at the worker, though no amount of confusion would cause the worker to take the tray back.

  The boy dug in his portion long before the worker saw herself off and back into the kitchen. The woman looked around and made quick eye contact with me, but I forced myself to read irrelevant news clippings of happenings from the day before.

  I felt her eyes on me for several agonizing seconds before she was satisfied.

  Her reluctance to eat only solidified my decision to help them out. She was a proud mom, but stubborn. She wanted to take care of her son on her own without any help, though after watching the boy paw indiscriminately at the breakfast sandwiches and hash browns on the tray, she couldn’t help but to feel a bit humbled.

  I nursed my coffee for several more minutes until they were done eating, and the mom stood up and wrapped herself with her scarf again, using it to cover her mouth and most of her face. It wasn’t cold enough to warrant such a tight squeeze from a scarf so I could only draw that she was ashamed at their situation.

  As she turned to walk towards the side door they entered, I reached out and tugged her coat.

  “Ma’am?” I asked.

  “Y-y-yes?” she responded, visibly shaken to be talking to a stranger.

  “Someone left two hundred dollars for you,” I said reaching out two crisp bills in her direction. “They said this should keep you off the street for the next week or so at the Cantaloupe Inn on Chester Drive. Take this twenty for cab fare to get there…here’s an extra fifty to get some more food.”

  She couldn’t speak, but the smile on her face brightened the entire room. I spoke in a low volume so as not to bring embarrassment upon her.

  “You don’t know what this means to us!” She exclaimed, gladly excepting the money. I wrote down my phone number on a napkin and handed it to her.

  “Call this number if you need anything else. I work for the Lincolnshire PD and I may know of some resources that can help you out.”

  She held the napkin close to her heart and a tear fell from her eye.

  “You are a great person. We will seriously never forget you. Thank you so much for this!”

  I smiled and nodded at them both and they walked out, flagging down a cab that just so happened to be driving by. I placed the paper back down on table and sat back…sighing in relief.

  The pressure was off, though I still felt a pounding in my chest.

  There was good in the world and I could be a part of it. The Sparrow wasn’t in charge of selecting what was good and what was bad. His mind was crippled with perversions of unhinged perceptions of that
dichotomy; draining his own energy into fulfilling what he thought was truly ‘great.’

  I knew it wasn’t…killing never was.

  It wasn’t even a goal of mine to kill The Sparrow, but only to stop him.

  Killing him would only serve to help me sleep at night.

  Chapter Forty

  Highland Park was an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of Lincolnshire where only the most affluent in central Maine lived. Several gated communities circled a large park, acting as a hub for town gossip and discussion of tiresome scandal.

  Brooks would go wherever his work would take him, and in this case, Highland Park was it.

  He wore his backpack filled with all the supplies he needed for an intrusion. The weather was damp and cool enough so no one would question him about his hoodie and beanie. He looked like a jogger out on an early morning stroll.

  He texted Dr. Leggons to let him know he’d be gone for the day…some sort of bug was going around and Brooks was playing it off like he had it. Though its mutation would leave him useless at work for a while longer should things go south at the Montgomery residence.

  The bus dropped Brooks off several blocks away from the elites and he went on foot the rest of the way. Large estates towered over him as he climbed over the wrought iron fence.

  Dogs barked in a distance, snarling as they saw him. They sensed he was up to no good, and he was prepared with hamburger laced with rat poison should one get loose.

  He ducked and looked around to where the cameras were facing; the adjacent house across the street belonged to Dr. James Montgomery.

  There was a narrow strip of green that stretched between the two mansions leading to the road and Brooks only assumed it was public land. He walked along the grass towards the road in broad daylight, hoping the social elites were either gone or not paying attention enough to see the trespassing man. When he reached the sidewalk, Brooks took out his phone and acted like he was calling someone.

  I’m just lost, he thought. I just need to phone a friend and get some directions really quick.

  Brooks spotted the house and thought maybe he’d come back at night when no one could see him. He was already suspicious as a group of five women jogged on the other side of the street.

  They didn’t seem to notice him, or bother to look at the mysterious person.

  This person who didn’t belong in their neighborhood.

  That was still who he was.

  A mysterious person.

  This was good.

  The Montgomery residence had a large camera above the front door, but it was facing straight down. He didn’t see much else as far as surveillance.

  As the group ran past, Brooks casually walked across the street and down the block a little bit before hopping over the fence into the Montgomery yard. Political signs were in the front yard advertising yet another candidate that didn’t care about what you needed as a constituent.

  Brooks thought about taking the signs down, but turned his focus to the massive three-car garage. The garage doors were closed, but the side door looked like it had a simple knob-lock.

  Brooks slid in a metal credit card-like object through the slit of the door and it came open. He entered with his .38 caliber King Cobra Special he bought second hand a few years back.

  He thought at the time it was for protection.

  He now knew what his calling was.

  The garage was empty, and the thousand square foot concrete floor appeared lifeless…as if no one was hardly around. The door to the house was attached, and it likely had an alarm, so Brooks walked steadily across the floor to see.

  He peered through the window into the house and near the front door. The keypad on the wall was blinking red, and Brooks didn’t know what that meant.

  He squinted, but couldn’t make out what the tiny words said on the screen so he grabbed his binoculars out from his bag and held them up to his face.

  The red light was blinking and the words on the tiny green screen read:

  Power failure. Please reset manually to restore power.

  Alarm deactivated.

  The storm that swept through Lincolnshire the night before reportedly did some damage, but Brooks didn’t know parts of the city lost power. He placed the card through the slit between the door and the wall, held his breath, and pushed through.

  The door opened with ease, and no alarm sounded.

  He turned to check the alarm at the front door and the door he came through. They both read power failure. Brooks had to believe it wasn’t a dummy system designed to trick him.

  He’d broke into houses before to kill others, and none of them had alarms. Brooks cocked his gun and went into the pantry, crouching down and listening outside the door. He gave it nearly thirty minutes before he opened the door again. The police response time for such an upscale neighborhood would be less than five minutes, so there was no way the alarms were working.

  There was an apology letter on the refrigerator signed, J.M. It was probably in response to him being caught a few nights before on the sting operation, but Brooks couldn’t be sure.

  A planner was left open, and Brooks found the date of March twenty-first. It indicated that Dr. Montgomery was set to perform an early morning surgery on a young woman who slipped and fell and broke her ankle while running up the stairs.

  Brooks wondered if she knew that a sexual deviant would be operating on her.

  Probably not.

  It was nearly ten o’clock, and Brooks was unsure what the rest of Dr. Montgomery’s day looked like, so he walked slowly up the stairs and found the master bedroom. The bed had four posts and a dark wooden headboard. The bed was massive and the dressers matched. The heavy oak bedroom set had to be north of ten thousand dollars.

  Much more than the futon Brooks was content with sleeping on.

  Down the hall a little farther was the grand study. The fireplace was empty, but wood was piled high next to it ready to burn.

  A large oak desk sat in the middle of the room and various medical journals and books lined the walls.

  No cameras were visible, though they could still be hidden. Brooks was out of lives and didn’t much care for his own safety. He only cared for retribution, no matter now frivolous it seemed.

  Brooks sat down in the old leather chair and looked at the dried logs.

  He pretended to smoke a handmade Calabash pipe that only elites would purchase, throwing his money away on unnecessary items only to look the part.

  He set the logs inside the fireplace and lit them with a book of matches he brought.

  Soon, the crackling fire would take Brooks away into a dreamworld only he would understand.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The patrol officers outside the cabin looked lethargic and spent, so I grabbed both of them a cup of coffee from the kitchen and took them each a cup. The temps were still low, and the wind began to pick up. The hills didn’t offer much reprieve from the cold.

  I spoke to the officers for a short bit about how the high school baseball team has looked in practice, though I didn’t know much about their starting lineup. One of the officers stated his stepson was an outfielder and a heck of a switch-hitter.

  I promised him I’d “have to catch a game or two,” but my mind was wondering elsewhere.

  The cabin was warm and I stoked the fire to allow it to breathe a little more. Nightfall overcame the horizon and I turned a few of the lamps on, nursing my own cup of decaf.

  The long hours ahead of me rendered sleep the most important thing in my life, and a strong cup wasn’t going to help. The recliner gave way to my upper body and I lay almost horizontal.

  The evidence.

  Go back to the evidence.

  That’s what your father would’ve done, Harlow told me.

  And, she was right.

  I was missing something somewhere. The trailer was filled with various clues, but the most telling piece was that he knew we’d be there. He left us a note. He was playing w
ith us.

  He possibly left us a…

  The hair!

  One piece of hair belonged to a man…the name slipped me.

  I popped up and pulled out the file from the end table drawer and quickly opened it, frantically looking around.

  “Bradley Claxton,” I said aloud. “It wasn’t you, was it?” I opened up my laptop, connected to the precinct server, and looked up his name. The file brought up a lengthy rap sheet with several arrests, and a recent arrest five days prior for disorderly conduct.

  Getting drunk in public and peeing on a car didn’t seem like something a calculated serial killer would do.

  Another piece of hair was inconclusive. The DNA taken off of it was so minute that no full profile was extracted.

  But, there was one more piece.

  The one that could’ve been left by the killer.

  “How could I have missed this?” I asked myself under my breath. The closest match to the DNA found in the hair was a Samuel Ingram. I searched his records and found that he was arrested over ten times for various felonies and misdemeanors.

  Carjackings.

  Solicitation of prostitution.

  Theft of under one hundred dollars.

  Theft of over five hundred dollars.

  Solicitation of a minor for inappropriate acts.

  Bingo.

  I read more into his file and it was marked with a red DECEASED at the top. It was hard to miss. He was forty-eight when he died. Cause of death was hematoma in the brain.

  It wasn’t a natural death by any stretch.

  I looked up public records for articles related to Samuel Ingram in the local newspapers, and found something intriguing.

  Lincolnshire Man Killed in Bar Brawl

  Samuel Ingram, 48, of Lincolnshire, Maine, was killed last night after an altercation broke out at Poor Folks Bar and Grill in the outskirts of Paducah Kentucky. Eyewitnesses say that Mr. Ingram and another gentleman were in a disagreement over an unpaid loan, and Mr. Ingram pulled a knife on Rodney Eller of Metropolis, Illinois. Eller, 36, preceded to combat Ingram and Ingram stumbled and was knocked unconscious. EMTs arrived and pronounced Ingram dead at the scene. Rodney Eller is being held at McCracken County Jail until his arraignment at 9:00 a.m. Monday morning.