Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (ebook audio reader txt) 📗

several days. My morning strides around the house have turned into a crippled old woman limping about, falling into nearly everything. It’s really made me rethink the clutter I’ve accumulated over the years.

Glide, My Sparrow. Glide.

You played with your dollhouse this morning…and I convinced you to bring it in my room so I could watch. You’re so creative, Sparrow, that you are lost in your own little world. I’m grateful for it, I really am, but I’m afraid you will crash down when reality finally sets in.

The remedies have taken its toll on my body that I’m on the verge of telling the doctor that I don’t want it anymore. I can’t have it anymore. I can’t.

Your dollhouse means so much to you…you know your grandfather made it for me, until I outgrew it and then he put it in the attic. It lay dusty, covered in a sheet for many, many years, until you turned two. Well before your innocence was taken from you.

Your fickle moods were not a “normal” progression of a young child like your psychiatrist had said, but a manifestation of your most dire experiences, which were often the root cause of your outbursts and ever changing emotions. I never meant for this to happen.

I never meant for you to go through this. My days are numbered and my mind is frail, but you still have a chance, Little Sparrow. I want you to find that chance and fly away as quickly as you can.

I don’t believe I can comprehend what is waiting for you after I pass, as the battles are very arduous now. Please…please do your best to take away from him what he took from you.

And keep your brother safe from the Ground. Don’t let him fall.

Not like you.

He is not as strong as you, though he’s not weak.

He’s just…different.

He expects and attracts more attention than I can give, but if he falls to the Ground, I’m afraid of what will happen to him.

Get back up, Sweet Sparrow, for you shall flap your wings once more.

Fly, baby bird. Fly.

 

The paper was held up to the light for all to read. Benjamin took the original copy and placed it inside of a bag, and left the room.

“What is he trying to tell us?” Abraham asked. We all stood in silence as the smell began to reemerge.

“It’s his history,” I said. “He wouldn’t be leaving us all of these notes if it didn’t tie in somehow.” Benjamin’s forensic team entered and made preparations to remove the body. I couldn’t stand the extraction process, so I left and stepped outside.

LT Anderson pulled down his scarf. “What’s the significance of all this? I mean, he made a charade out of the other killings, why not this one? One he sliced the guy up right in his doorway and the other one was a shotgun blast.”

“Maybe it was to buy him some time,” Abraham added.

“No,” I said. “Then he wouldn’t have come back to drop off the other sheet. He wanted us to find this one like the others. He brought it back to preserve it somehow. Like, in some sick way, the old letter wasn’t kosher any longer and it needed to be refreshed.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is, is that this guy is a psychopath…he doesn’t think like us. He left the Burnley scene a mess, but told me I somehow disgraced it by throwing up in the front yard. As if what I did was somehow worse than what he did.”

Harlow rounded the corner and met with us in the back. She had a manila folder that she stretched out towards us. “Here you guys go. I don’t think you’re going to be too awful surprised what you see inside.”

The deceased man’s name was Isaac James, and his rap sheet was nearly three pages long. The page displayed very little violence, but a real piece of work.

Then I saw it.

He was registered as a sex offender in the states of Ohio and Indiana, but moved to Maine three years ago soon after winning a legal battle with Indiana State Corrections.

He was registered at this address. Everything seemed in order.

“Well,” Abraham said after glancing over the documents. “Goes along with the rest of them.”

I nodded, and saw a concerned look over LT Anderson’s face. “Thanks, Harlow. This is just more validation that he’s targeting this demographic.”

“Given this information, it’s really hard to feel bad for these guys,” Abraham chimed in.

“Hopefully those beliefs aren’t skewing your judgment, Detective,” LT Anderson snapped back. “We still have a killer on the loose. He’s now killed three that we know of, and he’s not stopping anytime soon. I need to get the Commissioner on the phone and see what the next PR move is. This is going to shake this city.”

“You’re right,” I said. “This is the nicest neighborhood in town and someone got snuffed out right in front of their noses. Harlow, why don’t you see if any neighbors have any Camera’s facing this way, or at the street? Maybe we could get a tag number or something.”

“On it.”

I stepped back and looked around at the house and the yard. “He was here this morning. That shows you he’s still in the area. That’s a good sign, at least.”

“A good sign of what?” Abraham asked.

“A good sign he’s still here. He didn’t leave.”

“In what twisted world is it good to have a serial killer on the loose?”

“You know what I mean…” I walked around the garage back down the driveway. The press was standing outside next to the forensic van, and they filmed the crew bringing the stretcher out with the black body bag on top.

I got to my car