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

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 with 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.

I set the laptop back down on the coffee table and placed my hands up to my face. The DNA was a partial match, so that would mean that the killer was a family member of Samuel Ingram?

I was unsure and sent Benjamin a text letting him know I may have something and that I would bring it in first thing in the morning. The Sparrow despised child predators…much like the average human. Was Samuel somehow related to the killer?

***

Brooks reclined in the leather chair and watched the fire. Every light in the house was turned off and the sun was down.