Hello, Little Sparrow

by Jordan Jones

  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. When Dr. Montgomery arrived, he’d no doubt see a glow from his bedroom. Brooks had no plan how he’d subdue the man, at least initially, but he didn’t care.

  “Everything is set up for you, Brooks,” Madison’s raspy voice called from the darkness. “All you have to do is finish him tonight and you will have satisfied my hunger…our hunger.”

  Brooks couldn’t find it to smile at the pasty child, however he did acknowledge her by looking her way. Her faded outline pressed against the wall; almost sucked into the wall.

  Headlights flashed across the wall and Brooks grabbed his gun and hid behind the door, ready to strike. Dr. Montgomery took his sweet time entering the house, and Brooks had thought for a moment that he called the police, jeopardizing everything he’d worked for, but there was no sense of urgency coming from the doctor.

  Montgomery made his way up the stairs untied his tie and unbuttoned his shirt as he did. Brooks could hear him let out a sigh and talk to himself from the other room.

  “Christie, do you know how dangerous it is to keep the fire burning when you leave?” Brooks could tell he was on the phone. “Maybe it was Rachel then. Whoever it was, they’re going to be paying the deductible when this entire house goes up in flames. Was your nephew here or something? I don’t know. I’m going to put it out. Bye.”

  He entered the room and turned on a lamp. Before he saw Brooks from behind the door, he walked to the fire and shook his head in disbelief.

  From behind him, a voice said, “Good evening, Doctor.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “I’ll take that, thank you very much,” I said, scooping up my coffee from Harlow’s desk. “Follow me.” She logged out of the server and shuffled her papers.

  “What’s this about?”

  “I thought of something last night. In the cabin.”

  “Well…?” She was impatient, but I was quickly on the move to Benjamin’s lab.

  “Those names from the hairs,” I continued. “There’s a lot more to it than we thought. I cross-referenced the name Samuel Ingram with all of his criminal records, and the guy is no saint.”

  “Meaning? Benjamin said it was a partial match of some sort. He wasn’t sure what the deal with it was. He told me it could be something like an incubation error. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.” She pulled my shoulder and I turned around.

  “I think the match was familial.”

  “Wait…you mean, the hair was a relative of Samuel Ingram?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I don’t know. I need to talk to Benjamin.” I pushed the door into the lab, but there were three men in overalls with paint rollers, going over the white walls with a slightly darker white.

  “What is going on here?” I asked.

  “We’re…painting,” responded one of the men without looking up. “We started last night, but we’re finishing it up today.”

  Benjamin walked through the door and waved for us to come over.

  “Why are they painting our lab?” Harlow asked.

  “We still haven’t spent our money yet, so the Commissioner is getting us all kinds of new things.” Benjamin looked excited. “Computers, microscopes, even windows.”

  “Why is the lab shut down during several murder investigations?” I asked bluntly.

  “Oh, it’s not shut down. I moved some of the instruments to my office. It’s a little cluttered, but it’ll still work.” We followed him to his office. “Full of questions today, are we Detective Trotter?”

  “Yeah,” I responded. “And I have one more. What can you tell me about Samuel Ingram?”

  He thought for a moment, then said: “One of the hair guys right? We found hair in the Maise trailer drain and at first I thought it belonged to this guy, but now I’m not so sure.” He turned on his computer screen and pushed some buttons to make it respond. “Bear with me, now that we’re getting all new stuff, they’re really taking their time when we request information on the old stuff.”

  I looked at Harlow and shook my head.

  “Ah,” he finally muttered. “Here we go. Yes, Samuel Ingram was killed in Paducah, Kentucky after a fight with a guy…who obviously had some martial arts training. Rodney Eller was a jujitsu trainer at a local gym.”

  “Now, what about the DNA? What can you tell me about it?”

  “I thought you were looking into the other guy…what was his name? Claxton?”

  “We were, but not anymore,” I said, though we never took Claxton seriously. “Bradley Claxton was a low level criminal type. Got caught no matter what he did. Not a mastermind serial killer, that’s for sure.”

  Benjamin scoured his computer screen and placed his finger up to it. “Here, the DNA was fully processed from the hair. Looked like just enough of a hair to get what we need, honestly.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not Samuel’s; that much I know,” he continued. Harlow and I both looked at him. “Oh yeah, and also because he’s long dead.”

  “What else?” I asked, more impatiently.

  “It’s similar to the DNA we had from Samuel Ingram during his time in the system. This match is likely a family member. I’d say a close one, too. Maybe his child. Brother. Nephew?”

  “So you can tell it has the Y chromosome?”

  “That was the first thing you learn in medical school, John. Yes, I can tell the DNA is a male.”

  “So, our killer is a relative of this Samuel Ingram guy?” Harlow asked, enthusiastically.

  “This means that a relative’s hair was found in the Maise trailer,” I said.

  “We need to get back to our desks and begin looking up other family members and check arrest records. Harlow, you and Welker work on looking up any Ingrams in Lincolnshire and surrounding areas. I’ll look up all known relatives of Samuel to see if there is anything that can keep this case moving forward.”

  We both moved back to our desks, and began typing away. I searched for known aliases of Samuel Ingram, but all I found was a nickname “Mash” from prison, though I was unsure what that meant. He had a brother as well named Garrett.

  “Harlow, Samuel had a brother named Garrett Ingram. This says they were ‘lifelong accomplices.’”

  “Strange. Any chance it’s him?”

  I looked up Garrett’s profile and his age came up.

  “It says here he’s sixty-seven years old and lives up north in Winterville,” I said. “Easy enough to find. He’s another sex offender who spent twenty-five years in prison. The crimes he committed were gruesome.”

  She took a look at my computer screen and covered her mouth.

  “Those poor kids,” she said after several minutes. “Just when I think I’ve seen everything.”

  I let out a sigh and scrolled down, displaying more sex crimes.

  Harlow covered her eyes. “It makes me think twice about catching this guy.”

  “Don’t let LT catch you saying that,” I mumbled, grabbing my shoulder. The pain was coming back intense once more, but I wasn’t so sure it wasn’t psychosomatic.

  Harlow was busy reading the info on the screen when I leaned back in my seat, sweating profusely even as the furnace kicked off.

  These men were something disgusting that no one should ever have to deal with. They were so perverse in their thinking, twenty-five years in prison wasn’t near enough.

  Maybe The Sparrow was on to something. Was he trying to make penance for these crimes in some way?

>   Was it his sick way of giving back to the community?

  Abraham’s death was what was keeping me on the case for as long as I could stand it, but part of me also empathized with the deranged killer.

  Something clogged my throat and I let out a cough.

  “Are you OK?” Harlow asked, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  “Something is happening,” I responded.

  I was feeling something inside of me that I have needed to feel for a while. If The Sparrow was born from one of these sick men, then he had to be stopped. The rage he must’ve felt at each murder was intense…which was obvious from the scenes, but it was something more.

  It was something more brutal.

  It was something more sinister.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Dr. James Montgomery sat slouched in his chair, unable to move. He huffed tiny breaths out of his nose, as a thick layer of duct tape covered his mouth. His eyes were facing the ground when he opened them, and he was slowly gaining his equilibrium back.

  A small pool of blood formed on the floor directly underneath his downward-facing head, with more blood draining from the wound on his forehead.

  His eyes quickly darted side to side when he finally came to, searching the darkness around him for answers to the voice, though no one manifested.

  Rope was tied around his wrists, but it didn’t feel very snug, so he tried prying apart his hands in an attempt to break free.

  “Tisk, tisk, Doctor,” Brooks emerged from the shadows. “That is what’s called five-fifty cord. Military grade. You can pull a midsize car with that thin piece of string.”

  Montgomery struggled again to free himself as Brooks came closer. He finally gained the strength to bend his neck back and sit straight up in the wooden chair he recognized from the dining room.

  “Are the same questions flowing through your mind, Doctor?” Brooks mocked. “I’ve heard quite a few of them. Go on, let me hear them.”

  Montgomery moved his lips, but the duct tape was wrapped securely around them, it was impossible to mutter anything coherent.

  “Ah, I get it,” Brooks replied. He placed a vinyl record on the antique record player and placed the stylus on the record. An ambient sound came from the speaker, and then one of Beethoven’s violin concertos began to ring out. “You need more culture to get in the mood.”

  Montgomery looked worried. His mind was racing, thinking whom the madman could possibly be. He couldn’t think of anyone.

  “I’m going to do something…and if you make me regret it, you will regret it,” Brooks said. “Nod if you understand.”

  Montgomery nodded.

  “I’m going to take off the tape, and you aren’t going to say a word. Then I’m going to ask for a response.” Brooks knelt down to be eye-level with the doctor. “If you don’t give me a response, I’m going to cut you very deep. It will hurt. And, you will die.”

  Montgomery nodded, and in a panic, he nearly let out a whimper. Brooks took off the piece of tape and threw it to the floor. It took all of Montgomery’s energy not to pass out or make a noise. The man had no visible weapons, but he was clearly serious.

  “Now then, Dr. James Montgomery, of St. Francis Medical Center,” Brooks started. “My name is Brooks Ingram. No, I’m not some loved one of a wronged patient that is now paralyzed from a botch surgery. I’m not someone who you cut off entering the freeway. I’m no one.” He placed both knees on the ground. “You and I…we don’t matter. People don’t matter. Our actions, however, do matter. And you have committed the worst possible action of all time.”

  Brooks looked at him in the eye, his dark eyes pierced through Dr. Montgomery’s core.

  “I want a response, now.”

  Dr. Montgomery stuttered the first few words, but was able to say, “I-I-I’m sorry if I hurt you in some way.”

  “Again, it’s not about me.” Brooks continued. “None of this has ever been about me. It’s about what we do.”

  “Can you give me a hint of what I’ve done?” Montgomery said.

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” Brooks turned the doctor around to face a black wall, and turned on the television and DVD player he noticed was from his bedroom. This man had been all through his home.

  “I made this DVD from a video I found online,” Brooks said. “I think you’ll like what you see…or maybe not.”

  With the remote pointed at the screen, Brooks pressed play. Dr. Montgomery was walking through the parking lot of a known grocery store in town and the person filming ran up to him out of the darkness.

  After Montgomery fumbled through his words, the person on camera said, “No…no Doctor. You said some really grotesque things in your chat logs.”

  Montgomery bowed his head back down. He was obviously embarrassed and ashamed.

  The man on camera continued to ask questions and, from behind him, Brooks pulled his head back up.

  “You look at what you’ve done,” He sneered. “This is just the beginning.”

  On screen, Montgomery tried again to justify his actions by saying his marriage was loveless, how he hated his job, and his “life was falling apart.”

  It was all very poorly scripted, and no one on screen had much empathy for the struggling man. They knew he was a doctor and that they would forward the evidence to the police.

  The reel cut out after Dr. Montgomery sped away in his car.

  “So tell me, Doctor,” Brooks began. “What happened after St. Francis found out about this little incident?”

  “They told me not to let it happen again.”

  “So…nothing?”

  “It wasn’t nothing,” Montgomery said. “I was scared…terrified, even. I didn’t know what to do. I thought my practice was over. My life…my career…all over.”

  “But, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Ah…they said, ‘don’t let it happen again.’”

  “Yes. Sir, please stop this.”

  “But, did it happen again?”

  Montgomery thought back to several years ago when he was arrested for two counts of sexual misconduct, but it was wiped from his record after a team of lawyers worked their magic to eradicate any semblance of wrongdoing. He knew it was wrong, but couldn’t let it jeopardize what he’d worked so hard for. He was silent.

  “It did happen again, Doctor,” Brooks answered himself. “In fact, you had a fairly early run in with the law while in medical school, did you not? Looks like your mommy and daddy paid off a brigade of attorneys to fight your battle for you. You were twenty-four…the girl was five.”

  Montgomery lowered his eyes and could feel his pulse inside his head. “It was a stupid mistake, sir.”

  Brooks stopped the footage, and pressed a few buttons on the remote. The still frame that displayed on the screen was that of his arrest record and court date information. “This next picture is everything you need to know about why I’m here.”

  The next picture was a grainy picture of a young woman in a casket, loved ones stood around it in clear mourning.

  “This is Marie Barsett,” Brooks said, still holding up Montgomery’s hair and forcing him to stare at the screen. “This is the girl you molested all those years ago. She was twenty years old here and died of a lacerated liver after going on a bender for over a month. She drank herself to death, Doctor.”

  “Oh, no…please, don’t show me this. I’m sorry. I messed up. I can’t see this anymore!”

  “Her family surrounded her with a team of therapists and psychiatrists. She was in rehab four times before she was even sixteen. You caused her to lose her life in the most painful way.” Brooks looked down. “Speak up for yourself. She deserves some answers.”

  “I can’t do anything about it now!” He exclaimed. Tears were forming around his eyelids. “I’m sorry about this, OK? I went into therapy myself to try to get over what I’ve done! There’s not a night that goes by that I don’t think about her.”

  Brooks came to the front
of him and knelt down again.

  “Well, this night will be no different.”

  The fire crackled from behind Brooks and he glanced through the blinds. “Not a soul out there wondering what’s going on in here. This is good for me. I want you to know that this is very good for me.”

  Montgomery let out a wail as Brooks walked back over to the fire, stoking it with the fire poker.

  “Please, tell me why you’re doing this.”

  “There it is…they always say that.” He mocked, “Why are you doing this. Show some dignity. If you haven’t grasped your reality by now, the ending will shock you.”

  Montgomery tried situating himself again in the chair more comfortably as Brooks continued to stoke the fire. “Please, Sir. I don’t want to die! I want to make this right. Any way I can. Money. Anything.”

  Brooks used the poker to stab a piece of wood that was still burning bright red and placed it on the mantel above. It glowed brighter as it began to cool, and Brooks blew on it to bring out the flame once more.

  “Me…I am the ember fading.” He blew on it once more. His breath making the brightness of the flame burn again, but the brightness began to fade. He blew again, and it faded more. “Like this ember…the more I blow on it, the less the heat takes over. The more I find the vile, the less control of my actions I have. Of course, I could leave this piece of wood alone and it’d still burn for several hours on its own, but if I provoke it to fade by blowing on it, well…that’s when the fun begins.”

  Montgomery struggled with his hands to get free, but it was clear he couldn’t. Brooks could tell he was trying to break free, and didn’t acknowledge it.

  “The more I fade…the less I control. The less I control…the easier this gets.”

  “I’m a surgeon,” Montgomery said. “I make a lot of money helping people feel better. I’m sorry about Marie. If you knew her, I’m even more sorry. What you’re doing here isn’t going to bring her back. I want to make this right. I’ll give you money. I’ll donate everything I have to a foundation or something. Please, just let me go. My wife and kids are going to be home. They can’t see me like this.”