by Jordan Jones
“They won’t,” Brooks said coldly. “It’s disappointing that you don’t care to understand what’s happening here, though, I have to admit.” He walked back over to Montgomery for a final time and got on both knees in front of him. “You could’ve made something with your life, Doctor. You really could’ve.”
Montgomery’s eyes grew wide, as he came to a realization.
“You…you’re the killer, aren’t you?” His lips grew numb as he spoke, making it difficult for his breath to escape his mouth. “The Sparrow…that’s what they call you, isn’t it?”
Brooks leaned in. “I’m but a phoenix rising from the ashes one more time to claim another life. My fiery wings glide gracefully across the sky, making all those who walk beneath me turn from their ways, and end the suffering they call life.” He looked back to Montgomery. “You can call me what you will, for it doesn’t hold any bearing on what happens here tonight.”
Montgomery started to cry, as confused as he was terrified. “Please…” he whispered. “Please let me go. I don’t want to die. Please, I’m begging you.”
Brooks looked at him in the eyes. His expression was blank and his eyes turned back to black.
“I hope you take comfort in the fact that it never really mattered how brightly my ember glowed,” he said. “You were always going to die.” He plunged his knife in the doctor’s gut, turned it upside down, and brought it up to his sternum.
Chapter Forty-Four
“What is it?” I asked a patrolman as I stepped out of my Charger. My watch said 6:44 a.m.
“It’s pretty bad, from what I’ve heard,” he said. “The entire place has been ransacked, top to bottom. The wife came home early this morning and found him in his study.”
The house towered over us as we walked closer. “What does — did this guy do?”
“Surgeon.”
“That’d explain the house,” I replied, looking up to the second story.
“I think they said his wife was away on business or something,” the officer continued. “She came in early this morning on a red-eye from San Francisco.”
We stopped at the steps and I saw the alarm system blinking, displaying a message that it had been disabled due to power failure.
“How convenient,” I muttered.
I walked through the front door and past several officers who were looking over the place. LT Anderson waved me from the top of the stairs and I followed him up. The pictures on the wall were of the once happy family, though there was a subtle coldness to them, as if the husband was sitting just far enough away from the wife to convey any intimacy.
The daughter in the picture forced a smile as if to say, “My parents don’t love each other and are making me do this.”
“Trotter,” LT said. “C’mon.”
The massive second flood study was surrounded with medical journals. A flat screen television and DVD player were haphazardly placed on the edge of a marble tabletop with the disc tray extended.
The awkward facing of the television contrasted with the elegance of the imported table. It didn’t belong there.
The smoldering fire had burnt through the night, though it was just billowing smoke as we entered.
The surgeon’s body lay on his back with his feet on the floor. He was stretched over the oversized oak desk with many of the items pushed off onto the floor, smashing vases to bits.
His body was obviously sliced from his lower abdomen up into his chest, with the cut going in deeper as it went up.
I covered my mouth with a handkerchief.
“He wanted another spectacle,” LT Anderson said from behind me.
I nodded, trying again to catch my breath. The entire room smelled of iron with a heavy display of blood throughout.
“This looks overdone,” I said. “I’d say the initial stabbing happened over in this chair, then he was drug over to the desk for the grand finale.”
“Ugh…” Harlow said from the doorway. “It’s hard to get used to this.”
“I know I never will,” I said.
Benjamin stood up from behind the desk with a ziploc bag and latex gloves on his hands.
“He left another one of his ‘presents’ again,” he said.
In the middle of his chest, a large buck knife was stuck deep, with a piece of paper matted in blood to his button-up shirt.
Hello, Little Sparrow,
My time has almost come. The little flies are flying around the room again, but I know they’re not real this time. My reality is changing by the day. My pain is growing more severe. It hurts.
I won’t sugar coat it any longer. I know what the big bad man does in the darkness, but it will soon come to light. I cannot hear your screams any longer…I mean, I can hear them, I just choose to bury my head inside my pillowcase, as my physical body is useless to combat him.
I’m so sorry. I should’ve left when I had the chance. Slowly, slowly, my sanity seems to escape me. I’m seeing things…hearing things.
I’ve found lost items I haven’t seen in years just sitting on my nightstand without any explanation. My heart breaks.
My bed is worn with age, and I sleep alone. Who knows what he’s up to? I couldn’t care less…but I care so much.
My head is throbbing.
He came into my life like a tornado and he’s leaving like a hurricane. I cannot believe he swept me off my feet all those years ago.
My, my, Little Sparrow. If my head would turn, I’d be able to watch you glide and dance around the green sea once more, finding your way through life while you were at it. I know I surely haven’t found mine.
Maybe I’ll find it in death.
I can only hope.
I know my days are numbered…probably single digits now. The chemo sure did take a toll on my already destroyed body. I can barely feel my hands and feet now. That monster refuses to feed me per doctor’s orders.
If you wouldn’t be so scared to look at my shriveled face, I would tell you to secretly bring me something.
Peach cobbler…such a dish.
When you finally read this, I will have passed on. I can barely write this.
The pen is slipping from my fingers.
Until next time My Sparrow.
The writing trailed off at the end, with the last few words nearly impossible to make out. The bloodstained sheet of paper was collected and placed in a bag. No prints or DNA have been collected from them yet, but we needed every piece of evidence we could get.
My mind raced again.
Another crime scene.
Sadistic in every way.
I looked around the bloody mess of a room and wondered how I was still the lead investigator on this case. A quiet breakthrough here and there, but still little tangible evidence.
“What are we thinking boys,” LT Anderson said to Benjamin and me. Harlow nudged herself between us. “And girl.”
Harlow shook it off. “It’s a woman’s writing. My nana used to write like that. It matches the handwriting from the others. Some of the letters are easily identifiable. It has an elegance to it that men can’t portray.”
“Ingram…” I said. “This page is also yellowed, so it’s older like the rest. It reads like she’s dying still, but now she’s getting closer. Some parts make a lot of sense, but others are fading fast. I’m still thinking the writer is related to the killer. Last name Ingram. She was receiving some chemotherapy from somewhere. I’m thinking 1990s or early 2000s. We need to start there and assume it’s local.”
“I’m on it,” Harlow said. “I’ll meet you at the office.” She said, packing up her laptop and leaving.
The smell was almost unbearable. His wife finding him this way had to cause psychological distress. He was a mess and was purposefully placed in a vulnerable position.
The Sparrow was sick.
“He was an important guy, Trotter,” LT Anderson said, with a certain urgency to his voice. “I’d hate to do this, but the commissioner is soliciting help from the feds.”
“No…wait a minute, sir,” I said, panicking.
“It’s already done, John.” He lit up a cigar and put his hat back on. “This was a prestigious surgeon from one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of Maine. They want this guy caught and they’re bringing out the big guns to do it. The Commissioner is holding a presser later today.”
“We can do this in our department, Lieutenant. We’re getting closer.” I was trying to convince myself as well as him.
“They’ll be in this afternoon and expect you to hand over everything we have on this case,” he said, stopping before he left the room. “I’m sorry John. You can run a parallel investigation with them. That’s fine with me, but let them do their job.”
The room grew dark and cold as the forensic team started bagging up the body. The DVD player also went as evidence along with the DVD that was in the open tray. We would scour over the footage back at the office. I wanted to get to it before the FBI came in.
This was his sixth victim.
Five were sex offenders of some kind.
Dr. James Montgomery didn’t have much of a record that I could see with my field investigation software, but it has missed things before.
I doubted a well-respected member of society had such sinister secrets that The Sparrow would make an example out of him by spreading him across his desk like that…disemboweled for his wife to walk in on.
The house got colder as I walked out the door and down the stairs. The wind was picking up again as the other officers were starting their squad cars and pulling away from the residents. It was after 8:00 a.m.
I only had a few hours before the FBI arrived to seize what little evidence we had.
The DNA was all I had.
Ingram.
Relatives of Samuel Ingram…the sex offender.
I knew that I had to follow up with this.
I started the Charger and let it idle for a moment. The light from the second floor window where Dr. James Montgomery was gutted turned off.
Just like the doors to the house, my part in this investigation was coming to a close.
I needed to pry my way back in.
Chapter Forty-Five
It was nearly 8:30 a.m. when I reached the precinct. The place was bustling again. People from different departments were bringing in evidence from the crime scene, and their eyes nervously focused on me.
They knew I was on a time limit before the federal government came in and took away my responsibilities. I would be seen as a failure in another aspect of my life.
I couldn’t.
My computer booted up quickly and I typed away, looking up information on Dr. James Montgomery that we might have stored away in our database.
His legal history included a few parking tickets when he was younger…but there was another tab, an encrypted tab that I’d seen before on other files.
Chaplan in cyber-crimes helped me decode the lock on the file over the phone.
“They put those on there sometimes when a big shot lawyer comes to town and tries to negotiate dropped charges for a heinous crime,” he told me over the phone. “The encryption is just there so laymen cops can’t see what he’s done. I have an override and I think it’s appropriate, given what’s going on in this investigation…that, and the fact he’s dead.”
I thanked him and opened the file up.
He was twenty-four and in medical school when a friend of his caught him sexually abusing a young girl. The friend was a relation of the victim somehow, and brought it to the police, who arrested Montgomery and initially charged him with three felonies.
He was caught nearly four months later trying to abuse the same girl on her sixth birthday by her father, who beat Montgomery nearly to death.
Additional charges were filed.
However, Montgomery’s lawyers fought it tooth and nail and successfully pleaded his case. The charges were ultimately dropped and it indicated they settled out of court.
“Who would of thought that this young girl had to suffer for her family to win to the lottery. Makes me sick.” I muttered covering my mouth out of disgust.
The Sparrow knew about it. He was able to find the case somehow, and Montgomery finally fit his mold.
“The DVD player is in the lab,” Harlow said, passing me by. “They’re done painting in there.” She shrugged. “The walls are white still.”
We hooked the DVD player up with a precinct TV we brought into the lab. As a technician hastily dusted for prints, we closed the tray.
I recognized the voice of the man on camera right away.
It was Evan Crist of the Nightstalkers. The hair on my arm stood up.
He was much older than he was in the video when he captured Philip Maise. He looked much like himself when I visited his home about the same case only two months earlier.
Evan exposed Dr. Montgomery on the film. He was obviously trying to meet up with a thirteen year old girl at a grocery store at nearly 2:00 a.m.
Dr. Montgomery was shaken and answered each question with a simple answer. He was getting agitated and got in his suburban, and peeled off after the Nightstalker crew got his license plate information.
“Was this ever sent to the police department?” I asked. “That looks like Howsler’s Grocery. This was filmed in Lincolnshire.”
“I’ll look into it,” Welker replied.
“Detective John Trotter,” a radio called from Harlow’s shoulder. I grabbed around for my radio, but I had left it on my desk. Harlow pushed her button.
“Go for Trotter,” I said.
“There’s a gentleman on line four asking to speak with you,” dispatch told me. “They said it’s urgent.”
“Copy.”
I walked to my desk and my phone was blinking red, so I picked up.
“You have Trotter.”
“Good morning, Detective,” the voice said. I’d heard it before.
“I was told this call was urgent,” I told him. “Do you have information regarding The Sparrow case? Or, another case?”
“Oh, I think I have a lot of information regarding The Sparrow case,” he replied. His voice was cold and calculated. “I have all the inside info.”
I grabbed my pen and had a notepad at the ready. I narrowed my brows and looked to Harlow who appeared confused.
“OK, I’m listening.”
“I’ve seen the man you’re looking for,” said the man on the line. “He’s done his best to try and rid the world of the vilest humans to ever exist. He blasted Mr. Burnley in the back of the head with a shotgun. He stabbed Mr. Henson in the gut with a fillet knife. I stabbed Mr. James repeatedly until he stopped moving. It took you a while to catch that one.”
Harlow picked up another phone, joined the call and began to trace the line. Others around could sense commotion and they started to gather around.
“I shot Philip Maise over a dozen times,” he continued. “It felt like it anyway. And your partner. Detective DeAngelo Abraham. I shot him in the throat. I remember trying my best to keep him alive, Detective. I truly did. I wanted him to live. He wasn’t like the rest. I want you to know that.”
Harlow spun her fingers in circles, motioning for me to keep him talking.
“What about the others?” I asked, trying to get the subject off Abraham.
“There’s s surprise thrown in there somewhere,” he continued. “But, they wouldn’t mean as much to you as they do to me. Dr. James Montgomery was our latest victim. I didn’t offer them all an explanation as to why I cut their miserable lives short, but I definitely let him in. Sad, his poor wife had to find him like that. I meant no harm to her. I have no qualms with those who don’t step outside the boundaries of a few simple rules, Detective.”
“It seems like everyone you’ve killed, my partner excluded, had perpetrated some sort of sex crime,” I said. “They probably deserved what they had coming.”
“They did have what was coming,” he said. “I just wanted to call to apologize. Not for
killing your partner, heavens no…after I’d thought about it, he was trying to stop me from killing a man who had done the most vile thing a human can do.”
“I agree with you,” I said, shrugging to Harlow. “That’s why we’ve taken it so easy on you. You’re helping us in a way.”
There was a long and brutal silence. I could hear his breathing on the other line.
He was still calm.
“You see that?” He asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“Explain…”
I cleared my throat. “These guys didn’t get what they deserved at all. They perpetrated sex crimes. Those are the worst crimes to commit. When the legal system fails to execute them, someone has to do it.”
Another prolonged silence.
“If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t be investigating my crime scenes, Detective.”
“Look,” I continued. “We’re just doing our job. We are also dragging our feet a little bit, if you catch my drift.
My forehead and palms were sweating.
“You’re letting me do what I have to do,” he said under his breath, though I heard it clearly.
“Yes…” I was out of words.
He muttered something to someone else and returned to me.
“If that’s the case, I have something spectacular planned, Detective.” He hung up the phone.
“We have his location,” Harlow said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“Where are you taking me?” I asked Harlow as she searched the GPS on the dash.
“It’s way on the other side of town,” she said. Other squad cars followed us as we weaved in and out of traffic. The sirens from every vehicle in the convoy blared as we blew through multiple stoplights in a row. Cars sat impatiently on both sides as we sped through each light.