Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (the reading list .TXT) 📕

Hello, Little Sparrow

A Novel

by

Jordan Jones

Copyright © 2021 by Jordan E. Jones

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 9798680596791

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2021

Dedication:

To my amazing and supportive wife.

It is not difficult to avoid death. It is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death…

- Socrates

Chapter One

Madison Maise jumped off Covey Bridge to her death on January twentieth, though she lost her life many years before.

I pulled up next to Covey Bridge in my unmarked Dodge Charger and adjusted my rearview mirror, focusing in on a distraught couple talking to a uniformed officer behind the police tape. The sleet was light, tapping against my windshield, making intermittent splashes my wipers tried violently to wipe away.

I turned the car off and buttoned up my wool trench coat, grabbed my fedora, and swung the door open reluctantly.

The man and woman were still excited in their tone, and the uniformed officer was quickly scribbling at his pad. Another vehicle was stopped halfway across the bridge, the door still open with the key in the ignition. My partner, Deangelo Abraham, was already at the scene, poking his head over the railing of the bridge.

L.T Anderson was also present, fingering at his own notepad. “It’s about time you showed up; take a look at this,” LT Anderson said, motioning to the ground near the ledge.

“It looks like blood. Nearly frozen to the ground.”

“Very good, John,” he said sarcastically. “There is a girl at the bottom of this ravine. She must’ve walked on glass we spotted a few blocks back. The gentleman and the woman pulled up as this girl was climbing over the railing.”

“Why didn’t they stop her?” Abraham asked.

“There wasn’t enough time. All they remember was that she said, ‘My demons will die with me’ and then she jumped.”

“That’s horrible,” Abraham said. His greying beard pronounced in the white frozen snow that surrounded us.

“Yes, but I need to tell you two: be prepared before you go down that ravine. What you’re about to see, you won’t soon forget.”

The ravine itself wasn’t the worst part, but the slick, newly fallen snow and sleet was. None of us were properly dressed for the part. Although the bridge wasn’t very long, it was a long way down to the creek.

Lincolnshire, Maine, didn’t have a river, only a creek. It was shallow, but deep enough to fish from time to time when the season was right. When Madison took her plunge, the banks were completely frozen, though the stream was moving rapidly.

Abraham and I slipped and skidded our way down to the bottom, spouting a few choice words in the process.

Once at the bottom, the stream appeared faster close up than it did at the top. The forensics specialist at the Lincolnshire P.D was already down there taking pictures. Torrey Benjamin was a middle-aged man with no personality. We’ve never butted heads, but never really saw eye-to-eye. His part of the job often confused me and he offered us little insight…especially on the more egregious cases requiring an “all hands on deck” approach.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Benjamin stated as we finished slipping down the steep slope.

“Morning,” I answered as cheerfully as I could. “What do we have?”

“Looks like the wind shifted her during the one-hundred foot drop. It was much windier earlier this morning. It shifted her in this direction and she landed right there, in the middle of the creek bed.” He pointed to a rock jutting slightly out of the water; human remains were obvious from where we stood.

“That was only the impact point,” he continued. “The current took the rest of her body downstream a few hundred feet until it rested on the bank, over there.” He pointed to a lifeless body that was difficult for us to make out where we stood. “Follow me.”

Her body was mangled and unrecognizable. The closer we got to her, the uneasier I felt. The suicide rate in Lincolnshire grew tenfold in the winter months, as cloudy days and isolation take over the lives of people in Maine.

This winter has grown especially arduous for the teens.

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious the cause of death was a result of the impact, and the people up top saw her jump.” He adjusted his beady-eyed glasses at the end of his nose. He tried to appear older and wiser than he was. “Just a sad and young girl taking her personal atomic clock in her own hands.”

Her body was so badly contorted, it was hard to decipher the top from the bottom.

She wanted to die. She was backed into a corner and took it upon herself to end it.

But, why?

“I found this in her pockets,” Benjamin stated, holding out a necklace. “One of the uniforms helped me search her pants right before you arrived.”

I took the necklace in my hand and studied it.

It had a gold-colored chain, though it was clearly a knock-off. Not unlike something a young preteen girl would wear. The butterfly at its center had different colored jewels in it, the chain connected to each of the wings. The piece was fairly heavy given its cheap nature.

“What do you think the significance of this is?” I asked. “If there is any.”

“I doubt there is any,” Abraham said. “By the looks of it, she was hastily dressed. I don’t even see a coat anywhere.