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

“Here,” Katherine said. “Ice the shoulder a little bit. It looks a little swollen today.” The physical therapist came out twice a week and would always leave me in substantial pain, but today wasn’t so bad. The physical stress of the exercises and stretches usually left my right side a little more swelled than the left.

The feeling along the entirety of my right side was back, and I could finally move my arm in a full windmill motion without passing out.

They started weaning me off the Vicodin, but the ibuprofen was still on tap.

I groaned as Katherine placed the Ziploc baggie of ice cubes against my bare chest. We had gotten along for the most part during our stay in the cabin, though I knew it would likely be short-lived. I wanted her to know how much I cared for her, but I didn’t want to be taken advantage of.

The hurt I felt when she told me how little I helped her felt like a sharp instrument stuck in my side, though the pain was quite different than what I felt slice through my shoulder. The burden I carried was heavy, and I knew the trek was long and arduous.

“It doesn’t look as bad today as it was last week when she was here,” I said, gritting my teeth. “The discoloration is finally going away.”

“It’s going to leave a nasty scar, though,” she quipped. “You’ll have that for the rest of your life.”

The scar in the back was nearly two inches wide, and it broke an inch wide in the front. The doctor said it meant that he likely stabbed through up to the handle given what type of knife it was.

There was a knock on the door. LT Anderson was scheduled to drop off a new set of case files for me to scour through while I was still recovering.

“Good morning, Detective,” he said as he entered. He nodded to Katherine. “Miss.”

“Morning,” I said. Katherine started to redress the bandage. “What have you got for me today?”

He sat down slowly in the recliner. “Actually, I wanted to run something by you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah…it’s come to my attention that the last time you talked to Detective Abraham was nearly a month ago.” He repositioned himself awkwardly in the recliner. “He always had an excuse not to come up here, whether he was busy going through paperwork, or had to question a neighbor.”

“Really?” I asked. “I always thought it was sensitive information you wanted to deliver yourself.”

“Oh yeah, Trotter,” he said sarcastically. “I’m the lieutenant of an entire precinct. I have all the time in the world to drive out here in the middle of the forest a few times every week.”

I shook my head. “So, we had a conversation.”

“I need to know what was said…what was implied,” he demanded, uneasily in his chair. “Because, by the sound of it, you have one foot out the door.”

I sighed.

Harlow.

Abraham had confided in her about the conversation and she spilled it to LT Anderson. Abraham had too much pride in his work that he kept from allowing the telephone game to circulate the precinct.

“We talked about the case quickly, but not much more was said about it.”

“What was said, then?” he asked, peering over my shoulder to Katherine who had taken an interest in the conversation.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.”

“Meaning?”

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in this field any longer,” I said. “I just nearly bled to death and he was talking about me getting right back in the thick of things.”

“And now?”

“And now…I don’t know. I’ve had nothing but time to think about it, but I’m still jumbled up. I’m jumpy now. I’ve had dreams of what happened…different variations. I’ve had issues keeping lights off at night. There’s a lot going on right now.”

He narrowed his brows and sat back in the recliner. He unashamedly took out a fat cigar and lit it up and crossed his legs. He took a few puffs of it and lazily turned his head to face me.

“Have you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish in twelve years as a detective and ten as a uniformed officer?”

I winced as Katherine took the ice pack off my back.

My years as an officer were spent aimlessly arresting DUI offenders and breaking up domestic disputes. My one big break came when I shot Alvin Dugger in the back in the middle of a busy intersection. My time as a detective was spent investigating simple suicides and missing people.

Then Madison. LT Anderson hastily closed the case while I was working on it. I wasn’t ready to close it.

I wasn’t ready.

Something sparked within me. Something about the poor twelve-year-old girl who jumped to her death from Covey Bridge pierced me through the heart. It still didn’t feel like a typical depressed teen expressing herself through art hours before she forced her own demise in brutal fashion.

The fiery phoenix shown tearing the villagers apart held inadvertent significance to me. It felt forced and I couldn’t explain it, but the beast gliding purposefully through the sky attacking the helpless people below grew in importance over a few seconds of time, though I felt the importance from the beginning.

Madison’s case was closed too soon. Something about it didn’t sit right with me, and I all the sudden had plume of motivational thoughts short-circuiting my brain.

Sparrow be damned, I wanted justice for the girl who suffered so. The battle that waged within me wasn’t about agreeing or disagreeing with The Sparrow’s choice of victims…it was about Madison and what she experienced.

It was about Madison and her story.

It was about Madison and her ability to affect those who never knew her in inexplicable ways.

I felt a peace overcome me because I knew