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

“You bet, my boy,” he said. “This Sparrow fella…doesn’t seem all there.”

“What gave it away?” I asked, sarcastically. “The fact he murders people or that he was able to do so under our noses for the past three months.”

“Oh nonsense, son,” he said. “That kinda thing happens from time to time. Serial killers don’t get the ‘serial’ part if they were caught immediately. This guy is different than the other psychos.”

I thought for a moment and let him continue without interrupting. Dad had found many killers in his day and I wasn’t about to stop him from inadvertently helping me find mine.

“He kills pedophiles…that much you knew. But, he has another safe house somewhere. I’d venture to say it’s in the outskirts of town somewhere. Probably a different town. I’ll tell ya son, we found the St. Michael’s street killer after he fortified himself in a barn on his parents’ old property. It ended in a glorious shootout; bullet holes punctured the side of the old wooden barn, pieces of wood shattered all over the place. This guy has a hideout.”

I thought for a minute. Samuel Ingram was his uncle and was known for being a homeless drug addict.

But not Garrett. Brooks’ father had a secure income for several years so he must’ve had an address.

“Dad, thank you for talking me through this. I don’t know where this will lead me, but I’m sure it’ll be somewhere I need to be.”

We hung up and I turned around. Harlow was standing there, clicking her feet on the ground.

“You mind telling me what that was about?” She asked with an eyebrow raised.

“Come on,” I said walking past her. “We have some work to do.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

In the middle of the room, Brooks once again found himself on the floor contemplating. He had hallucinations of the police surrounding his home, kicking in the door, and filling him full of lead.

Madison stood in the corner of the room, but she wasn’t making eye contact with him. She was a shell of a girl, though she drove Brooks behind the scenes.

“The door is almost open to your retribution, Brooks,” she said softly from the shadows. Her voice was much smaller now; still easy to make out, but with less intensity.

“There’s still something large and unseen in the way,” Brooks said, looking up to the ceiling. The outline of his mother’s bed fit perfectly above his head and below his feet. “I will fulfill my retribution in time.”

“You need to strike, now,” she screeched.

Brooks searched the room and Madison was gone from the corner, though he still felt her presence.

“My sights are set to the Fortress that stands before me,” he said. The halfway house on the edge of Lincolnshire was home to several sex-offenders; they had trouble finding housing within the community after releasing from the state prisons, so they housed them together.

“The Fortress…” Madison answered. “The Fortress is but a dream not impeding your retribution. You need to stop dreaming about them and focus on him.”

“I will bring the dream to life,” Brooks answered. The ceiling started to swirl a little bit and he was motionless on the floor. He couldn’t believe everything he heard and saw, but wanted to so badly.

It comforted Brooks to witness things outside of the realm of possibility. It gave him hope there was a world beyond this.

Brooks stood up and walked to the garage. The darkened walls became darker as he passed them. Nightfall was present all the time around him now.

He grabbed the side of a small workbench that was no longer fastened to the wall and dragged it into his mother’s old bedroom. Sliding it to the wall, he secured it in place.

“This is where I work on my plan to destroy the Fortress and its inhabitants,” he called into the darkness. He opened the laptop and hooked up his internet card to it. The police were quick to shut down his communication and internet, but he was able to jailbreak an internet adaptor and retrieve Wi-Fi off the neighbors.

He’d learned a lot in the past few months of hiding his tracks.

“Now, the fun begins.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

“He has to have another place to live,” I said, scouring through the filing cabinet full of documents. The FBI Agents were fast at work in their makeshift headquarters. They made no attempt to reach out to me for help since I’d already given them everything I had. “Something like a backup plan, or safe house. Something.”

“How can you be so sure?” Harlow asked. “I mean his house was a treasure trove of evidence. He’s definitely our guy.”

“Oh he is,” I said, picking up a document. “But, he probably didn’t have much when he left. He had everything he needed elsewhere. Something like a fallback plan of sorts.”

I studied the document for a few seconds and noticed some markings at the bottom.

“Was that the bill sent to the phone company?” Harlow asked. “There’s that name Roisman again.”

I stared at the bill for a quick second and my stomach sank into the floor. Everything I’d worked for was being mocked right in front of my face. He was on to me as I was to him.

***

Consult Communications was a fairly large corporate building downtown. Customers didn’t often visit it because most of their customer service hassles were carried out over their terrible automated systems. We walked through the front doors and showed our badge to the front counter.

“I’m Detective John Trotter; this is Detective Kris Harlow with the Lincolnshire PD.” I displayed the warrant. “We’re here with regards to a single phone line installed at Franklin Scrap, though I’m not sure the exact date.”

The worried woman at the counter began typing into her computer.

“We’re also