Scarlet Macaw

“Um, can you help me?” a child’s voice rose above the tall desk.

Captain Shane Michaels sighed loudly as he rose from his chair. It wasn’t that it was hard for him to get up; he was just tired of talking to people. Usually, he drove around the city and talked to a few people a day. Even his partner, Eddie, is – was – quiet. But here on desk duty, he felt like he talked to as many people in an hour as he had in the average week on the beat.

He peered over the edge of the tall desk and saw a kid who couldn’t be more than eight or nine. She was dressed in mismatched clothes that were clearly too big for her and dirty, ragged sneakers. Her blonde hair was tangled under the red toboggan cap she wore and her freckled face had a few smudges. However, despite her poor appearance, she was smiling brightly and she carried a majestic bird on her shoulder, a Scarlet Macaw, if the memories from his twitcher grandmother were serving him well.

“Hey there,” Shane said to her.

“Hi!” she grinned back adorably.

“Hello,” squawked the bird.

Shane laughed. “Are you guys here by yourselves?” he asked, realizing she was standing alone.

Her gaze slid away from his. “I’m not here to talk about that.”

“OK,” he answered cheerfully. “Then what are you here to talk about?”

“I think this bird witnessed a murder.”

“Huh?”

“I think it witnessed a murder.”

“What makes you think that?” Shane asked, wondering if he was being punked.

The little girl put one hand around the bird’s feet to keep it from escaping, then poked its belly.

“NO, NO, NO!” it screamed. “Don’t kill me! PLEASE!” Then it let out a long moaning cry of pain and settled into preening its feathers as if nothing had happened.

The whole lobby of the police station had stopped to watch.

“Hey, kid, are you hungry?” Shane said, motioning for Randy to take over the desk.

Her face brightened. “Yes!”

He called for a female officer and ushered both of them into a meeting room as soon as she arrived. “Let me order some lunch and I’ll be right back.” He left them there chatting.

He sent a rookie to the deli around the corner and went to talk to the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Laura,” she said.

“I’m Shane. What’s your bird’s name?”

“I don’t know. He’s not really mine. He flew in the window from the building next door. I’ve seen him in his cage. He must have gotten out somehow.”

“Why do you think he came to see you?”

She grinned impishly. “I talk to him sometimes and we sing together. But he usually just says things like ‘Hey baby’ or ‘I’m hungry.’”

The female officer, Rachel Hastings, looked perplexed. Laura grinned at her and in answer to the confusion, poked the bird in the belly.

“NO, NO, NO!” it screamed. “Don’t kill me! PLEASE!” As its moans died away, Officer Hastings nodded slowly.

“Well, that was interesting,” she murmured.

“Yup!” Laura chirped.

“When did he come down to your window, Laura?” Shane asked.

“Yesterday,” she said. “I would have brought him then, but my dad was home.”

“He wouldn’t bring you down?” Officer Hastings asked.

Some of the happy light left Laura’s face and she looked at the table. “I didn’t ask him,” Laura mumbled. The two police officers exchanged heavy glances over her bowed head.

The bird, sensing Laura’s sadness, rubbed his beak against her cheek and said, “It’s OK, baby. Pretty girl. Pretty girl.”

Laura perked up and stroked the bird’s glistening feathers.

“OK, Laura,” Shane said. “Can you show us the window where your bird used to live?”

“Um, you mean, on a map?”

“No, we mean in person,” Officer Hastings said.

“Do I have to?” Laura questioned in a pleading tone.

The adults exchanged another pregnant glance.

“Are you afraid to go home, sweetie?” Officer Hastings asked gently.

“Maybe.”

“Well, you can just show us where the bird was and stay with us for a little while,” Shane told her. “We’ll just have to talk about everything and see what the best choice is.”

Shane arranged for a couple of marked cruisers to ride with them. Laura gave directions to a squalid part of town where the warehouses had jagged holes instead of windows and nothing looked clean. They found her building, which had three junkies snoozing on the steps even though it was only four in the afternoon.

The uniformed officers set themselves to providing a perimeter. Shane waited for a moment of quiet and said, “Can you show me where the bird came from?”

Laura darted around the side of the building and pointed down the alley. “It’s two buildings down, on the third floor. It’s the one with blue curtains.”

They left Laura with the uniforms. Fortunately. only one apartment had blue curtains. They went inside to find the manager of the building. He came out if his room yawning and scratching his naked paunch with a grimy hand. “What d’you want?”

“We need to see an apartment on the third floor,” Shane said.

“You got a warrant?” the manager said petulantly..

Shane waved a blue page under the manager’s nose. Without doing or saying anything else, the manager grabbed the master key and began clomping up the steps. Shane and Officer Hastings had to scurry along to catch up.

They arrived at the door that Shane had calculated was right from outside and the manager swung it wide. A few feet from them, they saw a woman’s hand severed below the elbow. The manager promptly ran away to throw up down the hall.

As Shane called for back-up, he heard a rustling sound in the apartment. He looked at Officer Hasting, but she was already taking out her gun. They crept into the apartment silently, looking all around and carefully stepping over bloodstains and body parts.

As Shane crossed the threshold into the bedroom, he heard a voice say. “Hey baby.”

Both aimed their guns at the sound. The bird was sitting on a woman’s face – on a head that wasn’t attached to a body. Blue curtains were blowing in the breeze in the window next to the gruesome sight.

The parrot stroked the cold face and said, “Pretty girl. Pretty girl.”

“Uh, excuse me, Detective Michaels?” a voice came crackling over the radio.

“Yes?” Shane responded.

“You’d better come look outside.”

Shane stuck his head out of the window and looked toward the street. He saw a body lying directly below in the stairwell to the basement.

Before Shane could say or do anything, the Macaw dove out of the window screaming “No! Don’t kill me. I’m sorry!”

He landed on the dead man’s face and joined the already present scratches with many more identical ones.