Do No Harm

After he hung up, he lay back and let his muscles go lax. A revving sports car up on Sunset reminded him of the earplugs he'd accidentally stolen from Healton's Drugstore. He retrieved them from his pants in the laundry, returned to bed, and put them in. They were surprisingly effective. He closed his eyes, pulling the sheets up to his chin, and drifted on the blissful silence. He was asleep in seconds.

Through his sleeping stupor, he became vaguely aware of a distant ringing. It repeated itself at intervals, then he was awake and momentarily lost before the familiar glow of the alarm clock reminded him he was home. The ringing returned. The doorbell. Muted through his earplugs. And some kind of rasping.

Why was someone ringing his bell at 3:30 in the morning? Grabbing the cordless from its cradle, he padded to the front door, leaving his earplugs on a hall table.

He peered through the peephole at Jenkins and Bronner. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"Please open the door, Dr. Spier."

David cracked the door and peered through the gap. "What does this concern?"

"Dr. Spier, please." Jenkins's voice had an edge of concern in it, enough to cause David to open up. Both officers stood back toward the edge of the porch. "Can you please step out onto the porch?"

"Look, I'm not really sure- " David noticed Bronner leaning to the side, trying to get a better angle to see around him into the dark foyer, and he stopped short. Resisting the urge to look behind him, David stepped out into the cool night.

Jenkins grabbed David's arm, his hand encompassing his biceps, and pulled him back, eyes locked on the open front door. "We got a 911 call alerting us to this address about fifteen minutes ago," he said.

David shook his head. "Well, everything's fine. I've been sleeping for hours. It must have been a prank."

His declaration did little to wipe the intense concern from the officers' faces. Jenkins was working his lip between his teeth, his arms steeled and rigid.

"What?" David asked. "Why are you so alarmed?"

Jenkins unholstered his pistol. "The call came from within your house."

David swallowed hard, but the spit caught in his throat.

Pistol drawn, Jenkins toed the door the rest of the way open and inched inside. "Stay outside," Bronner growled. He turned on his flashlight, unholstered his pistol, and, crossing his arms at the wrists, followed Jenkins into the house.

David stood out on the porch in his boxers, shivering in the cold. After a moment, Jenkins hissed at him from within the house. "Lights! Where's the fucking light switch?"

David inched inside, and clicked one of the switches by the front door, concealed by the braided trunk of a tall Ficus benjamina. A cone of light from the ceiling softly illuminated the antique table and the couches, just enough to see that the room was empty and undisturbed.

Jenkins and Bronner looked relieved, but did not lower their guns. They did a brief walk-through of the other rooms, using flashlights, whispering, and searching in closets and behind furniture. There was no sign of forced entry. Finally, they headed down the long hall toward the study and master bedroom.

The beam of Jenkins's flashlight illuminated the birdcage in the corner of the study. The drape had been removed, and the small wire door hung open. The cockatoo was missing. Jenkins and Bronner looked at David interrogatively, and he nodded solemnly.

David remembered the strange rasping which, in addition to the doorbell, had awakened him, and he felt the hair along his arms prickle. His bedroom.

He pointed to the slightly ajar bedroom door to which the hall led, and Bronner and Jenkins slunk toward it, pistols aimed at the small strip of blackness that ran the height of the jamb. Jenkins gestured as if he were flipping a light switch, and David mimed its location within the bedroom. Angling his gun to cover the left side of the room, Bronner toed the door so it creaked open, then he and Jenkins burst in, flashlights sweeping the interior.

A sudden stillness. David heard Bronner make a noise low in his throat and he stepped into the room just as Jenkins flipped the switch. He blinked against the flash of light.

But not before he saw the bird pinned wide, unfurled across the wall facing David's bed, its wings and feet tacked to the wall with surgical scalpels. A blood splatter sprayed the wall to one side.

The cockatoo's bright pink crest was stained and matted, its feathers shredded and broken. A small square had been excised from its throat with one of the scalpels, and blood drained from the hole down its feathers. Its voice box had been removed, a crude surgical procedure.

A shudder wracked through David as he stared at the bloody tableau. Clyde had pinned the mutilated bird to the wall while David had slept feet away.

Had David stirred, Clyde might have killed him. The stolen earplugs may have saved his life.