Melaine

Chapter 34

The leaves scrunched beneath his leather boots as he walked through wet woods and adjusted his black surgical mask that threatened to slip down. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was following him and reached a abandoned house whose paint had been peeled off the walls and fell like big pale flakes of snow. He stood under the shed of the house and unlocked the door, looking around the deserted neighborhood and entered inside the house closing it behind him. He removed his mask inhaling deeply through his nose and pulled out his glasses from his pocket putting them on his blue eyes. He marched inside the kitchenette and grabbed the tin bin from the corner. He unzipped his jacket and reached for his inner pocket to retrieve a folder file. He opened it and pulled out the paper documents of birth certificate, school admission forums, legal documents of children record with photos attached at the right corner and custody papers from Rosalind Orphanage. The folder which dictated his life and death was in his own hands.

"You have almost got me David which you shouldn't have." 

He muttered and lit the lighter holding it close to the documents and watch them burn before his eyes. He dumped the papers in the bin till they burnt to ashes and he stalked outside of the kitchen.He passed the closed rooms on the both sides of corridor and opened a door to the backyard of the house walking on the dried trampled grass and came to stop in the middle of the yard. He knelt on the ground and rotated the  wheel to disengage the mechanism of lock and lifted the rustic iron lid which opened with a squeaking sound. The figure sitting in the corner lifted its head up, shielding eyes with back of hand from the bright light and he smirked in satisfaction speaking to that person.

"You're going to have a partner down here."

-
Annie sat in front row in a mourning dress beside Sam and her mother who flew overnight from Italy the soon she received news of her son's death. There were distant sounds of sirens; police cars, ambulance, flashes of cameras and then too much color of blood that painted her memory. She didn't remember shouting at the paramedics who put David's body on the stretcher carrying him inside the ambulance. Neither she remembered passing out at the place of accident after receiving a trauma to her mind and waking up in a hospital room asking nurses for her brother. Sam hadn't left her side since the accident and held her hand speaking soothing words to her deaf ears that she couldn't comprehend. She faintly remembered the sobs and cries of her mother but she's too enclosed in her own mind to register for whom and why she had been crying only to realize later that it's for David.

She didn't get why they were crying for David.

'He is no more.'

 The official statement from the doctors declared 28 years old David, respected detective in the police department dead. He died in a road accident and his immediate death happened on the spot at the impact  because of head injury. But she knew that it couldn't have been a mere accident.

'You would do fine.'

Why did he say it unless he was implying something? David died half an hour after her meeting with that person whom she shouldn't have met. She had managed to clean herself and dressed herself in black mourning short collar gown for the funeral. She looked herself in the mirror and a shell of girl stared back at her in her reflection. It's because of her that her brother had died.

'I can't reach Rohan.'

Sam had told her and she didn't make a reply but nodded in silence. He simply wasn't there when she had needed him most. Sam drove Annie and her mother to the graveyard where the burial ceremony was to be held. David had been placed in a dark blue lead casket dressed in a black formal suit, wearing a silk grey tie and holding a white rose on his breast. He was supposed to wear this suit at her graduation ceremony next week. Close relatives and friends came to attend his funeral; the entire department was present in their uniform to pay him respect as a police officer. Even her mother's to- be husband had managed to take a flight from Italy to support them in their time of grief.