Never Buried: A Leigh Koslow Mystery (27 page)

The footsteps stopped, and a flashlight beam flickered over Leigh. She ignored it.

Leigh jumped as the guard touched her shoulder. She hadn't even noticed him walking over. She jerked her head up.

It wasn't the security guard. It was Chief Donald Mellman.

Chapter 23

"Are you crazy, girl? You've got to get out of here! The whole damn house is on fire!"

Leigh looked into the face of the police officer she's known since her childhood. Reserved, yet loyal; soft-spoken, yet firm; always calm. She stared at his twisted nose, the grayish hair falling into his eyes, and the beads of sweat forming on his broad forehead.

Later, she would realize how differently things might have turned out if she'd simply gotten up and gone with him. He had come to save her, to get her out. He was still the benevolent chief of police. The house was burning, his goal was accomplished. Or so it seemed.

But she didn't. She couldn't.

The pudgy fingers burned a hole in her shoulder, but her body didn't respond to her brain. She couldn't move.

"Leigh?" he asked, growing more agitated, "What's wrong with you?"

She looked up into his pale gray eyes. A boy, only fourteen years old. Beaten and disfigured by his father. A facade of calm. A core of rage.

"Leigh!" he shouted, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. "Let's go!"

She should have dropped the book. She didn't even want it. But the filthy journal was stuck inside the death grip of her frozen fingers, and as he pulled her up, it came too.

Mellman grabbed at it, then paused. He lifted her wrist and scanned the open page.

Leigh watched his eyes grow wide, and felt a tremor pass through his giant frame. Then he shoved her wrist roughly toward the floor and stepped away from her.

Still, she couldn't move.

"
That bastard!
" he screamed. It was a loud, gut-felt scream. The kind of scream whose very tone made the listener's own adrenaline surge. Before her eyes, his whole countenance changed. Gone were the dull, lackluster eyes, the easy half-smile. His face was fire-engine red, his pupils dilated, his muscles taught; his huge chest heaved with the effort of each breath. Leigh made her first motion. She stepped back.

He shook his head violently and pointed a finger at Leigh. "He won't win! I won't let him!"

She wanted to speak, but her throat produced no words.

He continued in a voice now deathly calm. "You don't know what he did. He tied Robbie's legs to a block. Did you know that? Tied him to a block and dumped him in the dirty river—just dumped him in.
Like garbage
!"

She swallowed. Mellman began to pace as he talked, gesticulating wildly.

"Paul wasn't a kid—he was a man. He could have stopped it. Norman beat Robbie, hit him, over and over, and Paul didn't care. He didn't do it, but he might as well have. Let Robbie's mother die, let Robbie die, and
didn't even bury him! God!
" He swung around to the wall behind him and smashed it with a fist. The wall shuddered, but Mellman seemed oblivious to the pain.

He turned back to Leigh, his voice suddenly calm again. "Paul didn't deserve to be buried, either."

Leigh inhaled sharply, understanding dawning in her stressed-out brain. It was Mellman. Mellman who had avenged his friend's murder by shooting Norman Fischer. Mellman who had spent the next forty years hating the stepbrother who'd let Robbie die. And Mellman who’d stolen the body.

She watched as he stared down at the floor, scraping his foot slowly from side to side. His hand fidgeted over his gun belt.

"I never meant to hurt you girls," he said softly. "I like you."

"I know." The words came out hoarsely, and Leigh swallowed and repeated them. "I know you didn't."

He looked up at her. "Robbie was my best friend. My best friend in the whole world. He never hurt anybody. He didn't deserve to die."

"Of course not," Leigh soothed. But her calm facade was only voice deep, because her nose and ears had convinced her that what she'd hoped was a bluff was real. Alarms in the ceilings below her feet beeped in chorus, and the smell of smoke hung thick in the air. "We need to get out of here," she said, shaky.

Mellman drew his gun.

"Paul wanted to ruin my life, you know," he continued calmly, caressing the gun's barrel. "He wanted me to go to jail. That probably wouldn't happen. But he knew I could never keep being a policeman. And that's all I have."

Leigh watched without breathing. She had never even seen a loaded weapon, other than tucked away safely in someone's gun belt. Her eyes fixed on it in horror as he began waving it aimlessly in the air.

"Nobody knew. Just me and him. That stupid will of his—he should have known better. I got that before the son of a bitch even died." He glanced at the journals littering the attic floor, aimed, and fired. Leigh jumped and threw her hands pointlessly over her ears. A book jerked, sending a cloud of dust to join the smoke already swirling around the junction of floor and rafters. Mellman erupted into peals of laughter, the gun tracing wild motions as he convulsed in mirth. Somewhere below, glass was breaking.

Leigh's legs, thankfully disconnected from her terrified mind, began moving her towards the door.

"
Freeze!
" Mellman said forcefully, training the gun on her. Then he began to laugh again. "Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. Old habit."

Leigh stood still. She imagined that the floor was growing hot under her feet as Mellman's laughter dissolved into sobs. He laid his head in his hands.

"We have to leave now," she said, as firmly as she dared.

"I never wanted to hurt you, Leigh," he repeated, wailing loudly. "You know that! Hell, I never even wanted to hurt your damn cat! If it hadn't kept running away from the doors—"

She stared at him in amazement. "You—"

"I only wanted to burn what Fischer left. Don't you see? Nothing had to suffer. It hurts to be burned, you know." He stood solemnly now, one hand rubbing a scarred elbow, the gun hanging limply from the other.

She took another step toward the door.

"
No!
" He was alert again, the gun trained, his eyes wild. "You can't leave. If you do, everyone will know. They'll think I'm a killer, and I'm not! He was a devil—you can't be blamed for killing a devil, can you?"

Leigh had no answer.

"
Well, can you?!
" he thundered, walking toward her, the gun pointing from his outstretched hands.

"Uncle Don?"

A meek, childlike voice drifted to them from the attic door. Mellman froze, then turned. It was Maura.

***

"Uncle Don, it's me, Maura. I need your help."

The woman Mellman turned to see was almost as big as he was, but from the look of his eyes, he appeared to see a child. "Maura, honey, you need to go back downstairs," he ordered in a gentle, paternal tone.

"I won't go without you, Uncle Don, and my friend. You'll come with us, won't you?"

Sweat rolled off Mellman's face, which seemed to register increasing confusion. His hands held the gun frozen on Leigh, but his attention was diverted to Maura, who moved slowly toward him. "Don't show your gun to my friend, Uncle Don. You're scaring her."

Mellman blinked. He looked at Leigh, then back at Maura. "I don't mean to," he said softly.

"I know you don't," Maura soothed, now only a few feet away. "But she's afraid of guns. Can she go now?"

Mellman slowly lowered his pistol, looking at Leigh apologetically, but speaking to Maura. "She won't tell anybody, will she?"

"Of course not," Maura responded firmly. She had managed to step in between Leigh and Mellman, and now she gestured to her friend behind her back. The implication was clear.
Move toward the door, slowly
.

Leigh saw no point in arguing. She made slow, sideways movements toward the stairway as Maura shielded her from Mellman, who had started to cry.

"I didn't do anything wrong!" he babbled. "I never meant to hurt anybody. Norman pulled the gun on me, you know. Right out of the night stand. But he was so puny, and even then, I—"

Maura issued low orders to Leigh as Mellman's speech gave way to racking sobs. "Stay low. Crawl down the stairs—don't open the hall door. Just climb out the window onto the roof. The glass is broken."

Leigh reached the attic doorway and immediately dropped to her knees. Black smoke seemed to fill the stairway at all but its lowest points, and more and more of the noxious haze was streaming up and curling into the rafters of the attic. They didn't have much time.

She looked back at Maura. "You've got to hurry!" she called.

Mellman was babbling again, and though Leigh couldn't understand what he was saying, Maura's hushed call was deathly clear. Even on her cockiest day, Leigh wouldn't have considered defying it. "
Go. Now
."

Leigh swung her legs out in front of her and down the stairs, then lay on her back and edged down. The smoke in the staircase was thick enough to burn her lungs, and her whole body felt hot. She coughed and sputtered as she slid over the last half of the stairs and belly flopped onto the square landing at the bottom. She was lying on broken glass, but that didn't seem important. She just wanted to breathe.

Thick smoke rolled under the door separating the attic steps from the upstairs hall, and Leigh took Maura's advice not to open it. Her odds of reaching the main staircase at the other end did not look good.

Instead she hooked her fingers over the windowsill, dimly aware of a stabbing pain, and pulled herself up. The heat seemed unbearable, and for a moment she was certain she would faint. But as the cool night air touched her face, and the wail of sirens assaulted her ears, she found renewed strength. Thanks to the abundance of gables on the old Victorian, a stretch of angled roof lay just below the window ledge. She threw a leg out and onto the roof, banging her head on the side of the window in an effort to stay low. Head down, she pulled her second leg through and released her hold on the piercing sill.

"Quick! Over here!" A voice called. It was exclamatory, yet soothing, and comfortably familiar. Feeling a sudden rush of relief, Leigh rolled over to get her bearings, but discovered she had none. Her chest heaving with coughs and her limbs heavy, she rolled helplessly down the gentle incline. As her legs plunged forward into nothingness, her scrambling hands caught on a thin rim of metal. The gutter held only for a moment or two, but it was enough. When Leigh's blood-smeared fingers lost their hold, she plunged down into waiting arms.

***

As to what the sobbing mass at her feet was babbling about, Maura could only guess. What she did know was that every second that passed made the air hotter, the smoke thicker, and their chances of a safe escape even more remote.

"Uncle Don," she continued, her voice as meek as she could force, "Would you put down your gun please? I'm afraid, too."

There was no response other than the pained sobbing of a man whose mind had lost control of his emotions. A wave of guilt spread over her. The signs had all been there. If she'd only been paying attention. But she hadn't, because she was too close. She'd lost her objectivity, and now she was paying the price.

She reached down and gently touched the hand that cradled the pistol. But Mellman's wide fingers only clutched it tighter, and he looked at her, more lucid. "I can't face it, Maura. I can't. You go on. It's all over for me, anyway."

The smoke curling up from around the attic floorboards joined that wafting up the stairwell, the two swirling in concert to increase the sinister haze above. Maura dropped to her knees, coughing.

"No. It's not over. You didn't do anything wrong. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows what a good police chief you are."