Little Girls(19)
She had suffered many nightmares about this little glass house, all of them immediately after Sadie Russ had died. And while those nightmares faded over time and with age and maturity, the sense of dread and terror that had come from them rushed over her now as if they had never left her. And perhaps they never had, that they had simply lain dormant and in wait for just this moment.
With a series of tugs, she undid the rope. It took some effort, but it eventually fell away and coiled in the dirt at her feet. She parted the canvas flaps like a stage actress parting a curtain for her encore, tucking each flap behind the lengths of chain that secured the canvas covering to the ground. The entire glass front was black. Things grew against the inside of the panes, dark green and furry. The smell coming from the structure was rank enough to transcend olfaction; it was as if all of her five senses were capable of being brutalized by the horrific odor of rotting vegetation. Regardless, she reached out and slipped fingers between the narrow space between the door and the spongy frame, and pulled it open.
The hinges didn’t so much whine as growl. Hunks of black, springy mildew pattered to the ground. She managed to get the door open just a few inches when the smell from within breathed out into her face, warm and fetid, and no less potent than a punch to the stomach. With the canvas covering overtop the structure, the inside of the greenhouse was absolute darkness. Only hesitant milky light could be seen through some of the glass panels lower to the ground. Squinting against the darkness, she thought she could see dark, immobile shapes huddled within.
Is there still blood in there somewhere? she wondered yet again. Has the blood seeped into the soil? Are there parts of Sadie Russ still hidden in there? The black, sightless tomb of a dead girl . . .
Startled by the sound of someone crunching along a carpet of dead leaves, Laurie spun around and scanned the dense foliage at her back. At first she saw nothing. Then a shape parted from behind a tree and crossed hesitantly behind a scrim of saplings. Laurie glimpsed a cascade of dark hair and a dress that looked bleached from the sun. It was the girl she had seen running across the lawn just moments ago.
“Hello,” Laurie called to the girl. Her voice frightened tiny birds, causing them to burst out of the trees and take to the sky. A squirrel that had been loping from branch to branch in a nearby tree froze. Through the trees, the young girl said nothing. She was perhaps twenty or thirty yards away, too far and too well hidden behind the foliage for Laurie to make out her face.
Laurie called to the girl again, this time trying to sound more pleasant. The girl took a step back toward the tree and then looked as though she wanted to crouch down and hide behind the screen of spindly saplings. When Laurie raised her hand and, smiling, waved to the girl, the girl turned around and ran off into the woods. Laurie heard her timid little footfalls trampling dead leaves, which confirmed for Laurie that the girl was not a ghost or some figment of her overworked imagination after all.
Feeling strangely unwelcome, Laurie walked back through the woods toward the house.
Before they left for David Cushing’s law office, Ted and Susan went out to the backyard with the little cigar box with the holes punched into the lid. As Laurie predicted, Ted dug a shallow grave beside the moldy fence. With a doleful expression on her face that made her look eerily mature, Susan opened the lid of the cigar box and dumped its contents into the freshly dug grave. Ted rubbed the back of Susan’s head and Susan laced a thin arm around her father’s waist. Laurie watched from the kitchen windows.
Chapter 7
David Cushing’s office was on the second floor of a two-story brick colonial on Duke of Gloucester Street in downtown Annapolis. There was ample parking in the rear and a cherubic-faced receptionist seated at a cluttered desk outside Cushing’s office. The woman beamed a smile at the Genarro family as they came into the office and she told them Mr. Cushing would be with them shortly. Susan quickly grew agitated and began to pilfer candy from the little crystal bowl on the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist smiled dully at Susan, but Laurie could tell she was growing increasingly annoyed. When Susan began talking playfully to the fish in the tank, the receptionist picked up her phone and spoke in a low voice into the receiver, muffling much of what she said with one meaty hand over her mouth. After she hung up, she told them that Mr. Cushing could see them now.
Cushing’s office looked more like that of a high school gym teacher’s than an attorney’s. There were baseball and football trophies on shelves and framed print articles from local magazines and newspapers on the walls. The articles spoke not of David Cushing’s lawyerly achievements but of his love of sport fishing, bicycling, and his frequent involvement in charity marathons. The screen saver on his computer was of two monkeys in boxing gloves exchanging punches in a ring with swollen red asterisks in place of eyeballs. Among the files and printouts on his desk, there were several Lego race cars and photos of small children with hair so blond it was nearly white.
David Cushing himself was surprisingly young. He possessed the keen eyes of a hawk, and he sported a short haircut that was perfectly styled. His shirt was crisp and white and his tie looked expensive. A pinstriped suit jacket hung from a coatrack in one corner of the office. David Cushing showed them his perfect teeth and shook their hands while a nice watch glittered on his wrist.
Laurie and Ted sat in comfortable chairs that faced Cushing’s desk. Susan lingered behind them, finally resigning herself to sit on an ottoman outfitted in a Navajo design.