Cicada Spring

by Christian Galacar

  “Why are you so sure of this all of a sudden?” Gaines asked. “Saturday night you didn’t say a peep. You fell asleep on the ride home. And now you seem positive beyond the shadow of a doubt. What bug crawled up your ass?”

  Gaines saw her eyes shift to the floor, but they quickly darted back up. There was something more going on here, and he had a sickening idea of what it was. He didn’t dare ask her, though.

  “Call it a hunch. Women’s intuition,” she said. Her voice had taken on a less aggressive tone. It was more pleading, desperate.

  Gaines sighed. “Deputy, I’m sorry, but that’s not enough. I need more than intuition. I’m not arresting him without evidence and that’s final. I don’t want to hear another word about it.” There was something about the way Catherine was acting, though. He was compelled to give her something, some piece to hang on to. “But if you want to talk to his secretary, Brenda, you can. And if you want to talk to Kara again, you can. That is completely fine. I’d actually prefer you be the one to do that. But be discreet and leave Harry alone. Sam, you go with her.”

  “Yessir,” Sam said.

  Catherine looked insulted. “I don’t need a baby sitter. I’m fine on my own.”

  “This time I’m afraid you do,” Gaines said. “This isn’t up for debate. You got some sort of fire under your ass right now, and I don’t want anyone getting burned by it.”

  Catherine bent forward, her elbows on her knees. “You saw that girl, you saw what she was like,” she said, as if to appeal to Gaines’s sensibility. “And it’s just as hard for me to believe Harry Bennett is capable of something like that, but we can’t just turn a blind eye to what she’s saying. Half the time when this happens to a girl, she’ll just keep quiet. If she’s decided to come forward and give a name… well… I’m telling you, she is telling the truth, and we should listen.”

  Gaines closed his eyes for a beat—a long blink, really—and opened them with a long contemplative breath through his nose. “I’m not ignoring what the girl’s saying. You think I wanted to march into the mayor’s office this morning and accuse him of raping a fifteen-year-old girl? You think that was fun? He can make my life—hell, all our lives—a lot harder if he wants to. If we find evidence that points us in his direction, then we’ll follow it. Okay? That’s the best you’re going to get from me right now.”

  “Fine,” Catherine said, looking away for a moment.

  “But that doesn’t mean you go tear the town open looking for it,” Gaines said. “You can follow up with what I said: his secretary and Kara. But that’s it for now. And I can’t be any clearer about being discreet. You got me? Can you be okay with that? Because if I hear otherwise, I’ll take you off this and you’ll be tearing tickets at the festival.”

  “Yessir,” Catherine said. “Is that all?”

  “Yes. You can go.”

  Sam and Catherine stood, both replacing their hats.

  “Sam, hold back a sec, would you?” Gaines said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Catherine looked at Sam. He shrugged. “I’ll be out front,” she said, turning and walking out.

  “What’s up?” Sam asked.

  Gaines stood, walking around and leaning on the front of his desk, arms folded. “I need you to keep an eye on her for me. Will you do that? I want to keep this thing under wraps for now, especially with the festival coming up. I know it will get out sooner or later, but I’d rather it be later. Just make sure she doesn’t go making a mess of this, okay?”

  “No problem. That all?”

  “Yes. You can go. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to get out of here early tonight. Have a few things to do.”

  “All right, sir.” Sam turned and headed for the door. When he reached it, he stopped and turned around. Then, cautiously, he said, “Just so you know, sir, I’m on your side,” and walked out.

  My side? Gaines hadn’t known there were sides. But deep down he knew what the deputy meant, and even more importantly, it felt good not to be alone.

  “Jesus, give me a break, would you?” Gaines said to himself.

  David Price was pulling into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department as Gaines walked to his cruiser.

  Gaines looked down at his watch. It was almost six o’clock. He wanted to get home. It was his own fault, though—he should’ve contacted the Prices by now with some kind of update. But there was no new news to give. And he imagined that what he did have to tell them would not go over well. His disagreement with Catherine was just a taste of what he expected he was about to hear from Kara’s father.

  David killed the engine and stepped out, leaning against his car with his hands in his pockets. He appeared to be in his work clothes, but they looked slightly disheveled. Wrinkled. Un-tucked.

  Gaines could immediately tell there was something off about David. The way he held himself was more aggressive. He didn’t look like the defeated man he’d spoken with in the waiting room of Dr. Hornsby’s. He looked like a man with an agenda, and Gaines knew exactly what that agenda was.

  “Evening, David,” Gaines said, and stuck his thumbs in his pockets. “I’m sorry we haven’t contacted you yet. I’ve been meaning to, but wanted to wait until we had something solid.”

  “Something solid?” David scoffed under his breath. “I’m sure you did, Sheriff,” he said louder, and turned his head and looked toward the fading sky in the west. He scratched the side of his face, swallowing hard.

  “Everything okay? You don’t look so good,” Gaines said.

  David laughed unenthusiastically, turning back and looking Gaines in the eyes. Gaines could see how bloodshot, glassy, and distant they were. The man was drunk.

  “What do you think, Sheriff? My little girl’s been raped, she doesn’t want me around her because I make her uncomfortable, and it’s Monday and I doubt you have Harry Bennett locked up back there.” David pointed at the station behind Gaines. “So what do you think? Does that sound okay to you?”

  Gaines could feel clouds of guilt and sympathy stacking inside him, darkening his mind. He remembered the way Kara had pulled away from her father in the parking lot of Dr. Hornsby’s. He remembered how the car had divided the family— David walking alone to the driver’s side as his wife and daughter, embracing, walked together to the other side. Now, with David standing in front of him, Gaines could see that the distance between the man and his family had been far greater than the width of a car. He truly did feel for him.

  “You have a few drinks tonight, David?” Gaines asked reluctantly. He could smell it from where he stood. Gaines didn’t have any intention of giving him any trouble for it. He just wanted to know what type of conversation he was about to have.

  “I had a couple beers with lunch. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” David said. His speech was a little slurred, but not so slurred as to suggest he was a person who would forget this conversation tomorrow.

  “Okay,” Gaines said. “If you say you’re fine, let’s leave it at that.”

  David didn’t respond directly. He only looked toward the station again and said, “So be straight with me. Can you do that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you arrested Harry Bennett?”

  Gaines’s stomach wrenched. He looked down for a second, but then back up, quickly meeting David’s eye. He owed the man that much. He owed him the respect of looking him in the eye. “No,” he said. “We haven’t arrested him.” Then, just like that, Gaines felt some floodgate opening and he began to pour out explanations. He wanted—needed—David to know why. “I’m sorry, but we just don’t have enough evidence right now. I know this is hard, but your daughter’s testimony simply isn’t sufficient to prove his guilt. We’re still looking into everything, and we’re still in the beginning stages, but we can’t arrest him and risk destroying his life without—”

  “Just stop, okay? Stop. I’m not stupid. I know that if you haven’t arrested him yet, you probably never will,” David said, holding
up his hands. “And that’s what I came down here to find out. I needed to rule out hope. My family has already been through enough. Waiting on hope where there is none would be the last nail in the coffin. I needed to know, and now I do. The son of a bitch will get away with it.”

  “That just isn’t true. We’re still gathering evidence, talking to people—”

  “I have no doubt you are. But I’ve heard all I needed to.”

  And like that, David seemed to revert back to the calm and level-headed man Gaines was familiar with, the man he’d seen in the waiting room two days before.

  “I promise you. Whoever is responsible will be held accountable. We only need some more time,” Gaines said.

  David laughed, shaking his head. It was an angry gesture. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re one of the smartest people in this town, but you’re too stupid to see you already made up your mind two days ago.”

  Gaines felt as if David had just socked him in the gut. He didn’t want to believe the words he’d just heard. Or maybe he did. He didn’t even know, anymore. On some subconscious level, he and David had just had a different, more-truthful exchange, and somehow all of Gaines’s cards had been exposed. He was vulnerable, just like in the waiting room when they’d first spoken. In a way, he felt some kind of anger toward David for revealing this secret. A secret that Gaines, up until this moment, hadn’t been fully aware of. He’d sensed it, especially during his debate with Catherine, but he had not seen it in its entirety, in all its ugly glory. It was like some monster that was hiding in the shadows. Gaines had known it was there, had heard it rustling, breathing, chewing on the bones, but he’d never gotten a clear glimpse of it. Now David had just shone his light into the shadows, revealing what lurked there. It was an ugly thing, a confused thing, with blood on its teeth and fear—not hate—in its eyes.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, David,” Gaines said, and no longer had any desire to explain himself to the man standing in front of him. The guilt and sympathy that had started to brew in him quickly faded. What right did this man have to throw accusations like that against him—unfounded accusations? I can see where his daughter gets it, he thought, almost said. He caught himself, immediately feeling sick for thinking it. “Listen, you okay to get home? Because if not, I can drive you. Otherwise, I have to get going myself.”

  David smiled a halfhearted smile. “I’m fine, Calvin. Sorry if I came off as rude. Was never my intention.”

  “Look, I know this is hard, but I promise you, in the end, justice will be served.”

  “I have no doubt of that,” David said, turning and opening the door of his car. He slunk in, rolling down the window. “Take care, Calvin.”

  “I’ll be in touch. Take care of your family. They need you now more than ever,” Gaines said.

  David forced a smile, started the car, and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Gaines watched his taillights grow smaller until they reached the end of Market Street and disappeared around a corner. The sound of his car faded in with the sound of the cicadas, vanishing like smoke in the air. Then out of nowhere, Gaines remembered what Dr. Hornsby had said back at his office on Saturday as he was leaving. At last he thought he understood what the man’s comment had meant.

  He brought his hands to his face and rubbed his temples despairingly. His thoughts raced and his head pounded. A million unresolved questions wanted to shroud him in darkness, where one threatening phrase repeated in deep red letters, flashing like an alarm:

  People protect their own. People protect their own. People protect…

  CHAPTER 17

  Catherine found herself thinking about her time in high school as she and Deputy Hodges sat in the cruiser outside Brenda Fahey’s apartment, waiting for her to arrive home from work. More specifically, though, Catherine was thinking about Dickie Hume.

  Dickie had been her first in so many ways. He was her first real crush. Her first real kiss. Her first real love. There were boys before Dickie, sure, but they were just that—boys. Boys her own age. Boys she’d known since kindergarten and gone to preschool with. Mostly they were the friends she was destined to share youth’s awkward romantic moments with. Innocent summer crushes. Kisses stolen under the stars at the park during a game of spin the bottle. Hearts pounding while holding hands. Tongues tied. The thrill of uncovering an entirely new and fun and exciting world of possibilities.

  But none of these clumsy, adolescent forays into sexuality compared to what she experienced with Dickie. With him the experiences were beyond novelty. With him, the things she felt left lasting impressions on her soul that forever shaped how she saw the world and her future in it. In her mind, that was how she defined real.

  Catherine and Dickie had met in high school when she was a freshman and he a senior. Dickie was tall and handsome, lean, with sharp-angled muscle. His blue eyes sat hard and dark against the chiseled features of his face. His dirty blond hair was usually swept behind his ears, some missed strands always spilling lazily across his forehead. Dickie wore his good looks humbly, as though it was more a burden than a blessing to be handsome and well-liked. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be seen. He was soft-spoken, but when he did speak it was with a deep, confident, steady voice, as if he were choosing each word so carefully.

  It was no wonder Catherine was shocked when Dickie offered her a ride home from school one afternoon. She was only a fifteen-year-old freshman, after all. She didn’t think he even knew who she was.

  “Need a lift?” He’d stopped to ask as she walked home that afternoon, the engine of his Plymouth rumbling low and powerful beside her, the heat of the car’s undercarriage breathing on her legs. He had one hand on the wheel as he leaned out the window, grinning, wearing his black and orange varsity jacket. It took Catherine a moment to open her mouth and reply, but somehow she managed a smile and a nod.

  He gave her a ride to her house, and they sat talking for twenty minutes in her driveway. The whole time she was so nervous, wondering whether or not her mother was watching from the living room window, about to come outside at any moment to ask to be introduced to Catherine’s new friend. It would have been so embarrassing. But she had a feeling Dickie would have enjoyed it. She had a feeling he would charm her mother the same way he charmed everyone else. It was his nature, his instinct, to be liked. Her mother had never intruded, though. And the two sat and talked uninterrupted, their eyes never breaking contact, the only two people in the world.

  Dickie did most of the talking, and mostly he talked about how he’d just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, Cadence Marlow. Catherine didn’t care that he was going on about another woman. He could’ve talked about pretty much anything and she would’ve donned the same awestruck smile and listened with the same level of delight.

  Dickie ran through all of the reasons he thought he and Cadence’s relationship had come to an end. But what Catherine recalled understanding most clearly, when she accessed these long-forgotten memories, was that Cadence had wanted Dickie to apply to the same colleges as she did so they could stay together after high school. Dickie had refused to agree to that. He said he’d always known that part of growing up was going out into the unfamiliar world alone, living life without a tether, and he didn’t think that he could do that with something as familiar as her by his side.

  Catherine listened and nodded, listened and nodded, too nervous to chime in with her own thoughts. It went on like this for a little while, but eventually Dickie accused himself of being a bore and a fool for offering her a ride home only to pine over an ex-girlfriend, so he stopped. He apologized, saying a few more things that Catherine once again just nodded her head to, smiling, and before she knew it, she had plans to go see a movie with Dickie the following Friday. It was a date, the first of many.

  It went like this for two months: Friday night dates. Rides home from school while other girls looked on in jealousy. Long nights parked up at The Point, the low rumble of his car idling away while they
made out with the heat blowing on her legs. Him sliding his hands up her skirt. Under her shirt. Her moaning. Her face flushing red. Her toes curling. The Rolling Stones on the radio. Why did he taste so good?

  Never sex, though. Even when he begged for it, she would refuse. She knew what their relationship really was. It was great and fun and wild and exciting, but she knew it wouldn’t last; he was off to college soon, and she remembered how he felt about being tethered to something familiar. That conversation never left her mind for the duration of their relationship, always reminding her to be ready to lose him.

  At the time, she was still a virgin, and as much as she loved Dickie she did not wish to give herself fully to someone who would more than likely forget about her within months, if not weeks, of leaving. Catherine was young, but never stupid or naive. She knew how the world worked… even Dickie’s world. What she felt and experienced with him may have been real by her definition, but she understood that that did not make the relationship everlasting or meant-to-be. Their time together had been great and fun and had changed her in ways she would never be able to put into words. She would forever cherish their moments together. Or at least, that’s what she’d thought at the time, before these cherished memories soured.

  Everything changed the night of the dance. The night he changed. The night she changed, too. It was Dickie’s senior prom. He invited her to go and she happily accepted. She even bought a new dress with the money she’d saved working shifts down at Woolworth’s.

  The dance was fine and good. They had a blast. They’d even kissed in the middle of the gymnasium during the last slow dance. It had been so romantic. But afterward was a different sort of time.

  Dickie and some of his friends rented a few rooms at the Heartsridge Motel for a place to hang out after the dance. But it was more than just a place to hang out. It was a place to party, a place to drink alcohol purchased illegally, a place for some of the looser girls to sleep with their dates. She had been to parties with Dickie before, parties with drinking and drugs and where there were rooms dedicated to fooling around. She wasn’t a square. But this was different. This place made her skin crawl. There was a raw energy in the air. She remembered feeling it on her skin. And the fact that it was a motel made the whole scene seem depraved. It just felt off, and she wanted to beg him to go somewhere else. But instead she held her tongue and went along with Dickie. He was leaving soon, after all. Why not appease him? He seemed excited about going.