Cicada Spring

by Christian Galacar

  His thoughts were interrupted.

  “Now, folks, I hope you enjoy the next few days. I know I will. And be sure to eat a slice of pie for me. Heck, make it two. My wife is making me watch my figure,” Harry Bennett said, and patted his stomach in a show of humor.

  The crowd laughed and then roared with applause.

  Gaines watched from the sidewalk as the town ate it up.

  The mayor stepped back from the podium and started to wave with his body slightly bowed, a sign he was finished. A drum roll began, followed by a thunderous bang that made Gaines flinch. It always made him flinch, every year, even though he was ready for it. But this time it was especially startling.

  The ceremonial cannon blast echoed off buildings and up and down Main Street. A small billow of white smoke drifted lazily around the firing crew in the commons. The crowd roared louder. Band music began to play. And Gaines still couldn’t shake the name Bill Sexton.

  “Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. Please have fun and be safe.” Harry walked off the stage and started shaking hands.

  Gaines turned away, back into his thoughts.

  “Calvin, oh Calvin, yoo-hoo.” Someone gripped his arm gently. Before he turned, he already knew who it was. He recognized the way the voice seemed to harmonize with itself. It was a sentence spoken by two people simultaneously.

  “Hello, girls,” Gaines said. “Always a pleasure to see you two.”

  It was Gertrude and Dolly Thayer, smiling overenthusiastically in their matching white summer dresses. They were twin sisters well into their eighties who had both lost their husbands within a year of each other, a story they were always more than happy to tell to anyone who would lend an ear.

  “Hi, Calvin,” Gertrude said, fanning herself with a paper fan. “Can you believe how hot it is today?”

  “Not even June, and already I feel faint,” Dolly added in almost an identical voice. She was also armed with a fan. It was like speaking to one person, the way they finished each other’s thoughts and movements.

  “Sure is. Picked a heck of a weekend for the festival,” Gaines said. “Hope you two are keeping—” But before he could finish the thought…

  “Say, did you hear about that girl? The one who’s claiming she had an affair with the mayor?” Dolly asked abruptly.

  “Yes, Calvin, did you hear?” Gertrude repeated.

  Both their faces had tightened into serious scowls. It was all they’d ever wanted to discuss. They waited in anticipation to hear what the sheriff of the town had to say on the matter.

  Gaines sighed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, ladies, but that isn’t something that I’m going to discuss. And I don’t think you should be, either.”

  The Thayer sisters looked at each other and smiled. “So it is true,” they said in unison.

  “Oh, what terrible, terrible lies. Why would a girl say such things about a good man like Harry?” Gertrude said.

  “Yes, why indeed?” Dolly touched Gaines’s arm with an air of dramatics.

  “I’m sorry, ladies. You’ll have to excuse me.” Gaines turned and walked away.

  “I knew it. I knew it.” He heard them saying to one another as he removed himself. They had gleaned what they wanted from that brief exchange, and Gaines could only imagine everyone else was doing the same.

  An affair? Is that how the story had broken, or had it morphed into that the way rumors do? Now there were two names at the fore of Gaines’s mind: Bill Sexton and Kara Price. The witch-hunt had begun. It wouldn’t be long before torches were lit and sickles were sharpened—if they weren’t already.

  Gaines saw Catherine standing opposite him on the street. She nodded, and he walked over.

  “Hey, Catherine. Had enough, yet?” Gaines smiled kindly, trying to offer some lightheartedness to cut through the tension that had materialized between them recently. He wondered if in some way Sam’s death would restore their relationship, a common grief they could bond over. But even if it did, he doubted it would last. Eventually, Kara Price would be brought up again, eventually tempers would clash. He had told Catherine they would revisit the case after the festival, and part of him hoped she would let it go, but a larger part knew she wouldn’t. Maybe that was a good thing, though.

  “Hey, Calvin.” She returned a soft smile. “How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. Could use a beer, though.” He had an urge to relay the conversation he’d just had with the Thayer twins, but that would only ignite a fire.

  “That makes two of us,” Catherine said.

  Gaines laughed. “Hey, let’s say you and I grab a drink later down at Hawk’s after we’re done here. It’s been a while.”

  Catherine seemed surprised, but then her face fell into a look of accord. “Sure, I could do that.”

  Gaines smiled, but then his attention shifted. Beyond Catherine, in the commons, was a group of teenagers smoking cigarettes in a gazebo. “Excuse me a sec,” Gaines said.

  Catherine turned and followed the sheriff’s sightline. “Give ’em hell, Calvin,” she said.

  “I will,” he said, already moving toward them.

  Before he arrived, the cigarettes were stamped out and butts flicked aside. The kids blew out their smoke in a hurry, trying to look nonchalant. They all appeared to be underage, but that didn’t matter—Gaines wasn’t about to give anyone a hard time for smoking under the legal limit; he already had enough on his mind. If they wanted to kill themselves, that was their prerogative. He was the sheriff, not their fathers. He just didn’t want them doing it in a public place that was full of families.

  “All right, you guys, go find an alley or some other place to burn your smokes.”

  “Sir, we weren’t—” one of the kids, the leader of their little gang, started to say.

  Gaines cut him off. “Save it. The festival’s only four days, guys. Take it someplace else for now.”

  “Yessir, sorry,” said the kid, looking down and away, his acne-covered cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “Not a problem.” He started coming down out of the gazebo, and his four friends followed. Before long they disappeared into the crowd.

  Gaines stayed back a minute, surveying the scene.

  Looking down, he noticed one of the kids’ crumpled cigarette butts. He crouched and picked it up. “Why the hell am I cleaning this up?” he said softly under his breath. “Punks.”

  He stood and made his way to the trashcan beside the gazebo, shaking the crushed filter in the palm of his hand like a lone die. As he did so, his mind went back to Bill Sexton—Gordon, not Bill, he had to remind himself—specifically to all the packs of Marlboros he had discovered inside that metal ammo can tucked under the bed.

  That had been strange. He couldn’t understand why Millis would carry around something like that and hide it under the bed in the motel room if it was only filled with cigarettes. It seemed needlessly cumbersome. The logic didn’t line up. Sure, Gordon Millis was a lunatic who had gunned down one of his deputies, so perhaps reason and logic didn’t apply here. But Gaines believed there were just some things that were universal truths across the human condition, one of which was that people, in general, seek convenience. And there was nothing convenient about carrying your smokes around in a ten-pound steel box. Maybe he’d overlooked something.

  “How’d it go?” a voice startled him, and he turned on his boot heel.

  Catherine was standing there. “You picking up trash now? Quite a demotion from sheriff,” she said.

  “Funny. It was just some kids. They got the idea,” Gaines said. He tossed the butt into the trash beside him. “You think you’d be okay without me for an hour or so?”

  Catherine looked around. “Shouldn’t be a problem. We have six other deputies here. Why? Something wrong?”

  Gaines rubbed the back of his neck. “No, just wanted to check on something back at the station.”

  “You leave the iron on?” Catherine laughed.

  Gaines smirked. “Just something that’s been b
ugging me, that’s all. It won’t take long.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Kara awoke to a boom. It thumped in her chest and echoed in her heart. It was the ceremonial cannon. She recognized it. The faint sound of cheering came quickly after that, barely audible over the cicadas’ late-afternoon chatter. Over the last few days she’d come to notice that the sound the cicadas made seemed to thicken as the day went on, becoming deeper and deeper as the day faded, until it seemed the sound set with the sun and merged with the night. There was another eruption of far-off applause and cheering, and suddenly Kara understood who everyone was cheering for—Harry Bennett. The name struck like lightning in her head. Then as her mind continued its ascent from sleep, her thoughts slowly went back to that dark place that scared her.

  Kara could only imagine how her name was being tossed around in that crowd. People who didn’t even know her would be regurgitating some version of the story they’d heard. None of them knew the truth. But even if they had, she doubted they would have cared. Everyone from her school was surely there, recounting the great prank they had played on that Price girl, the liar who deserved it. A week ago they would’ve been looked down on for an act like that, punished, but today they were probably heroes: the boys—and girls (she suspected many were involved)—who had shown that nasty girl what happened to liars.

  She looked over at the clock on her bedside table. It was 4:12 in the afternoon, and now the tinny sound of brass band music was replacing the applauding citizens of Heartsridge. She knew these sounds so well. Spring Festival was officially underway.

  The house was still empty, as far as Kara could tell. She went to the window to check. The smell of fresh-cut grass twirled around her, riding a warm breeze that caressed her face and batted her hair. It was a comforting, nostalgic aroma, one she always associated with the start of summer vacation, only now it felt more like an ending than a beginning. She put her hands on the windowsill and leaned forward, her forehead pressing against the screen as she peered down into the front yard. The driveway was vacant, just as she’d expected. Just as she’d feared. A part of her had wanted to see her father’s car parked there, come home to rescue her. As if maybe he could sense what she was thinking about now. Maybe he would arrive just in time to save her from herself.

  That was all she wanted: someone to save her. She sure as hell couldn’t do it herself. She’d tried and she’d failed. Enough now.

  Turning away from her window, away from hope, she looked through her open bedroom door and could see into the bathroom diagonally across the hall. It was so white and clean. So pure. She’d never noticed that before. Something inside Kara pushed her toward that room, almost as if being led there at knifepoint by her despair. Deep down, she knew she didn’t want to go. But she didn’t have a choice anymore. It was out of her hands. Something far more powerful was at work now.

  The phone began to ring as Kara walked into the hallway. She looked toward the stairs at the end of the hall and paused, listening to the ringer clatter away. She did not go answer it. After a few more rings, the caller gave up, and the house was once again silent.

  Kara turned away and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Hey, Sheriff. Whadya doing back here? The festival’s that way,” Deputy Briggs said, pointing to the door.

  Briggs was a part-time deputy filling in for Carol Matthews, who was currently on a leave of absence. She’d asked to take some time off because of Sam, but Gaines doubted very much she would ever return—and he didn’t blame her.

  “Forgot I had something to do,” Gaines said, continuing past the deputy, down the stairs, and into the evidence room. “Can you buzz me through?”

  Deputy Briggs pressed a button, and a loud rattle buzzed from the door.

  “Thanks, Arlo,” Gaines yelled up from the basement landing. Then he went into the evidence room and shut the door behind him.

  The fluorescent lights flickered overhead and painted the room in medical tones. Against the back wall were the folding tables, end to end, three in a row, with all the evidence from the Gordon Millis shooting. At the far end, on the sparsest table, was a bag Gaines did not recognize. As he walked toward it, something inside the bag caught his eye: HEARTSRIDGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. It was the embroidery on the sleeve of Sam’s uniform, the one he had been wearing when he was shot. There were brown splotches of dried blood on the inside of the evidence bag. It must’ve been dropped off by the Medical Examiner that morning.

  This is all your fault! a voice screamed from somewhere in his mind.

  Gaines averted his gaze. The sight of it was making his stomach squirm like a bucket of eels, and reminiscing on regret wasn’t why he was here now anyway. He was here for a purpose. He had come with a certain question in mind: Why the cigarettes in the ammo can? Something about that was odd and had elicited a peculiar curiosity in him. He was missing something. He could feel it, like a misalignment in his brain.

  On the opposite end of the tables was the green ammo can, a small yellow evidence tag hanging from the lid handle. Beside it in a bag were the five packs of Marlboros.

  Gaines walked to the table and opened the bag. He pulled out each pack and inspected it. They were all unopened and fresh-looking. To be sure, he peeled one pack open and dumped out the contents. Cigarettes and loose flakes of tobacco landed on the table. Gaines plucked a pencil from his pocket and sifted through them, looking for something—anything. The first pack turned up nothing. Then Gaines held up the empty pack, closed one eye, and peered inside. Nothing. He shook it to make sure there wasn’t something stuck. Still nothing. Then he did the same thing to the remaining four packs until a small pile of cigarettes and tobacco sat before him on the table.

  Gaines dropped the pencil among the cigarettes, pulled a seat over, and sat down. “Waste of time,” he said, resting his face against his open palm. He wasn’t even sure what he had really expected to find. Maybe an answer that justified or made sense of his friend’s death? Or something that made the whole thing seem less pointless?

  He leaned forward and hooked a finger under the lid of the ammo can, sliding it to the edge of the table. Gaines peered in, making sure it was empty. It was. He removed his finger.

  He grabbed the bag that all the cigarettes had been in, pinched it open, and then with a careful hand he wiped all the Marlboros back into it. The loose-leaf stuff he blew off the table and allowed to scatter to the floor.

  Some thorough cop you are, he thought.

  For the next fifteen minutes he sat there in silence, staring at the scene, racking his brain, trying to find and overturn some unseen rock in his head. So far all he had been able to do was make a mess of the evidence and get tobacco all over the place. He supposed it really didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though there was going to be a trial. The evidence would be stored for a little while, then eventually destroyed.

  Gaines checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. He should probably be getting back to the festival. As sheriff, glad-handing was important at town events. People expected to see him, to talk with him, to air petty grievances they wanted addressed, and today especially, to ask about Kara Price and Harry Bennett. Suddenly Gaines wondered if, perhaps, the only reason he had come down to the evidence room at all was to escape the very people who had elected him in the first place. Maybe he had concocted, and convinced himself of, this thin idea about the cigarettes and the ammunition box being strange, just so he could remove himself for an hour or so.

  On the heels of that thought, Gaines spun around in the chair to leave and head back to the festival. As he swiveled, the chair-back struck the table and the front edge of the ammo can. There was a loud rattle as the chair jarred the container, and that was followed by an even louder crash as the green metal box fell to the floor.

  Gaines stood abruptly. “Shit, God, Christ, fuck it all,” he muttered through clenched jaws.

  The ammo can bounced awkwardly a
few times on its edges and then came to rest on its side, spilling something out onto the floor. Small pieces of metal clinked and clanged in high-pitched symphony, like a fistful of change, only more hollow-sounding. One landed at Gaines’s feet. He bent and picked it up. It was a bullet shell.

  He held it up to the light for a second, then placed it on the table. He picked up the metal box and looked inside again. This time something was different. The bottom of the container was lifted up a few inches. It was a false bottom, akin to a magician’s prop or a drug smuggler’s suitcase. He set it down and pried the metal bottom up all the way. His heart pounded in his chest. This was something important. It was the something that didn’t make sense. There were a few more bullet casings in an unwrapped plastic baggy, but he brushed them aside. In one corner there was a small collection of driver’s licenses bound with a rubber band. Gaines removed them and scanned through the bunch. There were four: William Mathey, Kyle Giuffrida, Stephen Weagle, and Sarah Sexton.

  Sarah Sexton and William Mathey… Bill Sexton!

  The name finally made sense. It was an amalgamation of Sarah Sexton and William Mathey. But who were they?

  And like that, it hit him. How could he have missed it? Why hadn’t his mind gone there before, especially after all the press and newspaper coverage? He had just read those names in an article a few days before.

  “Jesus,” Gaines whispered.

  Laying down the licenses, Gaines reached back into the ammo can and fished out a gold necklace with a cross attached to it. He placed that on the table, too. There was one last thing at the bottom. It looked like photographs, face down. Gaines lifted the edge of one with his fingernail and got a grip on them. He shuffled through them slowly. At first Gaines thought he was looking at more of the same pointless pictures they had found in Millis’s motel room, but he quickly realized they were more than that. The first photos that caught his attention and suggested he had discovered something more were pictures of Joanna Renault, presumably taken from somewhere outside the diner at night.