David was asleep before the first commercial break. He dreamed of a better time, of a memory he hadn’t even known he’d forgotten.
“Where do the butterflies go when the sun goes down, Daddy?” Kara asks as they walk through a field along the edge of night. Vast space lowers to dusk. Purple skies kiss the horizon in straight lines. “Do they sleep like us?”
David laughs. “I’m not sure, but I imagine they do sleep at some point, sweetie.”
“Do they disappear?” she asks, stopping. There is a child’s seriousness in her voice.
“No, they don’t disappear. Do Mommy and I disappear when it gets dark? Do you disappear when the sun goes down and you go to bed?”
She balls her hands into clumsy fists, bringing them to her hips. “How am I supposed to know, Daaaaad?” she says, playfully annoyed. “I’d be asleep, silly.”
“All right, wise guy,” David says, and laughs again.
His daughter, barefoot and wearing her little purple sundress, hardly comes up to his waist. She is six. He reaches out and tousles her dirty-blonde hair. She giggles, turning her face up and exposing her tiny rows of tiny teeth. She runs ahead of him, turns, and lets her arms dangle in anticipation of a chase. Then she bows her head down, smiling mischievously. “Can’t catch me,” she says, turning and running with clumsy six-year-old steps.
He pursues as she tries to get away, scooping her up after only a few feet. His arms feel impossibly long and strong, like he could hold on no matter how far she ran.
“How can you run so fast?” she asks, between small rising and falling gasps. Her breath falls on his face. He can smell it. It’s sweet like watermelon. Her lips are bright red. There was a lollipop.
“That’s my job, sweetie. To be fast and always catch you when you stray.”
“Stray?” she repeats, confused.
“Yes, stray. It means when you go away or wander from me.”
“I won’t go away from you, Daddy,” she says, her face cramped into a look of concern.
“I know,” he says, and brings his face in close and blows on her neck, tickling her. She laughs hard. The sound fills the empty park. To David it seems to brighten the world.
“Eeeew, Daddy-germs.” She pulls her face away and wipes her neck.
He sets her down. “That’s right, Daddy-germs.” He makes a face at her. “Your mom’s probably starting to get worried. We should get back soon.” He glances toward the parking lot.
Kara’s face darkens and she looks down at the empty glass jar her father is carrying. “But we didn’t catch anything,” she says nervously, like there may never be another chance like this one again. “You said we’d catch lightning bugs tonight.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, “We’ll search on the way back to the car. Keep your eyes peeled. If you look toward the darkest spots, it usually makes it easier to spot them.”
They walk slowly, eyes scanning the horizon as they stroll back, but they don’t see any of the glowing insects. David can feel the disappointment building in his daughter.
“Where are they? Where are the lightning bugs?” she keeps asking, more and more frequently, the closer they come to the parking lot.
They stop at the head of the little path that leads them through to the parking lot. Kara and her father turn to look one last time out at the darkening field. Still, there are no bugs. No little green flashes of summertime wonder.
Kara looks up at her father and then down at her bare, dirty feet, covered in tiny shards of splintered, dead grass clippings. Her lip trembles as she tugs on the edges of her dress, swaying side to side. There will be tears soon.
He sees this and bends to one knee, lifting his daughter’s chin with a hooked finger. “Hey… hey, sweetie. Don’t be upset. We can come back and try again tomorrow. Maybe they were just sleeping tonight.”
She opens her mouth to speak. “What a fine fresh scent, Daddy. Look at the green and the white stripes. What a fine fresh scent,” she says with an accent, her lips never moving. David doesn’t recognize the inflection at first, but then he does. It’s an Irish accent.
The world around him quickly begins fading to reality. The colors all around him run like a painting left out in the rain.
Kara opens her mouth again—a black hole without lips or a tongue. “What a fine fresh scent, Daddy. Gets a strong man fresh.”
“What, honey? I don’t understand,” he says.
But the little girl vanishes, melting away with the rest of the world. He reaches toward the thought of her with his impossibly long arms, which now feel like a million tons each, but there is nothing to hold on to. She is gone. Kara is gone.
Colors run gray to brown to white to black. Darkness for a moment, followed by slow degrees of increasing awareness.
Awake.
David opened his eyes. A commercial for Irish Springs was playing on the television. He looked over at the clock on the nightstand. 12:12. Flashes of his dream flickered on and off in his mind, but for the most part, the recollection was foggy and far-off. He could feel that it was a pleasant dream, but the more he reached for details, the more he chased them away. Only the sensation lingered. Trace elements. But they were kind traces. Something had warmed his spirits. He was not consciously aware of what, but it didn’t matter. The effects were real just the same.
He sat up, rubbing his face. Four more hours, he thought, looking at the clock. David turned and planted his feet on the floor. This grounded him, rooted him in the present. He was fully awake now, back in the motel room, sitting on the same ugly yellow bedspread, with the same tiny TV and the same stale scent.
David picked up the remote, shutting off the television. Silence blanketed the room. He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain aside. The red truck he’d parked beside was gone. His was the only car there, now. Not many people need a motel at noon on a Monday, he supposed.
The sun had gone away in his sleep. The sky was overcast and gray, and he could see beads of water collected on his windshield, puddles on the pavement—it had rained. He remembered the weather reports from that morning, the ones he listened to on the radio in the bathroom when he was getting ready at home, before his wife had come in and told him he needed to go to work, before she’d told him their daughter couldn’t stand to be around him. He must’ve slept through the storms, although he still suspected there were a few more out there, dark clouds looming on the horizon and heading his way. He wondered if he would still be around when they arrived.
David turned back to the room, letting the curtain fall back against the window.
Again the clock on the nightstand caught his eye. The little black-and-white scoreboard numbers cartwheeling over and over again, keeping track of his time spent in the room, his time spent dishonestly when his family thought he was at work and his work thought he was at home. He was in limbo, holed up in a motel room, stuck some place between the two lies. But some place was the only place he’d been able to find relief from the racing thoughts, so right now it felt like home… or as close as he was going to find.
It was lunchtime. David wasn’t very hungry, but the idea of a cold beer pleased him. He knew of a little tavern just outside of town in West Elm. He went there sometimes on his way home from work. At this hour the place would be empty, save for a few problem drinkers who wouldn’t know him—or if they did, wouldn’t remember him tomorrow. A pleasant relief came with this thought. The idea of being forgotten was somehow satisfying. At first he didn’t know why, but then he did: it was freeing to have no identity, no one to be… or to not be. And then he understood something more: in this motel room, without his family, without a job to go to, without a purpose, he was not David Price at all. No. David Price did not exist in that place.
For the first time in a long while, he smiled.
CHAPTER 16
Sam and Catherine sat across from Gaines. He’d expected some sort of backlash for his decision not to arrest Harry, but he hadn’t expected it to come
from his own deputy. He wondered if perhaps Catherine being a woman made her especially sympathetic to the Kara Price case. It was dangerous for him to think so obtusely, but he couldn’t deny the fact that she seemed to be taking a particularly strong—almost personal—position on the matter.
“His story checks out. What can I do? My hands are tied. Not to mention Creed Hornsby just called this morning and said all the tests they ran came back negative. And remember what Julie told us: nothing proves for certain that Kara was raped. It’s all circumstantial,” Gaines said. “Without any hard evidence, I’m not going to arrest him. That’s just the way it is. He’s a respected pillar of this community, and there is too much at stake.”
And Harry Bennett’s story did check out. After his morning meeting with the mayor, Gaines had gone down to Harrigan’s Liquors and asked Gary Trask if he’d seen Harry come in around four o’clock to buy beer. He said he had. Then he drove out to the dump and searched out that bag of campaign signs. It was there, tied with a rubber band just like Harry had said it would be.
But there were still holes in the mayor’s story, gaps of time with no alibi. That was hard to ignore. Harry could have done those things just to lend some believability to his story. Sure. The man was smart enough to do that. Considering this, wasn’t there a tiny piece of Gaines that was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, the girl was telling the truth, after all?
Catherine said: “I get that all the evidence is circumstantial. That’s how it’s always been with rape cases, barring a witness or other direct proof. But Harry’s story doesn’t prove anything. He was still alone with no one to corroborate where he was when he left his office. He could’ve easily come back and offered Kara a ride. Those aren’t credible alibis he fed you. They’re just insignificant noise. And if we can catch him in a lie, then that’s gotta say something.”
Gaines folded his hands on his desk. “You’re right, his story doesn’t prove his innocence. But just the same, that girl’s story doesn’t prove his guilt. Christ, all we have are stories. That’s my point. I have to use my own judgment here, and right now that tells me Harry Bennett didn’t…” He trailed off. “Listen. He may be a little rough around the edges, but he doesn’t rape kids, is what I’m saying. People like that don’t just walk around unnoticed.”
Catherine slid forward in her seat. “Yes they do. It happens all the time. People like that exist everywhere. They spend their lives learning to blend in and go unnoticed. That’s what psychopaths do,” she said. “It’s survival for them . . . it’s an instinct.”
“That’s bull,” Gaines said. “There’s never been anything like this happened around here. No other victims. No other accusations, no incidents or reports of any behavior that would suggest that of him. A person doesn’t just turn that way overnight. There are signs. A violent history. Something. Anything. You both have known him your whole lives. I’ve known him almost fifteen years. And what, we all missed an important detail like, oh, I don’t know, he’s a sexual predator? ’Cause if that’s the case, maybe we should all turn in our badges. We may be a small town, but I like to think we’re more capable than that.”
The logic had run through Gaines’s mind on repeat over the last few days. He’d internalized it, analyzing it, looking for holes. But now that he was stating his reasoning out loud, he had to wonder whether he was trying to convince himself or everyone else that it made sense.
“That isn’t what I mean,” Catherine said.
Gaines sat back, folding his arms defensively. “Really? Because that’s what it sounds like to me. It sounds like you think Harry Bennett has been assaulting woman in his spare time as a hobby, and we’ve just been sitting here twiddling our damn thumbs, too stupid to notice.”
“I’m just saying we shouldn’t rule him out simply because you don’t want to believe he would do it.”
“That’s a cheap shot, Catherine. Don’t tell me what I believe or don’t believe. I just think we can’t be so irresponsible as to completely destroy a man’s life without being sure of the facts. Is that so bad? You know what it would do to his career—his life—if we arrested him? He could lose everything… we could lose everything. Sam, back me up here, would ya?”
He wasn’t sure if he believed it or not. Maybe it was only that the threat of ruining a person’s life was the best excuse for inaction. But Kara’s life had already been ruined. How was that fair? Gaines wasn’t sure he really knew, anymore. When he chose to run for sheriff after Billy Surret died, he never expected to have to deal with any type of crime like this. Up until now, the worst things he ever arrested people for were drunk and disorderly or the occasional drug charge, and most of these were kids in their early twenties, with a chip on their shoulders. Kids who never left town for college, sticking around to become the next generation of townies who drank cheap beer, worked menial jobs, and were always content with the way things were, are, and ever would be. Life to them wasn’t a series of growing experiences. It was a place to exist while the world went on without them, never knowing that if they’d just bothered to stick out their thumbs, they might have been able to hitch rides along to a better life. These were the type of people—the types of situations—Gaines knew how to deal with. He knew how to navigate a life like that. And that was fine and good and easy. But what he was at the center of now was a whirlwind of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing. He did not know the way here. He was a navigator at the wheel of a ship pointed toward storm clouds and a darkening horizon, and with each decision he made, he became increasingly aware of the clumsy footsteps he was taking toward some inevitable tragic end that was not even vaguely in sight.
Sam shifted uneasily in his chair, looking toward Catherine. “I gotta side with the sheriff on this one, Catherine. Without evidence or a witness, there isn’t much we can do. We can arrest him, but no court will convict him solely on the word of this girl. The prosecution has to think there is enough evidence to win the case and unfortunately right now there just isn’t. And you know me, I’m not exactly Harry Bennett’s biggest fan.” Sam turned, facing Catherine squarely. He spoke earnestly now. “But arresting him without proper proof is just reckless. I support the sheriff on that. If we’re going to say to the public that we think he committed such a terrible crime, I think we should be damn sure. The rumors that’ll surface about this will be bad enough, but people forget rumors. If we arrest him and it turns out he’s innocent, no way, forget about it—that’s permanent. That stays for life, whether he’s guilty or not.”
Catherine didn’t respond to Sam. She turned back to Gaines, picking up where they’d left off a moment before. “I understand that. Don’t think for a second that I haven’t thought the same thing, but you seem to have already ruled him out.”
Gaines rubbed his face. He was already exhausted with this. He just wanted it off his desk, out of his life, gone. “I haven’t ruled anyone out. I’ve only said that without definitive evidence, I’m not arresting him. And besides, he isn’t going anywhere. What are you worried about? If he did it, there’s something out there to prove it. And I’ll find it. But as of right now, Harry Bennett is off limits.”
“So what then, if he’s off limits? What other lead is there?” Catherine asked. “Where do we go from there? It’s a dead end.”
“There’s a boy, Ryan Kinsey. David Price said his daughter and Ryan are friends. Drives her home sometimes. That type of thing. He’s a couple years older than her, I think. Her father doesn’t believe they’re together in that way, but I don’t buy that for a second. I’m going to look into him, to start.”
“So… what? You think she was raped by him?” Catherine said in disbelief. “Why would she lie about that?” She paused for a moment, her lips parting as if she were suddenly receiving some secret message. Then her face tightened and she fell back in her chair, looking almost defeated.
Gaines noticed her peculiar look, but he continued. “I don’t know. But what I do know is I have a daughter and I know how teenage g
irls can be. They aren’t sweet and nice and honest all the time. They can be conniving and manipulative when they want to be, especially when they panic. Don’t you remember? You were one once, weren’t you?”
Catherine sniffed derisively.
“Listen, I’m not leaning any one direction on this,” Gaines continued. “All I’m saying is we’re still considering all possibilities. I’m just trying to let the dust settle a little and figure out where to go next. But I will say that it is not outside the realm of possibilities for a teenager to lie.” He raised an eyebrow, pleased with his own insights.
Catherine scoffed, turning her head away. “You didn’t see what I did, Calvin—”
“Don’t you pull that crap,” Gaines said sternly. “I was there. I saw the same thing you did. It wasn’t easy for me either.”
“No, not like me,” Catherine snapped back. “I looked into her eyes. And what I saw wasn’t a liar. What I saw was a terrified little girl.”
Gaines sat upright in his chair and shrugged. “What are you after, here? What do you want from me? There is no hard evidence.”
“I thought it was clear,” Catherine said. “Bring Harry in here. Question him for real. None of this ‘friendly neighbor’ crap. Put the screws to him and he’ll crack.”
Gaines laughed and shook his head. “‘Put the screws to him?’ You watch too many movies. That isn’t how it works, and I’m not bringing him down here. That’s out of the question.”
“You just don’t want to harm his reputation… or maybe it’s your own reputation you’re worried about.”
“Watch it. Don’t forget which side of this desk you’re sitting on.” Gaines pointed at her. Then becoming self-aware of his rigid demeanor, he softened and lowered his hand. “And yes, that is exactly what I’m afraid of. I thought that was clear.”
Catherine backed down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just can’t stand the thought of someone getting away with this. That’s what’s bothering me. If we don’t do something soon, you know how it is, this will just go away and people will forget about it.”
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