by M. D. Archer
“What?” Mom and Radowski said at the same time. Greene was scribbling furiously in her notepad.
“I overheard Logan on the phone, and then the lady from the blood drive rang up and said they couldn’t use the donations because Logan had used the wrong bags, and he did that on purpose, I think, to cover up the steroids in the players’ blood, so I, uh, said something to Logan because he was giving me a hard time, and… it turns out I was right, I think. He wanted to shut me up, I guess.”
“You confronted him about this?”
“Um… yeah. He denied it, but of course he would. But I was sure. The bits and pieces I heard, it all made sense.”
“Calliope, what were you thinking? You shouldn’t have. Oh, lamb.” Tears welled up in Mom’s eyes again.
“Mom.” I reached out my hand to her.
“I think that’s enough,” Mom said to Radowski, standing up and squaring her shoulders.
“We really—”
“I said that’s enough. For now.” Mom’s eyes narrowed, and she folded her arms across her chest.
Greene flipped her notepad shut. Radowski nodded curtly. “We may have some more questions for you, Miss Laws, at a later date.”
I nodded, relief washing across my shoulders as they both turned away.
35
Isaac opened the passenger door of his car and waited until I’d hoisted myself clumsily into the seat. He hadn’t made fun of my awkwardness yet, which meant he was still freaked out.
“How’d it go with the cops?” he asked once he was in the driver seat. “Mr. E is dying to talk to you. He’s on his way back from the city. We’ll meet him at Discovery Diner.”
“Okay, I guess. I fed them a story about Logan supplying steroids to the hockey team.”
Isaac thought for a moment, then nodded. “I heard that rumour. Good one. It’s believable. Better than a gas leak story anyway.” He grinned. “Does your Mom know you’re out?”
“She’s gone to work. And I can’t stay at home forever.”
Isaac reversed out of the driveway, and silence descended on the car. As he drove it deepened. It wasn’t the usual comfortable, easy quiet we shared; it felt weighty. Isaac cleared his throat and fidgeted in his seat. I focused on drinking from my water bottle and looking out the window. Mom wasn’t bustling around, her nervous energy absorbing the empty space between us, and there was no interview with the police to distract me. It was just the two of us. Isaac was sitting right there. So close but somehow far away. And all I could think about was the expression on his face last night.
He reached over and turned on the radio. “Some music.”
“Sure.”
“I like this song.”
“Yeah, it’s all right.”
After a beat, Isaac leaned forward again to turn up the volume. The sounds of acoustic guitar filled the car, but it didn’t alleviate the weight of our silence.
When Isaac pulled into Discovery Diner’s parking lot and shut off the engine, I put my hand on his arm. What happened last night was still hanging between us like a cloud, and I had to clear it.
“Last night—”
“I said don’t worry about it.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
We sat in silence. Again. Even though the conversation didn’t feel over, more silence. It was a relief when Isaac turned to me.
“But I’ve been meaning to say to you… well done.”
“Huh?”
“For figuring out the DcH stuff, Callie. All of it and… you’ve been so brave, with your foot and Logan and everything. You’ve been amazing through all this.”
“I didn’t really. I mean—”
“No. Don’t do that. You did. You put it together. The invoice, Logan and the blood samples, the fact that the pinprick tests weren’t actually for testing the blood. All the stuff going on with the students. You worked all that out.” His voice sounded hard. “Don’t sell yourself short, okay?”
A blush of pleasure washed through me.
“And now, dealing with your toe… and the police… and everything….”
I looked over at Isaac, but his eyes were now fixed ahead. “And I’m sorry that I wasn’t around much before.”
“You were starting college. I shouldn’t have—”
“I shouldn’t have abandoned you, Callie, but I was… I don’t know. I guess I was trying to get Montrose out of my head.”
“Why would you need to get Montrose out of your head?”
He looked down. “Because… uh… I needed to move on, you know?” He gulped.
“Oh.”
Suddenly I got what he meant by moving on from Montrose.
“Sometimes you just have to make a choice and then go for it, you know?” Isaac continued. “Like you… with, uh… dance. You just needed to decide what you wanted.” He turned to look at me. “And I think you’ve done that now, right?”
The silence was so loaded I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah, I have,” I said finally.
***
Inside the diner, Mr. Ellison was already settled in a booth. He smiled awkwardly at me. “It’s, ah, very nice to see you, Calliope. I was worried, and, ah—”
“You too, Mr. Ellison, and thank you both. Honestly, thank you.” I grabbed Isaac’s hand and squeezed it as I smiled at Mr. Ellison.
After the waitress came over and took our orders, Mr. Ellison cleared his throat. “Calliope, if you wouldn’t mind… could you tell us what happened with Logan?”
“Tell him about the guy who showed up, Callie.”
“What’s this?” Mr. Ellison peered over his glasses at me.
“He came out of nowhere. Actually, he’s the reason I knew there had to be another way out. He emerged out of the darkness, and then Logan woke up.” I swallowed. “He knocked Logan out and took him upstairs.” I shook my head. “He threw him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing.”
“Who is he?”
“I think he’s the guy Logan called HM1.”
“HM1? What kind of name is that?” Isaac said.
“The only one Logan gave me.”
“And you’d never seen him before?”
I started shaking my head, then stopped. “He’s the guy Logan tasered in the parking lot, Isaac, I’m sure of it. So, I guess I have seen him before, but I’d never seen him—like, his face—before.” I shivered. “He was… scary. Super cut and, like, dead-eyed.”
“What did Logan say about him?”
I recounted what Logan had said about HM1 “getting carried away” in the park.
“So, it’s likely this HM1 dude was responsible for killing Kade, the hiker, and the reporter, and he also probably killed Logan?” Isaac summarized once I’d finished. I went to nod, but Isaac lurched forward to wrap his arms around my shoulders. “Callie, I’m so glad you made it out of there. Do you think he was supposed to—” He broke off, pulling back to study my face.
I swallowed. “I don’t know. He was pretty focused on Logan.”
“Calliope,” Mr. Ellison said. “Tell me more about him being dead-eyed.”
“When I looked into his eyes, it was like… there was nothing there. He was vacant. As if he’d had a frontal lobotomy, or something.” I shuddered at the memory.
“He shows up and takes out Logan, but we have no clue who he is except for some bizarre name: HM1,” Isaac said.
“Logan recognized him,” I said.
“You think?”
“For sure. He totally freaked out when he saw him.”
“What are we supposed to do with this information?” Isaac said.
“I didn’t tell the police. Radowski and Greene came to my house,” I said to Mr. Ellison.
“Yes, Isaac said. What did you say?”
“I didn’t mention the dead-eyed guy, HM1, at all, because he could be Radowski’s buddy, you know?”
“Probably wise, given what we suspect of him.” Mr. Ellison said. “Di
d Logan tell you anything about the, uh, Candidates Project? Did he confirm what we believe happened at Montrose?”
“Yeah, pretty much. And he wanted to know who else was aware. And I said no one, that I’d been snooping on my own. He seemed to believe me. Apart from that and telling me who killed all the people, he just kind of rambled about scientific progress. Oh, he said I was in a unique position.”
“Because of the zero result.” Isaac nodded.
“Yeah. I guess he didn’t expect that.”
“Hey, check it out,” Isaac whispered, nodding at the entrance to the diner. I turned to see Detective Radowski push open the door. He ambled over to the counter, hoisted himself on the seat, and glanced back in our direction.
Was it a coincidence that he was here at the same time I was? I risked another look. A waitress was handing Radowski a takeout coffee.
“Should we be trying to tell a different cop what we know?” Isaac asked in a whisper.
Mr. Ellison took off his glasses and sighed. “While taking all of this to the police may seem like a good idea on paper, I worry about who else might be involved. If we tell them what we know—if we, in effect, confirm that we know something happened—then we may be putting ourselves in danger. It seems probable Radowski was paid off, which begs the question who else might have been, and without any actual concrete evidence—”
“Shush, Mr. E.,” Isaac hissed. “He’s coming over.”
Radowski came to a stop next to our booth. “This some sort of study group?” he asked, sipping from his takeout cup.
“Indeed,” Mr. Ellison said with a nervous laugh.
“Well.” He turned to nod at me. “Glad the whole Logan Kerry mess is over. Thanks for the heads up about the steroids, Miss Laws,” he added. “We were hoping to find an explanation for what happened in Montrose, and that sure is a good one. Seems like it can explain more than a few items on our docket.” He nodded. “Anyway. Logan’s where he should be, and this town can get back to normal. It’s done. It’s over.” He turned his head to make piercing eye contact with me.
It was impossible to miss his meaning.
“Take care now.” He pulled open the door and strolled through.
Once he’d gone, Isaac said, “I guess we don’t have to wonder if he was paid off or not. He was basically telling you to drop it.”
“That’s the message I got, for sure.”
Was I relieved? Not really, but that was probably just residual trauma. Plus, knowing you had a shady cop in town wasn’t exactly the most awesome feeling in the world.
“The laptop self-destructed, and the health centre was burned down,” Isaac said. “We don’t have any proof anyway.”
“And your patient file says your DcH results are zero,” Mr. Ellison said. “I presume none of the other patient files survived the fire.”
“That was the point, right?” Isaac said.
“But what about the students?”
Mr. Ellison raised his shoulders. “I don’t see any course of action. It is unfortunate they were exposed to DcH, but there’s no way for us to remedy it and no way to prove it even happened.”
“So, it’s over?” I said.
“The experiment at Montrose High is complete, the man who executed it is dead, and the evidence has gone,” he replied.
“And we’re the only ones who know what happened.” Isaac sounded somewhere between awestruck and disappointed.
“What about that guy?” I said. “HM1?”
“Oh yeah,” Isaac said. “Maybe he’s just some hired goon?”
“Maybe. He sure looked like one.”
After a beat, Isaac said, “But we stopped it, right? Whatever Logan had planned, he’s not going to be able to do it anymore, and that was us.” He grinned and raised his hand to high-five me.
“You know what?” I slapped his hand and smiled back. “You’re right. We did do that. Thanks to us, Logan won’t get a chance to do any more damage.”
It was time to put this behind us and for me to get on with my life.
Mr. Ellison checked his watch. “Sorry to cut this short, but I need to get going. Calliope, do you need a ride home? I’m going back to Montrose. Ms. Michaels wants to talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Logan, I think. She’s trying to get a handle on what he was up to, I believe.”
“What are you going to say?”
“The minimum.” Mr. Ellison made a face. “Isaac, you’re heading back to the city now?”
I whipped my head around to look at Isaac. Was he going already?
He nodded.
“Yeah, I need to get back.” He stood up.
Suddenly tears pressed behind my eyes. I felt like I was saying goodbye to Isaac all over again. I shook them away and stood too. As Isaac shrugged on his coat, I clambered out of the booth and pulled him into a hug. “Are we okay?” I whispered into his neck.
After the briefest pause, he replied, “We are.”
***
When Mr. Ellison stepped away from to take a call, I pulled my bag onto the table and retrieved a crisp manila folder. Not my patient file; I’d retired that to the back of my wardrobe. It was a new file I’d created, full of printouts of some psychology stuff I’d found online. The way people were, the way they thought, and what they did. It was fascinating, and I wanted more.
It wasn’t enough to just read about it online. I wanted to study this.
When I’d visited Isaac and toured around campus, I’d been filled with a yearning that, at the time, I thought was about missing him and being jealous of his life. But now I understood it was more than that. I wanted to be one of the students walking around clutching textbooks, talking to new friends about the class we’d just had, complaining about finals, and being inspired by professors. I wanted to go to college.
So, could I?
Could I pull off such a massive life U-turn?
I used to think I was only good for one thing, but now, after everything that had happened at Montrose….
A smile crept over my face.
I wanted to go to college and study psychology. The thought made my insides buzz with both fear and excitement.
And now I felt as if I might actually be able to do it.
*************
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed part one of The Candidates! Good news, a link to part two is right here: The Candidates, Part II: Reaction Time.
You’re probably aware that it can be tough for indie authors to get reviews, so if you could leave Exposure Point some stars on Amazon and/or Goodreads, I will love you forever. And if you’d like to receive information about new releases, email me at [email protected] with the message ‘sign me up’. No spamming, I promise.
Thanks so much,
Margot
(M. D. Archer)
acknowledgements
A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to Exposure Point.
It’s been a long journey from conception to publication and I’m so thrilled (and a little sad, to be honest) to finally release The Candidates the world.
Lisa, Sara, Sue, Jane, Julie, Sophia, Lauren, Shirley, Maddie, David and Paul, thank you for reading and providing feedback on the various iterations over the years.
An extra big thank you to those that stayed with me all the way through and read multiple versions of this story (you know who you are).
I’d also like to thank Barbara Else at TFS for manuscript assessment services on early drafts of this story, and a different Barbara for proof reading.
Finally, thanks to the team at Hot Tree Editing for their services.
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