Exposure Point: A gripping small town mystery. (The Candidates Book 1) Read online

  As the copy machine hummed and whirred in a soothing rhythm, a rumble of thunder announced that the weather was about to turn. A moment later, rain started to slash against the window, blurring the world outside.

  The ride home wasn’t going to be fun.

  As I looked out the window, a flash of headlights cut through the office and a dark-coloured sedan swung into the health centre parking lot. A man got out, wrapping his camel-coloured coat tightly around himself and immediately putting up an umbrella. Out of the darkness, another guy appeared. He wore only a hoodie to protect against the now pelting rain. They stood under the umbrella, a cell phone screen casting a circle of blue light between them. Suddenly, the vibe changed. It almost looked like… were they struggling? I jerked upright. There was a pulse of blue light, but not from a phone. Different. Brighter. Was that a stun gun? Yes. Camel coat had totally just tasered the hoodie guy. But he wasn’t lying on the ground. Where had he gone?

  A flash of metal to the right caught my eye. Was that him? I moved closer to the window and squinted at the rain-soaked scene in front of me. It looked like… a person climbing out of the ground? They were emerging from the ground to the right of the health centre like someone climbing out of their grave. No. It had to be a trick of the light. The person was now standing next to the building, looking around. It wasn’t the hoodie guy; this person was smaller and seemed younger. Their hair was shaggy, shoulder length and dark, except for some light-coloured chunky highlights. And they looked kind of familiar. Was it a Montrose student?

  Suddenly, the figure lurched forward and started to run. Almost immediately a second shape flitted past the front of the health centre and took chase. The next moment they’d both disappeared. I grabbed my phone, but instead of dialling 911, I called Isaac.

  “Callie?” he answered, his voice raised above the throb of music and chatter of conversation.

  “Isaac,” I said urgently. “I just saw something weird.”

  “I can’t hear you properly.”

  “I saw a person get tasered.”

  “Tasered?” Isaac started laughing. “You’re still in Montrose, right?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Hang on, I’ll go somewhere quieter.” After a few moments, I heard a door shut, and the music and talking became muffled. “Callie. You know you can just call me, right? You don’t have to make up an exciting story first.”

  “Stop. I’m at the office.”

  He chuckled. “Mrs. Pemberton’s got you working late.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here. It’s a long story, but—”

  “For real? You’re at school right now?”

  “Yes,” I hissed. “Listen. I saw these two guys talking outside the health centre, and then one of them tasered the other, but then it looked like someone was crawling along the ground, but then they both disappeared.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Isaac?”

  “Are you doing okay, Callie?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Seriously, if this—”

  “Listen to me. I saw them.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  “You work there. You have keys.”

  “Ye-es.”

  “What are you doing there anyway, Callie? It’s like a quarter to eleven.”

  “Is it? Crap. Mom’s going to be home soon. Okay, I gotta go, but I swear, I totally saw something weird.”

  “Callie, is this some sort of cry for help? Do we need to get you a hobby?”

  “Probably, but no. Whatever. Thanks for your support,” I added sarcastically, then felt bad. “You sound like you’re having a good time,” I said, frantically grabbing the wad of papers at the photocopier.

  “I am. What about you? Hey, uh, what was with that status update?” Isaac’s voice sounded weird.

  “Sorry, Isaac, I gotta go.” There was no way I was explaining my “Cole” status to him. “See you.” I disconnected.

  Moving as quickly as I could, I finished up the newsletter switch, got rid of the evidence, locked the office, and hurried outside.

  On my bike, I paused only briefly before pushing off. Regardless of what I saw, I had to get home. Mom wasn’t super strict, but I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing here. She’d been dubious about the job, and even though I was just as dubious, I’d found myself campaigning hard for the idea, as if I was trying to prove something to her as well as myself.

  I made it back with only a few minutes to spare.

  As Mom’s car pulled into the driveway, I turned off my light. I lay in bed listening to her potter around downstairs, my heart still beating a little fast and my breathing still a little shallow, and went over what I’d seen. Two guys talking in the rain, then a flash of blue light as if he’d used a stun gun, and a person who looked kind of familiar crawling along the ground, then running off into the night. In the dark, I sighed. If I called the police and told them that, they’d probably laugh at me, just like Isaac had. Or they’d get obsessed with what I was doing at the school so late, and I couldn’t tell them about the newsletter. What if I got in trouble for mass-producing curse words?

  I sighed again and rolled over.

  ***

  In the middle of the night, I woke up, yanked out of sleep as if someone had yelled my name. I still didn’t know what went on with that whole tasering situation, but I knew why the crawling person looked familiar. I sat up but didn’t turn on the bedside lamp, instead using the light of my phone to see. I opened a search engine and found the news report straight away.

  Kade Liston, aged seventeen, reported missing a week ago, and last seen hitching near the Montrose turn-off. I examined the photo, taking in his shaggy shoulder-length dark hair streaked with chunky white-blond highlights.

  It was Kade I’d seen tonight at the health centre.

  But what did that mean?

  emily

  One of Emily Levene’s clearest early memories was sitting outside her mother’s doctor’s office, waiting. About seven years old, she wasn’t able to go to her after-school piano lesson because her teacher, Mrs. Mathers, had the flu. She was instead sent to wait at the clinic.

  And so, she’d waited.

  Every so often, the receptionist had looked over at her and made an irritated sound, as if Emily was being annoying, but she was just sitting there. When the door to her mother’s clinical room opened, Emily sat up straighter, like a good girl, her eyes fixed on the door, but a woman with long brown hair exited the room. Still, she waited eagerly. Would her mother follow? She tried to sit even taller, to show her mother how good she was being, but the door closed. She dropped down in her seat. The woman with the brown hair smiled at her but Emily turned away. She lifted her hand to her mouth and chewed on her nail but dropped it a moment later. The last thing she wanted was to be doing something she wasn’t supposed to when her mother appeared.

  Finally, she did, and as soon as she saw Emily sitting there, swinging her legs and staring at the pictures on the wall, she frowned.

  “Why aren’t you doing your homework?”

  Emily had bit the side of her cheek to stop the tears already stinging in her eyes. She hadn’t thought to do her homework; it hadn’t even occurred to her. She resolved never to make that mistake again. And ten years later, she’d hadn’t. She’d put every spare moment she had to good use.

  “Emily?” Her mother’s voice floated up the stairs. Emily suppressed an irritated sigh. Every day, at one minute to seven, her mother would call up as if worried Emily would be late to breakfast. As if her mother didn’t know that for the past two years, Emily had gotten up at 5:00 a.m. to study. As if she wasn’t planning to get up every day at 4:00 a.m. for this, her final year of high school.

  “I’ll be right down,” she called back, like she always did.

  As if Emily hadn’t shown up to breakfast on time every single mornin
g of her life. As if that even mattered, because her mother and father just checked emails while they ate anyway. She finished brushing her hair, pulled it up into a smooth ponytail, and descended the stairs.

  When Emily was five, she’d received a toy stethoscope for her birthday and she’d loved it. At first. For Christmas, it had been the Operation game. She’d loved this too, at first. Until it became something else she had to study for, to practice, to perfect. But it was okay, because all of this was for something. Her future. Her bright, bright future.

  So bright it was almost blinding her.

  4

  Monday, the start of the school year, the halls were filled with students and I was at my normal spot at my desk in front of the window.

  Mrs. Pemberton had no idea about the newsletter fix job—or what I’d seen—because I was still trying to figure out how to tell her about Kade without incriminating myself. I was pretty sure breaking into the school at night was against the rules even if you did have a short-term employment contract and keys. Or maybe I was being too negative. Maybe she’d think I was a star employee, going the extra mile to solve a problem.

  “Calliope?”

  Suddenly Mrs. Pemberton was right next to me, pushing her round face close to mine. I blinked. Her hair was now a vibrant shade of red, her eyebrows resembled caterpillars, and she was wearing inappropriately glittery eyeshadow. Her “back to school makeover”, as she’d explained excitedly this morning. It was the make-up equivalent of a road flare, but what did I know? Maybe this was the height of sixty-something-year-old fashion.

  “Huh?”

  “Everything okay, dear? You seem….”

  “Um….” I bit my lip, then decided to go for it. I’d keep the details vague. “I think I saw that missing Kade person. Here, on campus.”

  Mrs. Pemberton’s eyes went theatrically round. “You did?”

  “Yeah, it was, uh, on Saturday night, and I, uh, happened to be passing through the school—” I paused, noticing Mrs. Pemberton’s frown. “—and I saw him next to the health centre.”

  “Saturday night? No, you can’t have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They found Kade on Sunday.” She made a sad face. “Such a shame. Another young person ignoring the signs and the rules and coming to a tragic end.” She shook her head sadly.

  “He’s dead?” I whispered.

  Mrs. Pemberton nodded. “Found in the park by the rangers on Sunday afternoon. You can’t have seen him on Saturday night because he’d been dead for several days.”

  “Huh? But how…?”

  I hurried over to the main computer and opening a search engine. Mrs. Pemberton was right. A local reporter had run a brief story with a teaser that this was part of a larger story about the park. They estimated Kade had died five days ago. But how could that be? Surely the coroner wouldn’t get the time of death so wrong?

  “I definitely saw someone at the health centre. And it looked like Kade.”

  Mrs. Pemberton looked thoughtful. “What were they doing?”

  “Um….” I lifted my shoulders. There wasn’t any other way to explain it. “They were at the side of the building. Low down. Maybe crawling?”

  Mrs. Pemberton’s eyebrows dropped even lower, almost becoming a unibrow.

  “And I saw someone else there, and it looked like they used a stun gun—”

  She laughed. “Oh, Calliope, you’re so entertaining.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Such an imagination, coming up with such fanciful ideas. I suppose it helps with your….” She raised both arms and made a wiggling gesture with her hips, then smiled at me as if I was a small child. “I sometimes wish I was more creative. It would probably make life rather interesting. And it doesn’t matter that you’re not really suited to practical tasks and jobs.”

  “I’m not?” I stared at her with an uncomfortable stinging in my eyes.

  “I found those extra copies of the newsletter in the recycling bin, Calliope. The ones with the, ah, typo.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks.

  “It’s a terrible waste of paper, but it’s fine, really. And don’t worry,” she said quickly, maybe noticing my stricken expression. “It’s only for the short-term. I need an extra pair of hands, and you need something to do with your time until you recommence your training. And Ms. Spencer warned me you might … ah… require a little of extra supervision. But that’s okay,” she tried to assure me again, “because you’re a dancer. You’ve got your dancing.”

  She wasn’t trying to be mean, but she was basically telling me that apart from dancing, I was useless. Which I guess wasn’t new information.

  “Anyhoo,” she continued, “we have a new student. I said you’d show her around tomorrow at lunchtime.” I swallowed and nodded, trying to recover from Mrs. Pemberton’s unintentional burn. “And there’s a box of stationery for the health centre. Can you take it over some time today?”

  “Yes,” I said, perking up a little. “I’ll go now.”

  I’d definitely seen something on Saturday night, and if I went over to the health centre, maybe I could figure out what. So far, I’d only stared at it from a distance. It was time for a closer look.

  With the box hoisted onto my hip, I left the office, took the path along the side of the building, and crossed the parking lot. Instead of walking up to the doors, I veered to the right of the building. I stared at the ground. It looked totally ordinary. What was I expecting? But I didn’t imagine what I saw on Saturday night, I just didn’t know what it meant. Maybe that whole thing had been an attempted break-in. Maybe they thought there’d be drugs or money here, and maybe a security guard had taken chase. But did we even have security guards at Montrose? And how did I not know that already?

  I moved around to the entrance of the health centre. The doors slid open soundlessly to let me inside, and I cast interested eyes around the modern-looking space. In the reception waiting area were a couple of couches, nice arty-looking pictures on the wall, and some large plants. Behind the front desk, two very shiny filing cabinets faced three flat-screen computer monitors, but there was no sign of a receptionist.

  “Hello?”

  The small door that led through to the rooms at the back was latched open. Did that mean I was supposed to walk through? I took a couple of steps closer. The sound of tinny music, playing from a phone or a laptop somewhere in the back, floated over, along with another, weirder noise. Some sort of machine making a strange crunching sound.

  “Anyone here?” I said, taking hesitant steps through the reception area. Where was Cole? Where was anyone?

  I placed the box of stationery on the counter and carried on to the small corridor behind reception. There were four doors, two on the left and two on the right. I tried the handle on the first one on the right, and it opened. It looked like a clinical consultation room, where you’d talk to the nurse or the doctor. The door on the left opened to reveal a similar-looking room. I carried on. The second door on the right was locked. I turned toward the last door. The music and the whirring noise were coming from this one, which was ajar. I crept forward, aware this wasn’t a totally normal way to act but unable to stop myself. I rounded the door to see a man standing with his back to me, feeding paper into a shredder. As I stood there watching silently, he threw back his head and glugged something from a silver hip flask.

  Seriously? It wasn’t even lunchtime.

  I started backing away, but I only managed one step before my moonboot banged against the door frame, a loud, thudding sound. He whirled around and I lurched backward even farther, stumbling against the door.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled. “Why didn’t the buzzer go?”

  He shoved the hip flask in his pocket and wiped his mouth with his shirt cuff.

  I couldn’t say anything.

  His face twisted. “Are you deaf?” He glanced down at the shredder, then up to me again. “You shouldn’t be back here.”

  “So
rry. I have, uh… I brought stationery from the office.”

  His eyes narrowed. “The stationery? What goddam stationery?”

  “I-I left it on the front counter,” I blurted, turning almost even before I’d gotten the words out. I hurried back through the reception area to get outside.

  What had I interrupted back there?

  ***

  As soon as Mrs. Pemberton left the office to run one of her mysterious errands—she disappeared with only vague explanations a lot—I jumped onto the main computer. That guy I’d seen had to be the health centre manager, but I wanted to double-check. Less than a minute later, I had photo confirmation. Mr. Logan Kerry was now on the Montrose High contact list. Cole too, I noticed, listed as a volunteer.

  So I caught Logan day-drinking and shredding. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it was a thing he did for fun, like how you can go to a place and pay to smash plates against the wall. To relieve stress or something.

  Still, drinking at work?

  “I’m back, love,” Mrs. Pemberton said. “Any messages?”

  “Do you shred things?” I said as she dropped her bag behind the front desk.

  “Why, yes. When you hold personal information about people, you have to get rid of it in a responsible, confidential way. We have a shredder out back. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, um, just curious.” I hesitated, wondering if it was even worth saying something, then took a breath and continued. “I thought I should tell you. I, uh, I saw the health centre manager drinking.”

  “Drinking what, dear?”

  “He had a silver hip flask. I don’t think it was water. Don’t people usually drink liquor out of hip flasks?”

  Her frown deepened. “Mr. Kerry? I doubt it.”

  It was my turn to frown. “But he did.”