a conspiratorial thrill as she walked the small room, gathering her thoughts. “Leish’s overall hypothesis was that it was the expectation of the group—the affected family and the investigators—that created a poltergeist?”
“Yes … ,” Brendan said, raising his eyebrows.
“Then maybe—maybe that report was a fake.” He looked at her, mystified. She sat on the edge of the table beside him, unconsciously lowering her voice, even though they were completely alone. “Maybe that’s just the story he gave out to his team.”
“What team?”
Without realizing she was doing it, she stood again. “What if you put a group of researchers together to study the effects of expectation on a paranormal investigation? Only you use research assistants who test off the charts for ESP and PK abilities?”
She turned and looked at him, watching comprehension dawn on his face. “So you tell these high scorers they’re going in to investigate a poltergeist, provide some corroborating documentation … and see if one shows up? I think that would be freakin’ awesome,” he finished, delighted. “But how do you know—”
She reached to the floor, lifted and set her roller bag on the table, and removed the paper-clipped sheaf of high-scoring tests. Brendan was pacing behind the table, as if he no longer could sit still, either.
She handed the test charts across the table.
He read the first one while standing—and his eyes widened. “Holy shit.” He pulled out a chair and sat at the table, flipping quickly through the tests, then going back and looking a second time, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth between scores, comparing. “This is—”
“I know,” Laurel said, her voice sounding giddy to herself. “Look at the dates.”
“I know,” Brendan said, with the same dazed exuberance. “Late March to early April. So Leish put together a team of super-scorers …” He looked up at her. “These are higher test scores than even Pierce and Linzmeyer.”
“I know. I don’t know how he found them—”
“It’s like putting together a PK pressure cooker—”
“If you believed in that kind of thing,” she said, with a straight face.
He stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Busted,” he admitted. He looked over the tests again, and she saw him frown and point to the notes, in Leish’s spiky handwriting. “What’s this? ‘Folger Experiment’? It’s noted on all three of the tests. Who’s Folger?”
In a split second she decided to keep that part to herself. You’ve said way too much already. You don’t know him. Not at all.
She shrugged, hopefully casually. “I don’t know. But there’s a linear progression with the dates. The police report, dated right before Leish’s name starts to show up on Rhine Lab documents, then Leish’s notes on all the ESP and PK tests, then the high scorers being culled from that series of tests and pulled for ‘The Folger Experiment.’ And the notations on the test papers are definitely in Leish’s handwriting.”
“And then the lab shuts down just six weeks after the start date of the experiment,” Brendan finished. “Something happened, all right. Something big. Let’s review.” He paced behind the table as if he were in front of a classroom. “One: The Rhine Lab is on a roll. They’ve reinvented themselves and taken paranormal investigations to a new level by starting field investigations of poltergeist activity. These investigations are getting them national attention. Two: A police report surfaces of electrical disturbances and rock showers and sound displacement at an undisclosed location.” He paused. “The report may or may not be real, but for the moment, let’s take it at face value.
“Three: Paranormal investigator Alaistair Leish suddenly shows up at the Rhine lab, attending meetings, conducting tests. It’s Leish’s theory that poltergeists are created by the expectation of the involved parties, including investigators. Four: Leish does a series of ESP and PK tests and culls a group of high-scoring testers for an experiment he calls ‘Folger.’ ”
He glanced at her and Laurel tried to keep from squirming uncomfortably. I can tell him anytime, she told herself. Just wait.
After a second, Brendan continued, pacing back and forth, gathering momentum as he thought aloud. “So, either A: Leish has made up a poltergeist house with classic manifestations to take his high-scoring team into to test his hypothesis that researcher expectation can create a poltergeist; or B: he’s taking his high-scoring team into an actual poltergeist house to see how the presence of the team and its abilities will affect the manifestations.” He stopped pacing dropped into a chair, and looked at Laurel, his face alight. “Either