bad happened in that experiment. I think that study might have gone terribly wrong.”
Brendan was quiet, so she continued. “Leish died the same month. And I’ve been looking for the student researchers: Subject A, Subject B, Subject C …”
Brendan frowned. “The high scorers? How did you do that? There was no information on them at all.”
She thought of Uncle Morgan, and hedged. “I looked at photographs in the 1965 yearbook—candid photos taken in the parapsychology lab—and then I tracked down those students. I mean, I tried.”
“How do you know the students in the photos were the ones from the Folger Experiment?”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “But I identified all the students in those photos, from yearbook photos, and I think I’ve found”—she hesitated—“two of them. There were two students who took work-study in the Psych department for the Spring semester of 1965.” She paused. “Victoria Enright and Rafe Winchester. They both dropped out of school entirely in late April. I haven’t found any information at all about them after that.”
Brendan was frowning, very focused on her. “I’m still not following. Why would you think those particular students were involved in the Folger Experiment?”
“Work-study,” she said again. “In the serious poltergeist studies I’ve read, the investigators went into the field. That was Leish’s M.O. If you’re right, and Leish came to the Rhine Lab to investigate the occurrences at that house in the police report, that would mean they couldn’t take ordinary classes—he’d have to put them into a work-study program. And you said yourself Leish’s name appeared on work-study requisition forms—”
“You’re assuming a lot,” Brendan pointed out. “But all right. I like how you’re thinking about work-study; that makes a lot of sense. So these students took work-study and then dropped out of school in April …”
“They didn’t just drop out of school. They dropped off the map entirely.” Of course she was leaving something significant out, but she wasn’t ready to talk to Brendan Cody about Uncle Morgan. She’d promised, and she agreed with her mother: she didn’t want to involve her uncle at all if she could help it; he was too fragile. Aloud she continued, “I haven’t been able to track down Victoria Enright at all, but I talked to Rafe Winchester’s sister.”
She relayed the conversation, watching Brendan grimace at her imitation of Mrs. Hapwell’s religious rants.
“Rafe ended up on the street, and the family lost track of him entirely.”
Brendan shook his head. “It was the sixties, Mickey. A lot of kids ended up on the street, or gone for good. And Atlanta was the South’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury. But let’s say you’re right. Something big happened in that experiment. Don’t you want to know?”
He suddenly kicked the porch railing. “I am so sick of this burying crap. Isn’t that what we went into all this—psychology—for? To unbury stuff? My family, God, they take the prize. Illness, addiction, alcoholism: don’t talk about it, don’t even look at it—”
Laurel sat very still in her rocker, taken aback by the outburst.
Brendan stopped and pulled himself together, with effort. “Sorry. Sorry. What am I talking about, anyway? We don’t even know if the house exists.”
“It does,” she said suddenly.
He turned and looked at her. She hesitated. Moment of truth. Then she plunged ahead. “It does. I’m pretty sure it does. And I’m pretty sure how we can find it, if it’s still standing.” Going back to Uncle Morgan was a last resort, but she thought they might just be able to do it without involving him. She took a breath. “Tax records.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“We need county tax records for 1965. For Folger. The Folger House.”
For the longest moment he was just staring at her, then he was on his feet with his arms thrown up in a “touchdown” gesture.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He picked her up before nine the next morning and they drove in his Prius through the downtown of brick factories converted to condos and bistros and malls, toward Raleigh, the state capital. She couldn’t help teasing him about the car. “How Bay Area is this, anyway?”
“The ozone is shot everywhere, doll face,” he lasered back. “Not just in the People’s Republic of Berkeley.”
“I think it’s sweet,” she said innocently.
“Ahh, she thinks I’m sweet,” he grinned. And just as suddenly he switched gears on her, metaphorically speaking. “So how did you know?”
She knew what he meant, but didn’t respond until he added, “About Folger? That it’s a house?”
She looked out the window beside her at the—well, at the trees, that