The Unseen

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Back at home Laurel fed the cat and fixed a bowl of Raisin Bran for herself, and then went upstairs to her study with the list of all the students for which the Alumni House had given her numbers.

She spent the entire evening on the phone. She felt increasingly guilty that she was able to reach all but two of the former students in her very first round of calls; it was a heartbreaking characteristic of people of a certain age that they were so accessible by phone, making them vulnerable to canny predators. Laurel chatted generally with the alumni of the Rhine experiments, about the psychology department and the research experiments they’d taken part in. They’d all been tested with Zener cards and dice machines.

But not one of the senior citizens she spoke with admitted to being a high scorer—although Laurel got the wistful sense from several of them that they wished they had been—and when Laurel asked each of the alumni if they had been part of the Folger Experiment, not one of the people she talked to had heard of it.

She also asked about the two missing students: Rafe Winchester and Victoria Enright. Victoria was a dead end—although one elderly woman hesitated when she heard Victoria’s name. When Laurel delicately probed, she finally said wryly, “Dear, in my day, sometimes young women just had to… disappear.”

So was Victoria pregnant? Laurel wondered. But that didn’t explain why Rafe Winchester had also dropped out.

She got lucky on Rafe, though. Another elderly alumnus recalled that Rafe’s sister was also a Duke graduate, and Laurel was able to get a phone number for Becky Hapwell, née Winchester, from the Alumni House.

Thank heaven for the old school tie, because Becky Hapwell would never have talked to Laurel if not for the Duke connection. But once she got started, Mrs. Hapwell had a lot to say, and none of it pleasant. Laurel had to hold the phone away from her ear as the older woman’s voice rose stridently on the other end.

“That department was the end of Rafe. He turned away from his family, and he turned away from the Lord. Magicians masquerading as professors… they infected his mind.”

Laurel was both creeped out and energized… feeling the possibility of a lead.

“Mrs. Hapwell, did your brother participate in parapsychology experiments while he was at Duke?”

“Call it your fancy names. ‘If any turn to mediums and wizards, prostituting themselves to them, I will set My face against them, and will cut them off from the people—’”

Laurel realized from the suddenly stilted cadence of her voice that Rafe’s sister was quoting from the Bible. She hastened to interrupt the woman’s trumpeting rant. “I know Rafe dropped out of school without finishing his senior year. Where did he go?”

“I warned him,” the older woman said with a steely satisfaction. “We all warned him to turn away from the left-hand path. He wouldn’t listen. It was the experimenting—”

Laurel’s pulse quickened. “Experimenting? Do you mean at the university? The Folger Experiment?”

“I mean drugs. I mean those heathen, hippie practices. They ruined his mind. He ended up on the street, in dissolution and degradation—”

“Was that here in North Carolina?” Laurel broke in, trying to keep the conversation on track.

“Atlanta,” Mrs. Hapwell said, as grimly as if she were saying Sodom and Gomorrah. “With the hippies and drunkards and prostitutes. Dissolute, depraved, and degraded—”

“Do you know where he is now, Mrs. Hapwell?” Laurel interrupted.

“He is dead to the family.”

Laurel tried one more time. “Mrs. Hapwell, was your brother involved in the Folger Experiment? Did he ever mention the Folger Experiment?”

There was a pause, and then the rasping voice intoned, “Open the door to the devil and the devil will walk through—”

Laurel quickly thanked her and disconnected before the woman got caught up in another rant. She set her phone on the windowsill and stood, too restless to sit. She felt distinctly unnerved, not just by the fanatic religiosity.

She had no concrete proof, but her nerves were jumping, her mind racing:

Victoria Enright and Rafe Winchester dropped out of school—and apparently disappeared from public record—after doing a work-study project in the Duke Psychology department coinciding with the dates of the Folger Experiment.

She stood and pawed through her roller bag for the 1965 yearbook. She flipped the pages of the yearbook and looked down at the photo of the dark-haired girl and the sharp-eyed young man, seated across from each other at the table with the Zener-card board between them. Victoria and Rafe. She was sure of it.

Two students dropped out and were never heard from again. One famous guest lecturer dead. And another student who, while he might have graduated, is not like the other boys and girls…

Laurel stopped her restless pacing and looked at her desk. She approached it with reluctance and looked down at the last name on her list of alumni.

Then she picked up the phone again and called her mother.

She spoke as soon as she heard Meredith’s voice. “I want to know about Uncle Morgan.”

There was an icy silence on her mother’s side. “Know what?” Meredith said finally.

“You know what I’m asking, Mom. What’s wrong with him?”

There was a long silence, then Meredith sighed. “You’re the psychologist, darling, what do you think?

“But I don’t know,” Laurel said in frustration. “Was he always this way? Or did something happen to him?”

“He was always sensitive—”

“I’m not talking about sensitive—”

“Please, Laurel,” Meredith said sharply. “Let me speak. He was always sensitive,” she said again. “But he changed.”

“When was that?” Laurel held her breath. She could feel her mother thinking on the other end of the phone, the other side of the country.

“The year I graduated. The year I left,” Meredith said slowly, and there was the heaviness of guilt in her voice.

“Nineteen sixty-five,” Laurel said. She felt hollow to the core. She sat down on the small sofa next to the window. “Mom, did Uncle Morgan ever mention taking part in a study called the Folger Experiment?”

Another silence on the phone as her mother considered. “Not that I recall. Remember, Laurel, I was only in high school. Your aunt and uncle were already at college and I only really saw them on holidays—”

“But when did you notice that Uncle Morgan had changed?”

Meredith took so long to answer that Laurel thought she wouldn’t. “He came home from school in the spring, just before I graduated. I wasn’t able to see him; Mama and Daddy said he was sick, they said he was in the hospital.” She laughed shortly, not a pleasant sound. “I suppose that could have meant just about anything, couldn’t it? A sanitarium, some equivalent of a drug treatment center. You have to remember the times—the whole world had gone crazy. And I was having my own rebellion; I wasn’t the easiest child in the world… not like you.”

That last admission startled Laurel so much she lost her train of thought for a moment. She willed herself back to focus. “But you never heard anyone mention the Folger House, or the Folger Experiment, or a Dr. Leish?”

“No.” Laurel could hear the frown in Meredith’s voice. “Why? Do you think the school involved Morgan in some kind of testing? Mind-altering drugs?”

For a moment Laurel thought of Rafe Winchester’s sister, raving about drugs and degradation.

Drugs, no, Laurel thought. But mind-altering? Maybe.

“I don’t know, Mom. Do you know the name Rafe Winchester? Or Victoria Enright?”

Laurel could picture the abstract concentration in her mother’s face as she paused to consider. “I think Morgan dated a girl named Victoria. Before he dropped out of school.”

Dated? Now that could lead somewhere. But…

“But Uncle Morgan didn’t drop out,” Laurel said aloud. “He’s listed by the registrar as having graduated.”

“Well, maybe I’m wrong,” her mother said wearily. “He left school before my graduation, anyway, because he was too sick to go. That’s what they said…” She was silent again, and then her voice changed. “What good is it to dredge all these things up, Laurel? Your uncle’s made his way. He’s comfortable. And I don’t want you bothering him with any of this, opening old wounds. I mean that. Promise me.”

Laurel swallowed. “I won’t, Mom.”

“Life isn’t always kind. Just leave it be.”

Laurel put the phone down and stood, lost in a chaos of thoughts. Two students traumatized. One disappeared. A famous researcher dead. And a lab closed down permanently, with all records sealed.

What in God’s name happened in that house?

A bell suddenly rang, loud and sharp. Laurel jumped, her pulse skyrocketing—before she realized it was her doorbell. She had never heard it before.

She moved out of her study. As she descended the stairs, the bell rang again. She crossed the hall and looked warily out the side window—and felt her heart drop. Brendan Cody stood outside on her porch hefting two large brown bags.