51
The first thing Mary noticed when she entered Seminary East: the room was full of people. They were people she had seen before, all of them familiar to her. The second thing she noticed was that Elizabeth Orman was standing at the podium, where Professor Williams had stood during their classes. The woman was smiling a strange, almost beatific smile.
52
Brian walked slowly. He’d cut his knee on a rock, and the dirt in the torn skin began to burn when he reached Pride Street. There were no cars. The campus was completely silent; the only sound was the traffic moving up and down Montgomery three blocks ahead of him.
Williams’s house came into view up ahead, and Brian began to jog. He heard the dog barking, saw the man’s pickup truck in the drive. He put his hand in his pocket, felt the weight of the gun, held it still as his coat jostled. Brian had shot a gun only once, with his father years ago. He had no intention of shooting one tonight; he wanted only to have protection in case…
In case what?
In case Mary was there, in the man’s house.
And they were laughing, Summer McCoy had told him.
Laughing? Why had they been laughing?
He was right in front of Williams’s house. It was dark; no lights were on inside at all.
Weird, thought Brian. Maybe they’re in the basement.
He approached the house, and as he did something caught his eye in the distance. It was the Seminary Building looming over the evergreen trees just across Loquax Avenue. The lights were on up there in Seminary East.
Why the hell would the lights be on? Brian wondered.
He went around to the side of Williams’s house to get a better look. Yes, they were definitely on. He saw them on the east side of the building as well. And was that-
He squinted to see.
There were people up there. A whole crowd of them. They were sitting in the student desks, and someone was at the podium addressing them. But he couldn’t see who it was. The side of the building obscured his vision.
At that point Brian knew.
He knew where he needed to go.
53
“I’m glad you made it,” Elizabeth Orman said to Mary. “We were worried there for a bit.” She gestured at the crowded room. There were perhaps twenty people there. Some stood against the wall, but most sat at the desks. They, too, were smiling at Mary. “And I assume you know these people,” Elizabeth said. “I guess no introductions are necessary.”
“No,” Mary managed, her voice hollow and ruined.
No introductions at all. In fact, back in the back corner, Mary recognized the boy they’d taken to the park, the boy called Paul. When he saw her looking at him, he waved.
“What is this?” Mary asked.
“This is the Polly Experiment.” Mary looked at Elizabeth Orman. The woman was in a black dress, different from the one she’d been wearing earlier. Her hair was perfect, her jewelry flashed in the fluorescent light. She had been preparing for this, Mary knew. This was her big night.
“What are you talking about?” Mary was bracing herself against the wall, the crowded room reeling around her.
“It’s my dissertation,” Elizabeth said. “I’m a PhD student in behavioral psychology, and you and Brian House have been my subjects.”
“You were performing a test on us?” Mary asked.
“Not on you, no,” Elizabeth said. “Not at all. I was using you to test certain results. Certain hypotheses. For instance: Did you know that a human being cares for a person that they’ve never even met? Did you know that a human being will go out of her or his way to save this hypothetical person given the right circumstances? If a human being feels that another is in danger, then that human being will ‘care for’ this other person in a profound, utterly human manner.”
“But not always.” It was a man’s voice. He was somewhere in the middle of the room, and when he stood up Mary gasped.
Troy Hardings.
He was dressed in a suit. It was silk, Mary saw: the light glinted off it when he moved. The facial hair was gone, the smirk had been replaced by a rigid smile. He looked completely professional, like a businessman-or perhaps someone acting like a businessman, Mary reminded herself.
“This is Dr. Troy Hardings,” Elizabeth Orman said. “He was my faculty adviser for this project.”
“To register the impact of this study, we have to remember Kitty Genovese,” Hardings said. “We have to remember the so-called bystander effect. What the Polly Experiment proves is that human beings are more apt to help a potential victim, an assumed victim, than they are if they, say, saw a woman being stabbed below their window at night.”
“Deanna,” Mary said weakly.
“Yes,” Elizabeth Orman replied. “Deanna Ward was completely fabricated. A lot of things in the Polly Experiment were fabricated. Or ‘exaggerated,’ as Troy liked to say. The night Brian saw me beside the road, for example. That was a ruse to pull in Brian. We thought he might be straying, so we found the perfect method of bringing him back. And the day you found Troy in the office. That was all done on the fly-we had no idea that you were coming up. We had literally nailed Leonard’s name to the door five minutes earlier.”
“And these people?” Mary asked. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at them, couldn’t turn to face the crowd. It was not embarrassment that she felt, not shame or guilt. It was fear: fear that there was another twist in the game coming, another misdirection. Mary didn’t know if she could handle it. Not now.
“We hired them to play roles,” Elizabeth explained. “They all did a beautiful job. And of course you know who we hired to play the part of your professor.”
Leonard Williams stood up from his chair and nodded. “In real life he’s in a theater troupe here in DeLane. His stage name is Mike Williams. And he was often disguised, so there was no way you could have uncovered him.” Mary thought about the first time she’d seen him, of the acne pits on his face. Makeup, she knew now.
There was a pause, a moment where nobody spoke. Then Williams approached Mary. He was smiling, trying to disarm her with his charm. In an instant he was beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Mary,” he said softly.
And then something happened.