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“There’s not a whole lot to tell. I was there for exactly an hour.”
“That’s it?” I say. “But you were a volunteer.”
“More like guinea pig,” Ragesh says. “Johnny’s the one who signed us up. He said he wanted to see what the place was like.”
“And what was it like?”
“Pretty much the same as it is now. Very old. Very stuffy. Lots of guys in dark suits sitting around reading. As soon as we got there, they separated Johnny and me, taking us into two different rooms. Minewas all white. Johnny later told me his was the same. We both sat at a table divided by a partition so I couldn’t see who was on the other side.”
“Did you ever see who it was?” I say.
“No.” Ragesh does a little shimmy, as if he’s still freaked out by the memory. “I just heard them. It was a man who told me he was going to hold up cards with shapes on them and that I needed to guess what they were by using ESP or something. I could take as much time as I needed, just as long as I concentrated on the card I couldn’t see.”
“How many were there?”
“Fifty.”
“Did you get any right?”
“Don’t know,” Ragesh says. “I was never told if I was right or wrong. We just moved on to the next card. When we were done, I was sent home and never went back. I finished up my volunteer work at the library, reshelving books.”
I look his way. “And Johnny?”
“He went back,” Ragesh says quietly. “A lot. Even after we finished our volunteer duty.”
I pull out my phone and swipe to the image of that photograph from 1993. The picture quality is terrible. In my haste, I hadn’t bothered with things like focus or centering the frame, resulting in a photo that’s slightly askew. Still, by zooming in I’m able to see the important part: Johnny Chen and Ezra Hawthorne.
Looking at them again, I pick up on details I missed the first time, such as the way Ezra’s pale, clawlike hand rests on Johnny’s shoulder. Or how Johnny’s dressed in a black suit identical to the one Ezra is wearing.
“Did Johnny ever tell you what he did there?”
“No,” Ragesh says. “I assumed it was the same thing. Weird tests and experiments. But Johnny liked the place. By the end, it was the only thing that seemed to make him happy.”
The end? At first, I don’t understand what Ragesh means by that.But then I check the photo again, this time zeroing in on the gold plaque and its date. The same year Johnny died. For all I know, this might be the last photograph taken of him.
I study the strange expression on Johnny’s face. He looks vaguely nervous. Like he’s not entirely comfortable being there.
Choosing my words very carefully I say, “Do you think what happened to Johnny could have had something to do with his time at the Hawthorne Institute?”
Ragesh pounds on the brakes, bringing the car to a skidding stop in the middle of the road. The force of it throws me forward a moment before the seat belt tightens, jerking me back against the seat. I tug it away from my neck as Ragesh turns to me, his face hard.
“Donotdrag Johnny into this conspiracy theory of yours. No one else had anything to do with his death. Johnny was…” Ragesh’s voice deflates, like air hissing out of a balloon. “He was messed up, okay? He was going through some stuff—a lot of stuff—and turned to drugs because of it. Then he died. And there are still days when I think about it and get so mad at him for what he did to himself. But that’s the key here. Johnny did it to himself. The Hawthorne Institute had nothing to do with it. Just like it had nothing to do with what happened to Billy.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. His reaction reminds me that I’m not the only person on Hemlock Circle who lost a friend.
Ragesh resumes driving. “You’re forgiven.”
A tense silence fills the car, becoming so stifling it makes me want to crack open the window. After a few minutes, it gets so unbearable that I feel compelled to break it.
“Detective Palmer thinks someone from Hemlock Circle killed Billy,” I say. “Do you agree?”
“Not exactly.”
“Since you don’t think it was one of our neighbors—and you don’t think it was someone from the Hawthorne Institute—who do youthink killed Billy? The stranger in camouflage people saw the day before?”
“It definitely wasn’t him,” Ragesh says.
“How can you be so certain?”