Colour of Death, The Read online

  “What?”

  Jordache stepped through the doorway and reached for a pile of magazines and newspapers on a small table by the window. He picked up the Oregonian and pointed at the unsettlingly beautiful face staring out from the front page. “It’s about the Jane Doe who saved the other girls. You want to know something strange? We don’t need her testimony to put the Russians away — we got more than enough from the girls she rescued — but my people went the extra mile to help her recover her identity and discover how she knew those girls were in there. And you know what my finest detectives came up with? Nada. Zip.”

  As Fox looked at the picture an idea came to him. He took the paper off Jordache and walked over to Linnet, who was being pushed into a police car. “Hey, George, do you recognize the girl who burned down one of your houses and ruined your party? Was she one of the girls you hunted? Was she the one that got away?”

  Linnet looked at the picture with cold eyes, then smiled. “I’ve no idea who she is. All I know is that none of the bitches I hunted got away.”

  “Like I said, Nathan,” Jordache said, as the car door closed on Linnet, “no one knows who Jane Doe is or why she went into the Russian’s basement, unless she had a sixth sense about the girls or something. I’m telling you, Nathan, she’s the real deal: your classic riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. The thing is, although she’s all over the news at the moment, no one’s coming forward to claim her. The last I heard she was destined for the Oregon State psychiatric unit in Salem and no one deserves to rot in that snake pit. Certainly not her, not after what she did. I was wondering if…”

  Fox smiled. Jordache didn’t do detachment. He couldn’t help getting involved with everyone and everything he dealt with. “Don’t worry, Karl, Jane Doe’s coming to Tranquil Waters. The handover meeting’s today. She’s one of the reasons I’ve got to get back.”

  Jordache nodded, satisfied. “That’s all I wanted to know.” He smiled slyly. “Watch yourself, though, Nathan. She’s got something about her.” The detective patted him on the shoulder and disappeared into the lodge. “She’s got a way of getting under your skin — even yours, my Teflon friend.”

  Two hours later, entering the outskirts of Portland, Fox turned right when he should have turned left. The almost subconscious detour meant he approached the city from a different direction — on a particular road. After a few miles a familiar collection of run-down buildings came into view and he slowed the car. Usually, he sought out the Chevron petrol station then drove on. But today a new yellow sign forced him to change his obsessive ritual, brake hard and pull into a dusty car lot, gripping the steering wheel white-knuckle tight, forehead beaded with sweat.

  He had lost count of the times he had altered his route to drive past the place where his life had changed, but he hadn’t ventured inside once. Apparently the interior had been transformed over the last twenty years — the merchandising of the products, the décor and even the location of the cash register had altered — but that didn’t make the prospect of going inside any more bearable.

  Although he had been only ten at the time, he still felt guilty about surviving the shooting and believed he should have done more to save his family. When he had told Jordache about the cobra tattoos, the police had identified the killers as members of Sons of the Serpent, a small anarchic cult whose followers took hallucinogenic drugs to reinforce their belief that they were immortals chosen by Satan to sow discord in the world. He had later learned that the strange looped crucifix tattooed on their arms was called an ankh, an ancient symbol for eternal life. Fox used to fantasize about hunting the killers down until Jordache had informed him that both men, model citizens before they had joined the cult, had been shot dead in a later robbery: ballistics had matched their guns to those used to murder his parents and sister. The Sons of the Serpent had disbanded shortly afterwards but Fox still possessed an almost phobic hatred of cults. Numerous therapists, attempting to recover his memory of the event, had encouraged him to revisit the scene of the crime and confront his fears but he had always refused, rationalizing that sometimes it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. The simple memory of arguing with his sister before she was murdered still had the power to upset him. Recalling the moment of her death and that of his parents would surely be intolerable.

  Deep down, however, he knew he’d never be at peace until he recovered those lost minutes. That was why the yellow sign had shocked him. It announced that the Chevron petrol station and many of the surrounding buildings would soon be pulled down to make way for a new shopping mall. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he feared that once the petrol station disappeared all hope of ever remembering what had happened on that night would disappear with it.

  Chapter 6

  Across town, a stranger entered the Shanghai, a seamy bar hidden among the run-down hotels, strip joints, whorehouses and derelict warehouses that lined the Willamette River. Vince Vega and other hardcore regulars looked up from their lunchtime beers to glare at the intruder who dared trespass in their domain. Vega, sitting alone in the corner, shook his head in disgust. Even the police knew to stay out of the Shanghai. This rube had to be from out of town, too stupid to know better.

  Portland’s Old Town, home of the original skid row, had a notorious and sordid past. Not so long ago, men who drank in its numerous bars could have found themselves drugged and dragged through the infamous Shanghai tunnels which ran under much of the neighborhood, waking to find themselves on a ship in the middle of the ocean, forced to work for food and drink. Young women faced an ever bleaker fate as white slaves sold into prostitution in some far-flung land.

  Today, it was still one of the more dangerous parts of the city, edgier than its fashionable neighbor the Pearl District, and this suited Vince Vega just fine. Over the years he had clawed his way to a position of power and now regarded Old Town, in all its seedy glory, as his fiefdom. Most of the whores who walked its streets or operated out of the low-rent flophouses came under his control. Many of the crack dealers who plied their trade in the district paid him a cut.

  As Vega sipped his beer, his weasel eyes watched the stranger approach the bar and study the extensive array of Oregon beers chalked on the large blackboard. The man wore a collarless white shirt but everything else was plain black: trousers, long jacket, boots, the broad-rimmed hat that concealed his face, even the large bag he carried in his right hand. His pale skin and lips added to the monochrome look. The stranger was large, with a laborer’s build, but size had never intimidated Vega, who was a wiry ferret of a man. In his experience bigger men were invariably slow and overconfident. And this guy looked like one of those Amish pussies who wouldn’t step on a bug. Some discarded marker pens lay scattered on the bar and the man picked them up, obsessively arranging the colors in a particular order before replacing them in their carton.

  What an asshole.

  He listened to the rumbling growl of the man’s voice as he ordered a beer, and watched the way he inclined his head like a dog, to stare at the screen above the bar. The guy seemed mesmerized by the TV, like he’d never seen one before in his life.

  “Fucking retard,” Vega muttered into his beer. Suddenly the man straightened and stepped away from the bar, literally taken aback by what he was seeing on the screen: a news feature on the mystery Jane Doe. Did the retard know her? The man watched the screen intently, apparently in awe of how Jane Doe had gone into a dark basement armed only with an axe and single-handedly rescued eleven girls from the Russian Mafia. Vega scowled at the television. If that bitch had moved in on his merchandise he would have given her more than fucking amnesia, that’s for sure. Nothing and no one got in the way of his business.

  He shifted his attention back to the stranger and noticed he was sipping his beer and looking in his direction. That stupid hat still obscured much of his face but Vega could sense the man was checking him out. The stranger glanced at him and then back at the screen a couple of times, as if making some connect
ion. Then he tilted his head and Vega saw the man’s pale eyes for the first time. The bastard was staring directly at him. He looked surprised, like he recognized Vega. Which wasn’t possible. Vega never forgot a face and he sure as hell had never seen this fresh-off-the-farm rube before.

  He reached for the gun in his waistband, intending to stand up and confront the stranger, show this asshole the natural order of things. But something about his cold, unblinking gaze stopped him. Vega could usually read a man’s eyes, detect his weakness and go for the jugular. He detected nothing from the stranger, though, not a flicker of humanity. It was like looking into the eyes of an animal — or a dead man. Vince Vega didn’t ever try to stare him down because for the first time in a long while he felt the chill of fear. The beer suddenly tasted sour in his mouth so he put it down slowly on the table, picked up his newspaper and walked out of the bar. As he passed the stranger he detected a faint, almost imperceptible sickly-sweet odor. He had smelt it before, on a number of occasions. It was the smell of death.

  Outside, he immediately felt better and cursed himself for not confronting the stranger. He was Vince Vega, for Christ’s sake, and Vince Vega didn’t back down from anybody or anything. Yeah, he reassured himself, if the guy was still there when he went back to the bar then he’d teach him a lesson he’d never forget. Heading for the low-rent apartment he used as an office, he cut through one of the deserted alleys off Burnside Street. It was only when he reached the end that he sensed someone behind him. He turned, just as his nostrils picked up a waft of the cloying smell he had detected in the bar earlier, but he was too late. The man was upon him. Before he could cry out a large hand clamped over his mouth, something sharp pricked his arm and his legs collapsed beneath him.

  Sometime later his mind cleared. He had no idea how much later. All he knew was that his head throbbed and his mouth felt dry. His hands were bound and he was lying face down on cold concrete steps inside a dark stairwell that smelt of piss. He was no longer wearing his own clothes, but a bra and women’s panties.

  “Feel familiar?” rumbled the same low voice he had heard in the bar. The smell wafted by him again and the big stranger came into view. He had a cell phone taped to his forehead and it took Vega a beat to realize its video lens was recording everything the sick rube was seeing.

  “What are you doing? What the hell do you want from me?”

  “Remember this place?” growled the man. Vega heard the stranger’s excited heavy breathing and looked around frantically. Where was this place? Why should it be familiar? The fucking retard must have him confused with someone else. The man opened the black bag at his feet and Vega saw the carton of marker pens from the bar, a transparent box of large syringes and a copy of the Oregonian newspaper. Reaching beneath the syringe box the man retrieved a staple gun and a large knife.

  “No, no,” Vega cried. “You’ve made a big mistake. You’ve got the wrong guy, I tell you.”

  “I’m going to cut your throat and throw you down the stairs. Does that help remind you?” Suddenly, despite his terror and panic, Vega realized what the guy must be talking about. But how did he know? How the hell could he know? Vega had told no one. The cloying smell intensified, became overpowering, as the stranger’s massive frame bent over him. “Who are you?” Vega screamed. “What are you?”

  The stranger’s pale unblinking eyes stared into his. “A demon,” the man replied in his low growl. “A fallen angel freed to walk among the children of men and spread my dark wings.” The man moved behind him and Vega’s last scream was cut short as the cold steel of his tormentor’s blade sliced through his throat. The final image Vega registered before he died was the face of Jane Doe in the newspaper.

  Chapter 7

  As the nurses bundled Jane Doe into the ambulance she felt for the locket round her neck, opened it and studied the picture inside of a smiling baby. Holding this one link to her past comforted her, although she had no idea who the baby in the photograph was.

  Jane Doe had once been somebody but now felt as if she had been dropped into hell, a lost soul bereft of any bearings. The nurses reassured her how lucky she was to be heading to a special private clinic, but it was hard to feel lucky about anything when you couldn’t even remember your own name. They told her that the vast asylum she was escaping being transferred to was the actual place where they’d shot the Jack Nicholson film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which might have meant something if she could remember the movie or who Jack Nicholson was — or anything before the night of the fire, ten days ago.

  As she sat alone in the ambulance and watched the state hospital recede into the distance it didn’t seem like she was escaping anywhere. How could you escape from your own mind? Physically she was much improved; her burns and the bullet wound to her head had been superficial. Mentally, however, it was a different matter. She caught her reflection in the window. Looking at the eyes of the stranger staring back at her made her feel as if she was peering into the windows of a forgotten home, for which she had lost the keys. The amnesia had left her adrift in the world, untethered from all things familiar, a stranger to everyone including herself. Her hallucinations frightened her more, though. And sleep brought little respite. The nightmares that visited her sleeping hours were as disturbing as any waking visions. The doctors clearly didn’t know what to do with her, apart from trying to fill her with pills, most of which she had refused. How could she hope to find herself again if she was drugged up to the eyeballs?

  After some time she felt the ambulance slow. Out of the window a freshly painted sign revealed that she had arrived at the Tranquil Waters Clinic and Residential Retreat. The ambulance drove down a long gravel drive, through magnificent grounds, past a peaceful lake sparkling in the sun, and stopped outside a Victorian building, connected by a glass walkway to a new modern wing. “You’re lucky to be out of the state hospital,” said the ambulance driver. “This place is the best in the area.”

  She said nothing. The doctors, visibly relieved she was now someone else’s problem, had already briefed her on Tranquil Waters. The original Victorian building had apparently housed the infamous Pine Hills Psychiatric Hospital, which once treated hardcore psychotic cases and the full-blown criminally insane. Since its closure, however, Oregon University Research Hospital had bought the site, totally renovated the old building, added the new wing and renamed it Tranquil Waters. The private facility now had an enviable reputation for research, treatment and the long-term care of patients with dementia, memory loss, and a range of neuroses and anxiety disorders.

  As the driver helped her off the ambulance and led her toward the forbidding Gothic façade of the original Victorian block, she didn’t expect this place to be any better than the last, however fresh the paint and beautiful the grounds. Her problem, after all, lay in the shadows of her mind, not out her in the sunlit world. Her worst fears were confirmed when she saw the two white-suited orderlies and the smiling doctor waiting to greet her. They looked no different to all the others she had seen. How could they hope to understand her when not one of them was even the right color?

  A few yards away, in one of the main offices near the Tranquil Waters reception, Nathan Fox sat in a handover meeting with Dr. Tozer, Jane Doe’s doctor from Oregon State. The other three people in the room were Tranquil Waters’ two other senior psychiatrists, Frank Miller and Walter Kolb, both considerably older than Fox, and their boss, the redoubtable Professor Elizabeth Fullelove (which she insisted was pronounced fully love).

  The head of Tranquil Waters was in her late fifties, hair more gray than black, but her bright eyes and unlined black skin made her look younger. She was a formidable presence; Fox had known her for some years but still called her Professor. As did all the other staff. He didn’t know anyone who called her Elizabeth, let alone Liz. He suspected that even her husband addressed her formally.

  Tozer passed Fullelove a thin manila folder labeled ‘Jane Doe’, the name the authorities gave to all female pati
ents — and corpses — whose identity was unknown. Fullelove flicked through it and then passed it to Miller, who passed it to Kolb who handed it to Fox. Fox knew that both Miller and Kolb had already read the contents and wanted to treat the patient. Jane Doe was high profile and her unusual circumstances added up to a potentially reputation-making case study. “Is this all you’ve got on her, Dr. Tozer?” said Fullelove.

  “That’s all we’ve discovered so far, Professor. Not just medically, everything. Remember, she had no records of any kind before last week.” Tozer looked tired and harried.

  Fox scanned the meager notes. There were no entries prior to the date Jane Doe was admitted to Oregon State. “She was wearing a locket?”

  “Yes, a heart-shaped silver locket. Not particularly valuable or distinctive, I’m afraid. It contains a faded picture of a baby.”

  “Does Jane Doe have any idea who the baby is?”

  “No. All I can tell you is she’s never taken the locket off — not even to let me study it.”

  Fox nodded. “I don’t blame her. Its’ all she’s got from her past life.” He recalled Jordache telling him about the night the police had found her, and how she had been unable to remember even her own name. “She’s really got full-blown retrograde amnesia?”

  “Total,” said Tozer. “It’s unclear if it’s retrograde amnesia caused by the physiological head trauma or her bullet wound or a psychological fugue state caused by what she experienced in the basement, but the result’s the same: she’s lost her memories, identity, everything. She can remember how to do certain things but nothing else from before the night she saved those girls. And there are other symptoms we kept out of the press.” Fox flicked through the tightly typed assessment. When he came to the third page his expression must have changed because Tozer smiled. “You found them, I see.”