“What about your mirror-touch synaesthesia? When you hit people, don’t you feel it yourself?”
He smiled. “Not if I look away or close my eyes at the crucial moment.”
She strolled over to the large hall mirror and studied the photographs on the table beneath it. One was of Fox’s karate class. His classmates stood together but he was a few steps removed, apart and alone. “You look much smaller and younger than the others.”
“I was so…” he searched for the right word, “…enthusiastic that they put me in an older class.”
“You do look pretty fierce.” She smiled, bent closer and read the signed message on the mount. ‘Never let them get too close. Never lose control. Sensei Daichi.’ She nodded slowly but passed no comment, then turned to another picture. “Is that you with your parents?”
“And my sister. Yes.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re dead.”
She paused a beat. “I’m sorry.” Then reached forward and traced a finger around his mother’s head. “She was the same color as you. Your father and sister were normal colors but your mother was indigo like you.”
Fox found this link to his mother comforting. He had always felt closest to her, especially as she had also had synaesthesia. Perhaps that explained their color, he realized suddenly. Could Jane Doe sense fellow synaesthetes? Was that why she’d made such a big deal about his color when they’d first met? “You said my father and sister were normal colors. Does that mean the indigo end of the color spectrum is different, special?”
She shrugged. “I can't remember. All I know is it’s my end of the spectrum.”
“Your end?” He recalled the mnemonic for remembering the colors of the rainbow he’d learned as a child in England: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. “What color are you, Jane? Are you indigo like me?
She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled wistfully. “I don’t know. I can’t see my own color. I don’t even know that about myself.”
Chapter 18
The basic apartment hotel was ideal. It was just outside the Pearl, on the edge of Old Town, blank, cheap, anonymous. It had a fully equipped kitchenette so he could eat when he liked without drawing attention to himself, and the staff obeyed the Do Not Disturb signs. As far as he could tell, no one had entered the sparsely decorated apartment in the four days he had been in the city. Best of all, it had a private entrance which meant he could come and go unnoticed.
Half an hour ago he had dispatched his third victim. Of the three kills, it had been the most violent and the least satisfying. As he laid his knife by the kitchen sink and stripped bloodstained clothes from his huge frame he promised himself it would be the last — especially as the odds of finding another worthy victim were slim.
Stripping naked, he put the soiled clothes in the small washing machine and showered, scrubbing himself with antibacterial soap to wash away his smell. After drying himself he picked up his cell phone and paced the apartment. His naked body was slabbed with muscle. Not the sculpted contours developed in a gym but the brutish power acquired from hard physical labor. The upper part of his broad back was textured with a criss-cross of raised welts and silver scar tissue: the legacy of childhood beatings. As he paced, he flicked obsessively through video images on his cell phone, trying to recapture the fleeting sense of peace he had experienced killing the three men. Regardless of how many times he watched the videos, however, the graphic images of his victims’ last moments were too pale an imitation of the real thing to satisfy him. Ideally, he’d return to the scenes of his crimes but the risks were too high.
When he had first arrived in the alien city its unfamiliar smells, tastes, sights and sounds had left him breathless with excitement. He had roamed Old Town in a daze, feeling his way around its seamier edges, exploring the run-down warehouses, cheap hotels, whorehouses and back alleys. He had told himself this obsession with the city’s dark underbelly was crucial to his quest, the reason he had come. But that wasn’t true. He had roamed the darker places precisely because their perverse history had inflamed his senses. He had never felt more alert and alive. He was a child again, every experience as raw and fresh as a newborn’s. Even the sweet, cloudy wheat beer he had sipped in the Shanghai bar on the third day had tasted like nectar compared with the fiery liquor he was used to.
When he had seen the object of his quest staring out from the television screen the shock of seeing her face had stirred up a confusing cocktail of emotions within him: excitement; frustration; anxiety. Only after he had learned of her amnesia did he realize he still had time, precious time.
Then he had spotted the man in the bar.
He had never met the man before and his face looked older than the images in his head but it was definitely him. He had glanced back to the face on the television and a giddying sense of power had coursed through him as a connection had fused in his troubled mind. He had realized that out here among the children of men, unfettered by the usual constraints, he could be himself: a powerful demon free to act out his darkest instincts.
Not only did he have time. He had time to kill.
He itched to kill again now, if only to escape the war raging in his head. His temples ached with the constant pressure of trying to resolve the conflict between the sense of duty and destiny instilled in him from birth, and the burning taste — the primal need — to break free and follow his own path. Only killing the men as he had, especially the first victim, had momentarily eased the conflict between the steel grip of duty and the irresistible pull of desire.
The time to kill had passed, though. His duty could no longer be ignored. He walked into the bedroom and threw the cell phone on the crumpled, unmade bed. The floor was strewn with clippings of the woman the children of men had rechristened Jane Doe. After collecting all available information he had discovered what clinic she was in and even which room. But he hadn’t acted on the knowledge until now. He glanced back at the cell phone on the bed, expecting it to ring at any time, remembering the two main demands from the last call:
‘Have you found her yet?’
‘Are you exercising discipline among the children of men?’
He had lied when answering both questions, the chill frisson of fear warmed by the glow of rebellion. When the phone rang next, however, he wouldn’t be able to stall. He had to decide what to do and do it quickly. There was no more time.
He pulled his one change of clothing from the black bag on the bed and dressed. Then he prepared a syringe, found the keys to the anonymous Japanese four-wheel drive parked beneath the apartment and retrieved the largest hunting knife from the kitchen, still encrusted with the blood and viscera from his last victim. He cleaned its blade under the tap. Now he was filled with a fresh sense of purpose, the turmoil eased in his burning mind. He put the knife and syringe in his bag and checked his notes on the whereabouts of Jane Doe.
Finally, when all was ready, he sat on the bed, returned to the flickering video images on his phone, and waited for night to fall.
Chapter 19
Leaving Samantha’s house, Jane Doe couldn’t remember feeling so positive. With his aunt’s help, Nathan Fox had encouraged her to view the terrifying hallucinations as a kind of unwanted gift, rather than an illness. The psychiatrist hadn’t assumed, patronized or judged. Instead he had listened, observed and, despite his own obvious misgivings, reached beyond what he found comfortable to understand her problem. For that alone she owed him a debt. Still, despite all the talk of synaesthesia, archaeosonics and quantum physics, she felt no closer to answering the question that preoccupied her most. Who am I?
She found Fox an interesting and complex man. Although she was only his patient she suspected Fox was a hard man to get to know well even if you were a friend. She thought of the message on the photograph at his aunt’s house: ‘Never let them get too close. Never lose control.’ Seeing those photographs of Fox as a young boy had increased her respect — and affection — for him
and made her think she understood him a little better. It couldn’t have been easy losing his family so young, and the picture of him as the brave little boy in his karate uniform, standing apart from the others, chimed with her own sense of separation and loss.
For all his detachment, though, she didn’t find him aloof or cold. He was too compassionate. She caught herself stealing glances at the psychiatrist, noticing the deep blue of his eyes, the generosity of his lips and the way his dark hair curled over his ears.
“I bet your other patients aren’t as peculiar as me.”
The blue eyes flashed. “You’d be surprised. But I’ll admit you’re more interesting than most.” He smiled. “A friend said I needed a challenge.”
“Well, you certainly got that.” She laughed and the unfamiliar sound took her by surprise. They drove on in silence and she noticed Fox was taking a different route to the one he had taken to his aunt’s that morning. As they passed a group of nondescript buildings he slowed the car almost to a stop. Although the petrol gauge showed a full tank, he seemed about to pull into the Chevron garage. At the last minute, however, he accelerated and drove on. She wanted to ask him why but the tight expression on his face stopped her.
“Is this the way back to Tranquil Waters?”
“We’re not going back just yet.” He pointed ahead to a street of residential houses. “We’re going to the place you were born.”
“What?”
He smiled. “The place Jane Doe was born. We’re going back to the last place you were seen before you lost your memory.”
Her earlier calm deserted her as a gutted house came into view, surrounded by crime scene tape and signs forbidding entry. The brick walls and the line of the roof were intact but the charred beams were exposed and half the tiles had gone. Most of the bricks and the surrounding ground were blackened with ash and she could still smell kerosene and acrid smoke in the air. “Is this where I saved those girls?”
He parked the car. “Yes. Remember anything?”
She looked at the deserted site. “Not yet.”
He pointed to a blackened doorway in the side of the building. The door was gone, save for a few splinters of wood. “That’s the door to the cellar you destroyed with the axe. All I want you to do is to go up to the wall by the door, run your hand along the bricks and tell me what you feel.”
“Why?”
“You have no memory of anything before the night you went into that house and rescued those girls from the Russian traffickers. No one else remembers you either. The authorities have no record of you. The Russians you fought, the owner of the house and the girls you saved had no idea who you were. To all intents and purposes you appeared out of nowhere.” He gestured to the burnt-out building. “Apart from your identity, one of the major mysteries is how you knew what was happening in that house. What prompted you to pick up the axe, break down the door and go inside? Detective Jordache joked that you must have had some kind of premonition, a sixth sense of what was going on in there. According to my aunt, perhaps you did.”
“You think I sensed something from the building?”
“According to the police report, two of the captive girls were murdered in or near the house and buried in the back yard. My guess is they didn’t die peacefully so if Samantha’s right then one or both would have left a big, fresh echo somewhere in the fabric of the building.”
“Which I sensed and acted upon?”
“That’s the theory, and the building’s still there so the echo should be too. By touching that wall again you should relive the identical experience you had as the person you were before you became Jane Doe, one of your last visceral experiences before losing your memory. That could spark a connection with your past self and build an emotional bridge back to who you were. Put simply, I want both to test your death-echo synaesthesia and use it to jog your memory. Understand?”
“Yes.” She felt suddenly nervous about what she would discover when she touched that wall. She knew Fox was right, though, and got out of the car.
“Don’t worry, you’re not going inside,” he said, as if sensing her nervousness. “Remember, stay detached from whatever you experience. They’re just memories and memories can’t hurt you. Stand on your imaginary bridge, observe whatever flows beneath you and emotionally disengage. I’ll be with you all the time. You ready?”
“I’m ready,” she said, feeling anything but. She walked to the broken door with Fox at her side. “You sure I don’t need to go inside?”
“No. If you sensed something that night then it must have happened before you went inside. Just touch the wall.”
She did as she was told. Instantly, the smell of fear-induced sweat cut through the acrid stench of ash and charcoal. Pale violet flickered across her vision, then a girl with beautiful long blonde hair emerged screaming from the doorway and ran directly along the wall toward her. Behind the girl, male voices were shouting in a foreign language. The girl was almost upon her when Jane heard a silenced gunshot and saw the girl drop at her feet, eyes blank, blood pouring from her head. Jane pulled her hand from the wall and collapsed into Fox’s arms, clutching her own head.
“You OK?” she heard Fox ask. She pushed him away, trying to stay focused on what had happened. The experience of watching the girl’s futile escape attempt was terrifying but it was the secondary emotions it stirred within her that disturbed her more: images from her dark recurring nightmares, especially the malevolent presence chasing her. The experience inspired in her a black rage even more intense than her fear — directed not only at the men hunting down the girl, but also at her own shadowy pursuer.
She told Fox everything. “What does it all mean?” she said, exhausted.
“First of all, it validates your death-echo synaesthesia. One of the murdered girls was blonde, exactly as you described, and had a bullet hole in her skull. As for the stuff from your dreams, that’s less clear. The dark unknown character chasing you could be a symbolic expression of a repressed fear. Perhaps you were running from something before your amnesia?”
“Or someone?”
“Possibly.” He shrugged. “We’re only speculating here but when you sensed the girl fleeing, you may have identified with her terror and decided that enough was enough. You had to fight back — even if it was against her demons and not your own — so you found the axe and went inside. The stress of fleeing from whatever was terrifying you, combined with what followed in that basement, may have contributed to your fugue state. Rare retrograde amnesia like yours can be triggered by intolerable stress.” He paused and studied her face. “But aside from this connection to the dreams you’ve been having, do you remember anything else? Any glimpses of your past life?”
“No.” He had obviously hoped for some kind of breakthrough and this wasn’t it. She searched his face for disappointment but he gave nothing away.
He smiled. “Well, it’s a start. We’ve validated your death-echo synaesthesia and you appear to have made some kind of connection with your past self.” He checked his watch. “Which we’ll explore another time.”
She felt she had failed him and wanted to do more. “I could try again now — for longer. I might have a breakthrough.”
“Or a breakdown. You look exhausted. It’s getting late and I’ve already pushed you harder than I should. I’ve got a time slot tomorrow. We’ll come back then.”
“But I’m here now…”
His phone rang and he checked the screen. “Sorry, I better get this.” Fox put the phone to his ear. “Hi, Karl.” Something the caller said made Fox glance at her. “Sure. Yes. Why?” His face flushed. “What kind of development?” Then he walked away toward the car, out of earshot. When he returned, moments later, he looked pale and troubled.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure yet. But you’d better get back in the car. I’m taking you back to Tranquil Waters.”
Chapter 20
As they left the site of Jane Doe’s rebirth, Nath
an Fox was disappointed her death-echo synaesthesia hadn’t helped her make a more profound connection with her past self. He was, however, convinced of her gift now. It made him think of the Chevron garage and the yellow demolition sign they had passed on the way back from his aunt’s. What would Jane Doe have sensed if he had stopped the car and led her into the garage kiosk? Could she have filled in the missing minutes that had haunted him these long years? More importantly, did he have the courage to find out?
Not yet, he decided, pushing the thought from his mind. Jordache’s call had raised more pressing concerns: How the hell could Jane Doe be connected to three homicides? After returning her to Tranquil Waters, he drove on to meet the detective, who had directed him to the Grand Hotel Excelsior, a run-down flophouse a couple of blocks from the Willamette River that rented out rooms by the hour. As Fox parked he was grateful for the battered state of his ancient silver Porsche. This wasn’t a neighborhood in which to leave expensive cars. Noticing that the G in Grand and the E in Excelsior had blown on the illuminated sign, Fox pondered why the sleaziest hotels so often boasted the most luxurious names. A crowd of reporters had gathered so he walked around to the side, where Detective Phil Kostakis escorted him through the cordon.
Jordache greeted him in the lobby, led him down a dark corridor that smelled of damp, and filled him in on the homicides. “This is the latest. We’ve had three in as many days, all with the same signature.”
“What’s the link to Jane Doe?”
“I’ll show you. Walk the scene with me, both as her shrink and as a forensic psychologist. I need to know why the guy’s doing this. There’s no obvious financial motive, no evidence of sexual activity and no real link between the victims, except they all were male, over fifty and scumbags.” Jordache pointed to an open door ringed with yellow crime scene tape. There was an emergency fire door beside it, which led directly outside. Men in white forensic suits were already in the room. “The guy at the check-in desk vaguely remembers a large man paying cash for the room.”
Colour of Death, The Page 10
