The Colour of Death (11 page)

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”  He pulled out another folder.  “Your medical file records most of the hallucinations you had at Oregon State.  This is where I first noticed the pattern.  They
all
, without exception, involved death.”

Numbness seeped through her as she tried to process what Fox was saying.  “Those happened too?”

“Yep.  I found death records that matched the location and description of almost every recorded hallucination.”

“What about the second room today?  Who was the man in bed you predicted?”

“His name was Jack Lee and he died peacefully in his sleep from an aneurysm.”

“Why didn’t I see him?”

A shrug.  “I don’t know.”  He frowned, reached into his briefcase and pulled out a typed loose-leaf document.  “Jane, this is getting a little out of my area.  Unless you’re perpetrating the most elaborate and pointless hoax, something unprecedented is happening.  I can just about explain how your total synaesthesia unconsciously synchronizes all your five senses to create these vivid episodes of dying, but you’re not just creating them — you’re
recreating
them.  These people
actually
died exactly as you described and your synaesthesia can’t explain that.  Even if your memory was intact you couldn’t have known about all those deaths, especially in such detail.

“What’s so bizarre is you have no memory of your own life but appear to have perfect recall of other people’s deaths.”  He leaned forward and, for the first time since she became Jane Doe, she looked into his intense eyes and didn’t feel alone.  “What we need to do is discover where these memories are coming from and how you’re accessing them.”  He opened the document.  It was peppered with yellow Post-it notes covered in scribbles.  “There’s a theory…”  He stopped suddenly, weighing his words.  “May I be totally frank?”

“Please do.”

“As I see it, we have two options here.  The conventional approach:  I treat this as purely a psychiatric problem and brief Professor Fullelove.  She’ll then brief other psychiatrists who’ll try and diagnose your psychosis and draw up a treatment plan.  The problem is, apart from your amnesia, I’m not sure the issue is purely psychiatric.  And I don’t want to turn you into a medical freak show.”

She shuddered at the thought.  “I feel enough of a freak already.  What’s the other option?”

“We assume this is more than a psychiatric issue and speak discreetly to someone with more relevant experience.”  He waved the document.  “The author of this has a theory which kind of fits what’s happening here.  Although, to be honest, it defies normal logic.”

“So do my hallucinations.”

“The point is,” Fox continued, “they might
not
be hallucinations.  Strictly speaking, hallucinations are perceptions in the
absence
of external stimuli.  But if the theory in here is valid, then there could be some external stimuli present.”

She craned her head to read the title page, expecting it to be on psychiatry or neurology, but the first words she saw told her otherwise.  “
The Echo of History
?”

“Like I said, this is getting out of my area of expertise.  I’d like to sleep on it and discuss this with the author tomorrow.  Do I have your permission to talk about your case?”

“Can I come with you?”

He considered for a second.  “If you like.  We’ve got to do it quickly, though.  Your face is all over the news at the moment and the last thing we want is for the media to get any more curious about you.”

She indicated the document.  “Can we trust the author to be discreet?”

“Oh, yes.”  He smiled at the question.  “I trust the author with my life.”

Chapter 15

As the setting sun turned the Willamette River to molten bronze, Karl Jordache stood in a disused warehouse in Old Town, studying the corpse at his feet.  He wasn’t as shocked by the sight of the second homicide as he was by its speed.  According to the pathologist, time of death was only a few hours ago, a day after Vega’s murder a few blocks from here.

The gray-haired corpse lay on the floor, legs splayed apart, arms tied behind its back.  The dead man was wearing a woman’s blue silk dress and had four stab wounds in his chest.  “The vic’s name is Josh Kovacs,” said Kostakis, scratching his bald, spherical head.  “Back in the day, he used to be a bit player in prostitution and drugs, before he took too much of his own product.  For the past few years he’s been nothing more than a wino and a junkie, hanging around the alleys off Burnside.  The MO’s different from the first killing but the signature’s the same.  Both victims were stripped of their regular clothes then dressed in women’s clothing, and their bodies were bound and staged.  Vince Vega was found in women’s underwear and had his throat slit with a heavy-duty hunting knife.  Kovacs was found in a woman’s gown and stabbed four times.  The knife was probably the same as that used to cut Vega’s throat.  Unlike Vega, there was no ketamine in Kovac’s blood but enough downers and booze to mean the killer probably didn’t need to sedate him.”  Kostakis pointed down at the sheet of paper stapled to Kovacs’ forehead.  “And that, of course.”

Jordache read the message, each capital letter written in a different color.  The wording and lack of punctuation was identical to that stapled to the first victim:

SERVE THE DEMON
SAVE THE ANGEL

“What’s the connection between the victims?”

“Both were scumbags with a history of narcotics and vice and may have moved in the same circles back in the day.  Otherwise there’s no obvious link.”

“What about the gown, and the underwear found on Vega?  Do we know where the killer got them?”

“The women’s clothes weren’t from a regular store.  They were factory rejects, with the brand labels cut off.”  Kostakis checked his notes.  “It’s hard to trace clothes like this but we do have one lead.  Two days ago one of the storekeepers in a thrift market on the border of Old Town and the Pearl sold items that matched the fancy lingerie and gown.  She remembers the customer because most of her clientele are women.  He wanted the biggest size and was pretty specific about color and type of clothing.  Like he was buying it for a particular reason.  She didn’t get a great look at his face because he wore a broad-rimmed hat, but she says he was large, had creepy pale eyes and smelt funny.”

“Get one of our artists down there and get a likeness of this guy.  What did she say he smelt like?”

“Weird, dead, like decaying meat.”  Kostakis indicated the victim’s obscured face.  “And that?  What do we do about that?”

Jordache frowned.  “I don’t know yet.  First, I want to find out all we can about the guy with the odor problem and the hat.”

Part Two

The Last Echo

Chapter 16

Hundreds of miles from the man-made sprawl of Portland a storm was building.  It was born in the Canadian Rockies and raced along the mighty Columbia River, through Washington State, toward a remote tract of privately owned land in the vast Oregon wilderness.  The storm whipped through its high canyons and dense forests before reaching a remote cluster of timber and stone buildings nestled in lush, rolling meadows, between a dense forest of giant sequoias and a rushing river.

This isolated Eden was man’s only footprint for miles around.  The corral was so large that the horses within it appeared to be running free and wild.  But these were not wild horses.  They were neither the mixed breeds nor the dun-colored Kiger Mustangs that roamed the region but the purest breed of all:  thoroughbreds.  The highly strung animals flicked their manes, snorted at the moon and galloped in circles, unsettled by the gathering storm and the three exhausted horsemen arriving in their midst.  Perhaps they sensed the fury of the lead rider, the storm in his head a match for any raging in the night sky.  His thick silver hair flailed in the wind as wildly as the horse’s mane, and his intense green eyes seemed luminous in the night.  He was not young but his tall physique was as lean and muscular as that of a man half his age.  His followers called him the Seer but tonight he felt blind.  He and two of his most trusted Watchers had spent days scouring the thousands of acres that made up his land but still hadn’t found what he was looking for.  Only a trace of where the object of his quest might have gone.  He dismounted the exhausted mare, patted her wet flank, unhitched the saddlebag and draped it over his shoulder.  Without looking back, he left the other two riders to tend to his spent horse.  His muscles ached but as he walked among the panicked horses he breathed in their wild energy.  A stallion reared before him.  He gripped its mane in his strong hands, stroked its neck and breathed into its flared nostrils.  The horse calmed instantly and the Seer smiled through his rage.  He released the horse and opened the gate leading from the corral.

As he strode through his dominion, past the slaughterhouse and the shed that housed the settlement’s main generator, expectant faces stared out from lit windows.  Some came out of their cabins to greet him, touching the center of their forehead and bowing low, but all remained silent when they saw he had returned alone, without his prize.  He strode on past the Great Hall, ignoring the figures painted on its large twin doors.  As he approached his private quarters, he glanced up at the round stone tower that dominated the settlement.  A flash of lightning illuminated its large blue eye, a glittering mosaic of embedded dumortierite crystals, which stared down from the top of the tower’s white walls.  The all-seeing eye seemed to taunt him.  For all its power it could not find what he was seeking.

He pushed open the door to his quarters, and entered a timber-beamed chamber, one wall of which was lined with bookshelves crammed with reference volumes, academic texts and books on world religions.  On the far wall a six-foot-tall tapestry depicted two men, one a shadowy twin of the other.  Both had their legs and arms outstretched like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, and had seven wheel-like vortices running up their spines, from the pelvis to the crown of the head, each vortex a different color of the rainbow.

The seer’s three beautiful Wives lay on a rug by the fire:  Maria, flame-haired and heavily pregnant; Deva, a brunette cradling a newborn in  her arms; and Zara, a much younger Nordic blonde.  Dressed in indigo robes, each had an indigo dot painted on the center of their foreheads, like the Hindu tilak.  When the Seer entered, each bowed her head, touched her tilak in greeting and jumped to her feet.  The blonde took his saddlebag and the redhead poured him a cup of fiery poteen from the earthenware jug on the table.

He waved them away.  “Leave me alone.  I need to think.”  The Wives nodded obediently, but as they hurried to their private rooms he had a change of heart.  He initially considered Deva — her newborn was still a neonate, less than a month out of the womb — or the heavily pregnant Maria.  Both were suitable for his needs.  Tonight, however, he wanted uncomplicated release.  He rested a hand on the young blonde’s arm.  “Not you, Zara.  Stay awhile.”  Barely out of her teens, Zara was fresh-faced with full breasts and large brown eyes.  She smiled at him, blushing with pride and excitement, then proceeded to help pull the wet oilskins from his back.  He drank deep of the fiery poteen, but the 90 per cent proof liquor brought him little comfort as he stared at the calendar by the fire and noticed that the next Esbat was only a few days away.  “Where can she be?  Where has she gone?”

Zara stroked his forehead.  “you are the Seer.  You see everything.  In time you will find her and all will be well.”

He still couldn’t accept what had happened.  He felt a sudden stab of anxiety but quickly dismissed it:  that she had left him was incredible, that she would betray him was unthinkable.  He rubbed his temples.  His mind felt muddled and blocked.  He had always thought of her as the weak one.  But now he realized that the very thing that made her weak also made her indispensable to his life’s most important endeavor.  How could he have been so blind to her value?  How could he not have appreciated what had been staring him in the face?  If — he corrected himself —
when
she returned he would not neglect her again.  Not now he realized how crucial she was to the Great Work.

He took Zara’s hand.  “Go to the bedroom and prepare yourself.”  He waited until she had left, then picked up his saddlebag, walked past the bedrooms, down a long corridor and unlocked a door at the end, which led to the base of the tower.  Inside he unlocked another door.  The lock was unnecessary — only a fool would pry into his affairs — but he rarely left anything to chance.  The small room was filled with incongruously modern electronic equipment.  Closed-circuit television monitors lined one wall, showing video images from various concealed cameras around the settlement, which were recorded on a hard drive beneath the desk for him to check periodically.  He ignored the screens, however, and unlocked the safe in the corner.  Its shelves were piled high with banknotes, documents, keys, cell phones and other paraphernalia forbidden to others in the settlement.  He considered what he might need, then reached for his saddlebag, retrieved a small satellite phone inside and plugged it into the charger beside the safe.  A good night’s sleep would rest his body but first he needed to unblock his mind and clear his vision.

He locked the tower and went to his bedroom where Zara was standing naked, her robe folded neatly on the bed.  She looked nervous but excited and her youthful beauty pleased him.  He noticed that her breasts were slightly fuller than normal and he suspected that she too was pregnant.  Without saying a word he stripped and stepped into the shower in the adjoining bathroom.  As the water rained down, Zara began massaging his body, moving her soapy hands from the top of his head, down his spine to his buttocks and round to his groin.  Her large eyes looked up at him she took him in her hands, but his flaccid penis remained immune to her caresses.  She knelt and took him in her mouth but he stopped her and turned off the shower.  Increasingly, he found it required more stimulation to arouse him — much more.  He put on a robe then led her down the long corridor, to the locked door that have access to the tower.  He saw her pupils dilate with excitement when she realized where he was taking her.