Colour of Death, The

by Cordy, Michael

  “Hallucinations?”

  “Not just any old hallucinations. Hers are high-definition visions in glorious Technicolor, with Dolby Surround sound. We moved her five times before we found a room in which she didn’t hallucinate. Strangely enough it was in the new palliative ward — where terminally ill patients are sent to die.”

  “Any brain damage?” asked Miller.

  “Her head injuries were minor. MRI scans have shown nothing abnormal.”

  Fox read the sketchy descriptions of her hallucinations. There was a recurrent theme. “I suppose they could be repressed memories.”

  “Pretty horrific repressed memories,” said Tozer.

  Fox thought of his own inability to recall the murder of his family. “Do you know of a patient who’s repressed good ones?”

  “Touché,” said Tozer.

  “Drugs?” asked Kolb, adjusting his thick glasses.

  “All the tox screens were negative,” said Tozer. “No traces of drugs or alcohol. And she isn’t taking any hallucinogenic medication.”

  Fox studied the file. “What medication is she taking?”

  “None, apart from sedatives and analgesics in the first few days. She’s clearly psychotic but when I prescribed risperidone she refused. She refuses to take any anti-psychotics. She won’t even take diazepam for her panic attacks.”

  “What about talk therapies?” asked Miller. “Have your people tried cognitive behavior therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy?”

  Tozer laughed humorlessly. “My people? You mean me.” He crossed his arms defensively. “We haven’t enough staff to give her CBT, ACT, DBT or any talk therapy. I’ve recommended it but the earliest she’d get any with us would be three months.”

  Fox nodded sympathetically. He worked long hours but they were varied and as a staff member of a well-endowed research hospital, he had access to first-class resources.

  “Any parting advice for us, Dr. Tozer?” said Fullelove. “Anything you want to tell us off the record?”

  Tozer gathered his papers together, keen to leave. “Honestly?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m glad the wealthy father of one of the American girls she rescued put up the money for Jane Doe to come here. She deserves the best care. But I’m also relieved to hand her over. Even here I think you’ll have your hands full trying to treat her. It’s not just the media spotlight, which adds obvious pressures. It’s the patient herself. Aside from her psychiatric problems, Jane Doe is difficult, impatient, aggressive and uncooperative. She has zero respect for our profession. So far she’s claimed that every doctor who’s treated her, medical and psychiatric, has been the wrong color.”

  Professor Fullelove raised an eyebrow and her black skin creased into a frown. “The wrong color?” Before Tozer could elaborate, Fox heard a distant, terrified scream.

  “Calm down,” soothed a far-off voice. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  “Let me out,” the first voice cried. “I won’t stay here. Why don’t you understand? I can’t stay in this room.”

  Tozer smiled wryly. “That’s her, the famous avenging angel. I’d recognize those dulcet tones anywhere.” He stood up, fastened his briefcase and hurried to the door. “She’s your avenging angel now. Good luck.”

  The commotion was coming from a room in the original Victorian building, at the end of the corridor leading to the new wing. The door was ajar and as they approached Fox glanced inside. A doctor and two orderlies in white coats were trying to reason with a tall, agitated young woman who was shaking her head from side to side and holding her locket like an infant clutching a security blanket. “I keep telling you,” she shouted. “I can’t stay in here.”

  Fullelove went into the room, flanked by Kolb and Miller, while Fox waited behind in the corridor. “What’s the problem, Dr. Feinberg?”

  “Jane Doe doesn’t like her room, Professor Fullelove,” said the junior doctor. The room was typical of all the rooms at Tranquil Waters: freshly painted walls; comfortable bed; large window overlooking the beautiful grounds; TV; chair and desk; private bathroom.

  “What’s wrong with it, Jane? It’s a nice room,” Fullelove reasoned gently. The terrified young woman kept blinking as if trying to see something more clearly — or trying not to see it. Fox couldn’t take his eyes off her. He had thought her striking on the television news but her sculptured features and haunted eyes were beautiful in the flesh. “What’s wrong with the room, Jane?” Fullelove asked again.

  “You won’t understand.” Jane Doe slammed her right hand hard against the door and Fox felt his left smart with the pain. “You’re the wrong color.”

  Fox could see Professor Fullelove stiffen. “What color’s that, Jane?”

  ‘Red.”

  “Red?”

  “You’re all the wrong color,” she shouted. “Just leave me alone and let me out of here. I can’t stay in this room.” She shoved one of the orderlies against the wall with surprising force, pushed her way past Fullelove, Kolb and Miller, and ran into the corridor.

  Straight into Fox’s arms.

  For a moment she stared at him, transfixed, then her face relaxed. The orderlies ran to her but Fox signaled them to stay back. “Are you a doctor?” she asked.

  “A psychiatrist, yes.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Nathan Fox.”

  She gripped it tightly in hers, as if frightened he might escape. “I don’t know my name, Dr. Fox, but perhaps you can help me remember it.” She turned to Fullelove, eyes shining with relief. “He can help me find myself again.”

  “Why him?” Fullelove said. “Is Dr. Fox the right color?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What color’s that?” said Fox, intrigued.

  “The faint glow around you is a deep purple-blue — indigo. The others have all been shades or red, yellow, green and orange.”

  “Why’s my particular color so important?”

  “I can’t remember.” She shook her head in frustration. “I just know it means you’ll be able to understand me better than the others.” Jane Doe looked imploringly at Fox, her haunted eyes so filled with naked need that every defense instinct he had nurtured over the years screamed at him to keep his distance, remain detached and not get involved. The reticence must have shown in his face because she released his hand, slumped her shoulders and stared down at the dark carpet. She looked exhausted, hopeless, helpless and totally alone, a stranger to everyone, including herself.

  Against his instincts, he took her hand again. “Tell me about what scared you in that room,” he asked. She stiffened, alert like a hunted deer. He smiled. “Hallucinations can be as vivid and terrifying as dreams and nightmares, but they’re also just as harmless. Unlike dreams, they occur in a conscious, awake state. Clinically, hallucinations are perceptions of things in the absence of external stimuli. Things that seem to be there but aren’t.”

  “They feel real, though.”

  “But they’re not. And that’s the crucial point because what isn’t there can’t harm you, however frightening it might seem.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw them.”

  “Then show me them.” He retrieved a pen-sized digital voice recorder from his jacket. “Walk back into the room with me and describe exactly what you see. Try to ignore whether the experiences are real or not, what they make you feel, or how you think they reflect on you. Just report them objectively, like a journalist. Be my eyes and ears. Can you do that?” He squeezed her hand. “You said you think I can help you. So let me.” He led her to the open doorway. As he stepped inside she hesitated. “Come,” he said. “Follow me. Tell me what’s so frightening. Tell me what you see.”

  He watched her take a deep breath, on the cusp of panic, riding the waves of her anxiety. The she turned to him, eyes cold and challenging. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Absolutely.” He hoped his unflinching gaze gave her courage. “I’m right beside you. Tell me everythin
g.”

  Chapter 8

  Encouraging Jane Doe to confront her hallucinations and describe them objectively was a classic defusion technique. Fox hoped to challenge her belief that she was responsible for the hallucinations and help her gain some emotional distance from them. It required an enormous amount of courage from the subject but, according to Jordache, Jane Doe had that in spades. You don’t break into a dark basement armed with only an axe and take on the Russian mob single-handed unless you know how to face a few demons.

  As he led her into the room he became acutely aware of her breathing and the tension radiating from every muscle in her body. Her wide eyes and flared nostrils brought to mind a wild horse about to bolt. It was obvious Fullelove and the others watching in the corridor weren’t immune to the tension. As Jane Doe crossed the threshold he switched on the digital recorder.

  “See anything yet?”

  She shook her head. “Only flashes. Disjointed images.” She looked exhausted.

  “Just report what you see,” he said. “Nothing more. Nothing less. Don’t try to analyze or interpret anything.” She rested against the wall then, her face changed. It had been pale before but was now ashen. Her nose twitched and again the image of a panicked wild animal flashed through his mind. “What do you see now?”

  “Nothing,” she said, barely above a whisper. She sounded very far away. “I can smell something, though.”

  “Smell?” Fox said, conscious of his own mounting unease. “What?”

  “Shit. And blood.” She spoke in a robotic monotone as if in a trance. “Now I can hear buzzing and see the flies.” She took a sharp intake of breath and Fox felt her fingernails dig deep into the palm of his hand. She visibly shuddered. “Now I can see him.”

  “Who?”

  She focused on a space in the middle of the room, her face contorted with disgust and fear. “The man.”

  “What man? Tell me exactly what you see.”

  “I keep seeing the same scene again and again, like it’s in a loop. He’s hanging in front of me, naked. His pajamas have been knotted together, looped over the ceiling beam and tied round his neck.”

  Fox looked up. There was no ceiling beam. “Go on.”

  “The pajamas have blue and white stripes,” she continued. “Shit is running down his legs and dripping on the upended iron bed beneath his twitching feet. I can hear each drip on the metal frame like water from a faulty tap. There’s an overturned chair by the bed.”

  The level of multi-sensory detail was remarkable. “You mentioned blood. Where’s it coming from?”

  “The other man.”

  “The other man?”

  She pointed. “He’s in the corner of the room. The hanging man is faint, translucent, like a ghost. But this man is more substantial. He looks as real as you. Every detail’s in natural colors except for a slight tint, which comes and goes, as though I’m looking through a flickering filter.”

  “What color is it?”

  She pointed to an African violet on the windowsill. “Like that flower but much much paler.”

  “Do all your hallucinations have this flickering color wash?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the man in the corner doing?”

  “He’s sitting on the floor, staring at the door. He’s wearing an orange T-shirt embossed with a yellow cartoon figure and the word Cowabunga.” She swallowed hard. Perspiration beaded her forehead. “His neck and both wrists have been sliced open, exposing white tendons and nerves in the wounds. It’s like I’m in hell. I can feel what he is feeling. I feel his slashes on my wrists and my throat. I feel the despair I see in his eyes. I taste the blood in my mouth. I am him.” Her steady monotone had turned to a pained, keening whine. “Blood’s pouring onto the floor. There’s a pool at my toes.” Suddenly she stumbled backwards, pulling Fox with her, and stared down at her feet. “I can’t let it touch me because then I’ll know it’s real — as real as your hand in mine. The blood isn’t the worst part, though.”

  “What is?”

  She let go of Fox and put her hands over her ears. “The screaming. The man’s staring at the door and screaming the same words again and again: ‘Marty, Marty. I’m sorry, Marty, but you can't help me. No one can help me, Marty’.” She turned and left the room.

  Fox stayed for a moment, staring into the corner of the room, trying to see what she had seen, then followed her into the corridor.

  Although Jane Doe couldn’t stop shaking, sharing her experience with Dr. Nathan Fox had normalized it somehow, made it less horrific. It had still been terrifying but for the first time since she could remember she’d felt a slight detachment from the terrible scenes, less like they were hers, less like she was mad or evil for being the only person able to see them. She felt a sudden rush of gratitude. She had been right about Nathan Fox’s color. Not one of the doctors at the other hospital had listened to her fears or even begun to understand her hallucinations. Although nothing had actually changed, Fox had given her something which she thought had been lost with her identity: hope.

  “How are you feeling?” Fox asked, as Fullelove and the others looked on.

  She nodded slowly, clutching the locket. “I’m OK.” She glanced back at the room. “I’m not going back in there, though.”

  “There are rooms available in the new wing,” said Fullelove. “Let Dr. Feinberg show you them and you can choose whichever feels most comfortable. How does that sound?”

  Jane nodded then looked back at Fox. “Can you be my doctor?”

  Fullelove smiled. “We’ll see. I need to talk with my colleagues.”

  As Fox watched Jane Doe walk down the corridor with Dr. Feinberg, he couldn’t shake off a feeling of unease. He remembered Jordache’s warning: Be careful, my friend. She’ll get under your skin — even yours.

  Fullelove turned to him. ‘You heard her, Nathan. What do you think?”

  “Are you sure I’m right for her? Her irrational dependence on my perceived color might be a good reason for me not to be her primary therapist.” He turned to Miller and Kolb, who suddenly didn’t seem so keen to treat her. “Perhaps Frank or Walter might be better?”

  “I disagree. If Jane Doe thinks you’re the right color — whatever that means — then it gives you an immediate rapport. You’ve effectively had one session with her already, which went pretty well. Any other objections?”

  He could think of quite a few, but none that were defensible. “I suppose not, Professor.”

  Fullelove patted him on the shoulder. “Good, you can have your next session with her tomorrow. I’d better go see her settled in.”

  Alone, Fox was walking back to the main reception area when he heard a cough from inside the room. He looked in and saw one of the orderlies lingering by the doorway. He was a big man but looked small, broken. His pale skin was glazed with sweat, his thinning hair slick on his forehead.

  “You OK?”

  The man moved closer and whispered urgently, “There’s something you should know, Dr. Fox.” He glanced nervously out of the doorway, down the corridor toward Jane Doe’s departing back, as if checking she was out of earshot. “About the room. About what she said she saw.”

  “What’s that?” said Fox.

  “I don’t know about the hanging man, but the other man — the one in the orange Bart Simpson T-shirt who cut his wrists and shouted for Marty — that actually happened. His name was Frank Bartlett and he was a patient in the old Pine Hills Psychiatric Hospital seven or eight years ago. He cut his wrists and throat and died in that room exactly as she described.”

  “That’s impossible. It was a hallucination.”

  The orderly shook his head. “I used to work at Pine Hills before the new place opened,” he said. “I found Frank. My name’s Martin Zabriskie. I’m the guy he was screaming at when he died. I’m Marty.” Something cold uncoiled in Fox’s belly. “The point is,” the orderly hissed, looking down the corridor after Jane Doe, “how could she, a woman who can�
�t even remember her own name, have known what happened in that room all those years ago?”

  Chapter 9

  Later that evening they found the first victim.

  Detective Karl Jordache was sitting down to dinner with his wife and two daughters when he got the call. His wife was an excellent cook but tonight’s chicken dinner didn’t excite his palate: no sauce on the grilled chicken breast, no dressing on the salad and no butter or salt on the boiled potatoes. He knew it was for his health but, cholesterol or no cholesterol, he wanted some flavor back in his life. Nevertheless, he was hungry and groaned when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller, excused himself and took the call in his study. “This better be important, Phil.”

  “We’ve got a one-eight-seven you should see, Chief,” said Phil Kostakis, one of the older detectives on his force.

  “Handle it, and give me your report in the morning.”

  “Trust me, Chief, you’ll want to see this.” A pause. “Could be kinda sensitive if the press got hold of it. You’ll see what I mean when you get here.”

  Jordache cursed under his breath. “Where are you?”

  “Old Town. One of the abandoned apartment blocks near the river.” He gave the address and Jordache wrote it down.

  “OK, Phil, I’ll be right there. Secure the scene, and don’t let reporters anywhere near it.” They had only just tied up the loose ends of Linnet’s involvement in the Russian sex-trafficking case and now this.

  Putting on his coat, he bent to kiss his daughters goodbye, but his wife shook her head. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve had your supper, Karl. You need to eat and if you go hungry you’ll only be tempted by a taco or a burger. So sit down and finish your plate. The dead can wait.” He considered arguing but knew it would only delay his departure further so he sat down dutifully and finished his meal.