Free The Colour of Death by Michael Cordy

in that room all those years ago?  Could she have overheard someone talking about it and registered it subconsciously?  She had only been at Tranquil Waters a few hours but perhaps she had heard something while in Oregon State or known about it in her earlier life, before her amnesia.  But how?  How?
    When he went to bed and eventually fell asleep his unconscious continued trying to process what his logical mind could not.  He woke the next morning exhausted, dragged himself out of bed, ate a quick breakfast, checked on his aunt, then hurried to the clinic.  Professor Fullelove was in meetings all morning but he could guess her brisk response.  “There’ll be a perfectly logical explanation, Nathan, so don’t worry about understanding it now.  Let it become clear as you treat her.”
    Treat what?  Her amnesia?  Her hallucinations?  Usually he would focus on the amnesia first, trying to discover the identity she had lost.  Most amnesiacs retained good operational memory so he would try to gain a picture of her past life by testing her for unforgotten skills, such as languages, sports and social activities.  Then he would take her back to the night of the fire, to the time when all knowledge of her old life had died and Jane Doe’s new identity had been born.  But the orderly’s revelation had made him question this approach.  Before seeing Jane Doe again, he decided to search the patient records of the original Pine Hills Psychiatric Hospital.
    As he sat alone in the small windowless basement room that housed the clinic’s computer archive, his unease increased when he found Frank Bartlett’s file.  The report on his death by suicide confirmed everything the orderly had told him.  More searches revealed that twenty years before Bartlett’s death, another man had committed suicide in the same room — using his pajamas to hang himself from the ceiling beam, which had since been removed.
    Fox played back the voice recording he’d made of Jane Doe recounting her hallucination, comparing it to the notes on Frank Bartlett’s file and the report on the hanging man.  They were virtually identical — chillingly so.  He went back to Jane Doe’s slim file.  The police report from the night she had been found raised more questions than it answered.  Dr. Tozer’s psychiatric assessments at Oregon State provided a few useful insights, and he was beginning to doubt Tozer’s assumption that she was psychotic.
    Psychotic patients lost contact with reality.  They believed and accepted their hallucinations, voice and urges unquestioningly — sometimes enjoying them.  They had little insight into their own condition, felt no anxiety or guilt for their actions, no empathy for their victims and were convinced they were completely sane.  People suffering with neuroses, however, were different.  They were aware that their experiences — whether hallucinations, anxieties, thoughts or compulsions — were irrational and found them terrifying and repugnant.  Essentially psychotics embraced their irrational experiences while neurotics fought them.  Jane Doe was fighting hers with every fiber of her being.
    Only when he reread the brief accounts of Jane Doe’s hallucinations at Oregon State and checked that hospital’s online files did he discover something interesting enough to make him return to the Pine Hills patient records and conduct more searches.  The pattern that emerged sowed a disturbing thought in his mind.  Irrational and resistant to logic, the notion quickly took root and began to grow.  When he printed off his findings and placed them in his briefcase, he discovered another document that fed the insane but insistent idea blossoming in his mind.  As he studied it, he began scribbling more notes.  Most were questions, impossible questions.  He was reaching across to make a phone call when he noticed the clock on the wall.  It was time to see Jane Doe.

 
    Chapter 11
     
    Jane Doe seemed