Free The Colour of Death by Michael Cordy Page A

comfortable in her new room so Fox had arranged to meet her there.  As he walked through the new wing, he decided not to tell her about the suicides until it was necessary and helpful to do so.  When he arrived at her room Jane Doe opened the door before he could knock.  Her beautiful face looked tired but expectant.
    “Hello, Dr. Fox,” she said, ushering him into the room and gesturing to the chair by the window.  “Welcome to my humble abode.”
    Then two things happened.
    The first wasn’t significant in itself, merely embarrassing, but Jane Doe’s reaction was significant:  when Fox placed his briefcase on the table and moved to the chair he tripped on a shoe she had left on the floor.  As he broke his fall, he turned his right wrist.  Anyone else would have missed the small hand movement she made as she apologized and tried to help him up, but it was the exact same gesture Fox would have made if he’d been sitting in her place and seen what she’d just seen:  she rubbed her left wrist.
    He sat on the chair and watched her sit cross-legged on the bed.  “Did you feel that?” he asked.  “Did your wrist hurt when I fell?”
    “Only a little.”
    He thought this interesting but not necessarily relevant as he looked around the room.  “Why’s the bed in the center of the room?”
    “It feels more comfortable away from the walls.”
    He considered this and her fear of being trapped in rooms and wondered again if she could have been one of the Russian traffickers’ captives.  “Do you have any memory of the place you rescued those girls from?  Or the men holding them captive?”
    She shook her head.  “None at all.  I can’t even remember breaking the girls out.  Did anyone there recognize me?”
    It was Fox’s turn to shake his head.  “No.  No one claims to have seen you before that night.”  He gestured to her neck.  “May I see that?”
    Her hand shot up and gripped her locket protectively.  “Why?”
    “I just wanted to see the photograph inside.”
    “It’s of a baby.”  She made no move to show it to him.
    “Do you know who the baby is?”
    “No.  But I must have done once.”
    He smiled.  “The locket’s important to you, isn’t it?”
    “It’s my only link to who I was.”
    He nodded and retrieved her medical file from his briefcase.  “I understand.”
    Then the second thing happened.
    As he laid her file on his lap she pointed to the name written on the cover and said, “I kind of like my new name.  I like the way it tastes on the tip of my tongue.”
    “The way it tastes ?”
    “Yes.”
    “What does ‘Jane Doe’ taste of?”
    “Salmon and chives.”
    “What does my name taste of?”
    “You don’t know the taste of your own name?”
    “What does it taste like to you?”
    She closed her eyes and said his name slowly, syllable by syllable, savoring it.  “Doc-tor Na-than Fox.”  She smiled.  “Cider and cream.  Quite yummy.”
    This bizarre exchange, and the way she had stroked her wrist, made what was already an intriguing case even more so.  Then he remembered how she attributed colored auras to people and cursed himself for not making the connection earlier.  He took a pen and notepad from his jacket and scribbled down a list.  It wasn’t exclusive but it covered every variety he could think of off the top of his head.  He immediately ticked off the first two entries.  Then on a blank page he wrote a large letter A in black ink and showed it to her.  “What color is this letter?”
    She smiled slyly like it was a trick question.  “You’ve written it in black but everyone knows the letter A is red.”
    “Always?”
    “Of course.”
    “The letter E?”
    “Olive green.”
    “What about the number 1?”
    “Turquoise.”
    “Do you know it’s turquoise or can you see it?”
    “I see it.”
    “Where?”
    She pointed to a space I thin air, about a foot in front of her face.  “Here.”
    Amazing.  This was getting more