The Colour of Death Read Free Page A

this philosophy to his personal life didn’t please girlfriends who mistook him for the marrying kind, but usually it served him well and kept him safe.  Usually.
    After taking the elevator to the third floor, he barely suppressed the urge to run the length of the corridor to the private room.  As he approached the bed and the woman tending to the patient, Fox could feel his defenses falling away.  His uncle Howard and aunt Samantha, who despite planning on never having children had brought him up as their own, were the only people in the entire world to whom Fox’s strategy of detachment and distance didn’t apply.  Howard had never tried to replace his father but in so many ways he had.  He had stepped into he blackest part of his life, when Fox was drowning in almost intolerable grief, and like a beacon in the dark had provided unswerving guidance with unconditional love.  When Samantha saw Fox, she reached for him.  “They say it’s close now, Nathan,” she said.
    Fox put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek.  “His suffering will be over soon.”  He checked his uncle’s pulse, listened to his ragged breathing and accelerated the morphine drip.  Fox’s parents and sister had been ripped away from him in an instant, when he was too young to understand fully what had happened.  Alzheimer’s had stolen his uncle away over a period of years, day by day, brain cell by brain cell, when the medically trained Fox  had understood exactly what was happening.
    Suddenly, Howard let out a rattling wheeze and opened his eyes.  He reached out his hand and gripped Fox’s arm.  Samantha leapt forward.  “Howard, Howard.  It’s me, Samantha.”  She stroked his face.  “Nathan and I are both here.”  Howard looked at her and then at Fox and his fevered eyes closed.  In that instant, for the first time in a long while, Fox felt sure his uncle recognized them.  Then Howard’s grip slackened and his hand fell back on the bed.  Samantha looked at Fox with red-rimmed eyes and smiled.
    Fox nodded.  “He knows we’re here.  He knows he’s not alone.”
    Moments later Howard took a shallow breath, released a final, rattling sigh and was still.  Samantha, who had always been so strong for Fox, suddenly collapsed in his arms and began to cry.  “He saw us,” she said, shock and wonder tempering her grief.  “I think he was trying to say goodbye.”
    Fox said nothing, just enveloped her small frame in his arms, supporting her, making sure she didn’t fall.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    The flames reached high into the dawn sky, lending the silhouetted neighborhood of nondescript brick houses an unfamiliar air of drama and menace.  Red trucks from the Portland Fire Department were already on the scene while uniformed cops were holding back the small crowd that had gathered despite the early hour.  More cops and paramedics were helping a group of blanket-wrapped girls into a bus.
    Getting out of his car, Chief of Detectives Karl Jordache took a sip of black Arabica from the flask his wife had prepared for him.  He was medium height and broad — too broad according to his doctor, who had him on a low cholesterol, low fat, zero-taste diet — but his charcoal-gray suit fitted well, and he was light on his feet.
    “What have we got, Danny?” he called to the nearest policeman.
    The cop checked his notes and indicated the girls getting on the bus.  “There were at least eleven in there, Chief.  They claim they were abducted and caged in the basement.  According to the fire chief, the wooden cages are why the brick house went up like a torch.  Helped by the kerosene, of course.  The basement reeks of it.”
    “Who are the girls?”
    “A couple of American runaways but mostly illegals from the old Soviet republics who paid a syndicate — part of the Russian mob — to ship them to the U.S. and hook them up with jobs.  See those Douglas firs at the back end of the yard?  A couple of girls