The Cleaner

CHAPTER 3

Quinn headed toward the depression he’d spotted in the snow. Behind him, the ATF agent pulled himself up off the ground and ran to catch up.

“What are you all mad about?” the man asked.

Quinn stopped. “What are you doing here, Nate?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Nate asked. “You told me to come.”

“I told you to come to Colorado,” Quinn said. “I didn’t tell you to come to the accident scene. And I especially didn’t tell you to impersonate an ATF officer and go visit the police.”

“What’s the big deal?” Nate asked. “Thought it was a good chance to put some of my training to work. I don’t think it harmed anything.”

Quinn was tempted to do more than just throw Nate back to the ground for that comment. “How do you know that?” he asked. “How do you know you haven’t done any harm? Maybe Chief Johnson is sitting in his office right now wondering why he had two visits in one day from federal officials about a fire he thought was just an accident. Maybe while you walked around here you stepped on something that might have been an important clue. Have you talked to anyone else?”

Nate shook his head. “No. Just the chief of police.”

“Give me the bracelet,” Quinn said.

“What?”

“The bracelet. The thing you were showing me earlier.”

“Right,” Nate said. He looked down at the hand he had been carrying it in. It was empty. “I must have dropped it when you pushed—” He stopped himself. “When I fell.”

“Get it.”

Quinn waited as Nate retrieved the bracelet and brought it back. This time when he held it out, Quinn took it.

He draped it over his left palm so he could get a better look at it. The bracelet was a series of solid, half-inch square links with some sort of design on the face of each. A few of the links had melted some from the fire, but otherwise it was surprisingly still intact. Quinn stuck it in his pocket.

“Think it means anything?” Nate asked.

“I want you to go back to your car and wait for me.”

“How am I supposed to learn anything that way?”

Quinn looked Nate in the eye. “Today’s lesson: Do what you’re told.”

Nate stared back for a moment, then looked down. Without another word, he turned and began walking away.

Once Nate was gone, Quinn continued toward the line of trees at the edge of the property. As he neared it, the first flakes of snow began floating down from the sky.

“Great,” he muttered under his breath as he picked up his pace.

When he arrived at the depression, he bent down to get a closer look. Immediately he knew it wasn’t caused by a pinecone, and definitely not by a branch. It was a footprint. Several, actually. Now knowing what to look for, he could see more indentations running along the trees leading back to the rear of the property.

At first Quinn couldn’t tell whether the footprints were heading to or away from the house. A closer look revealed they were doing both. Someone had approached the house from the forest, then returned, keeping his — or her — feet in the same indentations. In fact, the person may have made more than one trip. Or maybe more than one person had used the same tracks. It was impossible to tell. Snow boots, though. Sorels, if Quinn guessed right.

As he followed the tracks, making a new set of his own beside them, the air began to thicken with falling snow. The prints were deep enough, though, that it would take some time before they completely disappeared.

A hundred yards from the house, Quinn found that whoever had made the tracks had stopped, either coming or going, and used the cover of several pine trees to shield him from the house. The person had stomped around a bit, probably to stay warm.

“You watched the fire from here,” Quinn said to himself, picturing the scene in his mind. “Made sure it was doing what you wanted.”

But why had he gone back?

Because now that Quinn had had a chance to look at several of the depressions, the top set of footprints definitely were heading back to the house.

He tried to reason it out, but no answer came to him. He decided not to worry about it for the moment, then continued following the person’s footprints deeper into the woods.

He immediately noticed there was something different about these new tracks. There weren’t multiple passes on them. Just one set, heading toward the house.

Okay, Quinn thought. So, our guy approaches the house from somewhere off in the forest. He starts the fire. Walks back into the woods. Finds a tree to hide behind to make sure he’s done a thorough job. Then what?

The only possible answer he could come up with was that the fire didn’t take the first time.

Or, he suddenly realized, someone else had shown up, potentially ruining the arsonist’s plan.

Except there hadn’t been any report of another body. Just Taggert. The only thing Quinn could definitely determine from the tracks was that the assassin hadn’t left the scene the same way he’d come.

Quinn sat in the driver’s seat of the Explorer, still parked in front of the Farnham house. He was talking on his cell phone to Peter, head of an agency simply called the Office.

“Definitely not an accident,” Quinn said.

“Witnesses?” Peter asked.

“Don’t appear to be any.”

“And Taggert was the only victim?”

“Yes,” Quinn said. “Unless there’s something else you think I should know.”

“Nothing,” Peter told him. Quinn sensed a lie. “Did the chief have anything else?”

“He did drop something I was unaware of,” Quinn said.

“What was that?”

“He said they talked to someone who claimed to be Taggert’s sister. Know anything about that?”

“Just wrap things up and send me your report,” Peter said, ignoring the question.

“Not interested in cause of death?”

“No. You found out everything we need to know.”

“What did you do?” Quinn asked. “Hire someone you didn’t trust to get rid of this guy? Now you’re worried maybe he didn’t do as good a job as you’d hoped?”

There was a momentary silence from the other end of the line. “We didn’t kill Taggert. He’s no use to us dead.”

“Who was he?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“All right, whatever, Peter. I should be out of here by the end of the day. You’ll have my report in the morning.” Quinn paused. “There’s a few more things I want to check.”

Peter waited a moment before responding. “What?”

“There’s no car. Nothing here and nothing in the police report. Taggert couldn’t have just walked in.”

“Maybe he took a cab.”

“Out here he’d need his own vehicle.”

More silence on the other end. “Cadillac,” Peter finally said.

“What?”

“He was driving a white Cadillac.”

“Thanks,” Quinn said. “That’ll help.”

“Whoever started the fire probably took it. They’re long gone by now.”

Quinn was thinking along the same lines. But it wouldn’t hurt to check it out. He did find it odd, though, that Peter seemed so anxious for him to close the case.

“What else?” Peter asked.

“Huh?”

“You said a few things.”

“Just a figure of speech,” Quinn lied.

“I’m sorry, Agent Bennett. There wasn’t a car there when the fire department arrived,” Chief Johnson said. “We shouldn’t have missed that. I’m not going to apologize. We’re a small force, and we don’t get a lot of people dying like that around here. Still, I should have noticed it.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Quinn said into his phone. “Maybe a friend brought him up. Or maybe he just hired a ride.”

“I guess that’s possible,” Johnson said. “I’ll look into it.”

“Maybe Taggert’s sister will know something. If nothing else, she might at least know what kind of car he drove,” Quinn said, hoping to delay any search by the police until he’d been able to conduct one of his own.

“Good idea. I’ll try her.”

“Let me know if you come up with anything,” Quinn said. He asked the chief to fax him a copy of the final report, giving him a number that would send the document straight to Quinn’s e-mail in-box. They said their goodbyes, then Quinn hung up and got out of the car.

The snow was continuing to fall, lighter than before but steady. To his left, he heard the door of the Jeep Cherokee open and close. A moment later, Nate joined him.

They stood side by side looking at the remains of the Farnham house, the sound of their breathing the only noise breaking the silence.

After nearly two minutes, Nate said, “Did you find anything?”

Quinn didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was calm. “What were my instructions when I called you?”

“I know. I fucked up. I should have just waited in my hotel room until you called, just like you told me.”

“Why?” Quinn asked.

Nate hesitated, then said, “Because I could have messed everything up?”

“Because,” Quinn said, his voice calm as he turned to look at Nate, “that’s what I told you to do.”

“I’m sorry.”

Quinn looked at his apprentice, his face neutral. “I’ve told you what sorry gets you.”

Nate glanced down at the ground, then back up at Quinn. “Sorry gets you killed.”

Quinn turned without another word and started making a perimeter search of the parking area. Nate silently followed him a few steps behind.

Quinn didn’t really expect to find anything else. What tracks hadn’t been covered up by the new snow had undoubtedly already been destroyed by the rescue vehicles during the fire. He stopped after only a few minutes. If Taggert had a Cadillac, there was no longer any sign of it.

So, Quinn thought. Where is it now?

He stared into the wilderness, mulling it over. If Peter was right, the car was probably hundreds of miles away, dumped in a random parking lot. But there was another possibility. And the more Quinn thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

Back in the Explorer, he started the engine and pulled out onto Yancy Lane. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw Nate following him in the Cherokee. At least there was something the kid didn’t need to be told.

Quinn picked up his phone and called local information.