[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner - Страница 3

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'How'd you identify the body?'

'We checked with the agency that handled the Farnham place, Goose Valley Vacation Rentals. When he signed the rental agreement, he left an emergency number. That's how we were able to contact his sister. She forwarded his dental records to us. We got 'em the next day. They were a match.'

'I'm curious. Why was his name never released to the press?' Quinn asked.

'The sister requested we keep it quiet. Since he wasn't a local, I didn't see that it was much of a problem.'

'Could I get her number from you?' Quinn asked. 'The sister? Shouldn't your friend have that? I mean, if they're related?' 'Probably. You'd think he'd have given it to me, wouldn't you?'

Johnson pondered for a moment. Then he glanced down at the file again and leafed through a couple of pages until he found what he was looking for. He jotted a number down on a piece of paper and handed it to Quinn.

'Not much else I can tell you,' Johnson said. 'It was an accident. These things happen.'

'Has there been an autopsy?'

The chief nodded. 'That's standard.'

'Who handled that?' Quinn asked.

'Dr. Horner. At Valley Central Hospital.'

'Would you mind if I talked to him?'

'Not at all,' the chief said. 'Though I don't think he'll be much more help than I am.' 'You're probably right. But I just need to cover my bases.'

The chief pulled out another piece of paper and wrote something on it. He handed it to Quinn. It was the address of the hospital. 'Thanks,' Quinn said.

'Anything else?' the chief asked.

'Not that I can think of.' Quinn stood up, and Johnson did likewise. 'I'd like to get a look at the accident scene, if that's okay? Since I'm here and all.'

'Be my guest. Do you know where it is?'

'I do.'

'Just be careful when you're out there. Officially, it's still a potential crime scene, though we're really just wrapping things up.'

Quinn held out his hand and the two men shook again. 'Thanks, Chief,' he said. 'You've been a big help.'

A storm front had moved into the area while Quinn had been talking to Chief Johnson. The clouds were dark and low, and heavy with moisture. It wouldn't be long before snow started to fall, Quinn realized. He needed to get a move on so that he could survey the fire scene before any snow disturbed what evidence might be left.

As he drove through town he used his cell phone to call the number the chief had given him for Taggert's sister. After four rings, an answering machine picked up.

'Hello. After the beep, please leave us a message, and we'll call you back.'

The voice was female, but flat and unmemorable. The message itself was laughably generic. Quinn didn't recognize the speaker, but he was willing to bet whoever she was, she was not related to Taggert.

He found the Farnham place with little trouble. There was a sign posted at the end of the driveway warning unauthorized individuals to stay off the property. A rope that had probably been strung across the entrance lay off to the side, out of the way.

Quinn turned off Yancy Lane and drove up the snow-packed driveway. A white Jeep Cherokee was already parked in front of what was left of the Farnhams' vacation home. Quinn parked his Explorer several feet away from it, then took a look around.

It had been a large house before the fire, at least two stories tall. Now the only things still standing were a blackened fireplace, a stone chimney pointing up at the sky, and a few scorched walls. Otherwise, it was an uneven pile of charred junk.

It was clear there had been little the fire department could do once they'd arrived on the scene. Their efforts had undoubtedly been directed more at containing rather than extinguishing the blaze. Though, with several feet of snow on the ground and an air temperature probably hovering at no more than twenty-five degrees, the likelihood of the fire spreading was pretty much nil.

More of a marshmallow roast than a rescue operation, Quinn thought.

He zipped up the Gore-Tex jacket he'd bought the night before, then climbed out of the Explorer. If it was possible, the clouds seemed darker and heavier now, the storm threatening to break at any moment.

What struck Quinn first was the silence. There was no hum of cars on the distant highway. No crack of wood being split by one of the neighbors in anticipation of a cold night. No yelling of children at play or hints of distant conversations. There wasn't even a breeze blowing through the trees. Even the snow crushing under his feet and the whisper of his own breath seemed muffled and far away.

Everywhere a silence, a stillness. The only movement other than his own was the blanket of clouds rolling and dipping in an eerily soundless dance above his head.

But where his sense of hearing provided him little, his other senses more than made up for the deficit. The odor of burnt wood, melted plastic, and death hung in the air as if refusing to leave, claiming the site for its own. And on Quinn's tongue, a tangy, acrid taste coating its tip and the roof of his mouth.

His first stop was the Cherokee. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and put it on the hood of the vehicle. It was still warm. He returned his hand to his pocket and walked over to the house.

Chief Johnson had said the fire department believed the blaze started somewhere in the living room. Quinn located where he thought the front door used to be, and quickly spotted a path just beyond it through the debris.

He followed the trail into the remains of the house. At various points along the path were fresh scrapings of wood and cleared spots where the fire investigators had examined possible points of ignition. Quinn knew what he was looking for, but so far he hadn't seen it.

Near the center of the house he found an area that had been cleared of extraneous debris, exposing a spot on the floor near the remains of a wall. He leaned down for a closer look. There was a melted mound of plastic that had congealed into a lumpy, blackened mass on the floor. It could have been anything from a pile of CD cases to a lamp, or possibly even the space heater Chief Johnson had mentioned. Without cutting it apart, there was no way to tell.

Quinn stood up and looked around. As he suspected, the spot was the lowest point the fire had touched. There was no question this was where the blaze had begun. He could see the patterns made by the flames as they moved outward and then up what was left of the walls toward the second floor. But as to how the fire started in the first place, there was no definitive indication.

The job brief had said the second-floor room in which Taggert had died had collapsed onto the family room in the back of the house. Quinn backtracked out of the living room the way he had come in, then walked around the perimeter of the burnt remains until he was in the backyard.

At the far end of the debris, a man was leaning down, looking at the snow a few feet away from the house. His back was to Quinn, and on his jacket were three large letters: ATF.

Quinn stared at him for several moments, his face expressionless, then returned his attention to the house. His best guess was that he was standing only a dozen or so feet away from where Taggert had been found. Unfortunately, there was nothing much to see. A half-burnt dresser was about the only identifiable piece of furniture left; other than that, the back of the house was just an additional mound of junk.

He spotted another path through the wreckage, this one no doubt created to recover the body. But it didn't look inviting. And there really was no reason for Quinn to take a closer look. Any useful information had likely been destroyed in the fire.

He closed his eyes, freeing his mind from any distractions, and tried to mentally visualize what had happened. If this wasn't an accident, then someone had wanted Taggert dead. In that case, whoever had set the blaze would have wanted to make sure it took. Quinn pictured the arsonist-assassin as he went methodically through his tasks. He would have arrived either via the driveway or by way of -

Quinn opened his eyes and turned around to face the rear of the property. Directly in front of him, the snow had been thoroughly packed down, probably by the fire crew. There was a point in the snow about thirty feet away from Quinn where the foot traffic tapered off to a few scattered tracks, and another ten feet beyond, where the snow was just a flat surface, undisturbed since the last storm. This went on for a hundred feet to the back of the property. There the forest began again, lining the rear of the Farnhams' property, then wrapping around the sides of the clearing and coming all the way back to the house along either edge.

It was beside the row of trees along the left side of the property where Quinn spotted something. It was an indentation in the snow, perhaps only a pinecone or a branch that had fallen from a tree and created a depression in the cover of white. Or perhaps something more.

The man in the ATF jacket stood and turned in Quinn's direction. He was in his mid-twenties, a good ten years younger than Quinn. He was also a couple inches taller, topping out at about six feet. His brown hair was short, but not drastically so. When he saw Quinn, he smiled and started walking over.

'Thought I'd run into you here,' he said as he got close. 'Look what I found.'

He held out a silver bracelet. Quinn reached his hand out, but instead of taking the piece of jewelry, he grabbed the ATF man by the wrist and pulled him forward. At the last second, Quinn released his grip. The man's momentum was still carrying him forward as Quinn shoved him in the chest. The ATF agent immediately lost his footing and fell to the ground.