The Cleaner

by Brett Battles

  The chief shook his head. 'No problem. But like I said to Agent Driscoll, there's really not much to tell. It was an accident. That's it.'

  'I heard that. But Andersen – that's the guy back in D.C. – he wasn't satisfied. I guess when all your information is coming from what you read in the

  paper, you just want to make sure you're not missing something.' 'If he's getting his information from the paper, how did he know Taggert was the one killed?' 'That's a great question,' Quinn said honestly. 'I have no idea.' The chief seemed to give it some thought. 'Maybe it was the sister.'

  'The sister?' Quinn asked.

  'Taggert's sister,' the chief said. 'She's the only one we told.' Quinn nodded. 'That makes sense. Is there anything else you can tell me?'

  The chief shrugged, then said, 'It's not much.'

  'Anything will help.'

  Johnson pulled a thin file off the top of a stack on the right side of his desk. He perused its contents for a moment, then gave Quinn a halfhearted smile. 'As I said, it's not much. The fire was apparently electrical. We think it started in the living room. A space heater that caught fire or something similar. Taggert was in the upstairs bedroom. He was probably overcome by smoke before he could get out. By the time the fire department got there, it was too late. Once the flames were finally out, there wasn't really much left of anything.'

  '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 peri
meter 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.

  'What the hell?' the man said.

  But Quinn had already started walking away.

  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.'