[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

'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.