If he wasn't, he wouldn't have even answered Quinn's questions in the first place. There was definitely more going on here than Peter was letting on.
'I'm heading out now,' Quinn said. 'I'll e-mail you my report tomorrow when I get home.' 'Stay available,' Peter said. 'We might have something else coming up soon.' 'If I've got nothing else going on, we can talk.' Quinn hung up.
Chapter 5
Peter had always been a pain in the ass. But he did provide Quinn with consistent work, and seldom argued over fees. Since Quinn was planning an early retirement, that was enough. He'd long ago decided steady work at top dollar offset the annoyance factor that came with working for the Office.
The real problem was Quinn had actually stopped working for anyone else. It wasn't planned, it just kind of happened that way. Whether Peter was aware of the situation or not, Quinn didn't know. It was none of Peter's business, so Quinn never told him. The less Peter knew about Quinn's life, the better.
The same could also be said about Quinn's knowledge of Peter and the Office. The only thing Quinn knew for sure was that their main headquarters was located somewhere in D.C, nothing more. If pressed he would have guessed the Office to be some secretly funded agency of the U.S. government – maybe NSA, maybe military intelligence. But he wasn't sure. And honestly, he didn't really care.
That wasn't to say Quinn didn't have standards. He considered himself a patriot, though a jaded one. If he thought for one moment he was doing anything that would harm his country, he'd drop it. So far that hadn't happened with the Office. And until it did, he was content to do his job and take his money.
His standard rate was 30K a week, U.S., with a two-week minimum whether he worked all fourteen days or not. He averaged one job a month. It meant that, even without bonuses, Quinn was bringing in almost three quarters of a million a year. With bonuses he easily made double that. Not bad work, if you could get it.
Quinn and Nate left in the Explorer as soon as Nate returned. But instead of heading directly out to the interstate, Quinn turned the SUV toward downtown.
'I thought you wanted to get out of here,' Nate said.
'I need to make a couple stops first.'
As far as Peter was concerned, the Taggert investigation was over. But that wasn't the way Quinn worked. If there were still leads to be followed, he'd track them down. He would never leave a job half done. If Peter didn't want to know about it, so be it.
Valley Central Hospital was located about a mile from the police station in Allyson. As far as medical centers went, it was small even for the size of area it served. The building was a gray stone structure, only two stories high, and taking up the length of a short city block.
Quinn parked the Explorer in the sparsely filled visitors' lot. Immediately, Nate unbuckled his seat-belt and reached for his door.
'What do you think you're doing?' Quinn asked.
'You want me to come with you, don't you?'
Quinn thought for a moment. 'If you come along, you don't say one word. Understood?'
Nate smiled and nodded.
The receptionist in the main lobby told Quinn that Dr. Horner was in the morgue. As was typical, death had been relegated to the basement. Quinn and Nate took the stairs, and asked a passing nurse for directions. She pointed toward a small office halfway down the hall. There they found a man in his early forties, big but not fat, a college athlete who had started to go to seed, sitting at a desk and talking on the phone. A blue plastic badge on his chest identified him as Dr. Shaun S. Horner.
'I don't think so,' Horner was saying into a phone as Quinn and Nate entered. The doctor nodded a greeting, and gestured to an empty chair beside the desk, apparently not realizing there was only one place for two people. Quinn sat.
'No, no. Cardiac arrest,' Horner continued. 'No, ma'am. No signs of anything else . . . I'm sorry. That's all I've got. Okay. Thanks.'
Horner hung up the phone. 'Insurance investigator,' he said to Quinn. 'Looking for something that'll get them out of paying a claim, I think.'
'Doesn't sound like she got what she wanted,' Quinn offered. 'I can tell them what I know, but I can't tell
them what I don't.' The doctor extended his hand. 'Shaun Horner.'
Quinn grasped the man's hand and shook. 'Frank Bennett.' Quinn turned toward Nate. 'And this is . . .' He paused, then said, 'Agent Driscoll.'
'I thought so,' Horner said. 'Chief Johnson called to say you might stop by. What can I do for you, Mr. Bennett?'
'Actually, it's Special Agent Bennett.'
'Right. Sorry.'
Quinn smiled. 'It's about the Farnham fire.'
The actual morgue was two doors down from Dr. Horner's office. It was also small, boasting only ten body drawers and a single autopsy table. 'Seldom have more than three or four bodies here at one time,' Horner was saying. 'I had six once. But that was my record.'
'How many do you have now?' Quinn asked.
'Only two,' the doctor said. 'One's your fire victim. The second's a woman who lived across the valley. Slipped and fell on her own front porch.'
