[Quinn 02] - The Deceived

“Quinn?” Nate called out. He’d finished half of the inside, but had stopped and was staring at the wall. “Did you see this?”

Quinn pulled on his mask and joined his apprentice. After his eyes began to adjust to the dimness inside the box, small marks began to

appear on the wall.

“Grab some paper and a pen,” Quinn said.

While Nate was gone, Quinn knelt down to get a better look. He adjusted his face mask, but the stink of gasoline and death still seeped in around the edges. He forced himself to ignore it, focusing his concentration on the marks on the wall.

They were crude, like something a child would have written. Or maybe by someone writing in the dark, he thought. Someone already weak, about to die.

As Nate climbed back in, Quinn pulled out his flashlight and turned it on. The beam exposed walls dripping with gasoline. He pointed the light at the marks on the wall.

Numbers. Letters. Seventeen of them. Repeated twice.

45KL0908NTY63779V

“Looks like a VIN number,” Nate said, meaning a vehicle identifica

tion number.

“It’s not.”

Though the sequence had been written twice, there was something different about the second time around. At the very end, separated by a small space, were an additional two characters.

lP

They were only there the one time. Perhaps they were part of the long sequence and they had just been forgotten the first time through, or perhaps they were something else entirely.

Quinn handed the flashlight to Nate, then took the pen and paper and wrote down the sequence. He included the last two characters, though kept them apart from the others, just like they had been on the wall. The one thing he wasn’t sure about was whether it was the letter L or the numeral 1. Either way, none of it meant anything to him.

“Is that blood?” Nate asked.

Quinn nodded. Markoff must have used the only ink he had available.

“Okay,” he said, rising back to his feet. “Finish up. We don’t have much time.”

As soon as Quinn was out of the container, Nate sprayed the rest of the inside with the fuel, giving the message a double douse. Before he started on the outside, they unhooked the semi from the trailer, and Quinn drove it back to the point where the road climbed out of the ravine, parking it.

By the time Nate finished the exterior, there were about three quarts left of the five gallons of gas they’d brought. He unhooked the paint reservoir that contained the remaining fuel and placed it on the ground, then tossed the rest of the paint sprayer and the empty gas cans into the back of the shipping container.

“Done,” Nate said.

Quinn nodded, then climbed behind the wheel of the BMW. He eased the vehicle back down the wash, putting a good one hundred and fifty feet between the car and the container.

“All right,” he said.

Nate acknowledged the go-ahead by lighting a couple of pieces of dried sagebrush on fire. Through the receiver in his ear, Quinn could hear a whoosh as his apprentice flung one of the branches deep inside the container.

A torrent of flames began swirling through Markoff ’s former tomb, and once Nate lit the outside, the entire box became engulfed in a roiling inferno.

Their timing was good. Any later and their makeshift bonfire might have been seen for miles in the desert night. But the sun was just touching the western skyline, so even though day was passing, the darkness had yet to descend in full force. In fact, the fading daylight did double duty, hiding the temporary illumination while masking the smoke against the dimming sky.

The scent of the remaining gasoline in the container he carried preceded Nate as he rejoined Quinn. Without being told, he hopped up on the trunk.

“I’ll ride here,” he said.

Quinn slowly drove the BMW farther into the wilderness, away from the road. A couple miles later, they found another dry riverbed. At some point, the two empty waterways probably met, but it wouldn’t be an issue. Not here, where it might not rain significantly for years.

As soon as they’d stopped, Nate retrieved two shovels from the trunk.

Even baked by the desert sun, the sand in the wash was soft and easy to dig up. The darkness of the desert night had finally descended, so they worked by the headlights of the BMW. In less than fifteen minutes, they dug a body-length hole three feet deep. Perhaps in a year or two, the spring rains might root up what was left of Markoff, but by then there would only be bones. Still, the thought bothered Quinn. He contemplated digging the hole deeper, but he pushed the idea out of his mind and kept to his script.

They slipped Markoff into the hole, unrolling him from the plastic as they did.

“You want me to check his pockets?” Nate asked.

Quinn stared down at the body. “No. I’ll do it.”