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 seatbelt 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.”
The doctor led Quinn and Nate to a drawer at the far end of the room.
“You’ve had burn victims here before?” Quinn asked.
“A few,” the doctor said. “And if you ask me, I can wait awhile until the next one. It’s not pretty.”
Without asking if his visitors were ready, the doctor pulled open the drawer. The body, or what was left of it, lay uncovered on the long tray. It was a charred mass of flesh. Quinn didn’t even flinch at the sight of it, but Nate turned away, gagging.
“You okay?” the doctor asked.
“It’s his first time,” Quinn said.
“I’m okay,” Nate said, clearly not looking at it.
“Maybe you want to step outside for a minute,” Horner said.
Nate shook his head and resumed his spot beside the doctor as Quinn took a look at the body.
Taggert was lying on his back, his arms and legs bent upward in the pugilistic posture caused by shrinking tissue common to most burn victims. In some areas the flesh was completely burned away. Elsewhere the skin was sunken where the muscles and organs had cooked and contracted.
“Asphyxiation?” Quinn asked.
The doctor hesitated. “Actually, no.”
Quinn looked over at Horner. “No?”
“There appeared to be very little smoke damage to his lungs. I’ve sent some tissue off to the lab in Denver to be sure.”
Quinn made a mental note. That was one sample that needed to get lost. “If he didn’t die of the smoke, then what?”
The coroner shrugged. “My best guess is that when he realized there was a fire, he panicked, tripped, and hit his head on something. Maybe a bedpost or a nightstand.”
“Was there damage to his skull?” Nate asked.
Quinn shot his apprentice a quick look, but said nothing.
“Some,” the doctor said. “Which could have happened after the house collapsed. But that’s doubtful.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“There was a lot of blood loss that occurred around the wound,” Horner said. “Since his lungs seemed clean, I’m pretty sure by the time the house fell apart, Mr. Taggert here was already dead.”
“You don’t find that unusual?”
“Not really,” the doctor said. “Given the circumstances, I mean. He was probably terrified. The house was burning up around him. Most people make mistakes under that kind of pressure.” Horner looked at Quinn for a moment. “If you’re really asking if someone else did this to him, I guess it’s possible, but unlikely. Frankly, Agent Bennett, that kind of thing doesn’t happen here in Allyson. You’ve been spending too much time in big cities.”
“Sorry,” Nate said, once they were back in the Explorer driving away. “I just couldn’t help myself. I mean, it’s obvious he was murdered.”
Quinn pulled the SUV to the curb and turned to Nate. “Why?” he asked.
“The wound. That’s what killed him. Someone hit him over the head.”
“So the wound tells us conclusively that he was murdered?”
“Well, sure,” Nate said, only now he didn’t sound so confident.
“It couldn’t have happened the way Dr. Horner said? Taggert panicked and hit his head?”
“Sure, it’s possible. But it doesn’t seem likely.”
Quinn stared at Nate for a moment, then looked back out the front window and put the Explorer back in gear.
“What?” Nate asked.
Quinn said nothing. Taggert had indeed been murdered, and the evidence had been right there in front of them at the morgue. But it wasn’t the blow to the head that had led Quinn to this conclusion.
Quinn had known what happened the moment he’d seen the body. Taking the contractions in the arms and legs caused by the heat into account, the fire had frozen Taggert in the position he’d been in when the flames consumed him. If he’d died of smoke inhalation, the body would have been curled up in an obvious defensive posture. Even if he died from a head trauma, it was unlikely that his body would have landed so neatly laid out.
No, Quinn knew someone had posed him like this. Someone had wanted the Office to know this was a murder.
They drove across town, eventually parking in a lot just off Lake Avenue. Quinn was relieved to see the “Open” sign hanging in the window.
He looked over at Nate. “You stay here.”
There was no protest. Quinn zipped up his jacket and got out.
The building was an old, one-story house that had been converted into an office. Hanging on the wall near the front door was a sign that read, “Goose Valley Vacation Rentals Realty.” There was a covered porch where Quinn dusted the snow off his jacket. He then opened the door and went inside.
The front room had at one time probably made for a comfortable parlor, but now it was crowded with three desks, several bookcases, and a row of black metal filing cabinets. A radio was playing an old Neil Diamond song softly in the background. Against the far wall, a fire burned in a brick fireplace.