Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6)

by Steve Robinson

  ‘They keep death certificates dating back to 1874 for deaths in the DC area,’ Tayte said as they headed up to the first floor. ‘That’s when civil registration of vital statistics in DC began.’ He was glad John Bedford hadn’t died sooner as that could have made the task ahead more complicated than it already was, particularly if he’d died between 1861 and 1865, during the Civil War years, for which no death records existed.

  ‘It should help that we called ahead,’ Mavro said.

  Tayte smiled. ‘And that we have the weight of the federal government behind us. I usually have to wait days, sometimes weeks. That’s where the Internet can come in handy, although even when I get lucky online, I still like to see the original records if I can. In this case we can’t afford to make any assumptions or mistakes.’

  They were met by a middle-aged woman in a light-blue skirt suit. ‘I’m the head of department, Pamela Bryant,’ she said, ushering them into an office. ‘Please take a seat.’

  Tayte imagined Bryant had already been informed that the FBI needed to see a record, and that it was literally a matter of life and death for someone, so she’d wanted to oversee the matter personally.

  ‘We’re locating the record for you now,’ Bryant said, a little nervously, Tayte thought, as though being in the presence of the FBI made her uncomfortable.

  ‘Will it take much longer?’ Mavro asked. ‘I can’t stress enough how urgent this is.’

  Bryant paused before answering. Then, as if unable to think of anything positive to say in reply, she smiled and said, ‘I’ll go and see how it’s going.’

  Tayte took his laptop out as soon as Bryant left. ‘I want to run a quick newspaper archive check while we wait,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much to go on yet, but you never know.’

  All he had was the subject’s name, date of birth, and date of death. As he was interested primarily in the man’s death, Tayte entered the information, ‘John Bedford, 1885’, into the search field. He whistled at the results when they came back.

  ‘Eight thousand ninety-eight results nationwide.’

  He narrowed it down, choosing only newspapers covering the District of Columbia.

  ‘One hundred fourteen results for DC. That’s more like it, but it could take hours to go through them all, and with no guarantee of finding what we’re looking for. Not that we know what we’re looking for with any certainty yet. We need more information.’

  ‘Maybe the death certificate will help.’

  ‘I sure hope so.’

  Bryant was only gone fifteen minutes, although to Tayte, who was growing more and more impatient to find out how and where John Bedford had died, it felt more like an hour.

  ‘Here it is,’ Bryant said as she came back into the room, waving the copy of John Bedford’s death certificate above her head like a parade flag. She was all smiles now, clearly happy to be of service. ‘I’m sorry it took a while to retrieve it, but—’

  ‘That’s okay. Thank you,’ Tayte said, cutting her short. He was on his feet before she had fully entered the room, his eager eyes following the record as she handed it to him. He took it to the only table in the room, set it down and leaned over it with Mavro at his side.

  ‘Cause of death, hanging,’ he read out. It was annotated with the word ‘extrajudicial’, reminding him of times when unlawful hangings were still carried out by the citizens of America.

  He was about to discuss the record further with Mavro, but he could sense Bryant was now at his other elbow and he thought it best that their discussion should be private, given the nature of their purpose there.

  He turned to her. ‘Could we use this room for a short while?’ he asked her. ‘Privately, I mean. Do you mind?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Bryant said, sounding a little disappointed that she couldn’t stay to find out why the FBI wanted to see the record she’d brought in. ‘Just leave whenever you’re ready.’

  Tayte gave her a smile. ‘Thanks again for your help.’

  As soon as Bryant had closed the door behind her, Tayte turned to Mavro, and in a low voice said, ‘Now we know how the Genie plans to kill his next victim. The hundred-dollar question is, where?’

  ‘There’s no place of death shown on his death certificate?’

  ‘No, but it’s given us something else to search the newspaper archives for.’

  Tayte opened his laptop again and returned to the website he’d visited when they arrived. He added ‘hanged’ to his search and this time there were thirty-seven entries in newspapers from the DC area.

  ‘That’s not so many,’ he said, forcing an optimistic tone. ‘Most, if not all, of these results are likely to be from newspaper pages containing the keywords we’re looking for, but it doesn’t mean they’ll be related to one another. It shouldn’t take too long to read through them all to find out.’

  They sat down again, huddled around Tayte’s laptop as he clicked the link to the first of the newspaper pages. It was from the National Tribune and he was quickly able to dismiss it. The reference was to a John Banks of Bedford City. There was an entry in another column that matched the keyword ‘hanged’, but that was for someone else altogether. He moved on and was presented with a page from the Washington Critic. This was under the sub-heading ‘Marriage Licenses’ and not what he was interested in. He went through each newspaper page in this manner and the minutes zipped by. He found nothing but disparate matches to the keywords he’d entered. Many were related to hangings that took place outside the District of Columbia.

  An hour was lost all too quickly, but Tayte knew he had to be thorough so as to avoid missing anything important. It wasn’t until he came to the twenty-ninth newspaper page that he sat up from the slumped position he’d settled into. It was from the National Republican, dated August 1885.

  ‘This is it,’ he said, indicating an article in the fourth column. He read it out. ‘Ravisher lynched on the Potomac. Washington, August 11. John Bedford, the negro who assaulted Miss Katie Spencer on the ninth instant, was captured last night while hiding out along the river. News of the assault created such intense excitement that he was duly lynched from Chain Bridge. His hiding place was told by a negro who had promised to protect him.’

  Mavro’s phone was already out when Tayte turned to her.

  ‘Good job,’ she said. ‘I’ll let Reese know.’

  Half an hour later, Tayte and Mavro were sitting on a bench in the late-afternoon sunshine outside a coffee shop on nearby Georgia Avenue, waiting to hear back from Reese.

  ‘I hope we were in time,’ Tayte said as he sipped his double espresso, absently watching the rush-hour traffic. He didn’t like waiting around to find out. A big part of him would sooner have gone to Chain Bridge with Reese and his team, but they had been told to stay out of harm’s way, so that was how it had to be.

  ‘You did great,’ Mavro said. ‘I don’t see how anyone could have worked that clue out any faster.’

  ‘What if we’re wrong? What if there was more to it and Chain Bridge isn’t the right place?’

  ‘Stop worrying. I was there with you. Everything pointed to Chain Bridge.’

  Tayte sighed and took another sip of his coffee. ‘I hope you’re right,’ he said, noticing that Mavro still had her phone out. She was tapping it on her jeans, suggesting she was just as nervous about this as he was.

  There was a low wooden table in front of them with several newspapers and magazines arranged on top of it. Tayte hadn’t had time to catch up on DC’s general news since he’d arrived home, so he picked up a copy of the Washington Post, thinking it might provide a little distraction while they waited. He had to sit up in disbelief when he saw the front cover of the publication that was lying beneath it. It was the latest edition of the Washingtonian, a local monthly magazine that described itself as ‘The magazine Washington lives by’.

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding,’ he said as he reached for it, at the same time reading out the main feature heading: ‘Family history meets CSI.’

>   ‘What is it?’

  Tayte was shaking his head at the image associated with the heading. ‘Michel Levant,’ he said under his breath. He sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe it, but he could never forget that face. Nonetheless, it had come as something of a shock to see the skinny Frenchman on the front cover of a Washington magazine. He laughed sourly to himself as he took the image in. Levant was in his sixties, but there he was, more than a year after Tayte had first met him, still trying to look half his age, with his over-styled fair hair and his flamboyant dress sense. He had a crowd-pleasing smile on his face, and looking back, Tayte wished now that he had punched him on his pointy little nose when he’d had the chance.

  ‘Who’s Michel Levant?’ Mavro asked, sitting forward with him to get a better look at the magazine cover.

  ‘That’s a very good question, and I’m not entirely sure I know the answer. From what I know about him, he’s a probate genealogist—an heir hunter. I met him in London, just over a year ago. It was the day I met Jean, the same day a good friend of mine was murdered—Marcus Brown. Apparently Marcus and Levant had been friends once, but I don’t know how deep their acquaintance ran. I’m sure Levant had something to do with Marcus’s murder, not that I could prove anything. Levant’s one slippery character as far as I’m concerned, and right now I’m wondering what the hell he’s doing in DC.’

  ‘What’s the article about?’ Mavro asked. ‘I expect that will explain it.’

  Tayte opened the magazine, glad to be rid of Levant’s image. He quickly found the cover feature and began to read it. ‘He’s running a series of events here in DC at the National Archives Museum about genetic ancestry—how DNA can be used to help trace our roots.’ He noted the event dates. ‘The first event is the day after tomorrow.’

  Mavro smiled to herself. ‘I somehow doubt you’ll have time to attend.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Tayte said. ‘I have no interest in hearing what the man has to say.’

  Mavro’s phone interrupted the conversation. ‘Excuse me,’ she said as she took the call.

  Tayte knew it had to be Reese. He knew from the way Mavro’s eyes were suddenly locked on his as she spoke, although she didn’t say much. She mostly listened. Tayte felt his palms becoming clammy in anticipation of what Reese was telling her. He wondered again whether they had been right about Chain Bridge, and if they had solved the puzzle in time. A moment later Mavro began to shake her head. He saw a single tear roll down her cheek, and knew the news was bad.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked her as soon as the call ended.

  Mavro nodded and sniffed back her emotions. ‘Now you know why I can’t cut it as a field agent.’ She wiped her cheek. ‘Reese wants to see us. He’s at Chain Bridge. I’m sorry, JT. There’s another body.’

  Chapter Nine

  DC’s Chain Bridge was located at Little Falls, where there had been a bridge across the Potomac River since 1797. Currently in its eighth version, it was named after the chain suspension bridge that had been built in 1808 after the two wooden bridges before it were destroyed, first by rot and then by fire. The present version was of a continuous steel girder construction, sitting on piers built in the 1870s. It supported a pedestrian walkway and three lanes of traffic, carrying over twenty thousand cars a day.

  Dusk had begun to fall by the time Tayte and Mavro arrived at the small parking area on the Virginia side of the bridge, which had now been reduced to two lanes to facilitate the numerous emergency services vehicles Tayte could see coming and going. It seemed the whole area was alight with their red and blue flashing lights, although as he stepped out of the car he sensed that any urgency that had existed had now passed. He saw Reese standing by a low wall facing the river, with the bridge to his right. He was talking to two heavily armed men wearing FBI tactical vests. When he saw Tayte and Mavro he waved them over, dismissing the two agents.

  One of the agents, a dark-haired, dark-eyed man, smiled and nodded at Mavro as they passed. ‘Hey, Frankie.’

  ‘Hi there,’ Mavro said in a chirpy voice that seemed a little forced to Tayte. Or embarrassed. He couldn’t decide which.

  ‘Is that Jerome Martinez, by any chance? The guy you told me about?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mavro said, and Tayte thought she was blushing.

  ‘He seems to like you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m no expert, but he didn’t have to smile at you, did he?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  They arrived at the low wall.

  ‘We were this close,’ Reese said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. He shook his head. ‘If we’d been any closer we’d have caught the Genie in the act. Roadblocks have been set up, but they take time. I expect he’s long gone by now.’

  Tayte felt wholly responsible. ‘I’m sorry,’ he offered, but Reese quickly stopped him.

  ‘Mr Tayte, the team I assigned to this didn’t even come close. You did remarkably well, so I don’t want to hear any apologies. If it hadn’t been for you and Ms Mavro, we wouldn’t have known a damn thing about this until someone reported it. You gave us a chance and that’s all we need. Sooner or later this guy’s going to run out of luck.’

  ‘What happened?’ Mavro asked, peering down over the wall towards the river, where most of the activity was focused. ‘The victim was hanged, right?’

  Reese nodded. ‘He was still twitching when the response team arrived. We can’t have missed his killer by much. We found the victim’s wallet on him. His name was Samuel Shaw.’ He paused and threw his head back. ‘Christ! The press are going to love this. It’s been a long time since a black man was lynched so close to our nation’s capital.’

  Reese led them around to the walkway. ‘His killer slipped the rope through these railings and threw the ends down by the support pier so he could reach them from the bank below. He’d have had plenty of opportunity to set everything up unnoticed before the rush-hour traffic built up.’

  He leaned over the railing and Tayte and Mavro followed suit. Tayte could see the Evidence Response Team, still busy below. The rope had been left hanging for now, but Shaw’s body was no longer there. Looking across the river, Tayte could see that once the killer had taken his victim below the bridge, no one could have seen them from the far bank, which was distant and shrouded by trees and shrubs.

  Reese pointed back to the low wall they had just left. ‘We believe our killer took Samuel Shaw down over that wall, through the bushes and over the rocks to the bank where he put the noose around Shaw’s neck and pulled him up. The loose end of the rope was tied to that tree you can see down there. Once he’d done that, it was just a matter of scrambling back up to his vehicle and off he goes. We don’t believe Shaw was thrown off the bridge. There was no drop, as often happens with a hanging. That would have been too risky. Shaw was literally strung up and left to suffocate, and he was no lightweight. We’re dealing with a very strong killer here.’

  ‘Do we have another clue?’ Tayte asked as they headed back to the low wall. ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘I was just coming to that,’ Reese said. He shook his head. ‘There isn’t one. Not this time.’

  Tayte hadn’t expected that, but it was Mavro who asked the obvious question.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Right now, I don’t know,’ Reese said. ‘But you can be damn sure this isn’t over. Maybe the Genie didn’t like the close call we just gave him and he didn’t have time to leave his next clue. Whatever the reason, we need to stay sharp. Your temporary accommodation’s all set, Mr Tayte. Mavro can take you there. I suggest you both get some rest.’

  ‘Was anything found at my apartment?’ Tayte asked, wondering whether the Genie really had been there while he was away.

  ‘I can confirm that one of the glass panes in your bathroom window has recently been replaced. The glazing putty wasn’t fully set. I’m still waiting to hear whether the paint was the same type as the rest of the window, but given the fresh putty, I
suspect not. It’s clear that someone broke into your apartment while you were away, and they didn’t want to make it obvious. For now, we have to assume that person was the Genie, so if you need to go back there for any reason, I want you to call me first. I’ll have someone go with you. Personally, I’d stay away for now if I were you.’

  Tayte planned to. ‘So there was no message inside those books? Were there any fingerprints on them? Apart from mine, of course.’

  ‘No, there was no message, and there were no prints. Not even yours. The books were too clean, if you know what I mean. He probably just got bored, took a look at them and got careless putting them back. Or maybe he was messing with you again, knowing you’d be the only person who would know someone had been inside your apartment.’

  The way things were stacking up, Tayte figured the latter most likely. ‘What about my neighbours? Did you check with them?’

  ‘Yes, we did. No one heard anything unusual, and no one saw anyone coming to or going from your apartment other than the mailman. Most of them didn’t even know who you are.’

  ‘I keep to myself most of the time. How about the lock-up where I keep my car?’

  ‘That was interesting. If I didn’t know you were out of the country when your car was last driven out of there, I’d have sworn it was taken by you. The surveillance recordings show a man who looked just like you getting into the car. Not facially—he managed to keep his face hidden from the cameras—but he was a big man, like you, and he was wearing a suit exactly like the one you’re wearing now.’

  ‘Just as he was when he rented the apartment he used to kill Annabel Rogers,’ Tayte said under his breath.

  It was disquieting to think that the killer had dressed up in his clothes in order to rent that apartment and to steal his car, but where his car was concerned it made perfect sense. Whoever had taken it had waltzed into the lock-up pretending to be him, and he’d taken the keys right out of his kitchen drawer. He pulled a sour face, and he held on to the expression as he continued to walk on heavy legs that felt suddenly numb beneath him. His personal space had been violated, and it angered him to know that there was nothing he could do about it. Whoever broke into his apartment must have been there for some time, going through his files, copying what he needed from them, and in between, sitting on his couch, perhaps watching TV with the volume low, eating with his knives and forks, and worst of all, maybe even sleeping in his bed. Wherever he and Jean were going to live once they were married, he was now absolutely sure that it wasn’t going to be in his apartment.