Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6)

by Steve Robinson

  Tayte put away the last of the files he’d been looking through and went to the kitchen to fix himself a coffee and a sandwich. He wasn’t particularly hungry—he’d already eaten more than usual that day. He just didn’t have anything else to do. He was part way through making his sandwich when he heard familiar show-tune music coming from the living room where he’d left his phone. He put down the kitchen knife he was holding and ran to it, wondering whether the call was from Jean or the Genie. It wasn’t Jean. There was a number on the display, but he didn’t recognise it. If it was the Genie, he hadn’t withheld his number this time, in which case it clearly didn’t matter to him. It would be an untraceable phone that he’d destroy as soon as he was finished with it.

  ‘Hello?’ Tayte said as he took the call, aware that his heart rate was already climbing. What he heard in reply made his pulse kick harder.

  ‘Are you ready to play another round, Tayte?’

  Tayte didn’t answer right away. He sat down on one of the armchairs and tried to compose himself. He’d thought over what he wanted to say to this man many times since he’d last called, but right now he couldn’t think straight.

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  ‘Of course. We all have choices, but we also have to live with the consequences of our choices, don’t we? Now, are you ready to play the game again, or not?’

  ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Would you like to know where I am?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Good, because I want to tell you. I’m sitting in a vehicle I just stole, across the street from a DC realtor. They have a store front, and through the window I can see a smartly dressed woman in a green business suit. She’s thirty-four years old. She has a husband and two children, and she arrives here at work around a quarter after eight, Monday to Friday. She leaves promptly at five. That’s in about ten minutes. The only difference today is that she won’t be able to make it home tonight. And guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s all your fault.’

  It was a bitter pill to take and Tayte swallowed it hard. A moment later, he said, ‘I know who you are. Your name’s Adam Westlake.’

  ‘Bravo. But then I didn’t expect it would take long to figure that out—not once you were in the game. You might think that gives you some kind of advantage, but it doesn’t matter who I am.’

  ‘Why doesn’t it matter? There’s nowhere you can hide where the FBI won’t eventually find you.’

  Westlake gave a sour laugh. ‘Where I’m going, no one can follow. My life was over the day you destroyed it. Do you think I care anything for the pathetic existence you’ve left me with?’

  To hear that Westlake had no desire or expectation of living through this sent an icy chill through Tayte. It made the man all the more dangerous.

  ‘I’m going to stop you.’

  ‘Do you think you’re good enough?’

  ‘Just give me the damn clue and we’ll find out.’

  Westlake laughed again. ‘Your blood’s boiling, isn’t it, Tayte? I like that.’ There was a brief pause. Then Westlake said, ‘When this call ends you’ll receive a text message containing the clue. I wouldn’t want you to write it down wrong or lose it. You have until noon tomorrow. If you and your FBI friends can’t work it out in time, the woman in the green suit will die.’

  ‘You’re not going to kill her!’ Tayte said, his voice raised to a defiant shout. ‘Not this time. I’m going to stop you—you hear me?’

  With that, Tayte ended the call. He didn’t want to waste another second talking to this creep. He fell back into the armchair with a heavy sigh, hoping he was right and that he could stop Westlake in time to save this woman. He had little time to think about it before his phone beeped, startling him, despite the fact that he was expecting the text message. His hands were shaking as he opened it. It contained two letters, followed by a series of numbers: GJ 28027590. Tayte’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement as he began to wonder what it meant. Then he called Reese.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tayte’s next call after phoning Reese was to Mavro, and within thirty minutes she was knocking on the safe house door. During that time Tayte had been chain-eating Hershey’s Miniatures from a new bag he’d opened as soon as he’d received Westlake’s text message, all the while staring at it, trying to understand what it referred to.

  He and Mavro sat down in the living room, where Tayte had drawn the blinds against the fading early-evening light.

  ‘So, it’s not another burial plot reference?’ Mavro said.

  Tayte shook his head. ‘No. At least if it is, it’s like none I’ve ever seen. GJ 28027590. Two letters and eight digits,’ he added, thinking aloud as he popped another chocolate into his mouth. ‘Could be an index reference to something.’

  ‘Those letters could be someone’s initials, like before.’

  ‘Yes, they could,’ Tayte agreed. ‘Although, I don’t think we can know for sure until we know what the numbers are. I guess it has to be a reference I’d be familiar with in my line of work.’

  ‘Something genealogical?’

  ‘Or maybe something I’d know about because of my research. There has to be some logic to it. I can’t see why Westlake would make it too difficult to get off first base.’

  ‘So what kind of eight-digit numbers do you deal with?’

  Tayte had to think about that. A moment later, he said, ‘National Archives Identifiers can be eight digits. Maybe it’s a reference to a document they hold.’

  ‘Can we look it up?’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ Tayte said, getting to his feet. ‘Help yourself to those chocolates.’

  He went into the kitchen where he’d left his laptop and a moment later he returned with it, waking it up as he walked. He sat beside Mavro now so that she could see what he was doing as he brought up the page for the National Archives Catalog. He entered the eight-digit number into the search field and pressed the enter key with his fingers crossed. A second later he saw the results and read them aloud.

  ‘There are no search results found using the search term: 28027590.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Mavro said.

  ‘Yeah, I thought maybe we were onto something there.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Tayte sat back with his thoughts. Several quiet seconds later, he sat forward again. ‘I’m going to put a fresh pot of coffee on. You want some?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Mavro said. ‘That’s a question you never need to ask me.’

  Tayte was smiling to himself as he headed back into the kitchen, thinking that her coffee addiction was right up there with his own.

  When he came back, he was still smiling. ‘The Library of Congress,’ he said as he handed Mavro her coffee. ‘They use an eight-digit or ten-digit identifier, which they call a control number or LCCN.’ He sat down and referred back to the digits Westlake had sent him. ‘Depending on when the control number was allocated, the first two or four numbers refer to the year. It’s two digits up until 2000 and the full four digits of the year after that. The six digits that follow represent the sequential serial number for that record.’

  ‘So, if this is a Library of Congress Control Number,’ Mavro said, ‘it was allocated in 1928?’

  ‘That’s correct. I come across these LCCNs whenever my research takes me to the Library of Congress to see a publication. Being the fastidious researcher I am, I typically make a note of them in my assignment files for easy referral should I need to go back to them.’

  ‘It sounds like an LCCN would be something Westlake could be sure you’d know about, doesn’t it?’ Mavro said, with a look in her eye that told Tayte she thought they could be on the right track.

  Tayte nodded back, knowing there was every chance they were. He opened his laptop again and brought up the Library of Congress Online Catalog, into which he entered the eight-digit number, and this time he didn’t feel the need to cross his fingers so hard as he clicked
the search button. When the associated catalogue entry displayed, a wide smile spread across his face.

  ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Gertrude Jones.’

  ‘GJ,’ Mavro added. ‘The initials Westlake sent in his message.’

  ‘He wanted us to know when we were looking in the right place, just like before at River Creek Cemetery.’

  ‘So the reference points to a book,’ Mavro said, scrutinising the contents of the screen. ‘Tales of Romance: A Volume of Short Stories by Gertrude Jones.’

  ‘1908 to 1930,’ Tayte said as he read Jones’s year of birth and death. He quickly wrote the details down in his notebook. ‘She died age twenty-two, two years after the book’s publication,’ he added, wondering whether the close proximity between her death and the book’s release, or the fact that she had died young, might come to yield any significance.

  ‘She might have lived locally,’ Mavro said. She pointed to the screen. ‘It says here that her publisher was in Richmond, Virginia.’

  Tayte sat back with his coffee. ‘So we know whose death Westlake plans to replicate. Now all we need to find out is how, and more importantly where, Gertrude Jones died in 1930. To do that, we need to take a look at her vital records.’

  ‘That’s not going to be easy,’ Mavro said, checking her watch. ‘The Department of Health offices closed over an hour ago. Under the circumstances, I’m sure we could persuade them to open up for us, but it could take half the night to get access to the records we need to see.’

  ‘There could be another way.’

  Tayte led Mavro to his temporary filing room at the back of the apartment. ‘There’s a good chance that copies of Gertrude Jones’s records will be in here somewhere. If she was related to a former client whose surname was also Jones, it shouldn’t take too long to find out.’

  ‘I bet you have plenty of files for people called Jones,’ Mavro said. ‘It’s a common surname.’

  Tayte went to the cabinet containing surnames beginning with J. ‘Last time I checked, Jones was ranked the fifth most common surname in the US.’ He pulled open the drawer and turned back to Mavro with a raised eyebrow. ‘At least her name wasn’t Smith.’

  Mavro stood beside him as he began to flick through the files. ‘How many are there?’

  Tayte was still counting. A moment later, he said. ‘Fourteen, and they’re all bulging. All we have to do, though, is check the index at the beginning of each file—the client’s family tree. If Gertrude Jones is in the file, she’ll be listed.’

  ‘Let’s get to it then. Half each. We can spread out on the table in the kitchen.’

  They each carried a pile of files to the kitchen and set them down on the floor at either end of the table. As Tayte sat down, Mavro took her phone out.

  ‘I’m going to call Reese,’ she said. ‘I think it’s best that he at least informs someone high up at the DoH that we may need access to the Vital Records Division this evening.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Tayte said. ‘If Gertrude Jones’s records aren’t among these files, it would take more time than we have to go looking through all the rest.’

  Mavro wandered out of the kitchen to make the call as Tayte opened the first of the Jones files. He expected to find the client’s family tree index right there on top of the pile, telling him the names of all the people the file contained, but it wasn’t there. He quickly flicked through all the records in the file in case he’d put it in the wrong place, or slipped other records on top of it at some time, but he knew he hadn’t. He was far too meticulous when it came to his records. When he reached the end of the file, he sat back in his chair, dumbfounded.

  Mavro came back into the kitchen, putting her phone away as she walked. ‘It’s done,’ she said. Then when she looked at him she added, ‘What? What is it?’

  Tayte had already opened the next Jones file from his pile. There was no family tree index there either. ‘The indexes are missing.’ He opened another of the files and it was the same story. ‘Westlake must have taken them when he broke into my apartment. Not all of them, though,’ he added, recalling that he’d checked a couple when he first became involved in the case. He slapped the file down on to the table and sighed. ‘He’s only taken the ones he knows I need to see, to make things harder for us.’

  Mavro shook her head. ‘At least that tells us something.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘Sure it does. Gertrude Jones’s records must be in one of these files or he wouldn’t have felt the need to remove the indexes in the first place.’

  ‘Good point, but it’s going to take longer than I thought.’

  ‘We’ve got all night,’ Mavro said as they set to it.

  Tayte carefully began to thumb through the first of his files as Mavro did the same with hers. Tayte had to try hard not to let his mind wander as he recalled detail after detail from each past assignment. Without the copies of the family tree indexes it was slow going, but they had to be thorough so as to avoid missing that one vital record. Each had to be inspected for mention of Gertrude Jones, or a date later than 1930 when she had died, thus ruling it out. Depending on the type of record, it wasn’t always clear at a glance, necessitating close scrutiny of each document they came to. They sustained themselves on coffee and another bag of Hershey’s, which Mavro had also now taken to. Neither voiced any desire to take a break to fix something more substantial or nutritious to eat. Almost two hours passed without success, and it was after nine o’clock before Mavro sat up in her seat. She had a record in her hand and a broad smile on her face.

  ‘Here she is!’

  Tayte was already on his feet. He pulled a chair up beside Mavro and sat down as she slid the record in front of him. It was a copy of Gertrude Jones’s birth certificate.

  ‘Born 1908,’ Tayte said. ‘That’s her all right. Is there a certificate of death?’

  Mavro singled it out and handed it to Tayte. ‘That’s all there seems to be for her,’ she said. ‘No certificate of marriage.’

  Tayte studied the death certificate. The place of death showed the District of Columbia, and it stated that she had died in 1930, which again confirmed that he was looking at the same Gertrude Jones who had written the book Westlake’s clue had led them to. The document was otherwise unremarkable in all but one respect: the cause of death.

  ‘Suicide,’ Tayte read out. ‘Arterial hemorrhage.’

  ‘She cut her wrists?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘The poor thing. Why? She was so young.’

  ‘Why is a good question,’ Tayte said. ‘But where is the question we have to answer.’ He was thinking about the woman in the green suit Westlake had spoken of when he’d called earlier. ‘At least we now know how Westlake plans to kill his next victim, but that’s no use to us unless we know where he plans to do it.’

  ‘Maybe why leads to where,’ Mavro said. ‘There has to be a story behind this girl’s suicide.’

  ‘True, but maybe we can play a hunch here. If Gertrude Jones cut her wrists, there’s a very strong possibility she did so at home. She wasn’t married, so it’s likely that she lived with her parents, whose address at the time is right here in these records. It’s in the Downtown neighbourhood.’

  Mavro had her phone out before Tayte had finished speaking, calling Reese.

  ‘And you can tell Reese whose family Westlake’s next victim will come from,’ Tayte added, sorting through the file to find his former client’s details. ‘When I called him before you got here, I told him it was a woman who works for a DC realtor. He should be able to identify her now.’

  He thought perhaps a missing persons report had already been filed for the woman, who had in all probability not made it home from work that day. As Reese picked up the call and Mavro began to give him the details, he hoped the location was right. He could already feel his anxiety levels begin to rise at knowing he would once again have to wait to find out.

  Adam Westlake was back at the Downtown home he had recen
tly forced his way into. It had a traditional bathroom with a large claw-foot bath beneath the window. He was sitting on the rolled top at the tap end, looking contemplatively down at the woman in the green suit he’d abducted on her way home from work. She was lying on the black-and-white-chequered tile floor just inside the door, still unconscious. He was wondering when the injection he’d given her would wear off. He knew now that he’d given her far too much of the concoction of potentially lethal barbiturates and benzodiazepines. He’d almost killed her before the next part of the game had begun, and that would never do.

  He was waiting to run a nice hot bath for his guest, which would help prevent her blood from clotting once he’d cut her, but he wanted her awake before he began. Not too awake, though. Docile, yet aware of what was going on, her blood pumping at a decent rate, which he imagined would not be a problem once she came around and realised what was going on. He was already anticipating her fear. He had suffered. Now they had to suffer, and it was all because of Jefferson Tayte.

  His eyes wandered to the glass shelf over the washbasin where he’d put the knife he planned to use. It wasn’t his knife. He’d found it in Tayte’s apartment. It was an old bone-handled carving knife he knew the genealogist couldn’t fail to recognise. He thought that was a nice touch. Knowing that Tayte’s own knife had been used in the gradual exsanguination of the woman in the green suit would surely inflict a few psychological scars on the man himself—an added bonus as far as Westlake was concerned.

  He stood up and went to the woman. Then he stooped down beside her and cupped her chin in his hand, lifting her face to his. She looked pretty, just his type, and so calm and peaceful. How all that was about to change. He slapped her face in an attempt to wake her. He was keen to get started, and this really wouldn’t do at all. He was about to slap her again, harder this time, but he heard something that forced him to stop and listen.