Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6)

by Steve Robinson

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Marjorie Oakes. I hired you to research my family tree a few years back.’

  ‘Mrs Oakes,’ Tayte said, sitting himself up. ‘Yes, I remember you. What is it I can do for you?’

  ‘What can you do for me? You’ve heard what’s going on, haven’t you—about this serial killer they’re calling the Genie?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m helping the—’

  ‘The news report said to be extra vigilant,’ Mrs Oakes cut in. ‘It said this man is targeting your former clients and their families. Why? Why would he do that?’

  Tayte wanted to tell her that it was all because of him, because he’d ruined the man’s life during one of his early assignments twenty years ago, not that Adam Westlake hadn’t deserved what was coming to him for what he and his family had done, but for now he thought better of it.

  ‘He’s a sick man, Mrs Oakes,’ he said. ‘The authorities are doing all they can to stop him.’

  ‘Is my family going to be next? Is he coming after me?’

  Tayte honestly couldn’t say. If there was any kind of pattern or purpose to how Adam Westlake was selecting his victims from the vast pool of Tayte’s former clients and their families, he couldn’t see it. ‘Look, try not to worry yourself too much,’ he said, and he instantly regretted it. Of course she was worried, and she had every reason to be. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Oakes. What I mean to say is that I’ve had a great many clients in the DC area over the years. The odds of any harm coming to you or your family are very slim. Just do as the news report said and be extra cautious. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.’

  ‘But you can’t guarantee that, can you?’

  Tayte sighed. He couldn’t guarantee it at all. ‘I’m truly very sorry,’ he said, not knowing what else to say. Then he ended the call.

  His legs felt extra heavy today as he threw them off the bed and went into the bathroom to take a shower. It was only just light outside, but he figured he’d been in bed long enough, and he was glad to get an early start on the day—not that he knew what he was going to do to fill the time until Westlake’s call came in. It could be days for all he knew, but he somehow doubted it. He’d just denied the killer his kill. He didn’t think the man would let him sit back and revel in his victory for long. Tayte ran the shower until the water started coming through hot, but just as he was about to remove his boxer shorts and step into it, his phone started ringing again.

  It has to be him this time, he thought. He felt his pulse quicken again as he hurriedly shut the water off and sprinted back into the bedroom to answer the call. He didn’t check the display this time. He didn’t want to waste any time and this was a call he couldn’t afford to miss.

  ‘Jefferson Tayte,’ he announced.

  ‘Tayte!’

  Tayte didn’t answer right away. It wasn’t the Genie this time, either. It was a man’s voice, though, and he sounded angry.

  ‘Tayte, are you there, goddammit?’

  Tayte screwed up his face as he said, ‘Yes, who’s calling?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who I am, Tayte. My daughter came to see you way back when, and now she’s afraid to step outside the house. The papers are saying this mess is all your fault.’

  ‘They are?’

  ‘Sure they are. And I want to know what you’re going to do about it?’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to—’ Tayte began, but it seemed that the caller wasn’t really interested in hearing what Tayte was trying to do about it. He sounded as if he just wanted to vent some steam.

  ‘Don’t give me any of your bull-crap, Tayte. I don’t want to hear it. You’ve put good folks’ lives at risk, and I want you to know that if anything happens to my daughter as a result of this, I’m holding you personally responsible. You hear me?’

  Tayte heard the man loud and clear.

  ‘I’ll sue your ass, Tayte, and I’ll make damn sure you never work in this town again.’

  Tayte opened his mouth to cut in, but no words came out. He lowered his phone and continued to listen to the caller’s faint but angry diatribe for a few seconds longer, then he ended the call, thinking that if this kept up it was going to be a very long and challenging day whether the Genie called him or not. He trundled back to the bathroom, taking his phone with him this time.

  During Tayte’s first waking hour that day, he took close to a dozen phone calls from past clients or their close family members, many of whom appeared to be angry and upset with him to one degree or another. They were all understandably worried for their safety in the light of the news that was now all over the press and local TV stations following SAC Reese’s announcement the day before. Tayte’s heart went out to every one of them, but he could find no effective words to assuage their fears.

  He was dressed and in the kitchen fixing an omelette for his breakfast when his phone rang for the umpteenth time, although by now the sound did little to set his heart racing. Instead, it caused his heart to sink as he prepared himself for yet another unpleasant conversation with one of his former clients. He casually slid the pan off the stove and accepted the call.

  ‘This is Jefferson Tayte,’ he said, already impatient for the call to be over. He just wanted to eat his omelette before it got cold. This time, however, it was not one of his clients calling. It was the Genie.

  ‘Tayte.’

  Hearing Adam Westlake’s hollow voice again made Tayte’s skin crawl. He swallowed hard before he spoke again, by which time he was sitting down at the kitchen table.

  ‘You’re not wasting any time, are you Westlake?’

  ‘I don’t want you to get bored with my little game. Actually, I tried you five minutes ago, but the line was busy. That’s five minutes off your time, Tayte, not mine. They could mean the difference between life and death for someone.’

  ‘I’ll just have to work faster.’

  ‘Oh, you’re pretty fast already, aren’t you? Fast enough to save Tiffany Nelson, our mutual friend in the green suit. Are you sure you can work any faster than that?’ Westlake laughed drily to himself. ‘You’re going to have to this time. I’m giving you until noon today, which gives you just under four hours.’

  ‘Four hours?’

  Tayte couldn’t stop himself from repeating what Westlake had just said. Had he heard the man right? He was afraid he had, and he was suddenly in a hurry to get started. He already wished he could have back the five minutes he’d lost. He rushed his next words out.

  ‘What’s the clue?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to chat awhile first? Maybe you’d like to know something about the next life I plan to take if you can’t stop me in time.’

  ‘Just send me the damn clue,’ Tayte said. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to chat once you’re back behind bars where you belong.’

  The line went quiet. Then the call ended.

  Christ! What have I done?

  Getting sassy with a serial killer was perhaps not such a good idea, Tayte now realised. He’d just lost himself more precious minutes. What if Westlake decided not to bother with a clue at all this time, just to teach him a lesson? He got up and went to his omelette. He chopped into it and shoved a large forkful into his mouth, then another and another until it was gone. He’d barely tasted it. He sat down again and stared at his phone, willing it to beep, letting him know a new text message had arrived. Another five minutes passed before it did, and Tayte couldn’t bring the message up fast enough. It was short like the rest.

  ‘R71/S261,’ he read aloud.

  He called Reese straight away, to let him know he had the next clue and that he only had until midday to solve it. Then he called Mavro, who told him she was on her way over. Despite now having less than four hours to solve the Genie’s latest clue, Tayte was feeling more upbeat about the prospects of working it out in time than he had been when Westlake first told him how long he had. He was upbeat because he recognised the reference he’d been sent as soon as he saw it. He figured Westlake knew as much, w
hich was perhaps why he’d allowed Tayte so little time.

  The reference was a marker to another burial plot, and this time it needed no further clue to help identify the cemetery it belonged to. Tayte had seen a thousand references just like it in his time as a DC-based genealogist, which was not surprising given that the cemetery was so close to where he lived, or used to live, before his home had been burned out. The reference belonged to the Congressional Cemetery, where over 65,000 people were interred or otherwise memorialised, and where all the burial plot references began with the letter R, standing for range, and were often followed by an S, standing for site. Rather than identifying each area of the cemetery, as was the case at River Creek, the entire area was laid out as one large matrix, each plot being identified by the range and site numbers allocated to them.

  As a first step, all Tayte had to do was find out who was interred at this particular burial plot. Then he could go on to discover how and where he or she had died. His first thought was to use the cemetery’s online search facility, but he quickly remembered that the interment records database at the Congressional Cemetery was no longer searchable by range and site reference. Now, you had to know the name of the person whose plot you were looking for, which was exactly what Tayte had to find out. Nevertheless, he remained upbeat because he knew it didn’t matter. He had the right cemetery. All he had to do was wait for Mavro to arrive, and then they could go and take a look for themselves.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Washington, DC’s Congressional Cemetery was located eighteen blocks from the Capitol in the Southeast district on the west bank of the Anacostia River. Originally called the Washington Parish Burial Ground when it was established in 1807, the cemetery had rapidly expanded from under five acres to its current size of almost forty acres by the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There was no other cemetery on earth that Tayte was more familiar with, but because of its size, he was nonetheless glad he’d thought to put his map of the grounds in his briefcase before Mavro arrived to pick him up. She was wearing a mint-green polo shirt today, with the same blue jeans and green parka she’d been wearing when she’d first called at his house.

  They parked alongside the kerb on 17th Street by a black iron gate, which Tayte had already identified as the cemetery entrance closest to the burial plot they had gone there to see. It was a fine, cool morning. Stepping out of the car, they were instantly greeted by birdsong coming from the trees along the street and from those further into the cemetery. It helped Tayte to relax a little, following his particularly stressful morning full of phone calls from upset former clients. He’d put his phone on silent before leaving the safe house. They could leave a message because right now he had other things to focus on.

  Tayte took his map out as they entered through the gate on to Prout Street. ‘It’s going to be on our immediate right,’ he told Mavro. ‘According to this grid layout, it’s eleven rows back from that junction up ahead.’

  They walked to the junction at a fast pace and counted back to be sure they found the right burial plot when they came to it. As they went, Tayte noted how quiet it was, which was why he often came here, sometimes just to think and take in the history of the place and the people buried there, many of whom had helped define the city. He saw a woman walking her dog, and there were one or two indistinguishable figures in the distance, but for the most part they had only each other and the birdsong for company.

  Tayte counted eleven rows and stopped walking. ‘This is range seventy-one. Site two hundred sixty runs right along this street.’ He turned to face the opposite side of the street and walked across to where range seventy-one continued. He set his briefcase down, knelt, and began to brush at the grass, revealing a small ground stone.

  ‘This is it. R71/S261.’

  Mavro pulled up the knees of her jeans and knelt beside him. ‘It’s not too clear, is it?’

  Tayte agreed. The horizontal nature of the stone meant that the engraving had eroded over time, but he’d seen far worse and he didn’t think it was so bad that he wouldn’t be able to read it. He scratched at the ground until he had a handful of soil, which he brushed over the lettering to darken the words. The transformation was instant, if still a little patchy in places.

  ‘John P. Alexander,’ he said, wondering what the P stood for. ‘June 1877 to July 1922.’

  ‘Forty-five years old,’ Mavro said.

  It was a simple memorial, and it told Tayte that John Alexander had likely been a man of modest income. He checked the graves around it to see if any other family members were buried nearby, which would help him to identify this particular John Alexander when it came to looking for him in the records, but there were none. He took out his notebook and wrote the details down, still feeling upbeat about his chances this time around because, although he and Mavro only had until noon to solve this puzzle, it was still only half past nine and all he needed to find out was where this man had died.

  ‘I know I have files for an Alexander,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’re not for this family, but it’s worth checking.’

  He got to his feet again and put his notebook away. ‘Before we head back, though, I’d like to run a quick check to see if John P. Alexander here made the newspapers. He died prematurely. That’s often a good indicator that the cause might have been newsworthy.’ He had his laptop with him in his briefcase. ‘Let’s head back to the car and take a look.’

  Within minutes Tayte was sitting in the passenger seat with his laptop open on his knees, looking at the familiar Library of Congress newspaper archive website, Chronicling America. He selected to view results for the District of Columbia, and the date range he was interested in, covering 1922 when Alexander had died. Into the search field he entered the man’s name, and then he clicked ‘Go’. The search returned fifteen results for pages containing the keywords he’d entered, and he was quickly able to dismiss most of them because they contained unrelated instances of the words John and Alexander. Two, however, contained perfect matches. Both publications were from the Evening Star, dated 1922. The first was in the obituaries section. Tayte read it to Mavro.

  ‘Funeral arrangements for John P. Alexander, forty-five years old, 816 Tenth Street Northwest, who died Tuesday as the result of his electrocution while working for the Potomac Electric Power Company, have now been completed.’

  Tayte paused. ‘There’s something familiar about this.’

  ‘A past assignment?’

  ‘It’s gotta be.’

  He read on. ‘The deceased had been in the employ of the company for the past twenty years and is survived by his wife, Mrs Hattie Alexander. A verdict of accidental death was returned by the coroner’s jury late yesterday in the inquest over the body.’

  ‘So he was married?’ Mavro said. ‘I guess his wife must have moved away before she died.’

  ‘It’s possible, given she wasn’t buried alongside her husband, although if this is related to the assignment I’m thinking of, I believe she remarried and was buried with her second husband.’

  The second article bore the bold heading ‘CITY NEWS IN BRIEF’ and it began telling a similar story to the obituary, but halfway down there was more information, and it was just the kind of thing Tayte hoped to find. There was excitement in his voice as he read the section out.

  ‘John P. Alexander, Electrical expert who was shocked to death in a manhole of the Potomac Electric Power Company at Euclid and Champlain Streets Tuesday night.’ He turned to Mavro with a broad smile on his face. ‘That’s our location.’

  What followed happened so fast that Tayte had trouble taking it all in. His smile dropped instantly as Mavro’s door was pulled open with such force he felt the air rush out of the car. As Mavro turned away from him to see who had opened her door a fist thumped hard into the side of her face, knocking her head into Tayte’s shoulder. He saw a flash of the assailant’s blue denim shirtsleeve as he reached in and grabbed the key from the ignition. Then he saw someone he recognised from th
e recent prison photograph SAC Reese had shown him. It was Adam Westlake.

  Westlake leaned into the car again and this time he wrenched Mavro violently out of her seat, as if she weighed next to nothing. Tayte saw the fear in her eyes and wanted to do something to stop whatever was about to happen, but it was all taking place so fast that he had no time to think.

  Westlake pulled a handgun out from the back of his faded grey jeans and pressed the muzzle hard into Mavro’s temple. ‘Toss your sidearm!’ he told her, and a moment later Tayte heard it clatter on to the road at her feet. He felt utterly powerless to do anything but watch, aware that one bad decision right now could get them both killed.

  Westlake kicked the door shut. He forced Mavro around the front of the vehicle, holding her firmly by the neck. Given the man’s size and obvious strength, Tayte didn’t doubt that he could have crushed her windpipe if he chose to. His eyes were locked on Westlake’s, and the man was staring right back at him as he came around to Tayte’s door. He shoved Mavro away as he reached it, pushing her back towards the cemetery gate.

  ‘Go back inside! Now! Try anything and I’ll shoot you both.’

  As she went, Westlake pulled Tayte’s door open. Now the gun was pointing at him.

  ‘Move over!’

  Tayte did as he was told, awkwardly at first, his hands shaking and his heart pounding. He wondered why Westlake was doing this. Was his game almost over? Was this how it ended? As soon as Tayte slid into the driving seat, Westlake got in and tossed him the key. A car approached and Tayte silently prayed that the driver would stop, but either the driver hadn’t noticed what was taking place, or just didn’t want to get involved.

  ‘Drive!’ Westlake ordered, and as Tayte pulled away he risked a glance out of his window, back at the cemetery gate. He caught Mavro’s eye. She had her phone out. That was good. She was calling for help.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Tayte asked. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the gun Westlake was still pointing at him.