He drifted the binoculars across the house to his right, to another window, where he saw her father, option number two, preparing their lunch. How different, and how difficult he imagined it must have been for the man since his wife had died. The house was in Kensington, one of DC’s commuter suburbs in Montgomery County, Maryland. The town was purported by many to be the safest in the DC area.
But not today.
He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to sit there all day while Jefferson Tayte was busy solving the next puzzle he’d set for him. He’d heard about the discovery of Kelly Uttridge’s body earlier that morning on his handheld radio scanner, and he knew Tayte was good at what he did. He’d seen just how good he was first hand, and he didn’t think the latest clue he’d left for him would take the genealogist too long to solve. He had to be quick this time. He had to choose right now.
But which one?
If he chose the father, he would leave the little girl without any parents at all, perhaps in the care of her grandmother, the woman who had once employed Tayte’s genealogical services. He smiled wryly to himself.
How could she have known what that would someday lead to?
If he chose the little girl, on the other hand, the father would be left to grieve the loss of both of the people he loved most in the world. The little girl was young. She would have been no more than a year old when her mother died, and he doubted she even remembered her. But she looked so adorable, sitting there colouring in her picture book, nodding her head to whichever nursery rhyme he imagined she was humming to herself.
He lowered his binoculars again, careful not to use them too long at any one time in case someone saw them and began to wonder what he was looking at. So he sat, idly gazing at the double-fronted house, and he began to think about the nice house he once had—a better house even than this. But then, he’d had so much going for him before Jefferson Tayte came along with his unwavering sense of right and wrong, digging into his client’s family history without giving a thought to those who might suffer as a result of what he found.
‘I’ve suffered,’ he muttered to himself, picturing the genealogist in his bright tan suit the day he’d first clapped eyes on him. At the same time, he slammed his fist into the passenger seat. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
He didn’t need his binoculars to see the little girl’s father join her at the table she was sitting at. They began to eat their meal, the last meal for one of them, and he thought about tossing a coin to decide which. He didn’t really care. Maybe he’d base his decision on opportunity. It wasn’t as if either of their lives had any meaning or purpose beyond their own imaginations and the propagation of a species that was already beginning to outstay its welcome in this world. So what if the little girl might someday go on to cure cancer? It wouldn’t save him. Not where he was heading.
He refocused his thoughts and considered how he would abduct her. Movies and crime novels had had him believing that a chloroform-soaked cloth would do the trick just fine in a matter of seconds, but that mistake had almost got him caught the first time around. He recalled how he’d had to hold that cloth over the mouth of Annabel Rogers a full five minutes before she passed out. And she’d bucked and thrashed the whole time while her children were watching television. It had taken way too long, and its effect was short. It was only down to luck that the family had been so engrossed in their viewing, the volume turned up so high, that no one came out to the kitchen to see what was keeping her from returning with the bowl of potato chips she’d gone for, and that no one had seen him chase her down to the garage when she’d come round. It was pure luck no one had seen him drag her to his vehicle, still kicking and thrashing and trying to scream for her life. Now he mostly used a needle on his victims, injecting them with a concoction of drugs he’d learned about while he was serving time. He’d made many connections on the inside, largely through his association with Dead Man Incorporated. Through them, he knew people who knew people who could get him just about anything.
He thought ahead to how he was going to kill his victim this time. The way he would do it was already decided. That was part of the game. He thought about where he would do it—the predetermined location, also chosen by the game—and he stiffened in his seat, drawing a deep, excited breath at the thought of Jefferson Tayte trying to get there first. It made him want to get out of his van and go up to the house right now. Maybe he would, but he had to be patient. He had to wait for the right opportunity.
Chapter Seven
Tayte and Mavro were sitting opposite one another at a restaurant in Chinatown, just around the corner from the FBI field office. Not wanting to take long over their lunch, they both ordered from the express menu, although as Tayte imagined that any kind of express meal was going to be small, he ordered a side of pork dumplings to go with his. They had talked about the contents of the envelope on their way there, coming up with nothing remotely promising. Now Tayte’s notepad was open on the table between them, and they were still staring with thoughtful expressions at the killer’s latest clue when their meals arrived.
‘Ream,’ Tayte said, reading the first part of the clue for the umpteenth time. ‘Something to do with paper? A paper mill?’
‘A ream of paper is five hundred sheets,’ Mavro said, almost to herself as if thinking aloud. ‘Used to be four hundred and eighty. Could those numbers mean anything?’
Tayte put a large forkful of rice noodles into his mouth and sighed as he chewed and swallowed them. He’d passed on the chopsticks, preferring to use a fork when he was hungry. ‘They could,’ he said, turning his fork on his plate as he continued to think. ‘They don’t mean anything to me, though, genealogically speaking. What about the letters, EBH?’
‘An abbreviation or an acronym for something?’
‘Or they could be someone’s initials,’ Tayte offered. ‘Ream could be a surname.’
Mavro agreed. ‘And if those numbers at the end, 4/30/2, mean April 30th, 1902 or 1802, maybe that’s relative to whoever “EBH Ream” is.’
‘Let’s suppose for now that it’s a date of death,’ Tayte said, holding one of his pork dumplings in mid-air as he considered the possibility. ‘That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for here—the death of one of my clients’ ancestors, which the Genie plans to replicate here in the present. I don’t recall any clients by the name of Ream, but maybe it was a small assignment, easy to forget.’
‘Too bad your files are in transit. We won’t be able to take a look at them for a couple of hours yet.’
‘So let’s keep at it. We can’t afford to wait, and I don’t imagine for a moment that this is going to be as easy as checking my files for someone with the name of Ream. Otherwise, the Genie might just as well have used another genealogical wheel chart, like before.’
They continued eating in silence for several minutes, each caught up in their thoughts. Then Mavro said, ‘If it is a person, and it’s not one of your former clients, who else could it be?’
Tayte reached down into his briefcase and pulled his laptop out. ‘Let’s ask Wikipedia.’ He began tapping keys and was soon looking at a page for the word Ream. It showed several possibilities, but the one that interested him for now was ‘Ream (surname)’. He clicked the link and was presented with just five notable people. He turned his laptop around to show Mavro.
‘There aren’t many links, so we could take a look at all of them,’ he said, clicking the first, which was for Dwight Ream, American football and basketball coach. There was very little information, and nothing to suggest a connection to the puzzle they were trying to solve. He clicked the next and the next, reading along with Mavro until the meal was finished and they had reached the last name on the list.
‘Vinnie Ream,’ Mavro said, reading from the screen. ‘Lavinia Ellen Ream Hoxie, American sculptor.’
Tayte clicked the link, thinking there was something familiar about the name. When the web page presented itself, he saw why. ‘Of course,’ he said, edging
closer to the screen. ‘Vinnie Ream created the statue of Abraham Lincoln that’s in the Capitol rotunda. I came across her Hoxie name during an assignment a while back. I have a client with connections to the same Hoxie family.’
They read on and several seconds later Tayte slapped his palm down on the table, rattling their bowls. ‘There,’ he said pointing to a name part way down a list that appeared under the heading, ‘Works’.
‘Edwin B. Hay,’ Mavro read out. ‘That’s gotta be our EBH.’
There was another link. Tayte clicked it and was surprised to see that it wasn’t a link to the life of the man himself, but to a bronze bust Vinnie Ream had sculpted in his image in 1906, which marked the gravesite of the Hay family. He smiled to himself when he read that the bust was located at the Rock Creek Cemetery, right there in DC’s Northwest district. He picked up his notepad, knowing now what the numbers he’d written down were.
‘These numbers at the end of the killer’s clue aren’t a date of birth or death,’ he said, still smiling. ‘It’s not any kind of date. It’s a burial plot reference for a grave at Rock Creek Cemetery. Section four, lot thirty, grave two. We need to go and see who’s buried there.’
They took Route 29 north, and within thirty minutes Tayte and Mavro had reached Rock Creek Cemetery. It was a fine afternoon, Tayte thought, as they traversed the car park. October was one of his favourite months in DC, when the skies were mostly sunny and the heat and crowds of the summer months had passed. His assignments had often brought him to Rock Creek, and at any other time he could happily have spent a few hours amongst the cemetery’s famous sculptures, but not today.
On the way there, he’d been wondering what they would find at the grave marker they were now looking for. The obvious answer was a burial plot and a headstone, and from that they would have another name to work on—someone from the past whose death was going to be replicated here in the present; in a matter of hours, for all Tayte knew. The thought made him quicken his pace as they left the car park, heading for the red-brick church that was located roughly in the centre of the cemetery’s eighty-six acres.
‘You think there could be something important at the location of Ream’s sculpture of Edwin Hay?’ Mavro asked.
‘No, I’m sure that was just a cryptic way to get us here. The burial-plot reference is the important thing now. I have a map of this cemetery in my files, but that’s not much good to us just now. Fortunately, there are copies available online.’
Tayte was about to reach into his briefcase for his laptop, but he saw that Mavro was ahead of him. She had her phone out.
‘You know the website?’
‘Find A Grave has one.’
Mavro entered the search and they were soon looking at a copy of the cemetery layout.
‘We’re looking for section four,’ Tayte said. ‘If memory serves, it’s on the west side. That’s where most of the numbered sections are.’
Mavro found it. ‘Take a left here,’ she said as they reached the church, where there was a fork in the path.
They took the path to their left, and as they walked Tayte asked Mavro something he’d been curious about since first meeting her. ‘Reese said something about you having worked in the field before. How was that? I imagine it can get pretty intense.’
‘I started out in the field,’ Mavro said. ‘When I was in college my father became a victim of violent crime. My parents owned a small convenience store in Southeast where we used to live. He was shot point blank in the chest for the money in the cash register.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah. He was a kind, hard-working man, and he deserved better. He was always working, but he more than made up for it on the rare occasions when he did manage to find time for Mom and me. The day after the shooting I applied for a placement in the FBI Honors Internship Program, and that was that.’
‘You wanted to fight crime because of what happened?’
Mavro drew a long breath. ‘I guess I did at the time, although if I’m being totally honest, I was running away.’
‘From what?’
‘My mom. We didn’t get along so well, and things became a whole lot worse after my dad was gone. I knew it would and I didn’t want to stick around to deal with it. She didn’t handle his death at all well. Pretty soon she stopped taking care of herself. Then during my first year as a field agent she got sick. She died before we could reconcile our differences.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Tayte said. ‘So that’s why you left the field?’
Mavro nodded. ‘I could no longer perform my duties. That’s how I saw it. I started to screw up. I knew it, and I think my supervisor knew it. Although no one directly asked me to step down, I decided it was best to get out before I got someone killed.’
Tayte knew what it was like to lose your parents at an early age. He hadn’t known his biological parents—he’d been too young to know what was going on when he was abandoned—but he still missed his adoptive parents: the love and the fun times they used to share. He felt for Frankie Mavro. He sensed she was a lonely person, much as he had been before he met Jean. Half the time he’d paint a smile on his face and get on with his life as if it didn’t matter to him, but it did. That’s why he was always so wrapped up in his work, to keep himself busy and so tired that he’d fall into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow at night. He imagined it was much the same for her.
‘Here we are,’ she said, putting her phone away and interrupting his thoughts. ‘This is section four.’
Section four backed on to New Hampshire Avenue. It was a wide rectangular section, and although it was a relatively large area, Tayte was familiar with how the system worked. It didn’t take long for him to find the lot and the grave they were looking for.
‘John Bedford,’ Tayte read out. ‘1852 to 1885.’
‘It doesn’t say much.’
‘No, but perhaps it says enough.’
Tayte saw that there was another grave on plot thirty for this section, which also carried the Bedford name. It was for a woman called Mary Bedford, and because of the older dates engraved into her headstone, he figured this was the resting place of John Bedford’s mother. There was no grave for his father, and nothing for a wife or children.
Tayte set his briefcase down, took out his notebook, and wrote in the details. ‘Unless the rules of the game have changed along with the type of clue this killer’s leaving for us,’ he said, ‘I believe this is the equivalent of the name in the centre of those genealogical wheel charts. In which case I really need to see my files. The name doesn’t ring any bells, but if John Bedford’s name is among them, maybe it contains information about how and where he died.’
‘What if you don’t have a file for Bedford?’ Mavro said. ‘I mean, we had other names to look up from those wheel charts before. All we have here is one name—Bedford. If you don’t have a file for this family, we can’t exactly go through every record you have looking for mention of a John Bedford. It would take too long.’
‘Yes, it would, but we still need to know if I have a file in this man’s name. It could save a lot of time if I have.’
Mavro took out her phone again. ‘I’ll call Reese. Unless your files are in transit, I’m sure he can have someone check.’
Mavro made the call and Reese picked up straight away.
‘Ms Mavro. What have you got for me?’
‘Nothing yet, sir, but we have a lead. We need to know if there’s a folder under the name of Bedford in Mr Tayte’s files.’
The man with the scarred eyebrow was getting a real kick out of the game now that Jefferson Tayte was back in DC. It gave him even greater pleasure than the snatch he’d just made in Kensington. That had given him a wonderful adrenaline boost, but with Tayte the rush was more sustained, as if he were plugged into a drip feed that was steadily keeping him high.
He was driving south on Route 185, heading back to Washington, wondering how close Tayte was to solving his latest c
lue, thinking that Tayte had better hurry because he was almost ready, and he wasn’t about to cut the genealogist any slack. It was all he could think about, despite the banging that was now coming from the back of his van, letting him know that the injection he’d given his victim had worn off—and much faster than he’d expected.
He turned up the volume on the stereo and let Van Halen drown out the noise—not that it really mattered. The traffic was flowing well and he was close to where he was heading. He had another needle primed and ready to silence his catch again as soon as he stopped. All he had to do was feign a breakdown, pull over and take care of it.
He wound down his window and turned the volume up a little louder as he arrived at the next crossroads, which had forced him to slow down. He knew he was drawing attention to himself, but all anyone outside the van could hear was the music. As he took a right turn his mind began to wander ahead to how his next victim was going to die, concluding that it was both simple and ingenious. The game was going exactly to plan.
Another Van Halen track began to play and he smiled to himself as he sang along with the music as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He thought the song lyrics were never more poignant. He really was living his life like there was no tomorrow.
He was ‘Runnin’ with the Devil’.
Chapter Eight
Before Tayte and Mavro left Rock Creek Cemetery, Reese had been able to advise them that there was no folder in Tayte’s files under the name of Bedford. Tayte was disappointed, but Mavro’s call had saved them a trip to the safe house where the files were waiting for him. For now, Tayte saw little point in checking in. He had to find out specifically where and how John Bedford had died in 1885, and to do that he needed to see Bedford’s vital records. It was already late afternoon, and they were in Northeast at a building on North Capitol Street, the home of DC’s Department of Health Vital Records Division.
Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6) Page 7