Death Takes a Partner: A Mary Jo Assassin Novel Read online

  Susan had been talking and all Mary Jo had gotten was more confused.

  “I am missing some huge bits of information here,” Mary Jo said and beside her Jean was nodding her head as well. “Explain what you mean by a long con?”

  “Twenty-five years ago,” Susan said, “Jack Kelsall and a close friend by the name of Carson White started a small religion based on the belief that it was possible to return from death to become immortal. Both were archeology and history students so they actually took some truths from our ancient order beliefs, but got most wrong.”

  “Okay,” Mary Jo said. She didn’t want to sidetrack the conversation by digging into order beliefs that had made the three of them basically immortal. That would be a conversation for later.

  “The religion they set up is called Ever Life. It had managed to attract enough followers to make a little money with their scam. But they needed to have Kelsall die and then come back to life to make the big bucks in the con.”

  “So that’s what’s behind Ever Life,” Jean said, shaking her head. “Always wondered.

  “Never heard of it before,” Mary Jo said.

  “You are lucky,” Susan said. “They seem to be everywhere these days as the promised resurrection gets closer.”

  “So Kelsall faked his own death and went into hiding twenty-four years ago,” Mary Jo said, starting to understand the problem a little better.

  “And Carson White kept running the church,” Jean said.

  Susan nodded. “They faked a jump from a bridge, body never found. Then White and the remaining church members got to work on Jack’s promise to return to his congregation in exactly twenty-five years, an immortal being.”

  “And they’ve been milking these poor souls for money the entire time?” Jean asked.

  “They have,” Susan said. “Thousands of prep products, courses to learn balance and rituals to prepare the soul to leave and then return as an immortal being. All costing thousands and thousands. They have taken in more millions than I want to imagine.”

  “A real long con,” Mary Jo said. “Just like any typical religion.”

  Jean nodded to that.

  Mary Jo sat there in silence as the other two kept eating. This was really an amazing scam this guy was pulling. Amazing and about to work unless they found and really put the guy into the ground first.

  In a public fashion.

  And if three order assassins couldn’t do that, working together, no one could.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  JEAN CONTINUED TO work on her salad as Susan filled in some details about the target. It seemed Kelsall had loved the finer things in life, had no real family to speak of, and at least before his death had never been married.

  In fact, other than a degree from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and his friendship with another student, Carson White, Kelsall seemed to have a very unremarkable life until he and White decided to start their own religion.

  “I got pictures and backgrounds on both of them,” Susan said. “And every bit of data I have dug up on them and their church I’ll be glad to show you, including the film taken of Kelsall making his jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “Long distance images I’ll bet,” Mary Jo said.

  Susan shook her head, which stopped Jean in mid-bite.

  “Close-up from three different angles on the bridge from three different stationary cameras of him going off the side,” Jean said. “Then two long-shots of his fall and hitting the water, one from each bank.”

  “Got any idea how they faked that?” Mary Jo asked.

  Susan nodded. “Had Kelsall stand on the edge of the bridge just over a net strung from the side of the bridge. He jumped into the net. Then they cleared the net and filmed a dummy going over from a distance, weighted so it looked like a human body falling. It would be heavy enough to sink and quickly dissolve in the water.”

  “Real enough that no one would question it,” Jean said. She was amazed at the skill that had taken to plan.

  “What they are not questioning,” Mary Jo said, “is the twenty-five years. If he had come back in six months, the questions would be everywhere. The brilliance of this con is the twenty-five years.”

  “Exactly,” Susan said.

  Jean nodded to that. Then asked, “So who hired you?”

  “A parent of one of the kids trapped in the deeper cult of this fake church,” Susan said. “If we can expose this as a fake, my client thinks his kid will be able to walk away.”

  “More than likely right on that score,” Jean said, nodding.

  “Even after six years?” Mary Jo asked.

  Susan nodded. “My client is afraid that if this guy actually does come back and make it look like he’s coming back from the dead, my client’s kid will kill herself to try to gain the same immortality.”

  “So where have you looked for Kelsall?” Jean asked.

  “Everywhere,” Susan said, the tiredness and hopelessness clear in her voice. “I figured that following the money would be the way to track Kelsall, since he liked to live high, but no money leaves the church. It all just pours in.”

  “And where does White live?” Mary Jo asked.

  “In the church compound,” Susan said. “He lives the life of a king, of that there is no doubt, but I can’t find any way that money is being filtered to anyone outside the church. And I’ve done some deep tracking.”

  “You mind if we double-check you on that?” Mary Jo asked.

  “Please,” Susan said.

  They all finished their lunch with a few more basic questions, then Susan left for her apartment to get what she had dug up in six years of searching while Mary Jo and Jean strolled leisurely back toward their condo.

  Jean loved walking with Mary Jo like this. Their strides matched and neither of them minded walking in silence.

  This entire thing sure felt odd to Jean. Something was very wrong that Susan, clearly a smart and well-trained guild assassin, couldn’t find Kelsall. So finally, about a block from their condo, Jean broke the silence.

  “You think Kelsall is alive? Or is this Carson White and his people just milking what they can for as long as they can?”

  Mary Jo sort of shrugged. “I’m betting he’s still alive and hiding. We just have to figure out where and then figure out how to get him into the open and kill him.”

  “He’s slipped somewhere, right. That is what you are saying?”

  Jean smiled at the woman she loved.

  Mary Jo smiled back. “Twenty-four years in hiding. He’s slipped. We just have to figure out where.”

  Jean took Mary Jo’s hand. “Kind of fun to be back on the chase, isn’t it?”

  “Tremendous fun,” Mary Jo said. “And challenging at the same time.”

  “The best of both worlds,” Jean said.

  Mary Jo squeezed her hand in agreement.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  MARY JO COULDN’T believe how completely thorough Susan had been in her search for Jack Kelsall. Over a week-long period, with the three women eating together and Susan staying with them in the condo, Mary Jo and Jean double- and triple-checked everything Susan had done.

  And tried a few other dead-end ideas as well.

  They had set up the condo’s large dining area with three work stations, all protected from any kind of tracing. And they had covered one wall with a giant war board of print-outs and a twenty-four-year timeline.

  Finally, after yet another dead-end idea panned out, Susan sighed and said simply, “I’m starting to believe that Jack Kelsall really died twenty-four years ago.”

  Mary Jo turned from her work station and stared at the black-haired assassin, an idea slowly starting to form.

  “Someone died that day,” Mary Jo said. “I’ve studied that film now a bunch of times and I believe that was a real body dropping off that bridge.”

  Jean looked at her and Susan stopped and just stared.

  Mary Jo stood and went to the files that Susan had
accumulated over six years of research that were scattered on the top of the dining room table. She pulled out a college picture of Jack Kelsall standing next to Carson White.

  Both boys, not more than nineteen at the time of the picture, were the same height. Both were thin and from their arms draped over each other’s shoulders, clearly best friends. Jack had dark hair, Carson’s was blond. Jack had a smaller nose. Carson’s nose was larger and wider.

  Mary Jo looked closer at the picture. She could see that Carson’s eyes were blue, Jack’s eyes were dark brown.

  Jack wore his dark hair long, Carson wore his blond hair cropped short.

  The picture was taken about four years before the bridge.

  “What are you thinking,” Jean asked.

  Mary Jo didn’t say anything. She honestly wasn’t sure what she was thinking. But without Kelsall still alive somewhere, this entire religion was going to go down in flames in exactly one year.

  “You got a recent picture of Carson?”

  Susan flipped open her iPad and a moment later placed it on the dining table so Mary Jo and Jean could both see the blond-haired man. He was still trim and clearly wore his money well. Same wide nose, same blue eyes.

  “He doesn’t go out in public very often,” Susan said. “Pictures of him are rare. Other than the church, he has no family, never married, stays to himself mostly in his mansion on the church grounds.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend?” Mary Jo asked, hoping “or a series of them?”

  “Boyfriends,” Susan said.

  Mary Jo liked the sound of that.

  “Could that be Jack Kelsall, hiding in plain sight?” Jean asked, staring at the picture.

  “As crazy an idea as any,” Mary Jo said. “It would explain no money leaving the church.”

  “So what happened to Carson White?” Susan asked.

  “Carson went off the bridge instead of Kelsall,” Mary Jo said. “We need to search the morgue records from the time in the entire area for anyone pulled out of the ocean that would match Carson’s basic description.”

  Without another word, all three of them turned back to their own work stations.

  Mary Jo was excited. She always knew when she was on the right track with something and this was the right track.

  “I’ll take the east bay area,” Jean said.

  “I have the San Francisco records,” Susan said.

  “I’ll take the north bay towns and the coastal towns where a body might wash up if the tide was going out,” Mary Jo said.

  It was Susan who found Carson, at least the dead Carson, forty minutes later.

  “Got him,” Susan said.

  Mary Jo could feel a slight jolt of excitement as she and Jean both stood and moved over behind Susan.

  “John Doe,” Susan read. “Six-foot tall, blond hair, blue eyes, fished out of the bay two days after the jump. Never identified.”

  Then she glanced around at Mary Jo and Jean, a slight smile on her face. “Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Kelsall smashed in his friend’s skull and dumped his body off the bridge.”

  “Clothes?” Mary Jo asked.

  Susan went back to the report, then smiled again, this time even wider. “Same clothes that Kelsall was wearing when he was filmed jumping.”

  “We found the target,” Mary Jo said, smiling. “Hiding as they often do, right in plain sight.”

  “So now we get to the fun part,” Jean said, smiling back at Mary Jo. “How do we expose him and then kill him?”

  “Oh, this is going to be such fun,” Susan said, clapping her hands together. “Tonight, dinner is on me.”

  And as far as Mary Jo was concerned, it was a great dinner at one of the neighborhood’s nicest steak houses.

  And that evening wasn’t bad either, back in the hot tub, naked and sipping screwdrivers with two beautiful women.

  A memorable night of celebration all around.

  PART EIGHT

  Setting the Plan

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  JEAN COULD NOT believe the security that the Ever Life Church had built up around their main compound. She and Mary Jo and Susan had taken the next week digging out every detail they could find about the place, including original plans for most of the buildings.

  The sixty-acre compound draped over a ridgeline on the edge of the Sierra Mountains, with views out over Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area in the far distance.

  One major two-lane paved road led into the compound, winding up a valley from below. High stone walls and electrical fences on top of the walls surrounded the entire complex.

  Jean had seen less security at major prisons.

  And clearly there was a vast amount of money in the compound. Over forty homes, a number of what looked like condo complexes, dozens of large halls and other areas, not counting the large mansion that sat on the highest point of the ridge.

  The place was a marvel of architecture and art.

  The security systems were combinations of electronic, guards on foot, dogs, and a no-mans-land along the edge of the wall on the inside with electrical fences and from what Jean could tell land mines.

  Drones patrolled the area outside the walls like a vast swarm of bugs.

  The entire compound also worked off the grid, with its own electrical generation plant and wells and sewage facility.

  And there didn’t seem to be any Internet connection going into that compound. Or at least none that they could find.

  After three days of all of them focusing on finding any flaw in the security of the compound, they met at the small kitchen table in the condo. Mary Jo had made a wonderful chicken meal the night before and had saved some of the chicken for sandwiches on fresh bread.

  For Jean, the handmade mustard Mary Jo had done made the sandwich heavenly.

  “What would make these people get so paranoid as to build this compound?” Susan asked.

  “Not a popular religion,” Mary Jo said.

  “It’s a cult and cults have their detractors,” Jean said, “like sane parents who would go to all ends to rescue their children.”

  “So anyone have any idea how we get in there?” Susan asked.

  “We don’t need to go in,” Jean said, smiling.

  Mary Jo laughed. “I love it when she gets that twinkle in her eye and that devious smile.”

  “So how?” Susan asked, smiling as well.

  “We take him out from a distance. All three of us.”

  “Sniper?” Mary Jo asked.

  Jean nodded. “From three sides. But we need to flush him out of his mansion and into the open in his compound first. And to do that, we use his own defenses against him.”

  Mary Jo laughed. “I have no idea what you are thinking, but I sure like the sounds of it.”

  “How about we go down to Steven’s Deli for some cheesecake dessert,” Jean said as she pushed her empty plate forward, imaging how wonderful that cheesecake would taste right about now. “And I’ll explain the bones of my plan there.”

  “Perfect,” Mary Jo said.

  “I sure like how you two think,” Susan said, laughing. “Especially over dessert.”

  At the deli, Mary Jo set up the sound-blocking device so they couldn’t be overheard or recorded in any fashion, then Jean laid out her plan.

  “Step one is hijacking the drones,” Jean said as she cut into her thick piece of cheesecake with a fork.

  “Override their frequencies,” Mary Jo said, nodding.

  “No need to override them,” Jean said after letting the first bite of the cheesecake melt in her mouth for a moment. “Just short them out or block them completely. Basically just shut them off.”

  “They would fall out of the sky like dead birds,” Susan said, nodding.

  “But that’s not going to flush him out of his mansion,” Mary Jo said. “That might put him deeper in hiding, actually. Which reminds me, we need to triple check for hidden escape tunnels as well.”

  “Alread
y checked for them twice,” Susan said.

  “I did the same,” Jean said after another bite of the wonderful cheesecake. It was so good, it made her mouth water between bites. “But I’m betting they are there and we haven’t spotted them yet.”

  “So you got an idea on how to get him out into the open?” Mary Jo asked, smiling at Jean.

  Jean loved that smile, loved everything about Mary Jo, actually.

  “I got a hunch that our target will come out of his house if Jack Kelsall walks up to the gate.”

  Both Mary Jo and Susan stared at her for a moment, then started laughing.

  Jean had a hunch that meant they both really liked her plan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MARY JO LOVED Jean’s idea for flushing Jack Kelsall out of his mansion. Having Jack return from the dead months early would be something, of that there would be no doubt.

  But there were problems with the plan. It meant they needed someone to help them, an actor who needed a lot of money and who looked similar enough to Jack Kelsall to play the part. Granted, they were in New York with actors living in every third apartment, but they didn’t dare expose themselves to the actor, so he would have to be hired in a way that would never lead back to them.

  And in a way that could never be traced in any fashion to the execution they were going to commit while he was at the gate.

  The second problem was the time. They had less than ten months now. Mary Jo seldom worked under a ticking clock, so this bothered her. Both Jean and Susan said the same thing. Getting in a hurry made for sloppy work and none of them wanted that.

  So they split up the tasks that were needed.

  Susan would work on how to kill all the drones. With the drones down, that would allow all three of them to move into positions on three sides of the compound. Or at least get away after the shots.

  They had located three ideal sniper positions. If the real Jack Kelsall stepped out of his mansion and into that compound open area in front of the main gate at any place, they could drop him.