Smith's Monthly #31

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  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.”

  “Already 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.

  One nice aspect of their plan was that Kelsall, or as they were starting to call him, the fake-Carson, had a morni
ng exercise routine. He came out of his house every morning without prompting.

  Jean’s task was to continue to search for any secondary ways in and out of that compound. Once they dropped the drones from the sky, they needed to make sure that the real Kelsall didn’t escape before their fake Kelsall arrived at the gate.

  They still had to figure out the timing of everything, but they would do that once they reached California.

  Mary Jo took on the task of setting up the dummy corporations and overseas accounts that would end up untraceable so that money and instructions could be sent to the actor.

  And she was also charged with finding an actor close enough to Kelsall’s height and weight and age when Kelsall faked his death and killed his friend.

  Three days later Susan had finished her work. The drones would not be a problem.

  Jean had found three separate underground tunnels leaving the compound, but all three opened into the California trees close to the sniper positions they had already picked out. So that problem was easily solved as well.

  Mary Jo had her task done as well as far as setting up the accounts for all three of them to transfer money into and to hire the actor.

  Then she and Susan both went to work on the church finances, trying to figure out ways to hack into their accounts. All three of them had laughingly agreed that if they could take the fake church’s money as well as kill their fake leader, it would be a win for everyone involved.

  It turned out that draining the church accounts would be a lot easier than any of them had expected. It seemed that over the years the fake Carson had gotten very lax at security in that area.

  So finally, Mary Jo felt like they were ready, but for some reason still felt something was wrong.

  And that night over dinner, when she said everything felt ready, both Jean and Susan nodded, but not with any enthusiasm.

  “I think this is a great plan,” Susan said. “And I actually think it will work. But…”

  “My problem exactly,” Jean said. “But…It feels like we are forgetting one major detail.”

  Mary Jo looked at Jean, the woman she loved more than anything, and just started laughing.

  “It seems,” Mary Jo said, “that we have come up with a great plan and there is something about it that bothers all of us. We need to figure out what that is because as old as the three of us are and as long as we have all been doing this, we would be damned foolish to ignore that feeling now.”

  Jean nodded and then laughed. “First time I’ve been called old in a very long time.”

  Mary Jo just smiled at her.

  Susan laughed. “Let’s not start comparing ages and figure out what piece of this puzzle is missing.”

  “We take their money,” Jean said, holding up one finger. “That will put the church out of business.”

  “We kill the fake Caron, aka Kelsall,” Susan said, holding up two fingers.

  “Nothing can be traced to any of us,” Jean said, adding a third finger to the tally.”

  But as they talked Mary Jo knew at once where the problem was.

  “We aren’t killing Kelsall,” Mary Jo said. “As far as the world is concerned, we are killing Carson White, the head of the church. The followers would still all believe that Kelsall will still be returning.”

  Silence filled the kitchen. Only the faint noise of the city around them painted the background.

  Mary Jo knew at once that she had found what had been bothering all of them. Sure, they were killing Kelsall, but only they knew it wasn’t Carson White.

  And if they killed him like they had planned without anyone knowing the truth, it would set up Carson to be a martyr instead of a scam artist.

  None of them wanted that to happen.

  They wanted their targets dead.

  Nothing more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  JEAN LIKED HOW all three of them were working together. They once again had divided up the tasks they needed to do to round out their plan and expose Kelsall.

  Mary Jo finished hiring the actor and got him his instructions and where to pick up his clothes and where to stay when he arrived in San Francisco and so on. And got him his first money.

  Mary Jo said he was a nice guy, and it was too bad he was going to have to die for the part.

  “Not getting soft on me, are you?” Jean had asked, smiling at Mary Jo. Jean knew for a fact Mary Jo didn’t have a soft spot in her body when it came to killing to get to a target. And Jean didn’t either.

  “Always hate killing nice people to get to bad people,” Mary Jo said, shrugging. “But the nature of the job.”

  “I hate it as well,” Jean said. Then she had kissed Mary Jo and they had gone back to work.

  Susan was to document every detail about the John Doe body found two days after Kelsall supposedly jumped.

  She presented it to Mary Jo and Jean that evening after dinner.

  Jean was amazed. Luckily, the coroner had kept the body for two years on ice, as was required by law. And every six months more tests were run on the body, fingerprints taken, and so on, to compare them against missing person’s cases around the country.

  So there was a major trail of reports and files for that body. Susan seemed to have found them all.

  And when the body was finally cremated two years after being found, everything was again well documented, including DNA samples, and the clothing was stored.

  Jean was happy to see the DNA samples had been taken, even though DNA was still in its early years back then. That might be the key to discrediting Carson White.

  They all agreed that it was worth the effort to get a DNA match, so the next morning Susan left, headed to Washington State. She was going to figure out a way over the next few days to get DNA samples from Carson’s still-living mother. Then she would meet Mary Jo and Jean in Sacramento, California.

  Mary Jo left also in the morning, heading for California to get them set up out there in a house they had rented, leaving Jean alone in the large condo.

  And it shocked Jean how much she instantly didn’t like the feeling of being alone. Even after centuries of being alone, living with Mary Jo for a year had changed her.

  She didn’t want to admit that, but it had.

  And she liked the change.

  So instead of focusing on the feeling of being alone, she focused on what she needed to do.

  She needed to find some explosives in California. She had some escape tunnels to blow up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MARY JO HAD never been really fond of California, especially the mass of humanity California had become in the last one hundred years. She had fond memories of small towns back over a hundred years ago, but now the entire state felt hot and crowded and angry. Deeply angry.

  Mary Jo had a hunch that if she had to spend most of her time on those freeways and stale air, she would be angry as well. There were a lot more people in New York City, but it felt different.

  It took Mary Jo a full day to secure the home she had rented in a nice suburban area of Sacramento. No one would be able to get close to the home without her knowing it, and no one would be able to listen in to any conversation that went on in the home as well.

  The place was a standard California ranch-style three-bedroom, with a formal living room, huge modern kitchen that felt cold, and a pool out back with a hot tub attached. The lawn, as it was laughingly called, was a mixture of rock and decorative stone with brush and a few palm trees. Nothing to water, that was for sure. There were more green plants in their condo in New York City than this home had around it.

  And it was so warm outside, and the air so full of smog, Mary Jo doubted that she and Jean would even use the hot tub.

  They didn’t plan on being here for more than a month, but the landlord didn’t know that. Mary Jo had paid a hefty deposit and first and last on a year’s lease. The name she had used could never actually be traced to her when the property owner and management company came looking long after
they were gone.

  Susan had rented a condo in a nice area near the river, and then Jean had rented another house within a mile of the church compound, but none of them would sleep there, and when in the house would always wear gloves with fake fingerprints. They would use that place for staging and nothing more.

  They planned on blowing up the house when finished to erase most evidence of their presence there, but better to be safe than sorry with leaving traces and fingerprints.

  Mary Jo had rented a tan Jeep SUV for the month. The entire time on the plane and renting the car and talking with the real estate agent, Mary Jo had worn a light-blonde wig, a fake nose that was wider and flatter, and green contacts under large-rimmed glasses.

  Jean would be in disguise as well any time the two of them moved outside in any fashion. Their plan was that none of them would ever be seen by anyone. But just in case that part of the plan went wrong, they took no chances.

  Mary Jo had unpacked her few things in the master bedroom closet, laughing at how little room her clothes took up in the huge space. Then she wandered back into the massive kitchen and just stood there, looking around.

  Damn, she wanted to just call Jean, but she didn’t. They needed to stick to plan, but at the moment Mary Jo didn’t much like the plan of her being alone in this tomb of a house without Jean.

  Finally, she clicked on the alarms she had set and headed into the massive three-car garage where her rental Jeep sat looking sort of small and alone.

  “We need some dinner and to stock the fridge,” Mary Jo said out loud. Her voice echoed and she laughed. “And maybe even buy a few plates as well.”

  She had work to do over the next three days until Jean arrived. That was what she would focus on.

  For thousands of years, her work had been enough for her. It would be enough for three days as well.

  But that didn’t stop her wanting Jean beside her in the car. Not one bit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE