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.