One of the best things about living in Los Angeles was the weather. Temperate all year, a little cold in the winter, a little hot in the summer, but mostly nice every day.
Except this week, I thought as I shut off my car and walked into First Contact to meet Will. The first week of August and LA topped one hundred degrees for the first time in five years and I was miserable. My tiny house didn’t have air-conditioning but it had never bothered me before. The weather guy on the alternative rock station I listen to said it would be back in the nineties tomorrow and a reasonable eight-five this weekend when the Santa Ana winds kicked in. I couldn’t wait. Nine at night and the air was still stifling.
I stopped just inside the door. Will had asked me to come over and meet someone who was investigating possible fraud in government grants for the homeless, but there were four people in the room. As soon as I entered, Will got up and locked the door behind me.
“Thank you for agreeing to come in tonight, Violet.”
I didn’t budge. Three people were staring at me from the conference table. I felt overwhelmed. Will had said someone not three someones.
A man came in from the back dressed in layered shirts and khaki pants. I immediately recognized him. He was the homeless veteran who had been hanging around with Jake and Dev. He’d been there the day my mother overdosed and Will saved her life; a week later he told me that he’d look for Jane and would let me know when he found her.
He hadn’t found her yet, but I knew he was looking. The day I met him I knew he wasn’t like so many of the other homeless people we worked with.
No one in the room paid him any attention. He helped himself to water from the refrigerator in the corner.
“Will,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I swallowed, tried to stop shaking. Groups of people made me nervous. “You should have prepared me.” I do much better when I can anticipate a crowd. I did fine in regular staff meetings because I knew when they were, what was expected, and I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “But we need your help.”
Surprisingly, that simple statement calmed me. “Okay,” I said, trying for a strong voice, but it sounded like a squeak.
Will introduced me to the people at the table. They all seemed to know me, though other than the homeless veteran who I didn’t think was homeless, I had never met any of them.
I recognized the name Craig Dyson, a deputy district attorney. I’d been feeding information to Mr. Dyson through Will, specifically about the building owned by David Chen. He was in his early fifties with kind eyes. He wore a suit, the jacket hanging over the back of his chair. Will had a lot of respect for the man, and by extension, so did I.
The other two people were in law enforcement—Sergeant Lex Popovich and Lieutenant Elena Gomez. Her sharp eyes filled with both suspicion and concern. About me? About the meeting?
My eyes drifted to the man in the corner who was eating an apple.
“Colton, sit,” Will said, “you’re making Violet nervous.”
Colton smiled. A nice smile, revealing his perfect teeth—teeth that proved he was neither a drug addict nor chronically homeless.
“This is Detective Colton Fox,” Will said. “He’s a good friend of mine, and everyone thinks he’s dead.”
That was the last thing I expected to hear. I was still processing the information when Craig spoke up.
“Violet, I want to personally thank you for providing the information I need to investigate the city’s grant process. As you know, the system is rife with waste, but it’s very difficult to prove fraud. Nothing they are doing is illegal—on the surface.”
The way he said it made me believe he had found something illegal—something that he could use to expose corruption.
“There’s no accountability,” Will said. “Fraud and waste are built into the system, which is a scam in and of itself.”
Craig smiled, appeasing Will. “You’re right, but it’s legal. And that’s where I’m having the problem in opening up a grand jury investigation. Something may be unethical, it may even be criminal, but if it’s not against a law that I have the authority to prosecute, my hands are tied.”
Will mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then said, “I’m sorry. I interrupted.”
“You’re passionate about this issue, Will, and I agree with you. But we need to use what we have. Ms. Halliday, because of the information you provided about the crash of the city hall computer network, the evidence of deleted files and Detective Fox’s own investigation, we almost have enough to go to the grand jury. But because it’s a difficult case to prove, we need more time to put it together. And more facts.”
“I’m sorry if this sounds clueless,” I said, “but what investigation are you talking about? The police have an investigation? Into who?”
If people thought that Colton was dead, how could he investigate anything?
Craig said, “Will first reached out to me months ago about the housing project owned by David Chen, who was arrested for human trafficking and murder.”
I remembered. “A podcast I listen to talked about it a lot. No one else was giving it much airtime.” I didn’t know how the Chen building connected to anything, other than it seemed odd to me at the time. But Craig had questions about it, so I answered them best I could. Unfortunately, most records regarding the city funding going to the building had been destroyed in the computer crash.
“I am the DDA assigned to prosecute Chen. When Will mentioned that Chen had housed his workers next to the warehouse, I looked into the building and there was paperwork missing. It appeared that the address was listed as a homeless shelter in one database, but I couldn’t confirm the information and requested some documents from city hall. I was told the files had been lost in the computer crash and staff would research. I didn’t think there was anything nefarious about this, just expected the information later rather than sooner. Shortly after this, Detective Fox was shot in the line of duty.”
Elena Gomez spoke up. “We are still investigating the shooting—Colton’s cover was blown by the media. We don’t know who was responsible—the people he was investigating or someone else. While he was in the hospital, we devised this undercover plan, and put out that he didn’t survive his injuries. We felt that going in deep cover would both protect him because the shooter was still at large, and give us an advantage in this investigation. Fox could go places as a homeless veteran and not arouse suspicion.”
“What specifically are you investigating?” I asked. “You just said that how the city funds homeless services isn’t illegal.”
“The process may not be illegal,” Craig said, “but how the grants are approved may be. There are very specific regulations about reporting income, the bidding process and more. If friends and family of those in charge of allocating funds have an unfair advantage, I may be able to open a larger investigation into the grant program and demand a full audit.”
“Too much of this became political,” Elena said. “Everyone arguing about the cause—drugs, mental illness, lack of housing, any number of things. The money kept coming. State money, city money, bond money, federal grants. No one seemed to be accountable for any of the services they were supposed to provide, passing the buck to this agency or that agency. But, because of the grant Chen was awarded, we realized there was a potential crime—how did a criminal who trafficked in humans and ran a sweatshop profit off a housing grant?”
“But more important, why can we find no evidence of the grant?” Dyson said.
“Because it was destroyed in the computer crash,” I said, finally seeing what I had long suspected: someone in city hall had intentionally erased data that could get them in trouble.
“That’s where I came in,” Colton said with a smile and finally sat down at the table with us. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he was alluring with intense green eyes and a strong jaw. He looked like someone who could both take care of himself and everyone else. “Will identified several nonprofits that seemed to receive a lot of money—millions of dollars—but had nothing to show for it. He gave me a list of their properties, what they claimed to do, who they claimed to help. I went to every location. Slept outside most of them for a few days, a week or so. Documented comings and goings. Took pictures. Tried to get into shelters. Talked to people inside. I was one of them. When you’re homeless, you trust very few people—but you tend to trust your own kind.”
“The primary problem,” Craig said, “is that while Colton has been able to document that there is little sign of the money these nonprofits received, that isn’t a crime.”
That I knew. Will had told me over and over again and I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that truth.
Craig continued. “What is a crime is if the process is tainted. According to what you uncovered about the computer crash, it’s only the housing grants that were lost, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We need those original proposals and approvals. You told Will that you might be able to recover the data, but that it could get you fired.”
I cleared my throat self-consciously. I didn’t know why I was nervous. These were Will’s friends and colleagues, and they wanted the same thing I wanted—to fix the problem. Better, they had the power to do it. “I’m not afraid of being fired.”
“That’s honorable, but I might be able to give you some protection. Whistleblower laws have become convoluted over the years, but in general, when a government employee publicly reveals potentially criminal information about the health, safety or finances of a government agency, they cannot be fired. You may be removed from your current capacity, but you would receive a paycheck and be reassigned to another division. If you bring the information to me, as an officer of the court, I would be duty bound to look into the allegations.
“The concern I have is how you obtain the information. You cannot break any laws in gathering the data. But the information I want is public record. It’s just been—possibly—destroyed. If you can recover it, I want to see it. That and all grants awarded since the crash. The who, what, where, when and why. How they are decided and who makes the decision. Who signs off. Is there a bidding process and has it been violated or suspended? If so, how? Is this something you would be comfortable doing?”
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “I have been working on this for months.” I glanced at Will, hesitant now because I didn’t know how much he had told these people. Three of them were cops, after all.
Will said, “I’ve told them everything. We’ve done nothing wrong, Violet.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Craig asked.
“I didn’t expect it to take this long,” I admitted. “Someone intentionally went in and covered up the deleted files. I don’t know who did it, but I know when it happened. February 18.”
Why did everyone look like they knew that already?
“What’s wrong? Is that important?” I asked.
“That’s the day of the Chen raid.”
I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Elena said, “Chen knew about the raid shortly before my team went in to arrest him. We had enough evidence to take Chen down and protect the women he’d been exploiting. That happened the same day that someone else—presumably someone in city hall—” she looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded “—deleted files then caused a computer crash.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “They had to delete the files from the backup—either before the backup was installed, which was two days later, or after the backup—which means the files are still in an older backup, if I can gain access to it. Backup files are stored off-site at a data warehouse—data goes one way, unless we need a specific backup.” I didn’t go into more details. I’d found that nontechnical people didn’t pay attention and ended up confused.
“But you believe someone did it on purpose,” Craig said.
“Yes, I know it was intentional.”
“Can you find out who did it?”
“I think so.” Was I being too optimistic? I wanted to laugh—no one had ever accused me of being an optimist.
“Okay,” Craig said. “That’s what we want. Who did it, what they deleted and those deleted files if you can retrieve them.” He looked at both Elena and Lex and they nodded their agreement.
I was getting excited. If these people—people in a position of power—believed they could do something to end the corruption, it gave me hope I never had before.
“I can do that.” I sounded confident. And then, at that moment, I realized I was confident. This was my area of expertise.
“I’d like you to report directly to me as you gather information,” Craig said. “I have a staff investigator who will be following up on what you learn. So if you get just a name or an entity, pass it along, and we’ll do the background. Do not discuss this with anyone other than us in this room, and it would be best if you didn’t even do that—you never know who might be listening.”
“Violet is extremely trustworthy,” Will said. “I would never have brought her this far if she weren’t.”
I felt my face heat up. Was I blushing? I hoped not.
After Craig and the two cops left, Colton came up to me. “You did good. Relax.”
“You’re going back on the street, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “I’m heading out to Northridge. One of the entities you flagged is out there.”
“Sunflower Group Homes.”
“Yep. They have several facilities, some just for women, some for vets like me. I had to get fake documents, but I know the lingo.”
“What you’re doing—I couldn’t do it. Living on the street is hard.”
He shrugged. “What you’re doing, I couldn’t do it. Computers give me a headache.”
I laughed.
Then, Colton said quietly, “I haven’t found your mom yet, Vi.”
I tensed. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to. You’re worried about her, and you should know how she’s doing. As soon as I’m done in Northridge, I’ll keep looking. A week ago, I met a woman—Army, serious case of PTSD, got hooked on oxy after shrapnel took out a chunk in her leg. I don’t know how reliable she is, but she recognized your mom’s picture. The one you gave me?”
I nodded, remembering. It was the most recent picture I had of her, one we had to get for her benefits.
“My friend thinks she went to Venice Beach. Something your mom talked about when she wasn’t high.”
My mom used to love the beach. When I was little and my dad had to work weekends, Mom would take me to the beach. Usually Santa Monica. We’d walk, make sandcastles, get snow cones, and sometimes we rented bikes. Before she started doing drugs. Before everything fell apart.
“So I’ll check there next,” Colton was saying, “but if you want to go out yourself, Will says there’s a cleanup in a couple weeks.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He shrugged, gave me a half smile. “Anytime. Will knows how to reach me, if you need anything. Be careful over there at city hall. They might be a bunch of loafer-wearing elitist politicians, but some of them are dangerous.”