Staring at the woman in the dim light, I reached for the gun Colton had given me, but immediately realized it wasn’t there.
Kara Quinn.
I had heard that name several times over the last few months, knew she was a cop, knew she was the one who had arrested David Chen and then had to leave because of a threat on her life.
But most recently, I heard her name from Colton on Monday night when he found me here.
“Kara still thinks I’m dead.”
Then he’d said that Kara was a dog with a bone, that she would be looking for me.
“I can’t stay. Now that Craig is dead, I have to go deep until I have everything.”
“What if she finds me?”
“You can trust her. Tell her everything. She’ll be mad at me, but she’ll understand.”
Trust was hard for me, and it hurt to learn that Craig Dyson was dead. He had listened to me, even when I got emotional and upset. He gave me directions on what to look for. Without him, I would never have found out that Theodore Duncan, the mayor’s chief of staff, was profiting on the backs of people like my mom. That he had made a deal with David Chen and helped that evil man exploit all those Chinese women.
Colton didn’t trust people, either, but he said he trusted Kara Quinn. I needed to try.
“Let’s talk,” Kara said.
I got out of bed. As I slipped on my flip-flops, I realized I towered over Kara. But I looked at her and knew she’d be able to hurt me if she wanted. She motioned for me to lead the way to the kitchen. I did. I sat at the table, in the dark, because I didn’t know what to do.
Kara made coffee. She knew where everything was. She waited, watched the pot brew, as if she didn’t need to talk. I didn’t need to talk, either. I was scared and defeated and just wanted this to be over.
But I didn’t think it would ever be over. Even if the police arrested all the people involved in killing Craig Dyson, the system would still be broken. Craig was the only one who could fix it, and he was gone.
Kara put a mug of black coffee in front of me. She pulled out her phone and sent someone a text message; my heart skipped a beat. Could I trust this cop? I didn’t know. But...she’d been Colton’s partner, and I trusted him.
She said, “From the beginning.”
I told her everything. About how I became suspicious after the computer crash at city hall. How I’d suspected that the crash was deliberate, and then Will introduced me to Craig. How I figured out that someone had overwritten files from the backups and they all related to homeless housing grants. I learned that David Chen had received government money to house the women he’d trafficked, and Craig wanted to know how the system worked, how he got away with it, and so I got him the files and records he needed. We uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of waste, possible fraud. I explained how there were nonprofits within nonprofits and how whoever was in charge profited off the system.
“None of it is illegal,” I told her. “But Craig started looking at who worked at each nonprofit. He brought in his investigator, Mr. Sharp, to do deep background checks on everyone. And then I found it.”
“Whatever you were bringing to Craig at the courthouse on Monday afternoon.”
“Yes. I found the original files. I can’t get to them, but I know where they are and knew that Craig would be able to get a warrant. The virus deletes specific files when the backup gets loaded into the city hall system, but the files are still there in the backups. The city by law has to keep them for a year. So we only have until the middle of February before they’re gone forever.”
“Do you know who is responsible? Who erased the files to begin with?”
“I know whose computer it was done from—the mayor’s chief of staff. And that makes sense because Theodore Duncan had created the commission to review all grants when the mayor won his first election. Duncan put his brother-in-law in charge. At least, that’s what Craig and I figured out. After that, things started clicking into place.”
“I don’t understand what clicked into place,” Kara said.
“The city spends nearly a billion dollars every year on the homeless. But nothing gets done. It costs the city over eight hundred thousand dollars to house one person. The money that’s supposed to go into transitional or permanent housing? By the time it gets to the end point, it’s a fraction of what the grant was originally for. The city doesn’t actually do the work—they have the money, and then private contractors and nonprofits apply for grants to do different things.”
“Don’t they have to like, I don’t know, give a report? Show what they’ve done with all this money?”
“No. Built into the grant itself is complete autonomy. There are no checks and balances. That’s why the system is so lucrative to people who know how to exploit it.”
I paused, needed this woman to understand even though it was complex. I said, “For example, Angel Homes applied for a twenty-million-dollar grant to provide temporary shelter for women and children escaping abuse. They didn’t provide one bed. Instead, the director made a salary of $650,000, and the treasurer made a salary of $250,000. The director is the sister of LA County Supervisor Lydia Zarian.
“Angel Homes also gave a ten-million-dollar grant to Sunflower Homes, a nonprofit that runs group homes for homeless women and children. Each group home has a huge overhead—rent, supplies, staff. The houses are owned by an LLC that is controlled by the brother of Supervisor Lydia Zarian. Not only the houses, but the transportation, the food service, everything. All told, each homeless family that is served through that program costs between two hundred and five hundred thousand dollars a month.”
Kara frowned. “Wait—that’s like what? Fifty families? That has to be illegal.”
“It’s not illegal, but as Will said, if it got out, it could destroy Zarian’s career, and public watchdogs might have sway to effect change in the process. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to explain to the average person because like you, they’d look at the dollars and say, no, this can’t be happening, someone would have noticed. Will has gone through the public filings for each entity, and Colton investigated every property owned by the group home—in the last year, sixteen women with between one and three children have been housed in Sunflower Homes, and they are already approved for even more money next year. This isn’t one house for one family, these are group homes, so multiple families in one house.
“This is just one of many scams. There are multiple nonprofits working multiple angles, and half of them are controlled by the Zarian family—Lydia’s name isn’t on anything, but her brother, her sister, her daughter even! And we’ve been wondering how they’ve been getting away with this, while hiding the supervisor’s involvement, and Colton recently learned that Duncan’s brother-in-law is the son of a federal agent and on the housing commission.”
“What’s the brother-in-law’s name?”
“Jonathan Avila. Do you know him?”
Kara shook her head. “You have all this documented?”
I nodded. “And more. Most of it is shuffling money—moving a couple million dollars into one nonprofit, taking a salary, then moving it into another nonprofit where a relative or friend takes a salary, then moving it to another, and so on. But Craig thought he caught them at something that he could take to the grand jury. That’s why I was bringing over the documentation where I prove how the computer system was crashed and identify the specific files that were deleted.”
“Do you have the files?”
“No, I have the file names, size and when they were created, but not the actual records. As I said, we have to get the backup drive—the physical drive from the data center.”
“Where is your documentation?”
“Colton took everything for safekeeping.” My voice cracked. “I’m so sorry about Craig. I really liked him. He was the only person other than Will who listened to me. Listened to my theories. He believed me about the computers. I tried to tell my boss months ago, but he said it was a server crash and we didn’t lose anything, only time.”
“Do you think your boss is involved?”
“No, I’ve never suspected my boss. Though I think Craig looked into him to make sure he wasn’t living above his means.”
“What is Colton doing? Where is he working?”
“Everywhere. He was in Venice Beach last month, the Valley after that, Echo Park Lake recently, but he moved—I don’t know where, but he’s been taking photos of people, buildings, contractors, that sort of thing.”
“As what? A journalist?”
“As a homeless vet.”
“He’s been living on the streets for how long?”
“Um, about five months?”
Kara frowned.
“He told me to trust you,” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“What more do you want to know? I don’t think I forgot anything, but maybe. Ask me anything. I want this to be over.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Her head jerked up. “You knew? Well, shit.”
Kara got up and paced. I didn’t say anything. Then she turned to me and said, “Why did you run?”
I started to shake and grabbed the coffee mug to steady myself. “David Chen was shot in front of me. I know who killed him. Steven Colangelo. He’s an LAPD officer. I’ve met him a couple times—he patrols downtown.”
“You’re telling me that a cop killed Chen.” Her voice and eyes were flat. Did she not believe me?
“I didn’t recognize him at first—he had a face mask on, sunglasses—but then I saw his hands and I knew... He has this watch. It looks expensive, has a distinctive yellow face. I’d seen the watch before, when he was responding to a call at the Fifth Street Park. He looked at me, pointed the gun at me, and I ran. I thought he was going to shoot me, too.”
“When did you end up here?”
“Here? Um, late Monday night. After midnight. I didn’t come directly here because I was afraid someone might follow me.”
Kara frowned. What was she thinking? She looked upset and worried. Maybe...angry. But then her face cleared and she said, “And Will and Colton know you’re here.”
“Yes.”
“Colton knows that Chen’s shooter is a cop.”
I nodded.
“Where is Colton right now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t lying, though I don’t think she believed me.
She stared at me. “I’m going to get you someplace safe, then—”
“No. Please, Colton said I had to stay here.”
“He also told you to trust me, right?”
I nodded, but started shaking again. Everything had gotten so far out of control I didn’t know what to do or who to trust.
“Billions of dollars, you said?” Kara said. She was typing on her phone.
“Yes. There’s an entire business that will end when we solve the homeless crisis. That’s why it’ll never be solved.”
“I don’t know about fixing this kind of problem,” Kara said. “That’s way above my pay grade. But murder? That I can solve. We’re going to get you out of here, someplace safe, and then we’ll take down every single one of these people and find justice for Craig.”
“But I’m safe here,” I pleaded.
She stared at me, then said, “Maybe you are. But too many people are lying, and you are the only person who knows exactly how to extract the evidence.”
“Yes, but—” I stopped talking when I saw the look on her face. It wasn’t violent, but close to it.
Kara looked at her phone. “Okay, my boss is going to check the area, make sure there’s no one watching the house, then we’ll go out and meet him.”
“I don’t know...”
“My partner Michael was a Navy SEAL and my boss Matt was in FBI SWAT and I have street smarts, so between the three of us, you’ll be safe. Do you have anything here?”
I shook my head. “Colton loaned me these clothes,” I said, gesturing to my sweats and T-shirt, “but I’d like to change into my own clothes if I can?”
She looked at her watch. “Okay, you have five minutes. And I’m going to watch. My patience and my trust are wearing thin these days.”