Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2)

by C. E. Tobisman

  She checked the bots.

  No, everything looked right.

  Maybe the court’s website had glitched?

  She tried deploying the bot again.

  Your search has retrieved no hits.

  This time, Caroline tried inserting the names manually. One after another, she sent the name of a dead resident into the court’s database.

  But one after another, her searches retrieved nothing.

  The bot wasn’t bad. The websites weren’t glitching. There just weren’t any probates showing anyone leaving money to Oasis.

  Suddenly, another potential source of the problem occurred to Caroline.

  She scanned the practice guides on her bookshelf until she found the one she wanted.

  Probate Procedures under the California Probate Code.

  Caroline waited while her ex-classmate took a sip from a chipped coffee cup emblazoned with the district attorney’s emblem. Although she’d chafed when Boyd had asked her to waste time coming down to his office, her research had made her glad for the face-to-face meeting.

  “Rogelio Gonzalez isn’t in a gang,” Boyd said, addressing the ostensible reason for her visit. “But I’ve got a friend over in the gangs unit who told me that Rogelio has a brother named Fernando serving time at Wasco State Prison. He got sent up for drug dealing.”

  “What’s Fernando’s sentence?” Caroline asked.

  “Five years. Could’ve been shorter, but he wouldn’t roll on his coconspirators.”

  “That means Fernando is very loyal, very scared, or very related to his cohorts.”

  “Well put,” Boyd said. He graced Caroline with a wide smile. “I’ll get Fernando’s file for you. Hopefully it’ll contain something that’ll let you help that little boy who loves Xbox Madden as much as I do.”

  Boyd’s charisma was just as Caroline remembered it from law school. So was his ability to remember the small details of people’s lives. He’d asked after her mom, her uncle, and even her grandmother. Ambitious and calculating, he was a natural politician. He was going places, though the chipped mug and stained vertical blinds in his office said he hadn’t arrived quite yet.

  Boyd noted the subject of Caroline’s gaze.

  “The main office is way nicer.” He held up his cup. “Coffee’s just as terrible, though. Why don’t we go across the street to a great little café I know? They make terrific scones.”

  “I can’t,” Caroline said. She’d expected his invitation, and she’d expected to refuse it. Boyd’s relentless concern with joining the right societies, working for the right professors, and figuring out how to clerk for the right judges had grown tiresome in law school. She hadn’t cared about his climbing then, and she didn’t want to pretend she cared now.

  “Solo practice too busy?” The bemused glint in Boyd’s eyes told Caroline the question was more sarcasm than curiosity.

  “Yes, actually,” Caroline answered, feeling her face flush with annoyance.

  “How do you get clients as a solo only one year out of law school?” Boyd asked.

  “I get referrals from the dependency and family courts. Also, there are some lawyers on my floor who give me their overflow work.” The explanation sounded weak even to Caroline’s own ears. She was scraping for work.

  “Everyone was so surprised when you left Hale Stern,” Boyd said.

  Caroline’s stomach sank at the confirmation she’d been the subject of alumni gossip. She’d aced law school. She’d landed a job at the most prestigious firm in the city. Then she’d left after only one month. In her classmates’ eyes, it was in inconceivable career move.

  “I just feel so bad that things didn’t work out better for you,” Boyd said.

  Caroline forced herself not to respond. She knew that Boyd had chafed when she’d received Hale Stern’s offer of employment—the only offer the firm had made to her graduating class. He probably saw her failure at Hale Stern as her comeuppance.

  But the frustrating part was that she hadn’t failed at all. Before leaving Hale Stern, she’d helped thousands of people—including Amy’s son. She’d ended the destructive career of a deadly fixer. The problem was that her means of prevailing weren’t entirely legal, so she couldn’t tell anyone what she’d done. Or why she’d left Hale Stern.

  “What do you need to do to get moved over to the main office?” Caroline asked. That Boyd was stuck in the DA’s adjunct office over a year after graduation probably struck him as a flop. Better to put the focus on his failure to launch rather than on her own.

  “Good question.” Boyd’s eyes settled on his chipped mug. “We’ve got only one DIC—deputy in charge—over here, and he doesn’t care about mentoring anyone. He just wants to get through his day. If I’m going to get noticed, I need to get onto one of the bigger cases. All the big guns are across the street. Chief Deputy McFadden and, of course, the DA herself.”

  Caroline nodded. Like almost everyone else in the city, she’d voted for Donita Johnson. The new DA had branded herself the People’s Prosecutor. She’d promised a return to community-based policing and a clampdown on government waste. If Boyd aspired to have a political career, DA Johnson already had one. She was rumored to be on the short list for a cabinet position. Caroline knew Boyd would want to ride her coattails—if he could reach them.

  “I think I may have something that could get you where you want to go,” Caroline said.

  Boyd looked up from his mug. His gray eyes held a question.

  Caroline took a breath. It was time for her to make the face-to-face meeting worthwhile.

  “I’ve got a case involving possible fraud on the elderly by an entity posing as a charity. It’s a potentially large scam affecting lots of people.”

  Caroline waited while Boyd did the calculus.

  Helping old people was good. Entities posing as charities were bad.

  He lifted a curious eyebrow.

  In what she hoped were intriguing tones, Caroline told him what she’d discovered: The theft of the watch. The training program for CNAs. The nursing home administrators’ incentives to ignore the potential for abuse. The fact that Oasis was not a registered charity.

  When she finished, she waited for her ex-classmate’s reaction. If he shared her suspicions, he could throw the weight of the state behind an investigation. He could file criminal charges. He could subpoena witnesses and get search warrants.

  But Boyd just took another sip of cold coffee.

  “Oasis is Duncan Reed,” he said. “Why would he steal from old ladies?”

  “It isn’t clear that Duncan Reed is actually running Oasis anymore,” Caroline countered. The beloved television star had stayed out of the public eye since suffering his stroke. “And anyway, just because someone looks good doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of evil conduct.”

  “Fine, but I’ve got to be honest with you, Caro, this all seems really unlikely,” Boyd said. “I think you should keep your focus on what’s real—some woman stole your family’s watch.” This time the sympathy in his eyes was real.

  Caroline exhaled. The case was about more than the theft of a watch. There was one woman, maybe two, maybe a whole fake charity taking advantage of vulnerable old people. She had to make Boyd see that.

  “There’s something going on here. I didn’t find a single probate showing anyone leaving a gift to Oasis,” Caroline said. “The administrator at The Pastures facility in Chatsworth admitted that some of his residents left their estates to Oasis. At the very least, there should’ve been probates opened for those. There should’ve been court records.”

  “Why weren’t there?” Boyd asked.

  “It turns out there’s a loophole in the Probate Code. The courts don’t supervise the administration of small estates. If you die with less than $150,000, your estate can be disposed of without a court proceeding—there’s no probate opened.”

  “But then how does your heir get your money?” Boyd asked.

  “It’s dangerously simple,” Caroli
ne said, holding his gaze. “He just shows up at your bank with a certified copy of your death certificate, the will, an affidavit swearing that he’s entitled to the money in your account, and an ID. He gives those materials to the bank, and the teller cuts him a cashier’s check. Right there. Right then. No judicial oversight. No public records.”

  “No public records?” Boyd raised an eyebrow.

  “None. Only the banks have records of these transactions—presumably, they keep track of every time someone shows up with proper documentation and walks away with a cashier’s check. But other than those bank records, these affidavit-withdrawal transactions leave no tracks. As a result, they’re completely invisible to law enforcement.”

  Caroline paused to give Boyd a chance to catch up.

  “So, your theory is that these Oasis caregivers manipulate elderly people into writing wills naming Oasis as the beneficiary. Then, when one of these people dies, Oasis is entitled to a certified death certificate since they’re named in the will as an heir. After that, it’s as simple as going down to the dead person’s bank, presenting the documents, and cleaning out the account?”

  “Exactly,” Caroline said. “It’s the perfect scam. There are no witnesses for the wills. There are no probate court records. And to the banks, it’s just a small, routine bank transaction closing a dead person’s account. There’s no way Oasis can get caught.”

  Boyd leaned back, the springs in his ancient desk chair groaning in agony. “Let’s not forget there’s another possibility here: no one’s doing anything wrong. The absence of probates doesn’t have to be proof of a scam. It could just be proof that no one’s left any serious money to Oasis. Maybe they just get small estates left to them from time to time.”

  “Fine, let’s agree that two possibilities exist here: extreme innocence or extreme guilt,” Caroline allowed. “Wouldn’t it be irresponsible for the DA not to at least look into the possibility that it’s a case of extreme guilt?”

  Boyd frowned, his gray eyes narrowing.

  Caroline knew he was considering the possibility that she might be paranoid and weighing it against the possibility that she wasn’t. He might believe she’d bombed at a big firm, but he also knew she’d bested him in every class they’d shared. Plus, he needed a way to get out of the DA’s adjunct office with its secondhand furniture and second-tier cases. Bringing in a new case involving widespread elder abuse would make that happen.

  “If this is a scam, Oasis and these caregivers could be making a fortune,” Caroline pressed. “If they get $100,000 from ten estates, that’s a quick $1 million. All they need to do is hang around nursing homes long enough to convince or coerce the residents to write new wills. They could fly under the radar forever so long as they kept moving around.”

  Boyd tapped his fingers together as he considered Caroline’s arguments.

  “We need to see bank records,” Caroline continued. “That’s how we can find out how often the banks have cut checks to Oasis. If the numbers are higher than those for other charities, there might be something here. And if there is, you’re a hero, right?”

  After another long moment of consideration, Boyd lifted his phone.

  “Fowler? Can you come on down for a sec?” he asked.

  Seconds later, a young man with a patchy goatee entered. With wheat-colored hair and nondescript eyes of some unmemorable shade of blue, he reminded Caroline of a dozen law school classmates whose names she couldn’t remember.

  “This is our clerk, Gordon Fowler,” Boyd introduced the man. “He’ll help me begin to work up this case. If there’s something here, we’ll submit it to the deputy in charge, who will then submit it to the chief deputy DA.” He shrugged apologetically. “It’s a big bureaucracy.”

  Fowler perched himself against the wall and tried to balance a laptop on his thighs.

  Caroline rose from her chair. “Why don’t you take my chair?” she offered.

  With a grateful smile, Fowler sat down to listen while Boyd caught him up on the case.

  Caroline watched Fowler enter information into the DA’s internal docketing database. There were drop-down menus for potential witnesses and contacts. There were places to enter information about anticipated targets for subpoenas. Whoever had written the software had been very thorough. Hopefully the human element at the DA’s office would be as effective as the software.

  “If there’s really something going on here,” Boyd said to Fowler, “there should be other people who’ve been taken by surprise by a loved one leaving money to Oasis. Other angry heirs. I’d like you to look for any internal records of complaints. Search our files. Search the police call logs. See if there have been any complaints from any members of the public.”

  “I’ll jump right on it,” Fowler said, typing notes on the laptop.

  “I’m sure you will,” Boyd said, apparently enjoying Fowler’s earnestness as much as Caroline was.

  “If your preliminary research pans out, will you subpoena bank records?” Caroline asked.

  “Almost certainly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Boyd said. “Everything’s digitized, so it shouldn’t take long. We should be able to get through our internal search by the end of the day. I promise I’ll run everything by you once we’ve completed our internal review.”

  “What about human intelligence?” Much as Caroline believed in and depended on tech assets, she knew that not every piece of data was likely to be recorded in the DA’s databases.

  “Good point. Maybe I’ll bring Chief Deputy McFadden into the loop now,” Boyd said. “He’s a powerhouse. He knows everyone. He’ll know if there have ever been any rumblings about Oasis.”

  Caroline warmed at Boyd’s words. That he was willing to involve his boss at this preliminary stage struck her as significant.

  “Please call me as soon as you’ve finished your internal review.” Caroline took Fowler’s laptop and inserted two phone numbers. “If you can’t reach me, try my assistant, Amy. She knows as much about this matter as I do. She’ll also know how to find me.”

  After Caroline finished typing, Fowler shut his laptop, and Boyd rose.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Boyd said. He held up the badge he wore around his neck. “I need to swipe you through the security doors.”

  As she followed Boyd into the hallway, Caroline realized he was lucky. His tiny office with its stained blinds and sagging furniture had a window. The cluttered cubicles lining the interior of the floor were a type of grim that Caroline had only ever seen before on television. They made her meager office suite look luxurious.

  When they reached the elevator, Boyd held the door open then entered after her.

  “You seeing anyone these days?” he asked.

  Before Caroline could answer, he shook his head. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you? You really should give people a chance, Caro.” His gray eyes were sympathetic, as if he could see some cracks in her personality that she couldn’t see herself.

  Caroline frowned. The conversation had careened from work to her personal life with all the grace of a drunk driver in a Formula One race. It was time to get the car back onto the blacktop.

  “Let’s see what happens with your initial investigation.” She smiled in a way that left open the possibility of a date. Perhaps he’d grown in the year since they’d graduated. Perhaps they’d find community in their efforts to create careers. Or maybe she was leading him on to prove to him she didn’t have whatever flaw he thought he saw in her.

  When the elevator reached the lobby, the doors slid open.

  Like two homing pigeons, Boyd’s eyes landed on a group of people standing beside the adjunct DA office’s security desk. A tall African American woman stood in the center, regaling the others with a story. Her voice dipped and rose as she spoke, holding her listeners enthralled. Everyone laughed when she finished.

  DA Johnson, Caroline identified the woman. With her room-lighting smile, the DA looked the part of the politician–law enforcement offi
cial. Beside her stood Chief Deputy DA John McFadden, her second in command. A shadow of a beard clung to his chin, the only hair on his otherwise hairless head. His small eyes swept back and forth across the room with the regularity of a light on a prison watchtower.

  McFadden’s gaze settled on Caroline.

  She shuddered with a sudden chill. She’d heard rumors about McFadden. He was well connected, if not well liked.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Boyd said, striding away to join the high-powered group.

  Watching him go, Caroline hoped Boyd’s ambition would motivate him to pursue the investigation as far as her instincts told her it needed to be pursued. Without a criminal case, her legal options for investigating Oasis narrowed. And the prospect of crossing the line into less traditional means of gathering information filled her with apprehension.

  She dismissed the worry.

  Boyd would find something. The sheer elegance of the affidavit-withdrawal scam convinced her that it had to exist. Oasis’s carefully constructed invisibility confirmed it. Boyd’s search would yield evidence of other complaints or hints of some other wrongdoing. He’d take the risk of championing the case—for his own career, if not for her.

  That’s what she told herself, anyway, as she headed home to await his verdict.

  CHAPTER 4

  Caroline wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  She’d scrubbed the bathroom until her arms ached. She’d swept her downtown loft until the invisible motes of dust had sent her into sneezing fits. She’d even prepared a new batch of coding exercises for Amy. Now she’d run out of things to do.

  Yet Boyd hadn’t called. Or texted. Or e-mailed. Or sent up smoke signals.

  Just to be sure that was still true, Caroline checked her phone.

  Still nothing.

  She wondered how much longer she’d have to wait before Boyd called.

  She also wondered if she’d melt before he did.

  Checking the weather app on her phone, Caroline shook her head in dismay. It was still eighty-five degrees at 9:30 p.m. The heat wave had taken meteorologists by surprise. The September Furnace they were calling it. Caroline agreed with the moniker. In her stifling apartment, even the fake houseplants looked wilted.