Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2)

by C. E. Tobisman

  Pulling at the tank top that clung to her torso, she considered what else she could do to distract herself. Something outside preferably.

  Her eyes fell on the lone object sitting on the coffee table by the door to her flat: the Guatemalan pouch she’d taken from her grandmother’s room.

  Grabbing it, she walked the length of the shotgun apartment to the kitchen.

  An ancient refrigerator hummed along one wall. A row of metal shelves hung over a farmer’s sink on another. The other two walls each had a large window.

  The first window faced the street, giving a view of a gritty strip of downtown that glowed orange in the perennial city light. The neighborhood was slowly gentrifying. Still devoid of all but a handful of restaurants, the area north of Little Tokyo had attracted young professionals with large ambitions and meager down payments. Like many of them, Caroline was renting. For now.

  The other window faced a fire escape. It was this window that Caroline approached, hands on hips, frowning. Beyond the pane, a rusted landing hung four floors above the street. The perch promised respite from the heat.

  Unfortunately, the window never opened smoothly. Maybe the paint hadn’t properly cured. Or maybe the window just hated her. Whatever the reason, it had always given Caroline trouble. She’d considered leaving the thing open. But she’d heard the fights on the streets. The occasional gunshots. She’d decided it was safer to keep the window shut. And locked.

  Now, Caroline gave the window’s molding a solid whack with her palm.

  As expected, it didn’t move.

  Placing the Guatemalan pouch atop the stove, Caroline leaned hard into the molding, applying all of her 126 pounds to the task until the seal broke with a faint jerk.

  Shouldering the window open, Caroline scrambled out onto the fire escape.

  The air outside was as unmoving as it was inside the apartment, but the night sky arched overhead, the half-moon bright against the rusty firmament. There were no stars. There never were in Los Angeles.

  Caroline opened the Guatemalan pouch and eased the pile of pictures out onto her lap.

  The first image showed her grandmother as a young woman. Kate’s hair had been dark then. She smiled into the camera, her right arm flung back, gesturing toward the Eiffel Tower. Next to her, Grandpa Jack stood with a glass of wine, toasting the unseen photographer. Caroline couldn’t recall ever having seen her grandfather holding a drink. By the time she’d been born, he’d stopped.

  Her eyes traveled back to her grandmother’s face. It shone with elation.

  She wondered at the source of that joy. Was it that Kate was standing before one of the world’s great monuments after having come so far from her small town in North Dakota?

  Or perhaps Kate smiled because she had no idea what was coming next.

  The smile on Caroline’s own face faded.

  The woman smiling in the picture would face hard years. Kate’s genes were as solid as the Sentinel Butte that stood guard over the town where she’d been born. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the wild element to which she’d tethered herself in Jack Hitchings. Still, she’d persevered. She’d found meaning by volunteering. She’d taken in Rayan Hafaz, the original owner of the heirloom watch. She’d created a family with an expansive enough sense of kinship to embrace a lost native from another continent.

  Now that family had become far-flung to different worlds. Hitch to the streets. Caroline’s mother to the Oregon fringe. And Caroline to a transitional neighborhood near Skid Row. They were dissolving into strangers, losing whatever cohesion had once made it possible to welcome a lonely man like Rayan Hafaz into the fold.

  Somewhere in the distance, a siren echoed down the city streets. A personal tragedy to someone. A background noise to Caroline, as she lifted the pouch to replace the pictures.

  In the heft of the empty pouch, Caroline felt something weighing down the corner.

  She turned it over.

  A medallion fell into her hand. It was the size of a quarter and strung on a silver chain.

  On one side of the disc, there was a man wearing a robe and holding a staff. He leaned forward as if walking into a stiff breeze. A baby sat on his shoulders, pointing the way.

  Saint Christopher, Caroline identified the old man. Patron saint of wanderers.

  In a half-moon at the bottom of the medallion, Caroline found an inscription: PROTECT US.

  “Protect us all,” Caroline murmured, stringing the chain around her neck.

  The metal settled against her chest, its weight cool against her skin.

  Caroline closed her eyes, trying to feel some connection to her grandmother.

  Instead, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

  The sensation was familiar. She placed it: it was the same feeling she’d had it at court. The sensation of someone watching her. She couldn’t say how she knew it, but someone’s eyes traced her form. Someone’s attention caressed the surface of her skin.

  Peering into the darkness, Caroline scanned the urban landscape, trying to substantiate the hammering of her heart. Was there really someone out there? Or was the racing of her pulse just her own fears made manifest with the energy of her attention on them?

  Suddenly, she saw it. A shape on the roof of the building across the alley. A silhouette, but human. Facing her.

  Watching her.

  Thrusting the Guatemalan pouch into her pocket, Caroline scrambled sloppily to her feet, her eyes still riveted to the shape on the neighboring roof.

  A wave of nausea coursed up and down her gut.

  She’d exposed evil before, just a year ago, and the experience had come with harrowing escapes from people trying to kill her. What had she been thinking, investigating Oasis? If they were running a scam, they wouldn’t take kindly to her trying to drag it into the light.

  But when she reached the open window, she stopped.

  With deliberate slowness, she turned back toward the spot where she’d seen a person.

  The shape was still there, but it hadn’t moved.

  With a flush of embarrassment, Caroline realized it wasn’t human at all. It was just a cell tower. Or one of those other strange vestigial appendages that tended to adorn the tops of old buildings. A chimney or vent.

  A chimera, then. The equivalent of the creepy tree, silhouetted atop a hill, shapes of limbs resolving into human forms with the suggestibility of an overactive imagination.

  Gloom settled over Caroline as she climbed back into the kitchen.

  She’d always prided herself for her rationality. For her ability to control her fears with logical thought. She hadn’t had a full-fledged anxiety attack in a long time. But her recent performance on the fire escape didn’t bode well for her mental stability.

  Her grandmother’s death seemed to have stirred up mud from the bottom of the bucket of her psyche. The disappearance of the watch had only exacerbated her disquiet. She’d stop sleeping soon, she knew. She’d stop thinking about anything except finding out whether Oasis had scammed her grandmother and others.

  Opening the utility drawer, Caroline hunted around until she found what she sought: a strand of onyx beads. Called komboloi in Greek, the worry beads helped, Caroline had found. Their smooth roundness grounded her. The deliberate breathing as she moved through each stone calmed her. She hadn’t needed them in months. But now that she was spooking at cell towers, the beads seemed like they might be useful.

  A buzz in Caroline’s pocket interrupted her spiral of concern.

  Her phone.

  She read the screen: Wallace Boyd.

  Before answering, Caroline took a breath. She couldn’t let Boyd hear her jangled nerves.

  “What’ve you got?” she asked, skipping the chitchat. She’d been waiting too long to pretend she was interested in anything else.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Boyd said.

  It took several seconds for Caroline to process his words.

  “Turns out Duncan Reed was never much
for paperwork,” Boyd continued. “He didn’t register Oasis as a charity or take tax deductions for his good works or anything. He didn’t care about any of that stuff.”

  “Doesn’t Oasis still have to file tax returns?” Caroline asked. There had to be a record of Oasis’s finances somewhere, she figured.

  “No. Oasis currently operates under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor—Reed Philanthropy. They file tax returns, so Oasis doesn’t have to.”

  “In other words, Oasis is invisible,” Caroline said, making a mental note to look into Reed Philanthropy. “Someone really needs to look into this.”

  “I agree—and turns out we already have. Chief Deputy McFadden jumped in as soon as I told him about your theory. He pointed me to our files. Apparently the administrator of a skilled nursing facility out in North Hollywood complained a few years back about caregivers encouraging residents to leave money to charities. We investigated back then and came to the conclusion that Oasis is legit.”

  “Legit?” Caroline echoed. “Did you get bank records?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you can’t know whether Oasis is legit. Come on, Boyd, aren’t you even a little curious how often people are giving their estates to Oasis?” Caroline asked.

  “You need probable cause to subpoena bank records,” Boyd said. “We don’t have that here. It isn’t unusual for someone to leave money to their caregiver. And in Oasis’s case, this isn’t even leaving funds to some corrupt caregiver unduly influencing an elderly person—it’s folks leaving funds to a solid organization that’s doing great work in the community.”

  “I don’t care about the money—” Caroline’s face flushed.

  “There’s nothing here, Caro,” Boyd cut her off. “I promise you.”

  “But how can you promise?” Caroline asked. How could he promise anything? He hadn’t done a real investigation. No one had. “Did Gordon Fowler find anything in the call logs?”

  “He found nothing. Turns out we tried that angle before, too,” Boyd said. “There aren’t any records of any other complaints from disgruntled family members.”

  “But that just means that Oasis is targeting elderly residents who are estranged from their families—populations without relatives or friends who might cry foul if—”

  “Stop, Caro. Just stop.”

  In the silence, Caroline forced herself to humor the possibility that her suspicions about Oasis were meritless. That they’d germinated from a seed of irrational anger. Or displaced grief.

  All at once, she recalled Julie DeSotto, her second-grade classmate who’d been hurt when a car hadn’t stopped at an intersection. Julie’s parents had waged a campaign to get a stoplight installed at the intersection. It wasn’t clear the intersection needed one, but the DeSottos had channeled all of their fear, all of their helplessness, and all of their guilt into their campaign.

  Caroline realized she might be doing the same thing. Perhaps she was directing all of her sadness and guilt about her grandmother toward an outward foe. Perhaps her campaign against Oasis was no more rational than the DeSottos’ obsessive campaign had been.

  As if following the arc of Caroline’s thoughts to their logical terminus, Boyd said, “Your grandma just passed. Anybody would be on a hair trigger.”

  Caroline stayed silent. Boyd was accusing her of seeing ghosts.

  “Why don’t we focus on what’s really going on here,” Boyd continued. “Patricia stole your family’s watch. There’s a thief out there who’s got something that’s yours. If this lady’s got a record, she’s going to be in our database. You got a good look at her, right?”

  Caroline recalled exactly everything about the manipulative caregiver. The long red braid. The green eyes. The sympathetic tilt of her head. That Sanskrit tattoo on her wrist.

  “Yeah, I know what she looks like.”

  “Great. If you can ID her, I’ve got some buddies on the squad that could run her down.” Boyd paused. “That would be nice, right?” he asked, his voice conciliatory. It was the same tone she’d used with Mateo, offering him the Xbox. Or the one that nurses in mental hospitals used to cajole patients into taking sedatives.

  “Just tell me where to be,” Caroline said quietly.

  “I’ll meet you at 8:30 tomorrow morning.”

  Caroline was only vaguely aware of Boyd’s closing niceties before he hung up.

  Caroline stared up at the stained ceiling of her kitchen.

  Was she wrong to think Oasis might be bilking the elderly?

  The possibility that Boyd’s investigation had been shut down by someone at the DA’s office who was trying to cover up the scam wouldn’t stop yanking at the hem of her shirt, but she refused to give it her attention. Once she’d gone down the road of thinking she was seeing a swindle, everything fit into that narrative. But what if she was wrong?

  Either she was the mythical Cassandra, telling the truth to nonbelievers. Or she was paranoid.

  Both were possible, Caroline admitted.

  She lifted the worry beads from the counter where she’d laid them when she answered her phone. After walking her fingers through a few of the round stones, she felt a little better.

  She needed sleep. She needed perspective. She needed to grieve.

  Going to bed would be a good start.

  Before leaving the kitchen, she looked out the window one last time.

  Her eyes traced the jagged horizon. She stopped at the spot on the rooftop where she’d thought she’d seen someone watching her. Someone that was just a cell tower or chimney.

  But after looking and then looking again, she realized the shape she’d seen was gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Caroline tried to rub the sleep out of her eyes as she approached the police station.

  Boyd waited for her at the top of the steps. A stocky officer stood beside him, his feet shoulder-width apart. The officer’s hat was tucked under one arm, leaving the man’s full head of inky-black hair exposed to the wind. He eyed Caroline coolly as she approached.

  Though she was careful not to let it show on her face or in her stride, the presence of a uniformed officer worried Caroline. Perhaps Boyd had arranged for an escort to make sure she didn’t do something erratic. Perhaps he worried that she’d become consumed by the smoldering suspicions that had sent a thick cloud of irrationality across her mind.

  She’d stood at the window of her kitchen for an hour, trying to decide if she’d really seen a shape watching her from a neighboring rooftop. To force herself to bed, she’d convinced herself she hadn’t. It had been an optical illusion. A mistake, she told herself.

  But as soon as she’d crawled under her covers, she’d recalled the human silhouette dimly seen from the fire escape. Its contours were still vivid in her mind’s eye. The sensation of being watched still raised the hairs at the back of her neck.

  Flip-flopping back and forth on whether there had or had not been someone watching her had taken the better part of the night. And then it was daybreak. And here she was.

  Ignoring her exhaustion, Caroline jogged the last few steps up to the landing.

  “This is Captain Nelson,” Boyd introduced the dark-haired officer beside him. “He’ll take care of you.”

  Captain Nelson shook Caroline’s hand. “I’ve got to get back inside for a meeting, but I’ll be around all day if you identify the perpetrator from the mug shots.”

  Watching the officer head back inside the police station, Caroline frowned. Captain was an awfully high rank to be babysitting her on her simple task.

  “Sorry I can’t stick around myself,” Boyd said, causing Caroline to return her attention to her classmate. “I’ve got a new assignment and a new office.”

  The smile that blossomed on his face reached the highest recesses of his forehead.

  “They’re moving you over?” Caroline asked, happy for her friend.

  Boyd nodded. “McFadden gave me the good news this morning. He wants me to second-chair a huge mail fraud ca
se he’s handling. An office opened up near his, so it’s mine.”

  “Congratulations. That’s great news,” Caroline said.

  “Oh, before I forget, I need to give you this,” Boyd said, pulling a file from his briefcase. “Shaina Parker over in the gangs unit gave me the docket for Fernando Gonzalez’s case, as well as some stuff from her files that you might find useful. These are the materials the judge considered in his criminal action—all of the information’s public, but it takes forever for it to get uploaded and archived on the court’s server. I know you don’t have time to wait, so I went ahead and made copies of everything for you.”

  “Thanks,” Caroline said, taking the file folder. She appreciated the peace offering.

  “For what it’s worth, I think you might be right that Rogelio Gonzalez is involved in his brother’s drug business,” Boyd said. “Rogelio and Fernando actually own Rogelio’s apparel business together. Rogelio is the general partner. Fernando is the passive partner. Fernando’s been bragging in prison that his brother owns a big compound down in Guadalajara.”

  “That’s a lot of lingerie,” Caroline mused. “If I find out anything useful about Rogelio, I’ll let you know.”

  “If you find something, please tell Shaina Parker directly. She’s been trying to figure out how to get at Rogelio. You’d be doing her a favor if you come up with anything.”

  “Understood. If I come up with anything, it’ll be soon,” Caroline said. Mateo Hidalgo’s next hearing was in less than two weeks. If she didn’t find something by then, she never would.

  “Great, I’ll show you to the mug shot room,” Boyd said, holding open the door of the station. “Let’s go find that woman who stole that watch of yours.”

  Caroline regarded the two computers sitting on the long wooden table. The pixelated screen savers attested to their age. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they ran on DOS.

  Behind the computers, an interior window faced the break room. Some joker had tuned the television to C-SPAN, where a row of senators silently debated something. The screen filled half the wall, a taxpayer expenditure devoted to the important purpose of ensuring the police could watch football at a scale similar to real life.