Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2)

by C. E. Tobisman

  “We need to solve this damn thing,” she continued. “Caregivers in nursing homes are getting elderly residents to write wills leaving their money to Oasis.”

  “Where does Oasis find these caregivers?” Hitch asked, playing along.

  Caroline noted the clarity of his diction. He hadn’t had anything to drink since the night before. She hoped he managed to make it through the day without drinking again. She needed all the focus the ex-cop could muster.

  “That’s easy,” Caroline replied. “They’re sending ex-felons and people off the street to these nursing homes. These people train at Oasis’s nursing program.”

  “But why do these people cooperate?” Hitch asked. “What’s in it for them besides a free meal and a roof?”

  “Maybe that’s enough. Maybe these people think they’re doing a good thing by steering old people into leaving money to Oasis.” Caroline was thinking out loud, editing herself as she went. “But Oasis seems pretty corporate. Corporations don’t rely on people’s consciences to meet a bottom line. There’s got to be something more to it.”

  “Agreed,” said Hitch, following Caroline with his eyes. “Where’s the money going once Oasis gets it? What’s it being used for? Who’s benefiting?”

  “Oasis is Duncan Reed’s company, but he had a stroke. His son, Simon, is the obvious culprit, especially since Duncan is—”

  “—incompetent,” Hitch finished. “I agree, Simon’s the suspect. Our problem is one of proof.”

  Caroline stayed silent. Proving the criminal involvement of the charismatic son of one of the city’s most beloved citizens remained an intractable problem. How could they connect the dots that had eluded Hector? While Caroline had seen the hazy outlines of the beast she fought, she had not yet seen its true contours.

  “What about the affidavit-withdrawal transaction itself?” she asked. “There’s a moment where some Oasis officer goes to a bank and cleans out an elderly person’s account, right?”

  Hitch’s muddy eyes ignited with interest. He nodded, urging his niece onward.

  “That person’s going to show up at the bank with a Probate Code 13100 affidavit and a copy of the dead person’s will,” Caroline continued. “The bank cuts a cashier’s check to Oasis and then hands it to that person.” She paused. “Who’s the person standing there?”

  “It has to be someone pretty high in the Oasis food chain,” Hitch surmised. “Handling money requires trust.”

  “We need to figure out who that person is,” Caroline said.

  “How are we going to do that?” Hitch asked.

  Caroline leaned back against a tree. She pulled the Saint Christopher medallion out of her shirt. Warmed to body temperature by its contact with her chest, its uneven ridges soothed her like the worry beads that were a million miles away in her apartment. That the medallion once belonged to her grandmother calmed her, as well.

  Her mind traveled to the watch. The quest for it had once seemed irrational. Her anger at its theft and her visceral discomfort at its absence had been all consuming. But that form of obsessive grief had moved aside to leave room for desperation. She wasn’t running on despair anymore. She was running on fear for her life.

  Dropping the medallion, she thrust her hand into her back pocket and pulled out the Spreadsheet of Death. The list of BanCorp customers who’d left money to Oasis.

  Her eyes scanned the columns of information. “Oasis does all of its affidavit withdrawals each month from the same branch in Los Angeles. They aggregate all of the death certificates and make one trip of it.”

  “Maybe we could ambush him or her?” Hitch suggested.

  Caroline studied the dates of the transactions. Most recently, someone from Oasis had visited BanCorp’s Hope Street branch on July 17, August 21, and September 13. It wasn’t the same day each month. That meant there was no way to predict when he or she would show up again to make the next batch of affidavit withdrawals.

  But then something caught Caroline’s eye.

  “The most recent batch of affidavit withdrawals was just a couple weeks ago. September 13. There’s a time stamp—10:35 a.m.” She tapped the page.

  “The security camera would have taken a picture of whoever it is, right?” she asked, meeting her uncle’s eyes.

  “Definitely.” Hitch nodded. “I had a case involving a bank heist once. Most banks use a contractor called Security Images to store and maintain footage from the security cameras.”

  “In other words, there’s a centralized database,” Caroline said. “Or, more likely, each bank’s got a cloud account connected to Security Images.”

  “Something like that,” Hitch confirmed. “Standard operating procedure is that contractors only keep footage two weeks before destroying it.”

  “The last withdrawal was two weeks ago,” said Caroline. “When does the data purge happen?”

  “Midnight, usually,” said Hitch.

  “That footage still exists,” Caroline said. “I need a laptop.”

  “We’re a long way from any computer here, kiddo.”

  The answer wasn’t acceptable to Caroline. Her mind flew in a half dozen directions. She could try to contact Albert, but he’d already said he couldn’t bring her into protective custody. And anyway, he might not be able to get her what she needed—a computer she could use for the three to four hours necessary to hack the security company and then review reams of video files.

  She’d face the same problem if she tried to use a computer at a library or some other publicly available computer lab. Even assuming she could overcome whatever restrictions on Internet access she found at a public lab, she wouldn’t have the time and bandwidth necessary to retrieve what she needed from Security Images.

  Maybe she could try to reach someone who could wire money or lend her a computer, but how and whom? No, she was a suspect in a well-publicized crime. Who could she contact that would be willing to harbor a fugitive? Who could she even ask to take that risk?

  “We gotta talk to Floyd,” said Jake, interrupting Caroline’s flood of ideas.

  “Who’s Floyd?” she asked.

  “The mayor,” Jake said without any trace of irony.

  Caroline ran her hands down her shirt to make it more presentable, which was impossible, because her tank top had turned more brown than white.

  “Does he know we’re here?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes,” her uncle answered, his eyes trained on the hillside in front of them. “But he might not be willing to talk to us.”

  Caroline squinted up the scrub-covered hill. It didn’t resemble any other mayoral mansion. But her uncle’s description during their walk across town to this hillside on the edge of Vista Hermosa Park had convinced her that in the decentralized world of the homeless, Floyd was something between an ombudsman and the yellow pages. Everyone knew him. Everyone trusted him. Some even imbued him with some sort of mystical importance. It was said he could leave the streets if he wanted, but he’d decided to stay.

  “He’s coming,” Jake said, his eyes tracking the shadow of a man approaching.

  Hitch’s posture shifted to readiness. He stood on the balls of his feet, poised. For what, Caroline didn’t know.

  Soon a man came into view. Barefoot but wearing dress slacks and a button-down shirt, he picked his way down the hill until he stood seven feet from the group. Though he was not tall, his jet-black eyes commanded attention. They moved from Caroline to Uncle Hitch to Jake.

  Then Floyd raised an eyebrow: an invitation for the group to state its business.

  Jake reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a wood carving.

  He offered it to Floyd.

  With long, graceful fingers, Floyd accepted the figure. He turned the object over in his hands, his brow crinkling.

  “An albatross.” Floyd’s voice was eerily singsong, and it floated on the wind. “Yes, I am very much the albatross around my family’s neck.” His soft observation held an echo of regret.

  “No,�
� Jake said. “The albatross flies across great distances. Over oceans. But he always comes back to the same place. He’s committed to his home. To his people. He mates for life.”

  Floyd tilted his head as if considering this new interpretation.

  Caroline had watched Jake whittle late into the night without realizing he’d been creating a tribute. A poetic, thoughtful one.

  Floyd cradled the carved albatross in his hands.

  After a long moment, he turned and began walking back up the hill.

  Jake followed.

  Hitch and Caroline fell in behind him.

  Floyd led the group to a clearing. High above, an electrical tower rose over the eucalyptus trees. The loading lines hummed at a pitch barely audible to human ears. There were no birds.

  Floyd stopped in the shadow of the electrical tower. Beside a fraying green tent, a string between two trees held an assortment of blankets and jackets. A closet in the wind. Farther back, at the edge of the woods, were two sky-blue tents visible against the silvery eucalyptus trunks.

  The only other sign of civilization was the table. Small and square, it sat atop a carpet of fragrant leaves. It had been set with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and mismatched plates, saucers, and cups. Finishing off the settings, two silver candlesticks held two half-burned white tapers. An Italian café in the woods.

  Floyd gestured for them to sit.

  Once everyone had picked a chair, he disappeared into one of the tents.

  He emerged moments later. In his hands, he held a box of Walkers Shortbread cookies.

  With precise movements, he pulled a clear plastic tray out of the box to reveal a neat row of golden-yellow cookies. Accompanied only by the rustle of the eucalyptus trees and the hum of electrical wires, he placed a single cookie before each person.

  “Thank you,” Caroline said, grateful for the strange hospitality. The sweet, buttery flakiness was decadence on her tongue. After three days of slimy ham sandwiches and old apples, she knew she’d never think of shortbread the same way again.

  “I wish I had tea to offer, but I don’t,” Floyd said. His voice held genuine regret. “The city finds me and throws my stuff away every month or so. Then I have to start again. I haven’t found more tea yet. I take what I can when the police come, but it isn’t always possible to take much. Sometimes I have to leave everything.” Floyd touched the base of the silver candlesticks. “These are the exceptions. I always take these. They remind me of my family . . .” A grimace tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  “What happened?” Caroline asked, ignoring the cautionary glare from her uncle.

  “To my family? They’re much the same as they always are, I imagine. Work, work, working in the family business.”

  “Family business?” Caroline pulled her legs in to avoid the kick she knew would be coming from her uncle. When she found something—or someone—worth knowing more about, her curiosity was relentless. In Floyd she’d found a fascinating specimen.

  “My family owns a controlling share in one of the largest fast food franchisors in the country. But it wasn’t for me. The pressures of family can be intolerable,” Floyd said, as though that explained everything.

  Caroline remained silent. In her experience, people tended to fill the gaps in conversations.

  “I don’t have a head for business,” Floyd continued. “My family thought tough love would make me more . . . What was their word? Ah, yes, serious. But I didn’t do well without the intravenous drip, drip, dripping of cash, either.”

  In Floyd’s singsong voice, Caroline heard a downward spiral. Had Floyd fallen down a pit of addiction? Or mental illness? Dual diagnosis seemed to be de rigueur on the streets.

  “My father gave me a franchise to run for myself. But times aren’t great for the small-business owner.” Floyd shook his head. “Payroll taxes. Health care costs. Liability insurance. All of it was far too much to care about or manage. By the time my franchise went under, I’d come to understand some very important things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I detest the scent of frying potatoes. Also, I didn’t need the corrupting influence of my family. You can’t escape the greed that goes with money. Why do you think so many people are so stingy about handing a homeless veteran even a dollar at a stoplight?”

  Caroline resisted the urge to point out that some people assumed the dollar that went to the homeless veteran went to buying alcohol or drugs.

  “So you stayed on the streets,” she said instead.

  “It rather works for me. I much prefer being outside.” As he drifted off, the wind pushed through the eucalyptus grove, showering thin silver-green leaves onto the table.

  “People come to me for advice,” he continued, focusing his attention on Caroline again. “They call me the mayor.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  He liked the moniker, Caroline realized. Was it really ego that kept this man on the street? A need for respect so deep that the adulation of lost souls, addicts, and mentally ill vagrants was enough to justify living permanently in transit?

  “I know everyone out here,” he continued. “Who they are. What they’re good for. How honest they are. How addicted they are, and to what.” He smiled a full row of even, white teeth, the lasting legacy of a wealthy upbringing. “I am . . . respected.”

  A Craigslist. A Yelp. A Google. All rolled up into one small-boned little man sitting in a clearing on top of a hill.

  “When someone gets off the streets, I’m happy for them,” Floyd continued. “But I have no desire to leave.”

  “Really?” Caroline asked. She thought of Lani, the slight woman in the red dress who’d fled the distribution center in terror. She remembered the echoes of late-night fighting outside her apartment building. And she recalled the prostitute she’d once seen slip into a portable bathroom in the shadow of Skid Row to turn a trick. None of those people had found a comfortable home on the streets. That anyone could belong outside was ludicrous. It was a sad fantasy, at best. A dangerous illusion, at worst.

  As if to prove her musings correct, the distant shout of a man’s voice echoed up the hill, rising in crescendo until tapering off in murmured babbling.

  “That’s just Ansel.” Floyd chuckled. “My Minister of Madness. He’s harmless.”

  “He’s probably schizophrenic,” Caroline shot back. “Medicine would help him.”

  “Schizophrenics are drowning in the same ocean that mystics are swimming in,” Floyd said. “Some are enlightened or touched. Some are just stark raving mad. Some are broken. Some were never whole. Some are sojourning here. Some are just passing through.” He paused. “Which are you?”

  Caroline resisted her lawyer’s instincts to debate Floyd. Her goal was to get off the streets, and she needed Floyd’s help.

  “Passing through, I hope, but I really need a computer.” If Hitch was right, the security camera contractor would delete the bank’s video footage soon. They had to hurry.

  “There’s a whole unseen universe out there.” Floyd gestured with one long hand, around the grove. “Filled with everything you need.”

  Caroline wondered if he meant the urban wilderness or the spirit realm.

  “So what do you really need?” he asked.

  Caroline exhaled her frustration. She needed to dance with Floyd’s demons, apparently.

  “Justice. Safety. A way to make the people who are chasing me disappear,” she said.

  “Good, good.” Floyd nodded, gesturing for her to continue. “And a computer will make you free?”

  “It’ll help me make myself free,” Caroline said. The distinction seemed important.

  “Ah, taking initiative. Good!” Floyd slapped the table with both hands.

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “No,” he said.

  Caroline’s hopes fell.

  “But I know someone who can,” Floyd said. “His name’s Curtis. He’s even crazier than I am.”

  “Where can I f
ind him?” Caroline asked.

  Floyd looked up at the sun, then met Caroline’s eyes again.

  “He’ll be at the doughnut shop on Jefferson and Orchard right now, if you hurry. I think you’ll find that the dog is saner than his master.”

  CHAPTER 19

  They found the dog first. With black-and-white markings like a Holstein cow and the compact frame of a pig, he stood at the edge of the alley behind Stanley’s Doughnuts. He looked up at the group, then cocked his head as if asking whether they’d made an appointment.

  From somewhere deeper in the alley came a crash and a shuffle. The sound of dumpster diving.

  After licking Caroline’s offered hand, the dog trotted into the alley, leaving the sun-heated pavement for the alley’s humid, putrid shade.

  Caroline followed with Hitch, while Jake took up a post at the mouth of the alleyway.

  Approaching the cacophony at the end of the alley, Caroline’s body felt jerky and wrong. Hunger. Fear. Nerves. All had conspired to diminish her capacity to function.

  But she had to keep going. The clock in the window of the doughnut shop said it was 11:05. That meant she had less than twelve hours to find a way to hack Security Images’ server and uncover the identity of the person handling the affidavit withdrawals for Oasis. Though Caroline had worked under tight deadlines before, this one seemed impossible to meet.

  Pushing despair from her mind, Caroline forced herself to focus on the task in front of her. Or rather, its rear end. The dog had stopped beside a man whose head was buried in a dumpster, his long legs dangling down the front of the rusted green metal.

  “Excuse me,” Caroline said.

  She waited for the man to dislodge his face from the trash.

  Beside her, Hitch shifted from foot to foot. Evidently, he, too, knew they were running out of time.

  After another moment, the man emerged from his explorations. He had long black hair that hung down below his shoulders and teeth with too much space between them. In his hand, he held the crumpled white paper bag he’d fished from the dumpster.