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It had been Campana’s call to use Colton’s shooting and fake his death—Colton had no family and he was at risk of someone else coming after him once the FBI had, allegedly, exposed him and Quinn to the media. Colton knew this would most likely be his last undercover investigation. He didn’t care. If they could prove what they suspected, it would rip apart Los Angeles government at the roots.
In fact, this might be the last case for all of them. They were not only investigating a bad cop, but corrupt politicians. If they didn’t get each and every one of them, their heads might be on the proverbial chopping block—and they knew it.
“Violet Halliday is missing. Colton is looking for her, Will is waiting for her to call again. Detective Caprese, who’s running the Chen homicide investigation, wants to talk to Violet as a witness. The longer she’s missing, the more they are going to look at her as a suspect or accomplice.” She didn’t have to state the obvious: if Caprese attempted to pull a warrant, they’d have to read him into the investigation.
“Why would she run?” Campana asked.
“Fear,” Elena said. “Craig worked with her more than anyone, but he’s been quiet the last couple weeks. Maybe she heard that he was killed and she’s scared for her life. The girl is a computer nerd, this has to be completely foreign to her.”
“What’s happening now with the grand jury?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s up to the DA. I didn’t know until yesterday that he planned to impanel the grand jury this week. I didn’t think he had enough, but now? I’m pretty sure he was holding something back.”
“Why would he shut us out? We’ve given him some of our best people, our resources, months of time in this investigation.”
Campana was angry. She didn’t blame him, but she also suspected they didn’t know the whole story.
“I think,” she said cautiously, “that he may have been worried about a mole in the DA’s office.”
“And he didn’t give you any idea who it might be?”
“If I knew, I’d bring them in for questioning.” She didn’t want to put Colton on the hot seat, but her undercover asset had also changed over the last couple months. “Two months ago, we met with Halliday. She proved that the computer crash was deliberate and that specific files were extracted and then when the backups were installed, those files were gone. It takes a lot of skill to remove data from backups. Someone as good as Halliday, at a minimum. I think she found those files, and that’s why Craig called the grand jury.”
“Yet he didn’t tell you or Lex.”
She shook her head.
Campana swore. “This is a clusterfuck, Elena. Did you read Quinn in?”
“No. She and Matt Costa know that I was working with Craig on an investigation into housing grants, but she doesn’t know about the undercover operation. I did, however, tell them that we believe someone in the FBI alerted Chen to the raid through the interagency portal.”
Campana leaned back in his seat, looked at the ceiling quietly for ten seconds. Then he said, “Okay, this is what we do. We find Halliday, put her in a safe house, debrief her. What she knows, we know. When you feel Quinn and her feds need to know about Operation Sunshine, read them in. I know it’ll be difficult, considering, but we might need help to wrap this up.”
“And,” Elena emphasized, “keep the Chen murder investigation in-house.”
“No way am I turning that over to the feds, not when their own house is dirty. I need to talk to the chief.”
That was the signal for her to leave. She did, relieved that Campana had her back, but worried about the state of their investigation with Craig dead and Violet still missing.
Elena pulled out her private cell phone and called Colton. He didn’t answer.
She ended the call without leaving a message.
September
One Month Ago
21
The park cleanup in Venice Beach was a disaster.
Protesters from a harm reduction advocacy group launched a verbal assault against Will and First Contact, accusing us of stealing from the homeless. Will countered that he had permission from the people who lived in the park to help them clean up their garbage. The protesters opposed Will’s nine-step plan to end the homeless crisis, but mostly they objected to interfering with what they called “free will.”
The first step in Will’s plan was to make contact—find out who each person was, their name, their background. Basically—what was their story. The second step was to find out where they were at—if they used drugs, how long, if they were on medication, if they needed medical care, if they had identification (necessary to get into virtually any housing program), if they needed help to fill out government forms for disability or Medicare.
Everyone was different, but the stories were remarkably similar. The majority of the people living on the streets had been abused as children. Depending on which statistics you read, up to 67 percent were addicted to drugs or alcohol or were mentally ill—but working with them every day, Will put the number closer to 90 percent who had a history of addiction. The only way to get them off the streets permanently and teach them to become self-sufficient was to address their problems head-on and help them take ownership over their lives. Will had done it over and over and over again, but it wasn’t easy. It was time-consuming and frustrating. The government put more hurdles on success than anyone.
It was especially frustrating when I looked across the boulevard from the park we were cleaning and saw the four-story, 170-unit transitional housing project that was being built with a grant to Angel Homes.
