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Craig said, “Will first reached out to me months ago about the housing project owned by David Chen, who was arrested for human trafficking and murder.”
I remembered. “A podcast I listen to talked about it a lot. No one else was giving it much airtime.” I didn’t know how the Chen building connected to anything, other than it seemed odd to me at the time. But Craig had questions about it, so I answered them best I could. Unfortunately, most records regarding the city funding going to the building had been destroyed in the computer crash.
“I am the DDA assigned to prosecute Chen. When Will mentioned that Chen had housed his workers next to the warehouse, I looked into the building and there was paperwork missing. It appeared that the address was listed as a homeless shelter in one database, but I couldn’t confirm the information and requested some documents from city hall. I was told the files had been lost in the computer crash and staff would research. I didn’t think there was anything nefarious about this, just expected the information later rather than sooner. Shortly after this, Detective Fox was shot in the line of duty.”
Elena Gomez spoke up. “We are still investigating the shooting—Colton’s cover was blown by the media. We don’t know who was responsible—the people he was investigating or someone else. While he was in the hospital, we devised this undercover plan, and put out that he didn’t survive his injuries. We felt that going in deep cover would both protect him because the shooter was still at large, and give us an advantage in this investigation. Fox could go places as a homeless veteran and not arouse suspicion.”
“What specifically are you investigating?” I asked. “You just said that how the city funds homeless services isn’t illegal.”
“The process may not be illegal,” Craig said, “but how the grants are approved may be. There are very specific regulations about reporting income, the bidding process and more. If friends and family of those in charge of allocating funds have an unfair advantage, I may be able to open a larger investigation into the grant program and demand a full audit.”
“Too much of this became political,” Elena said. “Everyone arguing about the cause—drugs, mental illness, lack of housing, any number of things. The money kept coming. State money, city money, bond money, federal grants. No one seemed to be accountable for any of the services they were supposed to provide, passing the buck to this agency or that agency. But, because of the grant Chen was awarded, we realized there was a potential crime—how did a criminal who trafficked in humans and ran a sweatshop profit off a housing grant?”
“But more important, why can we find no evidence of the grant?” Dyson said.
“Because it was destroyed in the computer crash,” I said, finally seeing what I had long suspected: someone in city hall had intentionally erased data that could get them in trouble.
“That’s where I came in,” Colton said with a smile and finally sat down at the table with us. He wasn’t a handsome man, but he was alluring with intense green eyes and a strong jaw. He looked like someone who could both take care of himself and everyone else. “Will identified several nonprofits that seemed to receive a lot of money—millions of dollars—but had nothing to show for it. He gave me a list of their properties, what they claimed to do, who they claimed to help. I went to every location. Slept outside most of them for a few days, a week or so. Documented comings and goings. Took pictures. Tried to get into shelters. Talked to people inside. I was one of them. When you’re homeless, you trust very few people—but you tend to trust your own kind.”
“The primary problem,” Craig said, “is that while Colton has been able to document that there is little sign of the money these nonprofits received, that isn’t a crime.”
That I knew. Will had told me over and over again and I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around that truth.
Craig continued. “What is a crime is if the process is tainted. According to what you uncovered about the computer crash, it’s only the housing grants that were lost, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We need those original proposals and approvals. You told Will that you might be able to recover the data, but that it could get you fired.”
I cleared my throat self-consciously. I didn’t know why I was nervous. These were Will’s friends and colleagues, and they wanted the same thing I wanted—to fix the problem. Better, they had the power to do it. “I’m not afraid of being fired.”
“That’s honorable, but I might be able to give you some protection. Whistleblower laws have become convoluted over the years, but in general, when a government employee publicly reveals potentially criminal information about the health, safety or finances of a government agency, they cannot be fired. You may be removed from your current capacity, but you would receive a paycheck and be reassigned to another division. If you bring the information to me, as an officer of the court, I would be duty bound to look into the allegations.
“The concern I have is how you obtain the information. You cannot break any laws in gathering the data. But the information I want is public record. It’s just been—possibly—destroyed. If you can recover it, I want to see it. That and all grants awarded since the crash. The who, what, where, when and why. How they are decided and who makes the decision. Who signs off. Is there a bidding process and has it been violated or suspended? If so, how? Is this something you would be comfortable doing?”
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “I have been working on this for months.” I glanced at Will, hesitant now because I didn’t know how much he had told these people. Three of them were cops, after all.
Will said, “I’ve told them everything. We’ve done nothing wrong, Violet.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?” Craig asked.
“I didn’t expect it to take this long,” I admitted. “Someone intentionally went in and covered up the deleted files. I don’t know who did it, but I know when it happened. February 18.”
Why did everyone look like they knew that already?
“What’s wrong? Is that important?” I asked.
“That’s the day of the Chen raid.”
I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Elena said, “Chen knew about the raid shortly before my team went in to arrest him. We had enough evidence to take Chen down and protect the women he’d been exploiting. That happened the same day that someone else—presumably someone in city hall—” she looked to me for confirmation, and I nodded “—deleted files then caused a computer crash.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “They had to delete the files from the backup—either before the backup was installed, which was two days later, or after the backup—which means the files are still in an older backup, if I can gain access to it. Backup files are stored off-site at a data warehouse—data goes one way, unless we need a specific backup.” I didn’t go into more details. I’d found that nontechnical people didn’t pay attention and ended up confused.
“But you believe someone did it on purpose,” Craig said.
“Yes, I know it was intentional.”
“Can you find out who did it?”
