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“No. Built into the grant itself is complete autonomy. There are no checks and balances. That’s why the system is so lucrative to people who know how to exploit it.”
I paused, needed this woman to understand even though it was complex. I said, “For example, Angel Homes applied for a twenty-million-dollar grant to provide temporary shelter for women and children escaping abuse. They didn’t provide one bed. Instead, the director made a salary of $650,000, and the treasurer made a salary of $250,000. The director is the sister of LA County Supervisor Lydia Zarian.
“Angel Homes also gave a ten-million-dollar grant to Sunflower Homes, a nonprofit that runs group homes for homeless women and children. Each group home has a huge overhead—rent, supplies, staff. The houses are owned by an LLC that is controlled by the brother of Supervisor Lydia Zarian. Not only the houses, but the transportation, the food service, everything. All told, each homeless family that is served through that program costs between two hundred and five hundred thousand dollars a month.”
Kara frowned. “Wait—that’s like what? Fifty families? That has to be illegal.”
“It’s not illegal, but as Will said, if it got out, it could destroy Zarian’s career, and public watchdogs might have sway to effect change in the process. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to explain to the average person because like you, they’d look at the dollars and say, no, this can’t be happening, someone would have noticed. Will has gone through the public filings for each entity, and Colton investigated every property owned by the group home—in the last year, sixteen women with between one and three children have been housed in Sunflower Homes, and they are already approved for even more money next year. This isn’t one house for one family, these are group homes, so multiple families in one house.
“This is just one of many scams. There are multiple nonprofits working multiple angles, and half of them are controlled by the Zarian family—Lydia’s name isn’t on anything, but her brother, her sister, her daughter even! And we’ve been wondering how they’ve been getting away with this, while hiding the supervisor’s involvement, and Colton recently learned that Duncan’s brother-in-law is the son of a federal agent and on the housing commission.”
“What’s the brother-in-law’s name?”
“Jonathan Avila. Do you know him?”
Kara shook her head. “You have all this documented?”
I nodded. “And more. Most of it is shuffling money—moving a couple million dollars into one nonprofit, taking a salary, then moving it into another nonprofit where a relative or friend takes a salary, then moving it to another, and so on. But Craig thought he caught them at something that he could take to the grand jury. That’s why I was bringing over the documentation where I prove how the computer system was crashed and identify the specific files that were deleted.”
“Do you have the files?”
“No, I have the file names, size and when they were created, but not the actual records. As I said, we have to get the backup drive—the physical drive from the data center.”
“Where is your documentation?”
“Colton took everything for safekeeping.” My voice cracked. “I’m so sorry about Craig. I really liked him. He was the only person other than Will who listened to me. Listened to my theories. He believed me about the computers. I tried to tell my boss months ago, but he said it was a server crash and we didn’t lose anything, only time.”
“Do you think your boss is involved?”
“No, I’ve never suspected my boss. Though I think Craig looked into him to make sure he wasn’t living above his means.”
“What is Colton doing? Where is he working?”
“Everywhere. He was in Venice Beach last month, the Valley after that, Echo Park Lake recently, but he moved—I don’t know where, but he’s been taking photos of people, buildings, contractors, that sort of thing.”
“As what? A journalist?”
“As a homeless vet.”
“He’s been living on the streets for how long?”
“Um, about five months?”
Kara frowned.
“He told me to trust you,” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“What more do you want to know? I don’t think I forgot anything, but maybe. Ask me anything. I want this to be over.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Her head jerked up. “You knew? Well, shit.”
Kara got up and paced. I didn’t say anything. Then she turned to me and said, “Why did you run?”
