Chapter 59 Cara
FIFTY-NINE
CARA
—@USMarshalsHQ
Cara opened her eyes, confused, daylight beating on the window shades. The woman in the bunk across from her was snoring. The phone under her pillow was vibrating.
Snapping awake, she lifted the covers and climbed down from the top bunk as gingerly as she could. As she crept across the airless room to the door, the woman who’d slept below her snorted and rolled over.
She answered in a whisper while she padded down the carpeted hallway. “Hello?”
“This is Dylan Danvers.” His voice sounded higher and slightly more nasal than on his podcast. Did he use digital effects to deepen it?
“Please hold on.” She opened the sliding door to the backyard and tiptoed barefoot over wet grass and cigarette butts to a lopsided picnic table. “Thank you for calling me back. And thank you for continuing to believe in me.”
“I do have to ask you a question,” he said.
Her heart felt heavy, like a piece of lead in her chest. “But I thought—”
“I’m one hundred percent Team Cara, but give me a little something no one else would know. I need to confirm it’s really you. You’re the third person who’s contacted me claiming to be her.”
Of course they had. In a way, it was surprising there were only two before her.
Seeing movement through the partially open window of the men’s bedroom, Cara turned toward the dirty white fence.
“You said on your podcast that I was on probation at Santa Monica College my first year, but it was actually the first semester of my second year, and I wasn’t dating my instructor for a good grade.
I’m guessing my old roommates fed you that lie. ”
“Interesting. And what are the names of those roommates?”
“Pia Valenzuela and Justyn Mallo.”
“Either you’ve done as much research as I have or you’re really Cara Campbell,” Dylan said, sounding genuinely relieved.
“Too many people have tried to take ownership of my story. I contacted you because it’s time for me to take it back.”
“Preach,” he said. “How can I help you?”
Cara swallowed hard and pressed the back of her hand against her eyes. “Well, my initial plan was to contact Roy Abel and have him help me review my case but—”
“You didn’t actually tell him where you are, did you?”
“No,” she said, wondering if Dylan was about to ask her to tell him instead.
Thankfully, he didn’t. “Listen, I’m completely convinced you were railroaded. And Roy Abel was clearly more interested in fame, fortune, and airtime than helping you find justice. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been blindsided by that forensic accountant.”
Hearing what she already knew, from the only other person who’d questioned the truth of her case as much as she had, was the closest Cara had come to exoneration since the trial had ended.
A tall, skinny man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth stepped through the sliders and disappeared around the side of the house.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Cara told Dylan, lowering her voice even further.
“Look, like everyone else, I’m working an angle. I’ll help you by telling you everything I know, but in return, I want you to come on my podcast. To tell me absolutely everything that happened from the night Karl was murdered until—”
“I’m captured and sent back to prison?”
“I’m doing whatever I can to keep that from happening.”
Cara heard voices and clattering pans in the kitchen. The smell of frying bacon drifted across the yard, making her stomach gurgle.
“Deal.”
“OK, here’s what I know: first of all, every patient of your husband’s who ever complained about anything, from scratchy examination gowns to a surgical outcome, was investigated and cleared. So were all the employees at Glamp Ojai, even dread-headed Mr. Threlkeld.”
“I went out to City of Industry to see Karl’s surgical center and it—”
“Was never completed,” he said. “I know. Kind of surprised you, didn’t it?”
There was no point in defending herself. “Karl told me he had some arguments with the general contractor, Michael—”
“Yeah, Michael Donner. The guy is known in the business for his big mouth and his tendency to threaten people with all sorts of stuff. But he never follows through. Plus, he has an alibi and no known criminal associates. But the bigger point is that he never even started the job. He pulled out because he wanted money up front and your husband wouldn’t give it to him. ”
“Oh,” Cara managed, deflating. “He was the only actual person Karl told me about. I was kind of banking on whatever happened being connected to him.”
“Funny you should say banking. The one thing no one looked into, at least as far as I know, was the financing. I was at a party where people were gossiping about the case, and a very prominent banker told me Karl had been turned down all over town.”
“So that’s why construction didn’t start? But he told me he had the money. He said they were silent partners.”
“I can’t prove it yet, but I believe your husband may have agreed to a nontraditional financial arrangement with a company that appears to be a front for the Albanian mafia.”
Cara had seen a Netflix documentary about the way organized criminals lend respectable businesses money, then load the businesses with debt, force them into bankruptcy, and disappear. Had Karl been desperate enough to make his dream come true that he would have risked it all by taking dirty money?
“How do you know this?” she asked Dylan. “About the Albanians?”
Willow popped her head out of the open door. Cara hid her phone against her body, muffling Dylan’s reply.
“Brunch time!” Willow chirped, sounding much more friendly than the night before. Maybe she was just a morning person.
“I’ll be right there,” Cara said. Then, after Willow went back inside, she told Dylan, “I have to go.”
“Next time we speak, it’s on the record,” he said.
“I promise. But before we do, I’m going to do some more checking myself.”
Cara ended the call and went inside. In the kitchen, a platter of crispy bacon waited on the round oak table. The young couple was cutting fresh fruit, and one of the men had just finished pouring water into the coffee maker.
Willow shoveled a stack of pancakes onto a plate and smiled. “Ready for the most important meal of the day?”
All the boarders crowded around the table and introduced themselves. The snoring woman was Deb, the young couple were Anna and Anthony, and Cara’s two other roommates were Vida and Ines. A bald guy was Lucas, and a bearded, stout, and heavily tattooed man told her his name was Zeke.
“Nice to meet you all. I’m Claire,” said Cara.
She found it ironic that brunch, which she’d always thought of as a Millennial phenomenon she just couldn’t get into, had provided her most important moments of on-the-lam camaraderie—first with Sanjay and Devin, then with Fisk, and now at this safehouse deep in the San Fernando Valley where she was about to sit down with transients, hippies, and ex-cons.
In other words, her peeps.
“I can finish setting the table,” Cara offered, having spotted placemats and napkins on the beige Formica counter.
When Deb opened a cabinet and reached for a stack of paper plates, Willow reached over and pushed it shut. “No paper today. We’re using the real stuff.”
“Gotcha,” the unnamed woman said, opening a different cabinet with mismatched plates inside and handing them to Cara.
Willow counted out the silverware and handed it to her.
The whole thing felt downright civilized, like a bed and breakfast for the downtrodden.
When everyone was seated, Willow reached out to Cara and Lucas. Everyone joined hands as she lowered her head and intoned, “For the meal we are about to eat, for those that made it possible, and for those with whom we are about to share it, we are thankful.”
“That’s beautiful,” Cara said.
“It’s a humanist benediction. Don’t want to offend anyone’s beliefs or lack thereof.”
“Fruit?” Lucas asked, offering a large bowl filled with berries and melon slices.
As he spooned a portion for her, Cara speared two pancakes and put them on her plate. A bottle of syrup suddenly appeared over her right shoulder.
“Get your hands off that!” Willow grabbed it from the tall, skinny man who’d just appeared in the kitchen and carried the syrup with him to the table. “You know the rules, Joey. You don’t pay in advance, you don’t eat.”
“Aw, c’mon, Willow. Can’t I just—?”
“Chill out in the living room? Go ahead. You can pay to eat the leftovers, if there are any.”
“Gotta use the can,” said Joey, who definitely looked like he needed a meal or three, as he shuffled disconsolately toward the bathroom.
Willow looked embarrassed. “Joey thinks he can pretend he paid me when there’s someone new around here and I won’t say anything. But rules are rules.”
Around the table, people nodded somewhat sheepishly and began to eat.
“These pancakes are delicious,” said Cara, hoping to change the subject.
“Willow used my secret recipe for doctoring up the old Krusteaz,” Anthony said. “I also do mean slice-and-bake cookies. Maybe I’ll make some tonight. You’ll be here, right?”
“I don’t know yet.” After the information Dylan had provided, Cara knew she had a very long and risky day ahead of her. But it was comforting to know she had a place to rest her head if the plan she was making fell apart.
“You really have to try them,” Anna said.
“Somewhere you have to be?” Zeke asked from beside the toaster, where he awaited a slice of browning bread. “Because before you came in, some of us were talking about doing a beach day.”
Cara tried not to giggle at the thought of a safe house field trip. “Really?”
“I have a van,” Willow said. “If you need a ride anywhere, I’d be happy to drop you off, assuming it’s not too far out of the way.”
“It’s tough out there, so we all stick together,” Deb said with a dimpled smile.
They were all so friendly and convivial—with the notable exception of Joey—it was disconcerting. Was this a cult? And if so, did Fisk and Rae know? Rae’s comment about Southern California could have been a hint.
The answer revealed itself a moment later, when Deb jumped up to grab something from the fridge and her cell phone fell out of her pajama pocket. Cara reached down to pick it up, but Willow got there first, quickly grabbing it and passing it back to Deb.
The whole thing happened fast, but not so fast that Cara didn’t see what was on the unlocked screen: a surveillance photo showing her with purplish-black hair over the words $30,000 REWARD.
Cara felt like her body was glued to her chair. It took all of her strength to maintain her cheerful expression. The amount had risen overnight.
“Thanks,” Deb told Willow casually, slipping the phone back into her pocket. “Anyone need coffee while I’m up?”
Hands went up as, down the hall, the bathroom door opened, and Joey emerged.
They’d made breakfast to stall her. Had they already called the police? Was Deb going to bring back zip ties along with the coffee pot? No matter how leaden her legs, Cara had to get out of the house immediately.
“I’ll take some, too, but I need to use the restroom, now that it’s available,” Cara said, trying to keep her voice as bright and cheerful as everyone else’s. “Back in a minute.”
She pushed her chair back, deposited her mug by the coffee maker, and headed down the hallway.
Inside the bathroom, she locked the door and quietly tested the handle to make sure.
She really did have to pee, even though now she was so nervous she could barely get it out.
After she flushed, she pushed open the squeaky vinyl window.
No one would question her desire to air out the room out after Joey’s visit.
She peered outside. A narrow sidewalk linked the front and back yards. It was a short drop, and she could get a foothold on the stucco.
Before she went through, she picked up the damp, slightly grimy bar of soap and drew a single star on the mirror along with a very brief review of her stay.