JUDGE PRUITT: Sustained.
PROSECUTOR CAMERON: Your Honor, surely the defendant would be willing to share any theories about the actual perpetrator, if indeed it is not her.
ABEL: Objection! Speculation!
CAMPBELL: Karl was an excellent plastic surgeon with almost all five-star reviews. Everybody loved my husband. Even his ex-wife. They got along very well. He always saw the best in everybody. He didn’t have an enemy in this world that I knew of.
Jordan was seeing spots from staring at the bright screen of his phone. Putting it down, he got up to wash his face. He couldn’t do much more than splash it—the cold water trickled from the faucet. He hoped Wen was planning to check on Campbell’s remaining friends and family in the morning.
Because if Campbell had come to LA to clear her name, she clearly had a theory she hadn’t shared in court.
CALIFORNIA DEATH TRIP PODCAST:
PROGRAMMING NOTE
DYLAN DANVERS:Hi, crime fam, it’s Dylan. Sorry, no podcast today. But keep your notifications on and be ready to download my next episode the moment it appears. The next time you hear from me, I promise I’ll have something for you that will absolutely blow. Your. Mind.
DAY SEVEN
FIFTY-NINE
CARA
WANTED: Cara Irene Campbell. $25,000 reward for information leading to her capture. Please contact US Marshal Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System.
—@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?—”
