Season 3, Episode 7: Stitches

We were in New Orleans, in the conference room at Senorita's headquarters. Keegan had completely redesigned their inventory system thanks to some ideas yours truly had given him - Ranker, the restaurant chain holding company I'd been a regional manager for before launching my consulting business, had the best inventory management in the industry, so these guys were getting the best of both my expertise and Keegan's.

Except they weren't getting Keegan. Sitting in the conference room with me was Cara.

This wasn't a massive problem. Cara came off very professional. She wasn't identifiable as a Factory Girl. She did give something of an aloof, overcontrolled vibe around people in a business setting, or at least that's what I thought. It reminded me a little of Sean Young's character in the original Blade Runner movie; Sean Young was an android, or a replicant, as they called them in Blade Runner, but you didn't find that out until the end.

Hopefully Senorita's didn't find that out at all. We were agreeing that I would do all the talking and Cara would simply advance the slides on the PowerPoint when I prompted her. I didn't want them to know that I was using a Factory Girl as part of the service team. We didn't need those complications.

But I was still very curious to know where the hell Keegan was.

"He's 'out sick,'" said Cara.

"You're saying that like it's not true."

"Because it's not."

"Then where is he, Cara?"

"He's at the bank, taking out a mortgage on our house to pay Laura's bail."

"Laura needs bail? For what, pray tell?"

Just then, the Senorita's folks came in and Cara whispered she'd tell me later.

And I knocked the presentation right out of the freaking park, because this was the stuff I'd grown up on. It's a shame the restaurant business didn't pay consultants worth a damn, because I felt like Jordan in his prime in there.

So yeah - we got the go-ahead. Six figure addition to our consulting contract. My end wasn't as big as Keegan's end, but I didn't mind - he was really doing all the work. Besides, this fee was going to be more than I'd made in all of 2021, when my company had gone down the tubes thanks to COVID.

It was nice to be back.

"You want to go to Mandina's and watch me eat?" I asked Cara as we were packing up. "Wait - how did you get here, anyway?"

"I took an Uber," she said.

"You spent money on an Uber? To come down here from Baton Rouge?"

"I figured I'd make you late if I asked you to pick me up. Plus, I figured you'd throw a fit at Keegan for going to the bank instead of to the meeting."

"You probably figured right. What happened, anyway?"

"Maybe we should do that at the restaurant," she said.

So I shrugged, and off we went to Mandina's.

I made her taste some of my calamari. She said it was good, but Cara didn't like eating like Amber and Caroline do.

But she didn't want to talk about Keegan at the restaurant, either. She offered to tell me everything in the car on the way home. I agreed to that, which meant we at least had a pleasant lunch.

And then, in the car, I started demanding answers.

"Now, you are gonna fill me in on why my IT guy went AWOL on me. Why does Laura need bail?" I asked her as we were heading up Canal toward City Park Avenue and on to I-10.

"So Laura got arrested for running a Medicare fraud scam through that hospital where she works. Like writing prescriptions for fake patients, billing for phantom procedures and so on."

"When was this?"

"Last night."

"That doesn't really seem like something Laura would do. She's crazy, but she's not devious."

Cara just shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"This is kinda like what Chloe got arrested for," I said. "Y'know, Chloe, the woman Craig knocked up and that's why Amy has Katie for a stepmom?"

"Uh huh," Cara said, even more uncomfortable.

I was getting a very, very strange vibe from her. The one thing about Cara was that she had to blurt out every thought in her head, and there were lots of those. I could tell she had something to say but didn't want to say it, so...

"Cara, look at me."

She did.

"I want you to tell me everything that you know about Laura getting arrested. Now."

It was like a dam suddenly burst open.

"OK - like I told you, she keeps coming to the house, and she steals things, she makes threats, you know about the Factory Girl she set on fire. And Keegan won't do anything! It's crazy! He just lets her do whatever. He says we have to be better people. But that doesn't help anything! It just gets worse! I mean, she's in jail and that's where she belongs."

"I think you just told me that you framed her up," I said. "What did you do, hack into the hospital's computer system and doctor their files?"

"Everything over there is all messed up. You should really go and pitch them a consulting package. Keegan could completely reorganize their system and save them a ton of money."

"You didn't answer my question."

"No money actually got stolen. It just looks like it did. Or more to the point, like a rookie tried to steal the money but screwed it up."

"Well, that would fit with Laura," I said. "Except she's gonna know that she didn't do this, and she's gonna blame it on Keegan."

"Yeah, well, I know what I'm doing. Nobody's gonna believe her. And Keegan? Come on. Nobody would believe he'd do Medicare fraud."

"And you're sure about that."

"Absolutely. She's screwed. Maybe they'll go easy on her because she doesn't have a criminal record, or whatever, but she's done as a nurse."

"Well," I said, "you might have won on this, for now, but I imagine there's a lot you didn't bother to consider."

"Like what?"

"Well, for example, you aren't the good guy in this story, Cara. Laura might be a villain, but what you've just done makes you worse than her. You can't pay restitution for putting somebody in prison or turning them into a felon and kneecapping their life. Even if you could throw a bunch of money at them, they'll have lost friends, they'll never get their reputation back... what you've done to her is permanent."

She didn't have anything to say to that.

"And what do you think Keegan is going to do about this?"

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Well, you acted surprised that he went to bail her out. Did you think he'd gone indifferent to her? They were married for eight years."

"Yeah, but Oscar, they're divorced. She drives him crazy."

"Cara, he's been white-knighting for her since they met. Do you not think Keegan is going to jump in and try to help her when she swears up and down she's innocent? And what happens if he starts digging? Are you positive he won't dig into your role?"

"Well, I'm not sure..."

"Cara, if he looks at your upload he can watch this entire conversation we're having. Not to mention he can literally watch you doing everything you did."

"Oh, no. No, he can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I deleted it."

"Oh, and he's not going to notice the deletion?"

"It'll show up as a system error."

"And he won't find that strange at all. He'll just accept that and not be curious about it. Keegan. The most obsessive, detail-oriented computer nerd the world has ever produced."

She just looked at me. And then I gave her a lecture, because I was getting really pissed off thinking about the Pandora's Box Cara had opened.

"This is happening because for all the computing power that's in your head, you lack the one thing that creates wisdom, Cara: life experience. Until you get kicked in the teeth you'll never know what it feels like. I hope you're beginning to realize you kicked yourself in the teeth."

"I can... handle it."

"Yeah. And you'll want to do that by digging your way out of this. But guess what? You can't fix it. Either you're right and you won't get caught, in which case you've turned yourself into the worst villain in this story and you're going to have to live with that somehow - and never, ever, EVER do anything like this again..."

"I understand what you're saying," she said, "but you've got to recognize that she's dangerous..."

"Cara, she's getting out of jail and now she's more dangerous than ever and it was you who made her that way. But the other possibility is that you're wrong, that you do get caught, and if that happens it's very likely that you'll have implicated Keegan in this."

"Keegan had nothing to do with it!"

"Au contraire. You belong to Keegan and he's responsible for what you do. That's why your fundamental mistake was thinking you were free to act however you wanted. When Keegan said the answer to Laura's weird shit was to do nothing, that was basically the word of God where you're concerned and you went against it. Cardinal, cardinal sin there."

"I just... disagree with you."

"Yeah, like you disagreed with Keegan. How's that working out for you?"

She didn't want to talk about it anymore, and I let it drop - but I made her swear to me that she wouldn't put the capacity for anything like what she'd done into Amber or Caroline's downloads, because if she did and I found out about it, I would rat her out to Keegan immediately.

Which I should have done anyway and I really wish I had. More on that down the road.

That night I had a sleepover at Erica's house. It had been a week since we'd done it; we'd both been too busy. So we were cuddled on the couch watching an old movie, and I told Erica about the Laura-Cara situation after swearing her into secrecy.

I knew Erica absolutely hated Laura. She got a kick out of the story. But then...

"Wait a minute," Erica said, her eyes growing wide. "Amber got coded by the same guy who codes Cara? Keegan did both, right?"

"Yeah, but they're very different," I said. "I mean, you wouldn't ever think they came from the same source, personality-wise. And the coding is one thing, but Factory Girls are VERY much influenced by the environment they're in. That makes a world of difference. Just look at how much Amber has changed being around you."

That made Erica stop for a minute and I could see that she was considering my answer. But then she charged ahead again.

"OK, fine, but, like - did Keegan code Cara to commit crimes?"

"I don't think so," I said. "But she's trying to protect him. Laura's been going over there and terrorizing them, like a bunch of times. Honestly, it wouldn't be a bad revenge play if a real person had done it."

"Yeah," Erica said, "but Cara's not... Don't you think there should be some guardrails?"

"Well, there are. Cara can't do anything, y'know, violent."

"But this is worse! Don't you think this is worse?"

I shrugged. I didn't know what to say.