24 My Colonel Ordered Me To Serve A Tampered Tray To A Gold Star Mother — He Didn't Know I'd Kept The Seal He Broke

Rosa went home that night and did not sleep.

She sat at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee she did not drink and looked at her log. Twenty-three entries. Twenty-three seals in a ziplock bag in a shoebox in her closet. Twenty-three receipts. Twenty-three photographs on her phone.

She had started the log in April, after the first soldier got sick.

His name was Private First Class Marcus Webb. He was nineteen. He had come into the dining facility on a Tuesday evening in April and eaten a chicken breast that had been delivered that morning, and by 22:00 he was in the aid station with a fever and a violent stomach cramp, and by 23:00 he was on his way to Irwin Army Community Hospital, and by the next morning he was stabilized and had been told it was a "stomach bug."

Rosa had asked the medic about the food. The medic had said, "Sergeant, we see this ten times a semester. It's a bug."

Rosa had gone back to the dining facility and opened the walk-in cooler and looked at the chicken breast that was left over from the same lot. She had taken a photograph of the lot number on the box. She had taken a photograph of the seal. She had taken a photograph of the temperature log.

The temperature log was wrong. The cooler had been at 44 degrees for at least six hours on the day the chicken was delivered. The log had been signed by the shift supervisor, who had signed it at 06:00 and at 18:00, but not in between, which meant either the supervisor had not checked, or the supervisor had checked and had not written down what she found.

Rosa had asked the supervisor about it.

The supervisor had said, "Sergeant, I signed the log. If you have a problem with the log, take it up with the officer in charge."

Rosa had taken it up with the officer in charge.

Colonel Fallon had listened to her for four minutes, looked at the photographs on her phone, and said, "Sergeant, I don't have time for this. The dining facility has a contract with a reputable vendor. The vendor has a contract with the Army. If there is a food safety issue, the inspection process will catch it. Go back to work."

Rosa had gone back to work.

She had started keeping the log that night.

The next morning at 07:45, she parked in the visitors' lot outside Building 220 and walked up the steps with the log under her arm and the shoebox of seals in a canvas bag over her shoulder.

Colonel Wynn was waiting for her at the door.

"Sergeant Martinez," Wynn said. "The general is in the conference room. He's asked me to sit in. He's asked the provost marshal to sit in as well."

"Understood, ma'am."

"Sergeant." Wynn paused. "The general has been up since midnight. He's been on the phone with the installation commander, the garrison commander, the regional contracting office, and the U.S. Attorney's office in Topeka. The regional contracting office has already sent him a preliminary file. Do you know what is in that file?"

"No, ma'am."

"A vendor named Meridian Culinary Solutions has been delivering food to this installation for eleven months. They won the contract in November. The contract was awarded through a competitive bid process that was overseen by a contracting officer named Gerald Voss. Gerald Voss signed off on every invoice from Meridian for eleven months. Gerald Voss also has a brother-in-law."

Rosa's stomach turned over.

"Ma'am?"

"His brother-in-law is a man named Curtis Blaine. Curtis Blaine is the registered agent for Meridian Culinary Solutions."

Rosa closed her eyes.

"Colonel Wynn," she said quietly, "is Gerald Voss still on this installation?"

"He is."

"And Curtis Blaine?"

"He is currently in a hotel in Topeka. The provost marshal has him under surveillance. He is not going to leave the county until we have spoken with him."

Rosa opened her eyes.

"Ma'am," she said, "there is something else."

"What is it?"

"The substitution. Colonel Fallon didn't just sign off on the substitution. He ordered it." Rosa opened her log to a page marked with a paper clip. "Three weeks ago I submitted a memo to him asking why the allergen-free plates were being delivered from a different vendor than the rest of the food. The allergen-free plates have to come from a certified allergen-free facility. They have to be delivered separately. They have to be sealed separately. Three weeks ago the allergen-free plates started coming in the same van as the regular food, with the same driver, with the same seals, and I asked Colonel Fallon why."

"What did he say?"

"He said the vendor had consolidated its delivery routes. He said it was a cost-saving measure approved at the regional level. He said I was not to question it, and if I questioned it again I would be relieved." Rosa met Wynn's eyes. "Colonel, I should have gone to the Inspector General that day. I should have gone three months ago. I didn't. I kept telling myself I needed more evidence. I kept telling myself I would go when I had enough. And then last night I lifted the cover off a tray that was supposed to be for a Gold Star mother and found shrimp and scallops under it, and I realized that if I had waited one more week, if I had waited one more dinner, Mrs. Pruitt would have eaten it."

Wynn did not say anything.