Chapter 5 - The Vendor
Curtis Blaine was arrested at 14:20 the next afternoon.
He was arrested in the lobby of the Topeka Ramada by two FBI agents and a U.S. Attorney's investigator, on a federal charge of wire fraud. The charge was the first of thirty-one that were eventually filed. The other thirty were filed three weeks later, after the FBI had gone through the Meridian Culinary Solutions bank accounts and found fourteen shell companies and a paper trail that traced back to a single account in the Cayman Islands.
The account was in the name of Gerald Voss.
Gerald Voss was arrested at his home in Junction City at 17:00 the same day. He did not resist. He asked the agents if he could finish his dinner first. They said no.
Fallon was charged the next morning. The charge was dereliction of duty, followed by obstruction of justice, and eventually by conspiracy to defraud the United States. He was placed in pretrial confinement at Fort Leavenworth, where he remained until his court-martial began eight months later.
Rosa did not testify at the court-martial.
She did testify at the Article 32 hearing. She testified for three hours. She testified about the log and the seals and the photographs. She testified about the April evening when Private Webb got sick. She testified about the three weeks of substitutions that led to the banquet.
And she testified about the moment when she lifted the cover off the tray and found shrimp and scallops underneath.
There was a moment in the hearing when Fallon's defense attorney — a civilian lawyer from Wichita named Harold Feldman — stood up and said, "Sergeant Martinez, is it not true that you had a personal grievance against Colonel Fallon?"
"No, sir," Rosa said.
"Is it not true that you had complained to him repeatedly about his management of the dining facility?"
"I had submitted memos, sir."
"Is it not true that you had been counseled about your attitude?"
"I had been counseled about my tone, sir. Not my facts."
"Is it not true that you had been told, on more than one occasion, that if you continued to raise these issues you would be relieved?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you continued to raise them anyway?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
Rosa looked at the hearing officer.
"Because, sir," she said, "I am a sergeant first class in the United States Army. I have been in uniform for twenty-two years. And the Army taught me that the mission comes first and the soldier comes second and the paperwork comes third. If I had stopped raising those issues, the paperwork would have looked perfect. And a woman would have died. So I did not stop raising them."
The hearing officer — a colonel named Miriam Osei from the regional IG office — looked at her for a long moment.
"Sergeant Martinez," she said, "you are excused."
Rosa stood up.
She got as far as the door.
"Sergeant."
She turned.
"Thank you," Colonel Osei said.
May you like
Rosa did not say anything.
She walked out of the hearing room and into the corridor, and she stood there for a while with her back against the wall and her eyes closed and her hands shaking, and then she walked out of the building and into the parking lot and sat in her car for a long time before she could turn the key.
