Chapter 7 - The Witnesses
The witnesses came forward slowly, the way witnesses always do.
The first was a delivery driver named Luis Ortega.
He was twenty-nine years old, a resident of Junction City, and he had driven for Meridian Culinary Solutions for eight months. He had been the driver of the white refrigerated van that had pulled up to the dining facility loading dock at 16:40 on the night of the banquet.
The FBI found him because his name was on the delivery receipt. They found him because the receipt was in the shoebox in Rosa's closet. They found him because Rosa had photographed the receipt and the photograph had a timestamp and the timestamp matched the timestamp on the loading dock security camera.
When the FBI agents knocked on his door, Luis Ortega said, "I was wondering when you would come."
He sat in a conference room at the U.S. Attorney's office in Topeka for four hours and he told them everything.
He told them that he had been told to substitute the allergen-free plates on the evening of the banquet. He told them that his supervisor at Meridian had called him at 15:30 that afternoon and told him that there was a "packing change" and that the allergen-free plates were to be substituted with a regular shrimp-and-scallop plate. He told them that he had asked if this was allowed and that his supervisor had said, "It's approved at the top. Don't worry about it. Just break the seal and reseal it with the plate that's on the head table's order."
He told them he had done it. He told them he had felt sick about it. He told them he had taken a photograph of the substituted tray with the broken seal because he wanted to have a record of what he had done, in case someone asked, and he wanted to be able to show them that he had only done it because he had been told to.
The photograph was on his phone.
The photograph showed the tray, the broken seal, and a small piece of paper with a lot number written on it in his own handwriting.
The photograph matched Rosa's photograph. It matched the seal in Rosa's shoebox. It matched the receipt.
The FBI agent who took the photograph into evidence was a woman named Special Agent Christine Nakamura. She looked at the photograph for a long time and then she looked at Luis Ortega and said, "Mr. Ortega, you have just given us the missing piece."
Luis Ortega started to cry.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry. I should have refused. I should have called someone. But I needed the job."
Agent Nakamura did not say anything.
She handed him a box of tissues.
The second witness was a cook at the dining facility named Loretta Simms.
Loretta had been a civilian employee at Fort Riley for nineteen years. She was fifty-six years old. She had three grandchildren and a husband in a wheelchair and a mortgage on a house in Ogden. She was the person who had signed the temperature log on the April evening when Private Webb got sick.
She had signed it at 06:00 and at 18:00, just as the log showed. What the log did not show was that she had come into the kitchen at 14:00 that afternoon and found the cooler door propped open. She had closed it. She had taken a reading. The reading had been 44 degrees. She had written it down on a sticky note and put it in her apron.
She had told Colonel Fallon.
Fallon had told her that the cooler door had been propped open by a contractor who was cleaning the coils and that there was nothing to worry about and that she should "not create a paper trail for a non-issue."
She had not created a paper trail.
She had kept the sticky note.
She had kept it in a shoebox in her own closet for six months.
When the IG investigators came to her, she went to her closet and she took out the shoebox and she handed them the sticky note.
The sticky note was dated April 14. The handwriting was Loretta's. The temperature was 44 degrees. The cooler number was the same cooler that the chicken breast had been stored in. The chicken breast had been delivered the same morning.
The IG investigator looked at the sticky note and looked at Loretta and said, "Ms. Simms, why didn't you report this at the time?"
Loretta looked at the investigator.
"Because I'm fifty-six years old and I have a husband in a wheelchair and a mortgage in Ogden," she said. "And Colonel Fallon was a colonel, and I am a cook."
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The IG investigator did not say anything.
She took the sticky note into evidence.
