Chapter 3 - The Boy Who Set Up The Email
We drove my mother home in my car. Nobody said a word the whole way. Kurt sat in the back seat with his face turned to the window.
At my parents' house, my mother went straight to the kitchen and turned off the oven. It was still on. The rolls had burned black. She stood there staring at them for a long time.
Kurt and I sat on the back steps, looking out at the dark yard where we used to play when we were little.
"Tell me," I said.
He rubbed his face with both hands. Kurt is forty-four. He fixes computers at a car dealership. He has two little girls and a wife who loves him. And in that moment, he looked about nine years old.
"Two years ago, Dad called me," he said. "He said he was starting a consulting business. Helping veteran-owned companies. He said he needed an email address. A professional-looking one."
"And you made one in my name."
"He said you knew," Kurt said. "He said you'd approved it. He said it was easier for the companies to trust an email from you, and that you were too busy to answer them yourself." He shook his head. "I believed him. For about a month."
"And then?"
"And then I saw one of the emails," he said quietly. "'I've reviewed your proposal with great interest.' Signed 'General S. Merrick.' And I knew you would never write a sentence that stupid."
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
"Why didn't you stop him, Kurt?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Because I'm still scared of him," he finally whispered. "I'm forty-four years old, and I'm still scared of him."
I didn't say anything. I didn't have to. I remembered too.
The belt. The closet. The way the whole house went quiet when his truck pulled into the driveway. How Kurt used to hide under my bed, and I would lie on top of the covers with my shoes on, ready.
"You remember the night he broke my arm?" Kurt said. "I was eleven. I spilled grape juice on his work papers. Mom told the hospital I fell off my bike."
"I remember."
"Tonight, in that restaurant, was the first time anybody outside this house ever saw him do it," Kurt said. "Seventy-six years. And the first time anybody saw, it was a room full of strangers and a colonel and the FBI."
Behind us, the screen door opened. My mother came out and sat down on the step above us. She had taken off her cardigan. For the first time in years, I could see her arms. There was an old, faded bruise above her left elbow.
She saw me looking. She didn't cover it up.
"His lawyer called," she said quietly. "He wants me to come post bail in the morning."
"Are you going to?" I asked.
She looked out at the dark yard for a long time.
"No," my mother said. "I've been posting bail for that man for fifty-two years. One way or another." She took a shaky breath. "I'm done."
Kurt turned around and stared at her.
"Kurt," she said, "you need to go to the FBI. Tomorrow. And tell them everything. Before he tells them something worse."
"Mom, I'll get in trouble."
"Maybe," she said. "But you'll get in a lot less trouble if you walk in yourself. Your sister can't help you with this. She has to stay far away from it. But I can sit in that room with you."
Kurt looked at me. I nodded.
"I kept everything," he said slowly. "The password. Every email he sent from that account. I saved copies on a little drive in my garage. I think part of me always knew someday I'd need it."
I put my arm around my little brother's shoulders. He leaned into me, like he used to under my bed.
The next morning, I flew back to my headquarters at Fort Liberty. I couldn't be anywhere near the case. That's the rule. And I follow the rules.
But I made one phone call on my way to the airport. To the woman who made body armor for female soldiers. The one who wrote the letter that started everything.
Her name was Tonya Ruelas. A retired Army sergeant. A single mother of three. She had built her little company in her garage in Fayetteville. She had paid my father forty thousand dollars, her entire savings, for a meeting with me that never existed.
"I didn't know, Ms. Ruelas," I told her. "I'm so sorry. I'm not calling about the case. I can't. I'm calling because I wanted you to hear it from me."
She was quiet. Then she said, "Thank you, General. Nobody else in this whole mess has said those words to me."
That afternoon, Quinn called me at my desk. Her voice was tight.
"Sloane, I just heard from the prosecutor," she said. "Your father has a new lawyer. An expensive one."
"And?"
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"He's pleading not guilty," Quinn said. "And he's telling the FBI that it wasn't his idea. He says you were behind the whole thing. He says you knew about every dollar."
What do you think Sloane will do now?
