PART 2: The Dead Man’s Handwriting
Wendell’s face seemed to lose its color a little at a time. “That’s… that’s not…” Whatever explanation he had been reaching for failed to become a sentence. I kept my eyes on him and addressed the officer standing nearby.
“Colonel Rhodes,” I said, “I believe Mr. Pruitt has been telling your soldiers about his service.” “He has, ma’am.” “Would you mind asking a few questions?” Rhodes turned toward our host, and the room’s attention turned with him.
“Sergeant Pruitt,” he said, deliberately leaving out the title Wendell had claimed. “Which command sergeant major academy did you attend?” “I… Fort Bliss. A long time ago.” “Which class?” Wendell opened his mouth, then closed it without answering.
Rhodes continued. “Who was your sergeant major of the Army at the time of your promotion?” No answer came. The silence left Wendell standing in the middle of the stories he had told, unable to supply the ordinary details that should have supported them.
Staff Sergeant Okafor moved forward. “Mr. Pruitt, you said you ran logistics out of Camp Taji in 2006. I was a motor sergeant there. There wasn’t a command sergeant major named Pruitt. And you said you worked with the Third Corps Support Command. It was called the Third COSCOM.”
“It was a long time ago,” Wendell replied. “Memory fades…” Okafor remained polite. “It doesn’t fade that much,” he said. There was no need for him to raise his voice; the facts were doing everything that volume could not.
Another of the soldiers, a gray-haired master sergeant named Dolores Banks, lifted Wendell’s cap from the table near the door. “I wore three of these myself before I retired,” she said. “You’ve got the rank insignia on the wrong side of the crest.”
Wendell’s gaze traveled around the room as though he was trying to locate a way out. His voice had become hoarse when he said, “This is my house.” From the hallway, my mother answered him with a single word. “No.”
Everyone turned toward her. She stood with her arms folded over her blue cardigan, her chin raised in a way I had not seen for months. “It’s my house,” she said. “It’s been my house for twenty-six years. And I’d like you to leave, Wendell.”
He did not immediately obey. At first, he remained in the center of the room with his shoulders drooping. Then his whole bearing altered. The bluster disappeared, but what took its place was not embarrassment. It was a flat, cold quality that frightened me far more than his earlier arrogance.
“Ruth,” he said, using a voice I had never heard from him before. “You don’t want to do this.” “Yes, I do.” “You don’t understand what you’re…” Before he finished, my phone vibrated inside my pocket.
I drew it out and found a message from a number I did not recognize. A photograph accompanied it. In the picture, I was wearing civilian clothes and sunglasses, leaving a secured facility at Fort Eisenhower with a badge attached to my belt.
The image had been captured three days earlier, from far away, through a long lens. Under it was a seven-word message: “YOUR MOTHER WAS NEVER THE TARGET. YOU WERE.” The cold that moved through me had nothing to do with Wendell’s stolen title.
I raised my eyes. Wendell was looking directly at me. He had not been watching the screen, yet he knew. Somehow, he knew exactly what had just appeared on my phone. “Colonel,” I said, keeping my voice very calm. “Lock the doors.”
Rhodes did not ask for an explanation. Two of the men headed for the front entrance while Okafor moved toward the rear of the house. But Wendell was already moving, and he moved with a speed that did not fit either his age or the life he pretended to lead.
He shoved past a lamp, sent a chair over, and reached the kitchen before anyone could get hold of him. The back door slammed. Okafor reached the porch just in time to see a gray pickup racing down the gravel drive.
“I’ve got a plate!” he called. “Georgia, Charlie-Delta-Seven…” “Call it in,” I said. “Now.” Behind me, my mother had lowered herself heavily onto the arm of the sofa. Her hands were trembling.
I crossed to her and knelt in front of her, not caring about my dress uniform. “Mom. Look at me. Did he hurt you?” “No,” she whispered. “No, never. He just…” She swallowed, struggling to put what had happened into words.
“He took my phone. He said it was for my own safety. He read my mail. He asked me every day about you. What you did, where you were stationed, when you were coming. I thought he was being protective.” Each thing she described changed the meaning of the carefulness I had noticed that morning.
“When did he first ask?” “Before we ever dated,” she said, her eyes filling. “He found me at a church supper. He said he’d lost his wife. I felt sorry for him.” Her answer settled in my stomach with the weight of a stone.
Something white caught my attention beneath the lamp beside the sofa. A photograph had slipped from the jacket Wendell had tossed over a chair. I picked it up. The print was old, its surface faded and creased, and it showed two smiling men in desert camouflage standing in front of a Humvee.
One was a younger Wendell. He had a mustache then, and a private’s rank at his collar. The other man was someone I recognized immediately, though the place I knew his face from was a memorial plaque.
Colonel Lyle Ransom. He had commanded my first intelligence brigade. Eight years earlier, the Army had declared him killed in action after a convoy ambush outside Kandahar. I had gone to his funeral. At his memorial, I had carried a folded flag.
I turned the photograph over. Across the back, in blue ink, was handwriting I knew from a hundred signed orders. The message read: “Keep an eye on the girl. — L.R., 6 months ago.”
Six months ago. I stared at the date attached to the message, then at the handwriting that made it impossible to dismiss. Colonel Lyle Ransom had been dead for eight years. Yet six months earlier, he had written a note telling Wendell Pruitt to watch me.
