Chapter 6: The Man Who Stayed Successful
Three days after Sarah was admitted, Dr.
Okafor declared the infection under control.
"The debridement worked better than I would have expected given the conditions," she said, reviewing the chart at the foot of the bed.
"The wound is clean.
The baby's positioning is good.
We want to keep you for another week minimum, but I am no longer worried about the outcome I was worried about on day one."
"Thank you," Sarah said.
"Don't thank me." Dr.
Okafor looked at her over the chart.
"You did the hard part before you got here."
After she left, Sarah called the number she had kept in her contacts for four years without using it.
It rang twice.
"Diane Marsh."
"Diane.
It's Sarah Bennett.
I don't know if you remember me — "
"Haiti and then the Texas floods," Diane said immediately.
"I remember.
You set my dislocated shoulder back into place without any anesthetic and told me to stop making a fuss."
"I told you to breathe through it."
"Same thing." A pause.
"Are you all right?
You sound like you've been through something."
"I'll explain when I see you.
But I need to ask you something first." Sarah looked at the folded letter on the table beside her.
"If someone had documentation of financial fraud — transfers, account records, dates going back over twenty years — and the original police report had been closed without investigation, is there a path forward?"
Silence on the other end.
"How solid is the documentation?" Diane asked.
"I haven't seen all of it yet.
But it was compiled by the victim himself, before he died.
And then added to over twenty years by someone who didn't know what she was building but kept building it anyway."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Where are you?"
"Baton Rouge General."
"Are you — "
"I'm fine.
Pregnancy complication.
I'll explain later." Sarah paused.
"Can you come?"
"I have a deposition Thursday," Diane said.
"I can be there Friday morning."
"That's enough time."
"Sarah." Diane's voice shifted slightly.
"Who is the subject?"
"A man named Gerald Pruitt.
He runs a property investment company out of Cypress Hollow, Louisiana.
He's been considered a successful businessman for over twenty years."
A keyboard clicked faintly on the other end of the line.
"I'm going to run his name before Friday," Diane said.
"Don't show the documentation to anyone else before I get there."
"Understood."
"And Sarah — is the person holding the documentation safe where they are?"
Sarah looked at her mother, who was in the corner chair eating a cup of hospital pudding with her left hand and watching a nature program on the small television with the volume turned very low.
"She's with me," Sarah said.
"Good.
Keep it that way."
She hung up.
Margaret looked over.
"Who was that?"
"Someone who can help." Sarah set the phone down.
"She's coming Friday."
Margaret set the pudding cup on the side table.
"What happens then?"
"Then we show her everything.
All of it.
The letter, the box, everything you've collected." Sarah paused.
"And then we find out whether Gerald Pruitt has been careful enough."
Margaret was quiet for a moment.
"He came to your father's funeral," she said.
Sarah looked at her.
"He stood at the back.
He didn't speak to me.
He didn't sign the book." Margaret's voice was very even.
"But he was there.
And when I looked at him, he looked back at me, and he — " She stopped.
"He didn't look sorry.
He looked like a man checking something off a list."
The nature program murmured softly from the television.
Something about migration patterns.
Something about animals that traveled enormous distances to return to where they had started.
"He made a mistake," Sarah said.
"What mistake?"
"He thought you'd give up." Sarah looked at the fireproof box that Margaret had asked Mrs.
Collins to bring from the house that morning.
It sat on the windowsill, solid and ordinary-looking.
"Twenty years of documentation, Mom.
He thought you'd give up, and you didn't."
Margaret looked at the box.
"I didn't know what else to do with the anger," she said quietly.
"You turned it into evidence," Sarah said.
"That's exactly what to do with it."
That afternoon, a man knocked on the open door of the hospital room.
He was perhaps sixty.
Well-dressed.
Silver hair.
He held a small arrangement of flowers — the kind bought from a hospital gift shop — and wore an expression of practiced concern.
"Margaret," he said warmly.
"I heard about your daughter.
I'm so glad she's all right."
Margaret went very still.
Sarah looked at her mother's face.
Then she looked at the man in the doorway.
"I don't believe we've met," Sarah said.
The man smiled at her.
It was a smooth smile.
Comfortable.
The smile of someone accustomed to walking into rooms and being welcomed.
"Gerald Pruitt," he said.
May you like
"I was a colleague of your father's.
A long time ago."
