closed five years ago.” Méndez stared at the frozen image of Salomé’s face. An eight-year-old girl with eyes that seemed to hold all the secrets in the world. An eight-year-old girl told her father something, something that transformed him. “I need to know what it was.”
The silence on the other end of the line lasted several seconds. “You have 72 hours,” the Attorney General finally said. “Not a minute more, and if this is a waste of time…”
Time will tell, your career will be the one to end. Méndez hung up the phone, went to his office window, and looked out at the prison yard. Somewhere in this case was a truth no one had wanted to see, and an 8-year-old blonde girl was the key to finding it.
200 km from the prison, in a modest house in a middle-class neighborhood, a 68-year-old woman ate dinner alone in front of the television. Dolores Medina had been one of the most respected criminal lawyers in the country until a heart attack forced her to retire three years ago. Now her days consisted of pills, soap operas, and memories of cases she could no longer solve. The news appeared on the 9 o’clock news segment. Dramatic scenes at the central penitentiary.
An inmate convicted five years ago in the Sara Fuentes case asked to see his daughter as his last wish. What happened during the visit forced the authorities to suspend the proceedings for 72 hours. Exclusive sources indicate that the eight-year-old girl whispered something in his ear that provoked an extraordinary reaction from the convicted man. Dolores dropped her fork. Ramiro Fuentes’ face appeared on the screen. She knew that face, not from this case, but from another.
Thirty years ago, another man with that same look of desperate innocence had been convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Dolores was a novice lawyer then and couldn’t save him. That man spent fifteen years locked up before the truth came out. By then, he had lost everything: his family, his health, his will to live. Dolores never forgave herself for that failure. Now, looking at Ramiro Fuentes, she saw the same eyes, the same desperation, the same innocence that no one wanted to believe in.
