The guards tried to separate the girl from her father, but she clung to him with a strength beyond her years.
“It’s time you knew the truth,” Salomé said, her voice clear and firm…
“It’s time.” Colonel Méndez watched everything from the observation window. His instinct, the one that had kept him alive for 30 years, screamed at him that something extraordinary was happening. He picked up the phone and dialed a number he hadn’t used in years. “I need you to stop everything,” he said. “We have a problem.” The security footage showed everything with brutal clarity. The silent embrace, the whisper, Ramiro’s transformation, the cries of innocence. The little girl repeating that phrase. Colonel Méndez played the video five times in a row in his office.
“What did he say to her?” he asked the guard who had been closest. “I couldn’t hear, Colonel, but whatever it was, that man changed completely.” Méndez leaned back in his chair. In 30 years, he had seen it all. False confessions, innocent people convicted, guilty people released on technicalities, but he had never seen anything like this. Ramiro Fuentes’ eyes, those eyes that had always filled him with doubt, now shone with something he could only describe as certainty. He picked up the phone and called the Attorney General.
“I need a 72-hour stay,” he said bluntly. “Are you crazy? The proceedings are scheduled, everything is ready, we can’t. There’s potential new evidence. I’m not going to proceed until I verify it.” “What evidence? The case was 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.
