She’s 68 and has heart problems. Accidents happen. Older people fall. She forgets to take her medication.
He has emergencies in the middle of the night. Are you suggesting anything? I’m not suggesting anything. I’m saying you have 48 hours to resolve this issue.
How you resolve this is your business. But if that woman files a lawsuit before the execution, we’ll both be down.
Gonzalo nodded slowly. He had come too far to stop now. One more death wouldn’t change anything, it would only secure his future.
Dolores arrived home exhausted. The trip to San Jerónimo had worn her out, but what she discovered was worth every kilometer.
Martín Reyes was the key. She had proof; she just needed to find him. She checked her email before going inside. Among invoices and advertising, there was a package with no return address, a heavy, padded envelope.
He opened it carefully. Inside was a drawing. A drawing made with crayons, clearly by a very young child.
It showed a house, a figure lying on the ground, and a man standing next to it.
The man was wearing a blue shirt. At the bottom, someone had written a date: 5 years ago, three days after Sara’s death.
Dolores turned the drawing over. On the back was a message written in adult handwriting. If anyone sees this, it’s too late, but if there’s still time, keep looking.
The truth is closer than you think. Mr. Martín Reyes. D
The smells made her heart beat strongly.
Martín was alive. He had kept this drawing for 5 years waiting for the right moment and now, with the execution just days away, he had decided to act.
But why send a drawing of a little girl? What was she trying to say?
She examined the drawing again, the blue shirt, the photos Carlos had shown her. Gonzalo always wore blue shirts. Salomé had drawn what she saw that night.
At the age of 3, he had created the evidence that could save his father, and someone had kept it all this time.
Dolores needed to confirm that the drawing was authentic. She contacted an old friend, Patricia Méndez, a forensic psychologist with 30 years of experience in cases of childhood trauma.
They met in Patricia’s office the next day. Time was running out.
Less than 40 hours remained. Patricia examined the drawing with a magnifying glass, taking notes. The strokes were consistent with a child between three and four years old, she said.
The pressure of the crayon, the shape of the figures, the limited perspective. This drawing is authentic. Dolores, a young child, made it. Could it represent a real trauma?
Undoubtedly, children who witness traumatic events often process them through art.
This drawing shows a violent scene, one figure on the ground, another standing in a dominant position.
The use of the color red here indicated stains on the reclining figure. It suggests that the child understood there was blood, and the man in the blue shirt is the most significant detail.
Traumatized children remember specific elements: colors, smells, sounds. If the girl drew a blue shirt, it’s because the actual abuser wore a blue shirt. That’s a sensory memory, not a fabrication.
Dolores showed the photographs of Gonzalo that Carlos had collected.
In every single one, without exception, she wore shades of blue. Ramiro Fuentes always wore dark colors, Dolores said. Black, gray, brown, never blue. Patricia nodded.
If you can prove that the girl drew this days after the event, you have psychological evidence that she saw someone other than her father commit the crime.
It’s not legal evidence on its own, but combined with other elements it could reopen the case. Exactly. Dolores carefully kept the drawing.
I had one piece of the puzzle, but I needed more. I needed to find Martin.
Carlos arrived that night with more information. He had investigated Sara Fuentes’ past and found something crucial. Sara had a close friend, Beatriz Sánchez.
They had known each other since university. According to phone records I was able to obtain, Sara spoke with Beatriz the night before she died.
A 40-minute phone call. Beatriz Sánchez, a relative of Aurelio, his cousin, but they haven’t spoken in years. There was a family fight some time ago.
Beatriz lives on the outskirts of the city. She is a retired nurse. Dolores visited Beatriz that same afternoon.
She was a 60-year-old woman who lived alone with three cats and memories of better times. Sara called me that night, Beatriz confirmed. She was scared.
She told me she’d discovered something about Gonzalo, Ramiro’s brother, a fraud involving their parents’ will. What else did she tell me? That Gonzalo had been harassing her since before they were married.
Ramiro never knew. Sara didn’t want to cause problems between the siblings, but in recent months Gonzalo had become more aggressive.
He threatened her if she didn’t keep quiet about the will. Why did she never report this to the police? Beatriz lowered her gaze.
My cousin Aurelio visited me two days after Sara died. He told me that if I opened my mouth, he would investigate my taxes and find irregularities I didn’t know about.
He told me he could destroy my life with one phone call. I was afraid, Dolores. I was afraid and I kept quiet. And I’ve lived with that guilt for five years. Would you be willing to testify now?
Beatriz looked out the window where the sun was beginning to set. Sara was my best friend. I let her innocent husband be condemned out of cowardice.
If testifying now can fix some of the things I did wrong, I’m willing. Dolores left Beatriz’s house with a recording of her testimony and renewed hope.
But when he got to his car he noticed something strange, a black vehicle parked at the end of the street, the same model he had seen in front of his house days before.
She pretended not to notice and drove home. The black car followed her at a distance. Dolores changed her route, taking side streets.
The car was following her. Her heart was pounding, but she remained calm. In her years as a lawyer, she had faced worse threats.
Finally, it stopped in a well-lit area in front of a police station. The black car drove past, but something fell from its window as it accelerated.
Dolores waited a few minutes before leaving, picked up the object from the floor, a religious medal of the kind that mothers give to their children for protection.
It had his initials engraved on it.
Mr. Martín Reyes. He was following her. Not Gonzalo’s men. Martín. Dolores looked around for the black car, but it had disappeared.
However, now she had one certainty. Martín was alive, he was close, and he was trying to communicate. The question was, why wasn’t he showing himself openly?
Who was she so afraid of that she preferred to remain in the shadows for five years? The answer would come sooner than she expected. That night Dolores couldn’t sleep.
He gathered all the pieces on his table: Salome’s drawing, Martin’s medal, the forged will, Beatriz’s engraving, the connections between Gonzalo and Aurelio.
Everything pointed in one direction. Ramiro was innocent. Gonzalo had attacked Sara to silence her.
Aurelio had manipulated the case to protect his partner, but something was missing: the direct testimony of someone who had seen what happened that night.
Salome couldn’t speak. Martin was hiding. Without an eyewitness, everything else was circumstantial.
The clock read 3 a.m., less than 30 hours remained until the execution.
Then Dolores’s phone rang, an unknown number. Mrs. Medina. The voice was male, trembling. Who’s speaking?
My name is Martín. Martín Reyes. I know he’s been looking for me, and I know time is running out. Dolores felt her heart stop. Where is he? Why is he hiding?
Because if they find me, they’ll eliminate me, just like they tried to do five years ago. But I can’t stay silent any longer.
They’re going to execute an innocent man, and I have the evidence to save him. What evidence?
A long silence. The night Sara died, I was there. I saw everything, and I saw something else that no one knows, something that changes everything you think you know about this case.
What did you see? Sara Fuentes didn’t die that night, Mrs. Medina. I got her out of that house before Gonzalo finished her off.
Sara is alive and has been waiting for this moment for five years. And Dolores couldn’t process what she had just heard.
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