—Colonel, the visit is about to end…
“Be quiet for a moment,” he said, without taking his eyes off the girl.
He entered the room with slow steps.
Ramira tensed immediately, instinctively covering Salome with her body.
Méndez stopped two meters away.
“Little girl,” he said in a voice softer than anyone would have imagined from him. “What you just said… have you told anyone else?”
Salome looked at him without fear.
—To Aunt Clara. But she said I dreamt it because I was little. Then she sent me to talk to a lady, and after that I didn’t want to say anything anymore.
—A psychologist? —Mendez asked.
—I don’t know. She had a yellow notebook and she gave me candy if I stopped repeating the thing about the clock.
That was enough.
Méndez turned his face towards the younger guard, who was still standing by the door, not fully understanding what was happening.
—No one is to touch inmate Fuentes. Suspend all final proceedings until further notice.
The guard opened his eyes.
—But, Colonel, the sentence…
“The prison director suspends her when new elements arise that compromise the integrity of the process,” Méndez interrupted. “Or do you want me to quote it verbatim from the regulations?”
—No, sir.
—Then move it.
The guard practically ran out.
The social worker stood up.
—I… I have to report this…
“And she will,” Méndez replied. “But first I want the entire custody file for the minor, the psychological interviews, and any records of Aunt Clara’s visits. Everything. In my office. In ten minutes.”
The woman paled and left without protesting.
Ramira continued to hug her daughter as if someone were going to snatch her away again.
Méndez leaned forward slightly, just enough to be at Salomé’s eye level.
—Could you recognize that man if you saw a photo?
The girl nodded without hesitation.
-Yeah.
-Good.
He looked at Ramira.
For five years, every time she saw him cross the ward, she felt the same mixture of hatred and resignation. He was the face of the end. The man who signed schedules, protocols, and silences. But now, in that narrow room smelling of iron and disinfectant, Méndez didn’t look like an executioner. He looked like a tired old man who had just realized that perhaps he had been leading an innocent woman to her death.
“Mrs. Fuentes,” he finally said. “I need you to tell me exactly the same thing you told me in your first statement, without omitting anything, even if you think it no longer matters.”
Ramira looked at him like someone watching a door open after years of banging their head against a wall.
—Are you going to listen to me now?
It took him a second to respond.
-Yeah.
And for the first time, it sounded as if it hurt him to say it.
The following hours changed everyone’s destiny.
Méndez reopened the case from within, using the authority he still held and the pressure of a last-minute suspension of proceedings. He ordered the complete case file to be brought in—not just the court summary, but everything: original statements, expert reports, interviews, discarded names, psychological reports, and recordings of the scene.
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