THE NAME IN THE NIGHT

Later, Carmela called Dolores.

“There’s something else.”

Salomé screamed a name every night.

Not her father.

Not her mother.

“Martín.”

Martín Reyes.

The gardener.

He worked for the Fuentes family for three years.

He disappeared a week after Sara died.

No investigation.

No follow-up.

His mother filed a missing person report.

Closed.

Dolores felt the weight of it.

A child witness.

A missing gardener.

A forged will.

A corrupt prosecutor.

This was no longer a single crime.

This was a web.

And someone had spent five years making sure it stayed buried.

“I need Martín’s mother’s address,” Dolores said. “I already have it.” Carmela handed her a piece of paper.

“But be careful, ma’am. Whoever made that man disappear can make you disappear too.”

Dolores put the paper in her pocket. “At my age, Carmela, I’m no longer afraid of disappearing. I’m afraid of disappearing without having done justice.”

Five years earlier, two weeks before the tragedy, Gonzalo Fuentes’ office was on the tenth floor of a glass building in the financial center.

Sara entered unannounced with a manila folder in her hands and fire in her eyes.

“What does this mean?” she asked, throwing the documents onto Gonzalo’s desk. He looked at them without flinching. “Sara, what a surprise!”

Shouldn’t you be taking care of my niece? Don’t change the subject. I found your parents’ original will, the real one.

Ramiro was entitled to half of those lands. You forged them. Gonzalo stood up slowly, closing his office door.

Be careful with your accusations, sister-in-law. They’re very serious words. They’re not accusations, they’re facts. I hired an expert. The signature on the will you presented is forged.

The lines don’t match. I’m going to report you, Gonzalo.

I’m going to make sure Ramiro gets back what you stole from him. Gonzalo walked toward her with calculated calm. And you think anyone’s going to believe you? My partner Aurelio is a prosecutor.

My connections reach all the way to the governor. Your word against mine is worthless. I have proof. Proof can disappear, and so can people.

Sara felt the weight of the threat, but she didn’t back down. You have one week to return what you stole. If you don’t, I’m going to the police.

I go to the newspapers. I go wherever necessary.

Gonzalo smiled. That cold smile Sara had learned to fear. One week, I understand. Outside the office, someone had overheard the entire conversation.

Martín Reyes, the gardener, had come to deliver some documents and had frozen behind the door. What he had just heard could cost him his life, and he was right.

The town where Martin’s mother lived was called San Jerónimo.

It was a place forgotten by time, with dirt streets and adobe houses that seemed to be held up by a miracle.

Dolores arrived after a 4-hour journey. She found Consuelo Reyes’s house at the end of an unpaved street, next to a mango tree that shaded half the patio.

Consuelo was a 75-year-old woman with a face marked by decades of hard work and recent years of pain.

She opened the door suspiciously. “What do you want?” “I’m a lawyer. I’m investigating a case involving the Fuentes family.”

I think your son Martin can help me. Her eyes filled with tears of comfort.

My son disappeared 5 years ago. The police never looked for him.

They told me he’d probably gone to another country for work, but I know something happened to him. Martín would never have abandoned me. I had contact with him before he disappeared.

Consuelo hesitated for a moment. Then she went inside and came back with a crumpled letter. This arrived three days before she disappeared. Read it yourself. Dolores took the letter with trembling hands.

Mom, if anything happens to me, I want you to know that I saw something terrible at the house where I work, something that involves very powerful people.

I can’t say more in a letter, but I’m keeping evidence in a safe place. If anyone asks, say, “You don’t know anything. I love you.”

“Where did your son Martín keep the evidence?” Dolores asked. “I don’t know, but if Martín says he has it, he has it.”

My son never lied. Dolores looked at the modest house, the empty yard, the mango tree. Martín Reyes had seen something that night. He had proof, and someone had made him disappear, so the question was, was he still alive?

In an exclusive restaurant in the city center, Gonzalo Fuentes and Judge Aurelio Sánchez were having dinner in a private room.

The tension was palpable. “That lawyer is asking too many questions,” Aurelio said as he cut his steak.

He visited the prison, spoke with the warden, went to the home where the girl is being held, and now I know he went to San Jerónimo. Gonzalo stopped eating. San Jerónimo, why would he go there?

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