If all goes well, Ramiro will be free tomorrow and Salomé will have a family again.
Dolores. Sara and Martín traveled all night back to the city. Time was their worst enemy. There were less than 18 hours left until Ramiro’s execution.
They arrived at Dolores’s house at dawn. Carlos was waiting for them with news. Gonzalo is in pretrial detention, but his lawyers are moving heaven and earth to get him released.
Aurelio has activated all his connections. If we don’t act quickly, they’re going to bury this.
“They’re not going to bury anything,” Dolores said.
We have Sara’s recordings, we have Martín’s testimony, we have Salomé’s drawing analyzed by a forensic psychologist, we have the false will, and we have the alleged victim, alive and willing to testify.
“Who do we present all this to?” Carlos asked. Aurelio is a judge; he has contacts in all the courts.
“Not all of them,” Dolores said. “There’s one judge Aurelio hasn’t been able to corrupt. Judge Fernanda Torres is old school, a woman of integrity, and she owes me a favor from 20 years ago.”
Sara went ahead. Are you sure we can trust her? As sure as she is that the sun will rise tomorrow, Fernanda Torres has rejected bribes from drug traffickers and condemned powerful politicians.
He’s not afraid of anyone.
If anyone can stop this execution, it’s her. Dolores picked up the phone and dialed a number she hadn’t used in decades. Fernanda, this is Dolores Medina.
I need a favor. The biggest of your career. That’s it. Judge Fernanda Torres received them in her private office an hour later.
She was a 70-year-old woman with white hair and steely eyes that did not tolerate lies.
“This had better be true,” Dolores warned. “If you waste my time, no friendship will be worth anything.”
Fernanda, I’d like you to meet Sara Fuentes, the woman whose husband is to be executed today for allegedly attacking her. Fernanda looked at Sara with a mixture of astonishment and skepticism.
Can she prove she is who she says she is? Sara handed over documents, her birth certificate, her expired identity card, family photographs, and more.
her fingerprint that exactly matched Sara Fuentes’ official records.
It’s me, Your Honor, and I have proof that my brother-in-law Gonzalo attacked me on the orders of prosecutor Aurelio Sánchez. Audio evidence where they both confess everything.
Sara played the recordings. Fernanda listened silently to her impassive face. When the recordings finished, she spoke.
If this is true, we are facing one of the biggest judicial scandals in the country’s history. It is true, Dolores said, and we have less than 15 hours to stop the execution of an innocent man.
Fernanda stood up and walked to the window. “I’m going to call an emergency hearing, but I need you to understand something. Dolores.”
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