Victor didn’t make it to the door.
Two guards got in the way.
“I just need air,,s” he murmured.
“Sit down,” the director ordered.
My brother was still hugging Mom.
I knelt in front of him.
“Ethan, look at me. What did you see?
I was eight now.
But that night I barely had two.
That’s why no one thought I could remember anything useful.
“Dad was screaming with Uncle Victor.
A white towel.
Victor’s wet shoes.
I never understood what it meant.
Up to three weeks earlier,s, when he found a box of family photographs at our grandmother’s.
In one image, Victor appeared wearing those same shoes.
Then he remembered something else.
There was red mud.
Investigators returned to the archives.
The night of the murder had rained.
And next to a side door of our house had been photographed small stains of reddish earth.
The original report ruled them out because the family usually entered there.
But Victor had stated that he was never in our house that night.
That was already a contradiction.
Then another appeared.
Victor had said he received the news of my father’s death at 11:42.
However, the old records showed that at 10:58 he had called a financial crime lawyer for nine minutes.
Forty-four minutes before he said he knew something had happened.
Why?
The answer was at my father’s job.
Dad managed the accounts of a small family business he shared with Victor.
For months he had detected inflated bills and payments to suppliers he did not recognize.
The night of his death he was to meet Victor to demand explanations.
That quote was on his calendar.
Dad managed the accounts of,s, a small family business he shared with Victor.
For months he had detected inflated bills and payments to suppliers he did not recognize.
The night of his death he was to meet Victor to demand explanations.
That quote was on his calendar.
He had never been presented to the jury.
I felt nauseous.
How could they overlook this?
My mother replied from the other side of the glass:
Because they had the knife.
The gun.
The prints.
The blood.
Everything pointed to her.
Until a new team revised precisely what seemed more solid.
Mom’s fingerprints on the handle didn’t show when she touched the knife.
It was one of our kitchen knives.
