“Bring me every image from the crime scene,” Méndez ordered.
“They’ve already been reviewed—”
“Again.”
Photos filled the screen.
Then one analyst paused.
“Colonel… this one.”
They zoomed in.
A blurred figure in the background. Not Ramiro.
A hand slightly raised.
And on it—
A faint, irregular mark.
A scar.
“How did we miss this?” Méndez whispered.
No one answered.
Because they hadn’t missed it.
They had ignored it.
Dolores Medina arrived the next morning without invitation.
“You don’t reopen my case without me,” she said, walking in like she still belonged there.
Méndez didn’t argue.
Minutes later, she stood staring at the image.
Her face hardened.
“I knew it,” she whispered.
“Knew what?”
“Because I saw him too. In court. Five years ago. He never testified… but he was there.”
“Why didn’t you push it?”
“I did,” she snapped. “No one wanted complications. The case was too clean.”
She pointed at the screen.
“That man doesn’t belong in the background.”
“Do you know who he is?”
Dolores hesitated.
