It was an old, threadbare rag rabbit with one ear sewn twice.
“I also found this inside,” he said.
He handed it to the colonel.
Méndez picked it up carefully. It was heavy for a toy. He felt the stuffing, frowned, and unstitched a loose part of the seam with his fingers.
A small metal keychain and a tiny memory card wrapped in plastic fell out from inside.
Nobody breathed.
“I hid it,” the girl said. “That night Uncle Julian dropped it when he was struggling with my dad. Later, when everyone was yelling, I picked it up and put it in my rabbit hutch because I thought it was important. Then I forgot, or thought I had forgotten. Yesterday, when I heard his call, I remembered.”
Méndez held up his memory between two fingers.
—Do you know what this is?
Ramira shook her head.
The girl did answer.
—My dad used to record conversations when he didn’t trust people.
The colonel didn’t waste a second.
He left the room, memory stick in hand, followed by a technician and two guards. In less than twenty minutes, the entire prison seemed like a different place. Telephones rang. Doors opened and closed. Hurried footsteps. A prosecutor arrived without a jacket. A secretary woken up to prepare urgent reports.
Ramira remained in the visiting room, guarded, but no longer as a condemned woman about to disappear, but as the center of a tremor that was just beginning.
Salome was still with her.
“Forgive me,” Ramira whispered over and over. “Forgive me for leaving you with him.”
The girl denied it with a seriousness impossible for someone her age of eight.
—You didn’t let me. They locked you up.
Shortly afterwards, the colonel returned.
He didn’t have the face of a man who had seen too many things.
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