By evening, he called me back.
“Gabriel, there’s an open complaint in Guadalajara from three years ago. A woman named Hortensia Delgado reported that her widowed father remarried, and that his new wife and her mother drained his accounts and sold his house before he died. The mother used the name Elvira Montes. The daughter disappeared before anyone could find her.”
“Was the daughter Patricia?”
“The description fits. Ms. Delgado is willing to talk to you.”
I spoke to Hortensia that night. She cried when I described Elvira.
“My father thought he’d found love again in his last years,” she said. “They took his house, his savings, even my mother’s jewelry. By the time I understood what was happening, he was gone.”
“They come back Sunday,” I told her.
There was a long pause.
“Then I’ll be there,” she said.
Over the next two days, Javier and I filed formal complaints with the prosecutor’s office and with DIF, the child protection agency, supported by Dr. Ibarra’s report, Doña Carmen’s photographs, the binder, and the bank records. My accounts were frozen to stop any more transfers. Sofia gave a statement to a social worker, and I sat outside the room the entire time, holding her jacket.
