Chapter 12 - THE SHIRT
The visitation room smelled like bleach and old coffee.
Lorenzo sat behind a table wearing county-issued clothes.
For the first time since I had known him, there was no expensive watch on his wrist.
No lawyer beside him.
No assistant.
No audience.
Tomás walked in carrying a brown paper bag.
I stayed outside.
This needed to be his choice.
Later, he told me what happened.
Lorenzo stood when he saw him.
“Tomás.”
Tomás stayed near the door.
“You wanted to see me?”
“I wanted to apologize.”
“For what?”
Lorenzo hesitated.
That hesitation told Tomás everything.
“For how things happened.”
Tomás almost laughed.
“How things happened?”
“I should have gotten you out of that house.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I could control Sergio.”
“You couldn’t.”
“I was trying to protect a lot of people.”
“There it is.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“What?”
“The excuse.”
“It isn’t an excuse.”
Tomás placed the paper bag on the table.
“I brought you something.”
He pulled out an old blue shirt.
Long sleeves.
The one police recovered from the lake house.
Lorenzo stared at it.
“You remember?”
“Yes.”
“You brought it after I showed you my wrist.”
Lorenzo’s face tightened.
“I was going to fix things.”
“You always said later.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
That shut him up.
Tomás pushed the shirt across the table.
“You gave me this so nobody would see.”
Lorenzo looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
Tomás shook his head.
“You want me to make you feel better.”
“That’s not true.”
“You want me to say you weren’t as bad as Sergio.”
Lorenzo looked wounded.
Maybe for the first time in his life, he couldn’t control how someone saw him.
Tomás stood.
“You were worse in one way.”
Lorenzo’s head snapped up.
“Sergio never pretended he loved me.”
Then Tomás walked out.
I was waiting in the hallway.
He didn’t cry.
Not until we reached the car.
Then he broke.
I held him while he shook.
He kept saying the same sentence.
“He knew.”
“I know.”
“He knew.”
“I know.”
Months later, prosecutors announced additional charges related to Júlia’s death.
Sergio had confessed to tampering with her car.
He claimed Lorenzo ordered him to “make sure she never reached the lawyer.”
Lorenzo denied it.
The case would go to trial.
But then prosecutors revealed one more piece of evidence.
Júlia had made a final phone call from her car minutes before the crash.
The voicemail had never been recovered from her old phone.
It had been sitting for twelve years on someone else’s answering system.
May you like
Attorney Daniel Mercer’s.
And Júlia had named Lorenzo directly.
