Chapter 11 - The Man Who Looked Away
I didn’t shout.
That seemed to hurt Dr. Cruz more.
“You sent her back to the people she was accusing,” I said.
“I believed it was an administrative error.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
“Did you check?”
“No.”
He removed his glasses.
“There is no good explanation.”
“Then don’t give me one.”
Mateo examined the file.
The student’s name was Marisol Aguirre.
She had reported being asked to sign an acknowledgment before receiving any funds.
She refused.
Three months later, she withdrew from school.
I remembered her.
She had shared a bus stop with me.
Once, she bought me a boiled egg when I said I wasn’t hungry.
I had been starving.
“What will you do now?” I asked.
Dr. Cruz looked at the file.
“Turn this over.
Accept responsibility.
Cooperate with the audit.”
“And stay president?”
“That will not be my decision alone.”
I wanted his mistake to have a simple shape.
A villain.
An excuse.
A clean line between him and Carmina.
Instead, there was a man who had looked away because looking closely would have been inconvenient.
That was harder to forgive.
We found Marisol through an alumni contact.
Mateo approached her privately and explained what we were investigating.
She agreed to meet.
At a roadside café, she placed her old student identification card on the table.
“I kept it,” she said.
“Stupid, right?”
“No.”
“I thought I’d go back.”
She worked two jobs now.
Her father had died while she was trying to save enough for another semester.
When I showed her the payment record, she laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
“They said I got thirty thousand?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t afford the bus.”
She pushed the paper away.
“I complained.
They told me I must have forgotten signing.”
“Did anyone listen?”
“One woman.”
My chest tightened.
“A cleaner,” she said.
“She saw me crying outside the office.
She brought me water.”
“Teresa?”
Marisol nodded.
“She said I should keep copies.
I thought she was just being nice.”
My mother had been paying attention long before she found my name.
Marisol agreed to give a statement.
When we left, Mateo received a call from Nora’s lawyer.
The financial aid clerk had recovered a backup of approval emails.
Mr. Vidal had ordered her to delete them.
She hadn’t.
But there was a problem.
The backup showed that the university register we had found was only one part of the scheme.
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The larger payments had gone through a company outside the school.
Its registered owner was Carmina’s son.
