Chapter 5 - WHAT ELENA REMEMBERED FROM UNDER THE TABLE
Elena’s forensic interview took place without Mateo.
That was deliberate.
Nina did not want anyone claiming he had coached her.
Rosa initially refused permission.
Then Nina told her the alternative could involve asking a court to authorize further inquiry.
Rosa relented.
The interview lasted less than an hour.
Mateo waited four days to learn what Elena had said.
Nina brought no smile when she returned.
That scared him.
“She remembered Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
Mateo leaned forward.
“Then why do you look like that?”
“Because she remembered more.”
Elena said Daniela and Gabriel argued in the kitchen.
She had been coloring beneath the dining table because her mother had told her to stay there.
Gabriel kept asking Daniela for something.
Elena remembered the word numbers.
She remembered Daniela saying:
“I’m telling Mateo tomorrow.”
Then Gabriel noticed Elena.
He crouched beside her.
He told her to go upstairs.
Elena did.
Later she heard a crash.
She came back down.
She saw Gabriel standing near Daniela.
Daniela was on the floor.
Elena did not remember seeing him strike her.
That distinction mattered.
“What happened next?” Mateo asked.
“Elena says Gabriel saw her.”
Mateo’s face tightened.
“He told her Mommy fell.”
Nina paused.
“He also told her Daddy was going to be very upset, so she needed to hide.”
Mateo stared at the table.
“She hid in her bedroom closet.”
“Yes.”
That explained why responding officers had not immediately found her.
Mateo had discovered Elena almost twenty minutes after police arrived.
She had been curled behind winter coats.
Nina continued.
“Elena says she saw Gabriel leave through the back door before you came home.”
Mateo covered his mouth.
For three years he had imagined Daniela dying alone.
Now he imagined his daughter upstairs listening.
“Why didn’t she tell anybody?”
“She was five.”
“She could say Uncle Gabriel.”
“She also says Gabriel spoke to her afterward.”
“When?”
“At your mother’s house.”
Mateo went still.
“Elena says he told her if she talked about that night, Grandma would get sick and she might have to live with strangers.”
Mateo stood so quickly his chair scraped backward.
Nina did not flinch.
“He threatened my child.”
“He frightened a traumatized five-year-old into silence.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Sit down.”
Mateo stared at her.
Nina’s voice hardened.
“You already lost three years because people convinced a jury you were a violent man. Do not hand them another sentence they can quote.”
Mateo slowly sat.
Nina waited.
Then she slid a photocopy across the table.
It was Daniela’s handwriting on the photograph.
A document examiner had found strong indications it matched samples from her work records.
Beneath the picture, enlarged, Marcus had noticed something Mateo had missed.
On the kitchen table beside Gabriel sat a white envelope.
Across the front Daniela had written:
VARGAS CONST.—MISSING.
May you like
The photo was not only proof Gabriel had been there.
Daniela had photographed the reason.
