Chapter 3 - The Forensic Dissection
By midnight, the Mendoza villa had been transformed from a private residence into an active federal crime scene. The local paramedics had transported Teresa to the Hospital de la Santa Cruz, with Doctora Alondra Gomez accompanying her to ensure that every scratch, every pressure sore, and every chemical burn from the garden water was forensically documented.
Diego sat at the heavy wrought-iron table in the kitchen, the very room where his mother used to make mole from scratch every Sunday. Across from him sat Victoria Calderon, his senior legal partner from Mexico City, who had driven down with a team of financial forensic analysts the moment the live video feed hit their firm's secure cloud server.
"The video is unassailable, Diego," Victoria said, tapping her laptop screen, which showed a frozen frame of Brenda holding the hose over Teresa’s face. "The criminal complaint for elder abuse, aggravated assault, and domestic slavery has already been filed with the State Prosecutor’s Office in Guanajuato. But the financial side... that’s where the real horror is."
Diego took a sip of cold, black coffee. "What did you find in the bank records?"
"Look at this," Victoria said, turning the laptop toward him. "Your father died in November. Within forty-eight hours of his funeral, Brenda used a secondary corporate token to transfer three million pesos out of the Mendoza Construction payroll account. She didn't pay the laborers. She didn't pay the suppliers. She routed the money through a shell logistics company registered in the name of her brother, Hugo Salazar."
Diego’s eyes narrowed. "Hugo? The one who runs the customs brokerage in Nuevo Laredo?"
"The very same," Victoria nodded, her expression grim. "And it gets worse. We traced the IP address used to access your father’s personal email accounts during his final weeks in the hospital. The logins didn't come from San Miguel. They came from a penthouse apartment in Guadalajara—an apartment purchased by Brenda three months before your father even had his first stroke."
Diego closed his eyes, the weight of his own guilt pressing down on his chest like a physical block of concrete. He had been so consumed by his work at the capital, handling constitutional litigation for multinational corporations, that he had believed the smooth, reassuring emails that came from his father's account. I'm doing well, son. Brenda is taking good care of me. Focus on your trial. Don't waste time driving down.
It hadn't been his father writing those emails. It had been Brenda, sitting at his father’s desk, systematically isolating the old man while she drained the corporate marrow of the family business.
The front door of the kitchen opened, and Commandante Silva walked in, holding a high-security evidence container. "Licenciado Mendoza," the officer said, his face solemn. "We found something else during the sweep of the master bedroom. In the false bottom of the closet safe, your stepmother had these."
He set down three bottles of liquid pharmaceuticals. Diego picked one up, reading the prescription label: Lorazepam. The dosage was massive, prescribed to his father in the weeks leading up to his death. But the prescribing doctor wasn't a cardiologist or a neurologist; it was a cosmetic surgeon in León who happened to be Brenda’s first cousin.
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"Chemical restraint," Victoria whispered, her eyes widening as she looked at the bottles. "She wasn't just isolating your father, Diego. She was sedating him to secure the signatures on those holographic documents."
Diego stood up, his hand shaking with a silent, terrifying rage that made the coffee cup rattle against the stone table. "She didn't just abuse my mother, Victoria. She murdered my father."
