He admitted that he had been an accomplice to Don Erasmo for years, that he had helped intimidate witnesses, burn documents, and silence those who asked uncomfortable questions. In exchange for his full testimony, Judge Morales offered him a reduced sentence. Jacinto accepted, and his confession sealed Don Erasmo’s fate. The trial lasted three weeks. It was held in the city because there was no way to guarantee impartiality in the village. Catalina was called to testify, and she did so with a clear and firm voice, recounting everything she had seen and heard.
Father Anselmo also testified, corroborating Catalina’s story and explaining how he had acted to protect her and ensure that justice was served. The soldiers who had seen the body testified. The village elders who remembered the Medinas’ disappearance testified, and Jacinto, from his cell, testified against his former employer in great detail. Don Erasmo was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, robbery, kidnapping, and other crimes. His properties were confiscated by the federal government, and part of the recovered treasure was returned to the surviving descendants of the Medina family, who lived scattered throughout other parts of the country.
The rest of the treasure, according to the judge’s ruling, was allocated to a fund to help poor families in the region who had suffered under the scourge of drug trafficking. And Catalina, the widow who had only sought a roof over her children’s heads, received a reward from the federal government for her courage and for helping to solve a case that had been buried for decades. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to buy a small house in town, to send her children to school, and to start a new life without hunger, without fear, without having to beg or hide.
Six months after the trial, Catalina and her children moved to a small house on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t a mansion, but it had solid, whitewashed adobe walls, a tiled roof that didn’t leak when it rained, and three rooms separated by thick curtains. There was a kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a wooden table that Catalina had bought at the market, and two beds that, although old and patched, were a thousand times better than sleeping on the floor of a cave.
