Chapter 2 - The Dead Man on the Phone
For one second, Brenda and I simply stared at each other.
Her light eyes were inches from mine.
The smile had disappeared from her face.
From the speakerphone on the bed, Diego's voice exploded through the room.
“Brenda!”
She moved first.
Her hand shot toward my wrist.
I twisted away so violently that my shoulder struck the wooden frame of the bed.
Pain flashed down my arm, but fear was stronger.
I scrambled backward across the floor, kicking aside the shattered remains of Diego's photograph.
“Stay away from me!”
Brenda lunged again.
I grabbed the first thing my hand found.
A brass lamp.
I swung it between us.
She stopped.
Not because she was afraid of the lamp.
Because somewhere outside, a siren was getting louder.
Her face changed.
“Did you call the police?”
I said nothing.
She looked toward the phone.
Diego must have understood.
“Get out,” he ordered.
Brenda snatched the phone from the bed.
“The patio?”
“No. She'll expect that now. Use the laundry exit.”
Brenda turned toward the hallway.
I stepped in front of the bedroom door.
“You're not leaving.”
She actually laughed.
“Mariana, you have no idea what you've walked into.”
“My husband is alive.”
The words felt impossible in my mouth.
“My husband is alive, and you knew.”
Her expression hardened.
“You really should have stayed under the bed.”
Then she charged.
The lamp flew from my hands.
We crashed into the wall.
I felt her nails scrape my wrist as I tried to keep her from reaching the hallway.
She was stronger than I expected.
Desperate people usually are.
And Brenda was terrified.
Not of me.
Of Diego.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Let me go!” she hissed.
“Tell me where he is.”
“You don't want to know.”
“WHERE IS HE?”
Her eyes flicked toward the phone.
For the first time, I heard Diego breathing.
Not laughing.
Not giving orders.
Breathing.
Listening.
Alive.
Two years of funerals, condolences, paperwork, sleepless nights, and conversations with an urn suddenly compressed into that sound.
I stared at the phone in Brenda's hand.
“Diego.”
Silence.
“Diego, talk to me.”
Brenda stopped struggling.
The sirens were almost outside now.
I heard Doña Elvira shouting at someone near the gate.
Still, Diego said nothing.
I felt tears burn my eyes.
“You let me bury you.”
His voice came quietly.
“You weren't supposed to find out like this.”
The sentence broke something inside me more completely than his death ever had.
Because death had been cruel.
This was a choice.
“You watched me grieve.”
“Mariana—”
“You listened to me cry.”
Brenda's fingers tightened around the phone.
“Stop talking to her.”
Diego ignored her.
“You need to listen carefully. What you're doing right now is dangerous.”
I almost laughed.
“What I'm doing?”
“You don't understand the situation.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can't.”
“You faked your death.”
“Mariana—”
“You made me identify your ashes.”
“You never identified anything.”
The room went completely still.
I stared at the phone.
“What did you say?”
Diego was silent again.
But he had already said too much.
I remembered the hospital.
The police officer explaining that the body had been badly burned.
Ernesto placing both hands around mine and telling me there was no reason for me to see what remained.
The closed coffin.
The cremation.
The urn.
My brother-in-law standing beside me at the memorial, crying harder than anyone.
Ernesto.
“Oh my God.”
Brenda tried to push past me again.
This time I grabbed her coat.
“Ernesto knew.”
Her face told me everything.
I stopped breathing.
Then the front door burst open.
“Police!”
Brenda reacted instantly.
She shoved me backward.
I fell hard beside the dresser.
She ran.
Two officers entered the hallway just as she disappeared through the kitchen.
“There!” I screamed. “She's getting out through the back!”
One officer ran after her.
The second came toward me.
“Ma'am, are you injured?”
“My husband.”
“What?”
“My husband is alive.”
I pointed toward the phone Brenda had dropped during her escape.
It lay near the doorway.
The call was still connected.
The officer looked at it.
“Who's on the line?”
I reached for the phone.
“Diego?”
Nothing.
The call ended.
I stared at the dark screen.
The officer crouched beside me.
“Ma'am, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”
I wanted to.
But suddenly I didn't know where the story began.
With Doña Elvira hearing screams?
With Diego dying?
With his affairs?
With the life insurance?
Or with the fact that I had spent two years sleeping alone in a house that someone else could enter with a key?
Outside, voices rose.
A few minutes later, the officer who had chased Brenda returned alone.
“She got over the back wall. We have units checking the streets.”
“She can't disappear.”
“We'll find her.”
“You don't understand. She's working with my husband.”
He exchanged a glance with his partner.
“The husband who passed away?”
“The husband who pretended to pass away.”
That was the first time I saw doubt in their faces.
I almost became angry.
Then I realized how insane I sounded.
I grabbed my phone from beneath the bed.
“The call.”
My voice shook.
“I called emergency services before she found me. The line was open. You recorded everything, didn't you?”
The officer's expression changed.
“Yes. Emergency calls are recorded.”
“Then you heard him.”
“We'll request the audio.”
“No. You heard him.”
The younger officer nodded slowly.
“The dispatcher reported hearing a male voice giving instructions.”
My knees nearly collapsed.
It was real.
There was evidence.
Diego could no longer exist only inside my memories.
Doña Elvira appeared in the hallway behind the officers.
“Mariana!”
She pushed past them and wrapped her arms around me.
I had never been particularly close to her before that week.
She was simply the neighbor who gave me tamales at Christmas and complained when my tree dropped leaves into her driveway.
But in that moment, I held onto her as if she were family.
“I told you,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I knew someone was inside.”
One of the officers turned.
“Ma'am, you reported hearing screams?”
“Every weekday.”
“Approximately what time?”
“Different times. Usually between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon.”
I pulled away.
“Every weekday?”
Doña Elvira nodded.
“Almost.”
I looked toward my bedroom.
Brenda had entered only to search for documents.
What had been happening the other days?
We searched the entire house.
This time the police did it with us.
Closets.
Cabinets.
Attic.
Laundry room.
Nothing.
Then one officer stood in front of the hallway mirror.
The same mirror Diego had mentioned on the phone.
“Look behind the mirror,” he had told Brenda.
The officer lifted it from the wall.
Behind it was a shallow compartment.
Inside were documents.
And a small electronic device.
My skin went cold.
“What is that?”
The officer removed it carefully.
“A remote audio receiver, I think.”
There were wires running through the wall.
They followed them to two tiny speakers hidden behind decorative vents, one near the living room and another close to the kitchen window facing Doña Elvira's house.
I stared at them.
Someone had installed speakers inside my home.
The younger officer turned on the device.
A recording immediately played.
A woman crying.
My own voice.
“Diego, please answer me.”
I staggered backward.
The recording continued.
“I don't know where you are. Just come home. Please. Don't leave me here.”
Doña Elvira covered her mouth.
The words echoed through my house.
My words.
A voice message I had sent Diego years earlier.
Someone had been broadcasting my private cries through hidden speakers.
Every day.
While I was at work.
“Turn it off.”
The officer did.
I could barely breathe.
Doña Elvira whispered, “That was the scream I heard.”
I looked around my home.
Suddenly every wall felt contaminated.
This wasn't only about searching for paperwork.
Someone wanted witnesses.
Someone wanted the neighbors to believe I was home during the day.
Crying.
Screaming.
Behaving strangely.
“Why?” I asked.
No one answered.
But deep inside, I already knew.
They were building a story about me.
The question was what kind.
At the police station that evening, Detective Rafael Salgado listened without interrupting.
He was in his late forties, with tired eyes and the careful patience of someone who knew that frightened people often remembered the most important detail last.
He listened to the emergency call twice.
When Diego's voice said, Then find her, Detective Salgado stopped the recording.
“Are you absolutely certain this is your husband?”
“Yes.”
“You haven't spoken to him for two years.”
“I know his voice.”
“Could someone imitate it?”
“No.”
He studied me.
“What about the woman?”
“Brenda Salas.”
“You know her?”
“I know who she is.”
I explained the photo.
The supposed insurance client.
The expensive perfume.
The nights Diego disappeared.
Detective Salgado wrote down her name.
Then I mentioned Ernesto.
The pen stopped moving.
“Your husband's brother identified the body?”
“Yes.”
“And arranged the cremation?”
“He handled almost everything.”
“Did you receive a death certificate?”
“Yes.”
“Insurance payout?”
My stomach tightened.
“One policy.”
“How much?”
“Eight million pesos.”
He looked up.
“Where is the money?”
“Most of it is still in an investment account. I barely touched it.”
“Who was the beneficiary?”
“I was.”
“Any other policies?”
“I don't know.”
Detective Salgado leaned back.
“Your husband instructing Brenda to locate ‘the policy’ suggests there may have been another one.”
I thought about the documents behind the mirror.
“Why would Diego need insurance papers if he's supposed to be dead?”
“That's what we need to determine.”
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I nearly ignored it.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph.
I opened it.
My heart stopped.
It was a picture of me sitting inside the police station.
Taken through the window from across the street.
Underneath were six words.
GO HOME BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DIES.
I handed the phone to Detective Salgado.
His expression sharpened.
He stood immediately.
“Lock down the entrance.”
Two officers moved.
Salgado looked at me.
“Do not leave this building alone.”
Another message arrived.
This one contained no photograph.
Only an audio file.
The detective told me not to open it.
I did anyway.
Static crackled.
Then Diego's voice filled the room.
“You always were stubborn, Mariana.”
My hands started shaking.
“But now you're putting Elvira in danger.”
I looked at the detective.
Diego continued.
“I know you think the police can protect you.”
A pause.
“They couldn't even protect the man they buried in my name.”
The recording ended.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Detective Salgado slowly turned toward me.
“What did he say?”
I couldn't answer.
Because I had heard it too.
The man they buried in my name.
The burned body from the highway had belonged to someone.
Someone whose family had been told something else.
Someone whose death had been stolen so Diego could disappear.
My phone vibrated one final time.
A picture appeared.
Doña Elvira standing at her kitchen window.
Taken only minutes earlier.
May you like
And beneath it:
YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT.
