Chapter 3 - The Body That Wasn't Diego
The police reached Doña Elvira's house before anyone else did.
She was sitting at her kitchen table when officers entered, furious that they had frightened her by pounding on the door.
“I am seventy-three, not helpless,” she snapped.
Detective Salgado didn't argue.
He moved her to her daughter's house under police escort.
Only after the car disappeared did I realize how deeply guilty I felt.
My neighbor had heard my screams when I wasn't even there.
She had tried to protect me.
Now she had become part of Diego's threat.
“This isn't your fault,” Salgado said.
I was standing beside the police car outside her home.
“It feels like it.”
“That's what people like your husband depend on.”
I looked at him.
“People like my husband?”
He hesitated.
“People who create fear so victims start making decisions emotionally.”
I almost corrected him.
Victims.
The word felt wrong.
For two years I had thought of myself as a widow.
Now I was something else.
I just didn't know what.
We went back to my house with a forensic team.
By midnight, everything had changed.
The documents from behind the mirror included copies of property deeds, financial statements, a second life insurance policy, and photocopies of my signature on documents I had never seen.
One file contained medical records.
Mine.
Except they were fake.
I sat at the dining table while Detective Salgado placed the pages in front of me.
According to those documents, I had been undergoing psychiatric treatment for eighteen months.
Diagnosis: severe depressive episodes with psychotic symptoms.
History of auditory hallucinations.
Suicidal ideation.
Episodes of paranoia.
I stared at the paper.
“This isn't mine.”
“You never saw this doctor?”
“I've never heard his name.”
The doctor's signature appeared at the bottom.
Dr. Arturo Ledesma.
Salgado photographed every page.
“Your neighbor hears a woman screaming from your home during hours you're supposedly at work,” he said.
“Supposedly?”
“I'm explaining how someone might frame the story.”
I understood.
The recordings.
The fake medical history.
The witnesses.
“They want people to think I'm losing my mind.”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
The detective turned to another document.
The second life insurance policy.
The insured person's name was mine.
I felt my body go cold.
“How much?”
Salgado didn't answer immediately.
“Twenty-five million pesos.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I read the beneficiary.
Diego Alvarez.
My dead husband.
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes terror finds the wrong door when it tries to leave the body.
“He can't collect that,” I said. “He's dead.”
“Legally, yes.”
“So what's the point?”
“We don't know yet.”
I stared at Diego's name.
Then I noticed the date.
The policy had been opened fourteen months after his supposed death.
My hands froze.
“That isn't possible.”
Salgado leaned closer.
“What?”
“The date.”
He saw it.
Someone had taken out a life insurance policy on me while Diego was officially dead.
The application included my signature.
It looked almost perfect.
But I had never signed it.
For the first time, Detective Salgado looked genuinely disturbed.
“This means someone with access to your personal documentation submitted the application.”
“Ernesto.”
“Maybe.”
“He helped with everything after Diego died. Banks. Insurance. Taxes.”
“Maybe,” Salgado repeated.
I hated the word.
Because I knew what it meant.
We needed evidence.
The police found Ernesto at home before dawn.
He opened the door wearing pajamas and an expression of perfect confusion.
When he saw me standing behind Detective Salgado, his face changed for less than half a second.
But I saw it.
Fear.
“Mariana? What's going on?”
I walked toward him.
“Where is your brother?”
His eyebrows lifted.
“My brother?”
“Diego.”
He stared at me.
The performance was excellent.
“Mariana, Diego is dead.”
“No.”
“What's happened to you?”
There it was.
Not What are you talking about?
Not Why would you say that?
What's happened to you?
As if he already knew the version of me he wanted everyone to believe.
Detective Salgado stepped between us.
“Mr. Alvarez, we need you to come with us to answer some questions.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Then I'll contact my lawyer first.”
He started closing the door.
I spoke before I could stop myself.
“Whose body did you identify?”
His hand froze.
The silence lasted barely a second.
Then he looked at me.
“What?”
“The man from the highway.”
“You're not making sense.”
“You told me it was Diego.”
“It was.”
“You lied.”
His jaw tightened.
Detective Salgado watched him carefully.
Ernesto looked almost exactly like Diego around the eyes.
I had never noticed how much before.
Or perhaps grief had stopped me from seeing it.
“I don't know what someone has told you,” Ernesto said, “but you need rest.”
My anger became ice.
“You used my voice.”
This time his face betrayed him.
Just slightly.
I stepped closer.
“You played recordings of me screaming inside my house.”
“No.”
“You created fake medical records.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“You helped him fake his death.”
“Mariana, stop.”
“You put someone else's ashes in my hands.”
His voice rose.
“STOP!”
The street went silent.
Even he seemed surprised.
Then he lowered his voice.
“My brother is dead.”
Detective Salgado said, “Then you won't mind us reopening the investigation into the unidentified remains associated with his accident.”
Ernesto looked at him.
The fear returned.
This time it stayed.
Within six hours, the original accident file had been retrieved.
There had been no DNA identification.
No dental confirmation.
The body had been burned beyond visual recognition.
The identification rested largely on personal objects found near the remains.
Diego's watch.
Diego's wedding ring.
And testimony from Ernesto.
That was enough two years earlier because the license plates, truck registration, and personal belongings all pointed to Diego.
But now the entire case looked different.
The coroner's report listed one detail I had never been told.
The dead man had a surgically repaired left femur.
Diego had never broken his leg.
Detective Salgado looked at me across his desk.
“It wasn't him.”
I thought I was prepared to hear those words.
I wasn't.
“Then who died?”
“We're trying to find out.”
They took a DNA sample from the remains that afternoon.
The process should have taken longer.
But by evening, they had a likely match through a missing persons report.
The man's name was Mateo Rivas.
Thirty-six years old.
A truck mechanic from Puebla.
He had disappeared forty-eight hours before Diego's crash.
He had a wife.
Two daughters.
And a metal plate in his left femur from a motorcycle accident six years earlier.
I sat in the hallway outside the interview room and stared at his photograph.
Mateo had kind eyes.
A round face.
He was smiling beside two little girls in school uniforms.
I couldn't look at it for long.
Diego hadn't simply disappeared.
A man had died in his place.
Whether Diego killed him or used his death afterward, I didn't know.
But Mateo's family had spent two years waiting for someone who had already been cremated under another man's name.
Just as I had spent two years grieving someone who was alive.
Two families destroyed by the same lie.
Then Brenda was arrested.
Police found her at a small hotel near Toluca.
She had cash, three different identification cards, and a bus ticket to Guadalajara.
When Salgado told me, I expected relief.
Instead, I felt dread.
Because Brenda knew where Diego was.
And Diego would know she had been caught.
She refused to speak for the first four hours.
Then Salgado placed Mateo Rivas's photograph on the table.
According to him, Brenda stopped smiling.
She asked for a lawyer.
After the lawyer arrived, she made an offer.
Protection in exchange for information.
I watched the interview from behind one-way glass.
Brenda looked different without the red lipstick.
Smaller.
Tired.
But I couldn't forget her face appearing beneath my bed.
Hello, widow.
Detective Salgado sat across from her.
“Where is Diego Alvarez?”
Brenda stared at the table.
“I don't know.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.”
“He changes locations.”
“How do you contact him?”
“He contacts me.”
“Where was he when you spoke to him yesterday?”
“I don't know.”
Salgado stood.
Brenda panicked.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
She looked toward the glass.
I wondered whether she knew I was there.
“Diego isn't his real name.”
Salgado sat down again.
My breath caught.
“What is his real name?”
“I don't know.”
“That's not a very useful answer.”
“I'm telling you the truth. Diego Alvarez is an identity.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Six years.”
I felt as if someone had struck me.
Diego and I had been married for nine.
Brenda continued.
“He told me he had done this before.”
“Done what?”
“Started over.”
Salgado's expression didn't change.
“With another identity?”
She nodded.
“How many?”
“At least three.”
My legs weakened.
I gripped the edge of the table in front of me.
Three identities.
Three lives.
Three families?
Brenda swallowed.
“Mariana was supposed to be the last one.”
Salgado leaned forward.
“Explain.”
“He said after her, he'd have enough money to disappear permanently.”
“After her what?”
Brenda didn't answer.
The detective's voice hardened.
“After her what?”
She whispered something.
The microphone barely caught it.
Salgado made her repeat herself.
Brenda looked directly toward the one-way glass.
This time I knew she understood I was watching.
“After Mariana died.”
The room around me vanished.
I heard only my heartbeat.
Salgado remained still.
“How was she supposed to die?”
“A car accident.”
My stomach turned.
“Like Diego?”
“No.”
Brenda shook her head.
“Like Elena.”
Salgado frowned.
“Who's Elena?”
Brenda closed her eyes.
“One of his other wives.”
The word wives seemed to echo forever.
“How many wives?”
“I only know about two others.”
I couldn't breathe.
Salgado asked, “Are they alive?”
Brenda opened her eyes.
“One is.”
“And the other?”
Brenda looked toward the glass again.
“That's why Diego is so afraid of Mariana finding the insurance policy.”
Salgado waited.
Brenda whispered, “Because the company that issued it also insured Elena before she died.”
Twenty minutes later, Detective Salgado came into the observation room.
I was still sitting in the same chair.
“Mariana.”
“I want to know everything.”
“We're still verifying her claims.”
“I want to know.”
He hesitated.
Then he placed a photograph on the table.
A woman.
Dark hair.
Maybe thirty years old.
Standing beside Diego.
Except Diego looked younger.
And beneath the photograph was a different name.
Alejandro Cruz.
The woman was Elena Varela.
She died eleven years ago.
A fall from a hotel balcony in Cancún.
Her husband disappeared three weeks later.
Insurance money totaling eighteen million pesos had already been transferred through multiple accounts.
The husband was never found.
I stared at Diego's younger face.
My husband.
Alejandro.
Whoever he really was.
“There was another woman,” Salgado said.
He placed down a second photograph.
This woman was alive.
Lucía Herrera.
Married thirteen years ago to a man named Gabriel Santos.
Gabriel disappeared after draining their joint accounts.
The picture showed the same face.
Diego's face.
Older than Alejandro.
Younger than my husband.
But unmistakably him.
“Where is Lucía?”
“We've contacted authorities in Querétaro.”
“Does she know?”
“Know what?”
“That he's alive?”
Salgado's phone rang.
He answered.
I watched his expression change.
“What do you mean she's gone?”
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“When?”
Another pause.
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Officers went to Lucía Herrera's address.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“The front door was open.”
I stood.
“Where is she?”
“They don't know.”
Then Salgado's phone buzzed again.
A photograph arrived.
He looked at it.
For the first time since meeting him, Detective Rafael Salgado looked afraid.
He turned the phone toward me.
Lucía Herrera was sitting in a chair.
Her wrists were bound.
Her face was pale.
Behind her stood a man.
Only half his face was visible.
But I knew him.
Diego.
Alive.
Older.
Real.
He was holding that day's newspaper.
Across the bottom of the image was a message.
MARIANA KNOWS TOO MUCH.
BRENDA TALKS TOO MUCH.
May you like
ONE WIFE COMES HOME.
OR THE OTHER ONE DOESN'T.
