Before I Go: A dark and tense psychological crime thriller. Read online

  BEFORE I GO

  MARIE REYES

  © Marie Reyes. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Josie looked up from her laptop as the house phone rang—rudely cutting through the peaceful silence. The shrill sound almost alien; no-one ever phoned on the land-line anymore. She glanced over at her parents, both of whom were asleep on the couch. Her mother’s head lolled to the side, resting against her father’s shoulder as he clutched a glass of Malbec in his hand, which threatened to spill onto his white shirt as he gently snored. Part of her wanted to wait for the caller to hang up so she could go back to her half-assed job hunting, but she didn’t want her parents to wake up.

  As she placed her laptop on the seat next to her, she noticed the time in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and wondered who would call so late. It was probably a bad sign. No-one would call at this hour unless it was important. Maybe her grandmother was in the hospital again? She sighed and plodded towards the phone in the hallway, picking up the receiver, and putting it to her ear.

  “Hello?” said Josie, her voice still croaky from the cold she was getting over.

  “Josie, is that you?” She recognized her sister’s voice, although the line was crackly, like someone was crunching aluminum foil at the other end. It was typical of her sister Tanya not to consider that her parents might be asleep. It wouldn’t cross her mind to think about the time, and that people might have work to go to as she was living it up, partying in Central America.

  “Having fun?” Josie asked, trying to keep the jealousy from seeping into her voice.

  “I need help.”

  “You run out of money again or something?” Josie twirled the phone cord between her fingers whilst staring out the window onto the dark street at the front of the house. “Shall I put mom on?”

  “I’m serious. You need to listen.”

  It was in that exact second that Josie registered the panic in her sister’s voice. “What’s wrong?” She snapped upright from her slouched position.

  “I’m in a taxi. They won’t let me out. Please get dad.”

  Josie's heart started thumping like a jackhammer. “Dad,” she called. She couldn’t hear him stirring on the other side of the door. She could go and grab him, but she didn’t want to leave the phone. “Dad!” she shouted louder. “Mom?”

  Finally, her father opened the living room door and looked at Josie with a hazy glare. “What?” His annoyed, sleepy expression gave way to a look of concern as he locked eyes with her.

  “It's Tanya. Something's wrong.”

  “Give me that.” He grabbed the phone.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. There was still a hint of annoyance there, like this was some minor inconvenience in his day, and soon everything would go back to normal.

  Josie couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but her father’s expression told her everything she needed to know. His face dropped and his hand clutched the phone tighter. “Slow down. Now where are you?”

  He went quiet, and his eyes darted around as he nodded his head. “Well, what can you see? I need street names, landmarks, anything.” He grabbed the address book and pen that lived next to the phone. “Tanya. Are you still there? Hello? Tanya? Shit.” He kept the phone to his ear, even though Josie could hear a dial tone blaring from the other end. Her sister was gone.

  “Dad, if you don’t put the phone down, she won’t be able to call back.” It took him a moment to register what Josie said, and he finally detached himself from the phone, slamming it back in the cradle.

  “Get your laptop,” he demanded.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Josie hurried to the living room where her mom stirred on the sofa, rubbing her eyes. Confused, but not looking overly concerned. “What’s up? Is it nana?”

  “No. It’s Tanya.” Josie picked up the laptop and ran back into the hall with her mother following behind in a state of bewildered frustration, like she was being kept in the dark.

  “What about her?”

  Her dad was staring at the phone with his hand ready to go as if willing it to ring with the power of his mind. Although they were expecting it, all three of them jumped when the ring shrieked through the quiet house. Her father almost dropped the receiver in his hurry to pick it up.

  Josie hovered as close as she could, hoping to catch a snippet of the conversation. She couldn’t hear Tanya anymore. It sounded like a man’s voice, but it was hard to hear over her mother babbling hysterically about calling the police. Her father silenced her with a mere look. He covered the speaker with his hand and faced them. “They want money… via wire transfer.”

  “I’m calling the police,” her mother announced, as she dialed 911 on her cell phone.

  “Not yet,” he demanded. “Be quiet.” He listened intently and started scrawling notes on the pad. Josie tried to see what he was writing, but his penmanship wasn’t great at the best of times. He definitely had a doctor’s handwriting. It looked like a child’s incoherent scribblings. “How do I know you’ll let her go? I want to speak to her. Put her on now.” His face was bright red—his anger palpable as he shouted. It had always terrified her as a child, but she wasn’t sure it would be so effective on a kidnapper hundreds of miles away.

  Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, pooling in the corners of her lips. The sight of her father’s hands trembling only made her tears come harder and faster. Nothing rattled him. She had never even seen him cry in her entire life, but she could see he was close now. The somber wail of the dial tone spilled out of the phone. They must have hung up.

  Everything had happened so fast, but now she was in slow motion, watching on helplessly as her father tried to calm down her mother. Their words faded out as a high-pitched ringing buzzed in her ears like a persistent mosquito. It was as if she had left her body and was just an onlooker, disassociated from what was happening. Despite her father’s protesting, her mother called the police, and he had to take over the call as her mother could barely speak. Her chest heaved, and it looked as if her heart may explode as every bit of color drained from her face.

  He gave the cops the limited detail that he had: roughly where she was, that she had got into a taxi, and that the taxi driver drove her somewhere secluded and demanded that a vast sum of money be sent to a Mexican bank account via a wire transfer. It couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Josie took a deep breath and tried to talk herself out of the blind panic that consumed her.

  She opened her laptop and muttered obscenities when it took forever to load. The blank page and turning blue circle taunted her from the screen. “Come on.” Surely the World Wide Web could help her. The Internet had all the answers, didn’t it?

  The only Internet searches she could find, all related to scams. Not this situation. None of the testimonies referred to people who had actually spoken with their loved one before the kidnappers demanded money. This was real. This was happening.

  Her father raised his voice. “But they said they would kill her if I went to the police, if I didn’t pay. I can’t just sit here and do nothing like some schmuck,” he yelled down the phone.

  Josie trawled through her sister’s social media accounts, hoping for some hint that this was all some joke, but all she came across was the typical vacati
on snaps: cocktails by the pool, groups of travelers snapped in midair, their limbs splayed out in some ridiculous position as they jumped, white sand beaches, waterfalls. She scrolled down to see earlier pictures. Her sister petted a Llama with vast sandy mountains stretching out in the desert landscape in the background. There was nothing that would help—nothing in the last few hours.

  Chapter Two

  The road seemed to go on forever, and even though he was walking downhill, he was still panting like a dog in a hot car. No doubt he was berry-red by now and glistening with sweat as his clammy hands swiped along his phone screen to zoom into his destination. It wasn’t far now; mere meters away. Another car drove past, blasting him with the heat from the exhaust. Apart from a steady stream of cars, there was little else going on, and no one else walked down the street he was on. He had stumbled upon the quietest part of Tijuana, which he was grateful for. A terracotta-colored house came into view from the adjoining street. Finally, according to the map on his phone, it was just coming up on the right.

  Veterinaria—the big-bold letters appeared in blue on the banner above the shop.

  Michael stopped and wiped sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand. A combination of the unrelenting heat and nerves had sent his sweat glands into overdrive. He had never been more anxious in his life, and that was saying something. The building formed part of a mini strip mall. It was peaceful, and he could see the mountains in the distance from his elevated position. He couldn’t help but laugh when he noticed that positioned above the veterinarian surgery, up a tall flight of metal stairs, was a psychiatrist’s office. It was a little late for that now.

  Sunlight bounced off of the white buildings, so he put his sunglasses back on after wiping sweat and sun-lotion off the lenses with the fabric of his t-shirt, and leaned against a metal post while he practiced what he was going to say. He pulled away the t-shirt that clung to his back to get some airflow to his skin as he psyched himself up to go inside. As he crossed the small parking lot, the shade of palm trees momentarily provided him with shelter from the persistent sun, and he took a deep breath. Stood in front of the glass door, he willed himself to go inside. There was no point dragging this out. In and out. Get it over with.

  He was met with two rows of shelves as he entered, and the woman at the end of the store stood behind the till, giving him a nod of acknowledgment. He was glad she didn’t speak to him, and he wondered if he was even capable of getting words out at that moment. In his pocket was a picture of what he was looking for. The drug he wanted went under a handful of different brand names and he managed to find photographs of the various colored packaging online in case he struggled to find it as all the labels were in Spanish, for products he had never had a use for: dog worming tablets, flea treatment, antibiotics and such. His eyes scanned the shelves, briefly hovering over each box. It didn’t seem to be on this side of the shop, so he moved over to the next aisle. The scent of disinfectant and other cleaning products stung his nostrils as he browsed, and he started to feel queasy.

  What if he couldn’t find it? He didn’t know if he could bring himself to ask. He could always visit another vet. The print-out had started to fall apart in the creases where his sweat had soaked into the paper. As he turned to the next shelf, a red and white box stood out to him. It even had Pento on the label. This was it. A huge surge of relief rose within him, and despite the morbid nature of his purchase, he felt elated and had to resist the urge to do a little happy dance in the middle of the store. Somehow — he thought the hard part was over. He couldn’t get over the fact that this drug people call, death in a bottle, wasn’t even behind the counter, and that anyone could walk in and buy it. Even though it was perfectly legal in Mexico, his throat was as dry as the desert as he walked towards the counter with his box.

  Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any questions. As casually as he could muster, he put the box down in front of the woman and reached for his wallet. He tried to look directly at her, like she had nothing to be suspicious of, but her eyes lingered on him for longer than he would have liked. He couldn’t maintain eye-contact any longer, and she took his tattered note and ran it through the cash register. He snatched up the change that she placed on the counter and a coin slipped through his fingers. The sound of the edge of the coin striking the floor seemed deafening in the quiet store, and Michael cringed as the sound of it rolling across the ground seemed to go on forever.

  “Los siento. Gracias.” He grabbed the box of pentobarbital and rushed to the door, leaving the runaway coin on the floor. Once outside, he didn’t stop. He power-walked across the road until he was a safe distance away, propped himself up against a wall and took a deep breath.

  “You did it,” he said to himself as he unzipped his backpack and stashed the package right at the bottom. Now he could relax.

  Chapter Three

  The hostel was a breath of fresh air and Michael was glad to be done with Tijuana and Mexico City. His plan was to work his way overland, finishing up in Cancún, and he was now in the charming city of Puebla. He sat on one of the unstable wicker chairs which made up the hostel’s collection of eclectic furniture and placed his cold beer on the wooden table in front of him, coated in the remnants of people’s sticky drinks. Music from one of the other guest’s phones drifted across the rooftop terrace as he looked out over the city, his eyes drawn to the towering spires of the cathedral. He lifted his drink, almost bringing the table up with it, and wondered what the hell had been spilled on it, glue?

  A chill ran through him as a breeze brushed passed. It was the first time since he arrived in Mexico that he hadn’t been hot, and it took him a moment to remember why. The altitude made Puebla a much cooler place. There was something about gazing over the colonial architecture as the light changed that made him feel at ease for the first time since he had got there. Colorful Talavera tiles ran along the side of the bar, mesmerizing him with their patterns.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” A girl asked. Her two friends stood behind her. She had an accent he couldn’t place, definitely European though.

  “Go for it.” He nudged the chair out for her with his foot as her friends gathered two more spare chairs from other tables. She sat down, placed her pack of cigarettes on the table and tucked her mousy blonde hair behind her ear.

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  Ah yes, the standard traveler questions. Where are you from? Where have you been? Where are you going next? It beat people asking what you did for a living, a question he never liked giving the answer to. There was no way to make data entry sound exciting.

  “I was born in California, but I’ve lived in lots of different states in my time.”

  “Oh cool,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was feigning interest, but she seemed genuine enough.

  “And you?” He watched her light up her cigarette.

  “I am Anna, from Denmark.”

  “I’m Michael, nice to meet you.” He took a sip of his beer so he would have something to do with his hands.

  As her friends sat down, they introduced themselves. Freja and Aleksander. He tried to commit their names to memory. With a glint in his eyes, Aleksander pulled out a tattered pack of cards from his pocket. “Anyone fancy a drinking game?” A broad smile spread across his face. Michael wasn’t sure what it was, but he instantly liked this guy. “I have a little something.” He pulled out a bottle of some piss-colored liquid from the rucksack that rested at his feet.

  “I’m in.” Michael could do with a little social lubricant. He watched as Aleksander arranged the cards in a circle, with a gap in the middle in which he positioned a tall glass. “I know this one. Kings?”

  “Kings, ring of fire. It has many names. You pick the first card.”

  “Why thank you.” He teased a card out from the ring. “King.” He held the card out for everyone to see and made a discard pile. He dribbled some beer into the glass in the center of the table for some unlucky person to drink later.<
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  Anna slipped a card out and looked blankly. “I don’t know what this one is?” Her delicate features scrunched up in confusion.

  “Nine is rhyme.” Aleksander said.

  “Ah, okay. So I just say any word?”

  “Anna, we played the other day. Do you not remember?”

  “Too many rules. Okay, okay. Um.”

  “Just pick a word.” Freja laughed. “Okay, I think we need a drink while you think rule. You’re taking so long.”

  “Okay. Beer. Beer is the word.”

  They went around the group: deer, steer, career, tear, queer, shear. Michael was stumped after that and gladly accepted defeat with a burning shot of tequila washed down with a swig of beer. Freja was next and drew a five. Thumb master. Next Aleksander drew a four. “Whores!” He shouted, and everyone on the rooftop glared at them.

  “Alex, shut up.” Freja shoved him, almost knocking him off his chair.

  He pointed at her, “You drink, girls drink. It’s the rules.”

  As Freja drank she subtly placed her thumb on the table, and Michael and Anna quickly followed suit. “Now you drink!” she ordered. “Karma.”

  ***

  The city took on a beautiful glow in the fading light as the colors of the vibrant buildings intensified. Each table had a ceramic candle holder, and Aleksander lit the candle inside. “Romantic.” He winked at Michael.

  “So forward. We’ve only just met.” Michael joked as he picked up another card. “Jack. What is Jack again?”

  “Make up a rule.”

  “No cursing.” Michael chose this rule as he knew he was useless at sticking to it.

  “We are going to Cholula in the morning if you want to come. It’s early, though. You can book at front desk,” Aleksander offered.

  “For sure. Thanks for the invite.” Michael had that feeling he would always get after a few drinks. It started with a warm feeling in his chest, which spread throughout his body into a tingling sensation that travelled down his limbs as the tension melted out of him. Colors looked that bit more vibrant and the surrounding air seemed alive with possibility. A goofy grin spread across his face, and he didn’t care.