A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

the door. Other officers are inside the house, searching through Josh
and Meredith’s things.
“Has anyone seen Josh?” I ask.
“He’s gone to the river,” someone says, “to see the body.” We all
fall momentarily silent at the mention of that word: body. My heart is
in my throat, hoping and praying that it isn’t Meredith or Delilah
they’ve found.
We stand in a circle on Josh and Meredith’s lawn. The entire group
is on edge and feeling anguished and defeated. The rain has slowed
to a steady drizzle. Those of us that have them hold umbrellas over
our heads to repel the rain. The rest just get wet.
“How do we know there’s a body?” Bea asks.
“My wife and I heard about it,” a man says, stepping forward.
“How?” she asks.
“We were on the Riverwalk, showing Meredith and Delilah’s photo
around, asking if anyone had seen them. There were a couple
runners there. We showed them the photo. No, they said. They
hadn’t seen them. But they’d heard that the cops were just a couple
miles downriver, trying to identity a body that was found. Hope that’s
not who you’re looking for, they said.”
“We continued to dig for details,” the wife says. “We asked around
to see if anyone knew anything.”
What they derived, she tells us, fighting tears, was that the body
had been discovered early this morning by a man walking his dog. It
was half-buried in the earth. The head and the torso were concealed
underground, while the rest of it poked obscurely out. It had likely
been buried better, some surmise, but last night’s rain may have
washed the mud and the leaves away. The dog found the body first,
driven there by the offensive scent. The river there is high, on the
verge of overflowing; a day or two later and the body would have
been at risk of floating away.
“Any signs of foul play?” a woman asks.
The husband and wife exchange a glance. They tell us they heard
the body was unclothed, and, collectively, we gasp. Our minds go to
the same place.
“Oh God,” Bea, beside me, says, taking my hand into hers and
squeezing it tightly. Our eyes meet, thinking of what might have