A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

I turn on the car and begin to drive. Rain pours down from the sky.
The wipers whip back and forth across the glass. They can’t keep up
with the downpour. I have trouble seeing out the windshield as I pull
out of the parking lot and into the street. I cut it too close, cutting off
another car; the driver lays on their horn for a prolonged period of
time, putting me even more on edge than I was to begin with.
Usually I’d step on the gas and pull away, but I can’t with the streets
as wet as they are. It takes time for us to pick up speed.
“Careful, Kate,” Bea scolds. “That was close.” The other car
switches lanes and speeds around us, inconvenienced and
apparently immune to the weather.
The window is all fogged up. I rub at the glass with the sleeve of a
shirt, clearing a semicircle out of which I just barely see. I turn on
both the rear and the front defrost.
“I didn’t tell you,” I say to Bea, “because I knew what you’d say.”
“And what’s that?” she asks. She tosses her wet jacket into the
back seat.
“You’d tell me not to go through with it.”
“You’re damn right,” she says. “The man is in the middle of a
malpractice suit. Meredith is a witness. She was going to expose
him. Regardless of what’s happened to Shelby or Meredith, you think
bringing her name up wouldn’t tip him off to something? He knows
where we live, Kate,” she says. “He knows because you told him.
You wrote it down on those forms. If he figures out we’re Meredith’s
next-door neighbors, he’ll think we’re colluding with her.”
“But you saw his reaction?” I ask, fighting through the fog to see. I
lean forward in my seat, gazing out that four-inch circle that gradually
grows, but not quickly enough for me. I consider pulling over, waiting
the deluge out. But more than anything, I want to be home, behind a
locked door. I need a shower. I need clean, dry clothes. It’s cold in
the car and I’m drenched to the bone. “You saw how he responded
when I asked about Meredith, didn’t you? He lied, Bea. He said he’d
never heard of her, when he has. Why would he lie if he hasn’t done
something to her?”
“I don’t know, but listen,” Bea says, her tone softening so that
she’s hard to hear over the pelting rain, which isn’t only rain now, but
hail. It stabs at the hood of the car like knives. “It’s time we stop