A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

it that left me feeling violated and strange—that along with the
knowledge of Shelby’s murder, with the image of him dragging her
cold, naked body out there into the woods and discarding her like
trash. “We spoke to him. The man is detestable. He’s a swine.”
“That doesn’t make him a murderer.”
“We need to call the police. We need to tell them what we know.”
Bea agrees. Her cell phone is on the coffee table. She grabs it and
looks up a nonemergency number. The police are conducting their
own investigation. They’ve already questioned Jason Tebow about a
bajillion times and are trying to do a deep dive into the contents of
Meredith’s phone, though without the phone itself, that’s proven
problematic.
Bea says to whoever answers, “I have some information on the
Dickey missing-persons case.” She’s put on hold. While we wait, I
drink my wine, liking the way it both dulls my senses and gives me
courage. I ask Bea to put the phone on Speaker so that I can listen
in. She does, scooching closer to me with the phone between us. A
female detective comes on the line.
“I heard you have some information for me,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, overanxious to speak.
“And who am I speaking to?”
It’s Bea who tells her.
“Okay, Kate and Bea,” she says. “What do you know?”
I go first. I start with Cassandra Hanaka from across the street. I
feel extra guilty that we’ve been sitting on this information for over
twenty-four hours now and haven’t told, but with the discovery of the
body yesterday and all the intense emotion that went with it, Bea and
I let it slip. I tell the detective about the night Cassandra was up with
her son, seeing people in Josh and Meredith’s yard late at night. “We
were thinking that maybe one of the neighbors has a home security
system, and it caught a glimpse of them.” Bea and I don’t have a
home security system. It never felt necessary, until now.
“Unfortunately,” she says, “many home security systems
nowadays only offer a live feed—they don’t record. And those that
do only store the footage for a couple of days. But we’ll look into it.
We might just get lucky. I’ll talk to Mr. Dickey, too, and see if he