A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

member of our group in the parking lot of a motel two towns over.
The police have been notified.
Bea sees the text, too. She comes running in to find me.
Unshowered and undercaffeinated, Bea and I decide to drive Josh to
the motel. He’s been in touch with the detective, but refuses to stay
home and wait for news, though that’s exactly what she told him to
do. He’s understandably worked up and in no state to drive himself.
The three of us drop Leo off with the babysitter on the way; while
Josh walks him to the front door, I call my office and ask them to
reschedule my morning patients. Josh, Meredith and Delilah need
me now.
The drive feels long, though it can’t be more than twenty minutes.
All the way, we don’t speak, each lost in our own thoughts, thinking
the very worst.
The motel is located off a two-lane highway in an unincorporated
part of town. There isn’t much around it other than a handful of
industrial buildings and open land, much of it for sale and
underwater. When we arrive at the motel, there is an obvious police
presence in the parking lot. We don’t see Meredith’s car at first, but
we’re drawn there by the circle of officers that surround it.
Josh throws his door open while the car is still moving. He leaps
from the car and runs toward Meredith’s. The doors, the trunk of it,
are open and police are looking inside.
I can’t find Meredith or Delilah. “Do you see them?” I ask Bea,
glancing around the parking lot.
“I don’t,” says Bea. She looks, too, but all we see are a handful of
bystanders and police.
I pull into an empty spot. The parking lot is not large. I park the car
and Bea and I make our way toward Josh. We don’t get far before
we’re stopped by police, and forced to wait a good thirty feet back,
away from what the officer calls a crime scene. His words make my
throat go suddenly dry and I’m certain they’ve found something
inside Meredith’s car. A body, more blood. Bea grabs my hand as he
says it and together we stand, rooted in place, waiting anxiously for
Josh to return with news.
The motel itself is somewhat skeevy. It’s dilapidated and small, a
single-story building with doors that enter from the outside. In the