A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

parking lot, a 1970s neon sign flashes Vacancy, advertising rooms
for just fifty dollars a night or two hundred a week. I’m guessing
much of the clientele is homeless. They live here.
This isn’t the kind of place the Meredith I know would ever go.
“What did they find?” Bea asks when Josh comes to stand by us.
“The car,” Josh tells us breathlessly, “is empty. No sign of either of
them, though there’s mud all over the driver’s side. Blood in the
passenger’s seat. An officer went inside and spoke to the clerk. He
was told that Meredith checked in on the same day she disappeared.
She paid cash. She rented the room for the month and declined daily
maid service. The police are going to search the room.” He stops
there, dragging his hands through his hair. His eyes are exhausted
but hopped up on adrenaline. They don’t look right. “I’m supposed to
sit tight and wait, but...” His voice trails.
Two things flash across Josh’s face in that instant: hope and
despair.
Bea reaches for him. We stand together like that, the three of us in
a row, holding hands.
The officers step inside a room and close the door behind
themselves. It takes too long for them to return. With each passing
minute, my concern grows exponentially. I fidget. I can hardly stand
still, but I force myself to for Josh’s sake.
Josh asks things like, “What do you think is taking so long?”
God bless Bea, she comes up with reasonable explanations that
put Josh at ease, like, “They’d want to talk to her. They’d have
questions for her if she was there.”
But I think that if Meredith and Delilah were there in the room, the
officers would be back immediately. But they’re not. Too much time
passes as we watch from behind the barricade tape, staring
expectantly at the closed motel door.
A few officers remain to keep watch on us. They speak to one
another through walkie-talkies, though the voices are muffled and
low; we can’t hear what they say. But then, as we watch, two of the
officers leave and move toward the room. They’re let inside by
someone we can’t see. The door closes. There is a window in the
room, but the curtains are drawn. We can’t see anything.