A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

“You’re hearing things.”
Bea pulls away. I don’t know where we’re going or how long it will
take to get there. If Shelby is alive, I pray there’s enough oxygen in
the trunk to last awhile.
But what about the exhaust pipe so close to the trunk? Does
carbon dioxide get in?
And if she’s bleeding internally, how long until she bleeds out?
It’s only after we’ve gone a block that Bea turns on the headlights.
“If you heard something,” Bea says after a while, “it’s because
bodies make noises when they die.”
Bea keeps her eyes on the road. She won’t look at me.
Rain begins to fall in big, fat glops. It splatters against the
windshield. If the weathercasters are right, this is the first of many
rains to come.
“Can’t we just check?” I ask a few miles from home. The hospital
is nearby. If we check and she’s alive, we can take her there.
“Shut up, Meredith. Just please shut the fuck up!” Bea snaps.
I fall silent. I think of Shelby in the trunk. I think of what we’ve
done. I think of Jason and her baby at home. I think of Josh, at home
in our bed, waiting for me to come.
We drive for miles. We drive through town and then keep going.
The road turns wooded. It cuts through the river’s floodplain, on the
outer edges of a forest preserve. The houses disappear. The road
turns narrow, gravel. The trees close ranks around us, scratching on
the hood of the car.
That’s where Bea stops the car, in the middle of the abandoned
gravel road. We get out. “We can’t do this. I don’t want to do this,
Bea.”
“I’m not going to jail,” she says. She’s hell-bent on that. I’ve never
seen this side of Bea. I don’t know who this woman is, but I know
this woman is as scared as me, even if it manifests itself as anger
and control. Bea is a good person. She’s not a psychopath. But
she’s backed into a corner, desperate for a way out. This is that way.
She opens the trunk. I brace myself, not knowing whether we’ll
find Shelby dead or alive.
Shelby is dead. She has no pulse. Already the earliest stages of
rigor mortis have begun to set in. Her face is fixed in a terrifying