A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

morning her daughter, Piper, was around and so she couldn’t call
and tell Josh then; she didn’t want to scare Piper. By the time Piper
went to school, the search was in full swing. Cassandra didn’t feel
right stealing Josh’s attention away from the search.
“Arlo, my son,” she explains, “he’s a lousy sleeper. We’re trying to
sleep train, but easier said than done. Anyway, that night—the night
that I saw someone—he was wide awake, crying. I was in his room
trying to rock him to sleep. His room faces the street,” she says, and
without her saying it, I understand that Arlo’s bedroom has a bird’seye
view of Josh and Meredith’s home. “We never do pull the
shades. We didn’t when we lived in Chicago. You know what they
say about old habits.”
“They die hard,” I say. There’s a tremor to Cassandra’s voice when
she speaks. Whatever she witnessed out Arlo’s bedroom window
that night has her suddenly spooked.
“What exactly did you see?” Bea prompts. My pulse quickens in
anticipation. I wrap my hands around my coffee but I don’t drink it. I
hang on to Cassandra’s every word.
“It was dark out,” Cassandra says, “a moonless night. The
streetlight outside has been out a month or two. My husband, Marty,
called the city about it a while ago, but it still hasn’t been fixed. Our
tax dollars,” she quips, “hard at work. The only light came from
whatever porch lights were left on overnight.
“For as dark as it was, I still saw movement in Josh and Meredith’s
yard. At first I thought it was my imagination. That I was seeing
things. It was late and I was tired. Then, when it didn’t go away, I told
myself it was their trees or a deer. A coyote, maybe. But the longer I
watched, I realized it was someone, people, in Josh and Meredith’s
yard. I watched for a while, not sure what they were doing,
wondering if I should call the police.”
“Did you call the police?” Bea asks, knowing the answer.
“I wish I had,” Cassandra says regretfully.
“How many people did you see?” I ask.
“Two,” she says. “It didn’t look like a break-in attempt. The people I
saw, they weren’t flush against the house. They were farther back,
away from the door. I convinced myself—once I knew that what I