Hard Pill to Swallow

The red light flashed on the phone console in the inner office. “Yes, Denise.” “Pick up line two. There’s a woman who says it’s about Jessica.” With a deep frown, Meredith Ivanoff picked up the phone, hoping for any news of her twenty-year-old daughter, Jessica, who had been missing for nearly two weeks. “This is Dr. Ivanoff. To whom am I speaking?” “I know Jessica. I have information…” ”Who is this?” “Don’t talk. Listen. Leave your office right now. Drive your black Mercedes, license number SBX-787 to Liberty and Zeeb. Park on the north side of the street, about a hundred yards west of Zeeb. Leave it running. Stay in it and wait for me. I cannot get involved with the police. If I sense that you are not alone, you will never hear from me again. Speak to no one. Hang up. Leave now.” “Wait,” but the line was dead. Where is my daughter? What trouble is she in? Grabbing her coat and purse she walked quickly and silently through the outer office and down the 2nd floor corridor, past patients, colleagues and hospital staff, into the parking structure and the cold winter morning, returning to the car she had parked not an hour before. Snow mixed with rain and a thin layer of slush covered the streets. She thought about her cell phone, about calling her husband Nick or maybe the private investigator she had hired the day before, maybe the police. No, she thought, I can handle this. She turned right onto Huron from Glenn. She faced the incoming weather and tried not to speed. Meredith was not used to waiting. She fidgeted. In the back of her mind, she knew that what she was doing was rash, but her thoughts were consumed with half-formed images of horrible things happening to her daughter. She looked at her watch. Five minutes had passed. No traffic, no one in sight. She was alone and frantic and wanted to cry. A voice in her head told her to drive off or call someone. Her pulse raced. The pictures in her mind. She reached alternately for the gear shift lever and the cell phone but touched neither. The sky darkened as a new squall line crossed overhead. The wind was intense. Intermittent gusts rocked her car. In an attempt to calm herself, Meredith closed her eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths, but found that she could not sustain the effort. Her eyes opened and her breathing went back to being rapid and shallow. She stared into the windshield, transfixed by the sound of the storm and the heavy, horizontal snow. When a car pulled up behind her, the spell was broken. From her side-view mirror she could make out a form exiting the vehicle. It hunched and pressed into the wind making its way toward her. A woman, Meredith thought, in a heavy winter coat with the hood up and a scarf around her neck. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that whoever this was might be carrying something in her right hand, maybe a piece of paper. It will be an address or a phone number, maybe a letter, but surely some key to Jessica’s whereabouts. Hope …something eternal. What is that quote? She had her window part-way down. The driving snow stung her face. The figure was now even with the car door. Meredith looked up. No facial features. Except for a few strands of red hair that had escaped from under the hood, all she could see was scarf and shadow. She opened her mouth to speak, “Wh….” The figure’s left hand emerged. Meredith saw the dark metal of the gun, its empty, black bore, and then the flash.