Chelsea Cain - Heartsick

Archie did not allow himself to react. He didn’t want to startle the woman. To pressure her. He had talked to hundreds of witnesses. And he knew that if someone felt pressured, they would try too hard, and their imagination would fill what their memory couldn’t recover. His hand remained lightly on her back. He was steady, unflappable-the good cop. “She was walking it? Not riding it?”

“No. That’s why I noticed her. My mother used to make me and my sisters do that-walk our bike across busy streets. It’s safer. Especially in this neighborhood. People drive like fools.”

“So the bike wasn’t damaged. It didn’t have a flat tire or anything?”

She pulled at her fingers again. “I don’t know. Not that I noticed. Someone took her? Someone took this girl?”

Archie evaded the question. “Did you notice anything else? Anyone following her? Anyone suspicious on the street? Any vehicles?”

She shook her head sadly and let her hands drop to her sides. “I was on my way to work.”

Archie took down her contact information and her license number and let her go on her way.

A moment later, Detectives Henry Sobol and Claire Masland walked up behind him. Claire was carrying two cups of coffee in white paper cups with black lids. Both Henry and Claire, Archie noticed, were wearing waterproof jackets.

“What was that?” Henry asked.

“Witness saw Kristy walking her bike about three blocks from here at”-he checked his watch-“about 6:55 P.M. Her friends say she left rehearsal at six-fifteen. Which begs the question, Where was she for that forty minutes?”

“It doesn’t take that long to walk a bike three blocks,” Henry observed. “Even walking real slow.”

Claire handed Archie one of the cups of coffee. “Back to the friends,” she said.

Archie glanced down at the cup in his hand. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The coffee you asked me to get you.”

Archie looked noncommittally at the cup. He didn’t want coffee anymore. He was actually feeling pretty good.

“No,” Claire said. “I had to go eleven blocks for that coffee. And you’re drinking it.”

“I’m pretty sure I asked for a nonfat latte,” said Archie.

“Fuck you,” said Claire.

T he friends wereMaria Viello and Jennifer Washington. Maria, Jen, and Kristy had been inseparable since middle school, and high school had not yet soured their friendship. Maria’s house was just a few blocks from Jefferson, so the detectives went there first. She lived in a rented 1920s wooden bungalow surrounded by a chain-link fence. The house needed painting, but the yard was neatly kept and the sidewalk out front was clean of the usual debris of litter that clotted much of the neighborhood. Her father, Armando Viello, answered the door. He was shorter than Archie, with a square torso and hands rough from manual labor. His face was deeply ravaged by acne scars. He spoke English fluently, though with a heavy accent. His wife, to Archie’s knowledge, did not speak English at all. They were probably illegals, a fact that escaped none of the cops who had called on the house in the last twenty-four hours, but did not make it into any of their reports.

Armando Viello stared gravely at Archie and the others through the battered aluminum screen door. The porch light flickered and then went out.

“You were here this morning,” Viello said.

“We have some new questions,” Archie explained.

Armando opened the door and the detectives walked in. It was a brave thing, Archie thought, to know you could be deported but let cop after cop inside your house anyway, on the off chance it might help find someone else’s missing kid.

“Maria is in her bedroom,” Armando said, heading down a short hallway in his stocking feet. Dinner was cooking in the kitchen, something spicy. “You want to talk to Jennifer, too?”

“Jennifer’s here?” Claire asked.

“They’re studying. They did not go to school today.” Armando rapped on Maria’s bedroom door and said something in Spanish. In a minute the door opened. Her elbow-length straight black hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was wearing the same purple velour sweatpants and yellow T-shirt that she had on when Archie had interviewed her that morning after his less than inspirational staff meeting.

“Have you found her?” she asked immediately.

“Not yet,” Archie said kindly. Kids were often overlooked in police investigations. The thinking was that they made bad witnesses, but Archie had found that they noticed things that adults didn’t. As long as they were interviewed appropriately, assured that they didn’t have to know the answers, so they wouldn’t make up what they thought the interviewer wanted to hear, kids as young as six could offer valuable observations. But Maria was fifteen. Teenage girls were unpredictable. Archie had never communicated well with them. He had spent most of his teen years attempting to start conversations with girls and flubbing miserably. He hadn’t really gotten much better. “Can we talk to you some more?” he asked Maria.

She looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. Well, you’ve still got the magic touch , thought Archie.

Then Maria sniffled and nodded. Archie looked at Claire and Henry and then the three followed Maria into her bedroom.

It was a square yellow room with a single-paned window that looked out into the window of the bungalow next door. A paisley twin-size sheet was tacked up in place of a curtain.

Jen Washington sat on the bed, under the window, holding an old and well-loved stuffed alligator on her lap, a relic of childhood. Her hair was styled in a short Afro and she wore an Indian-style shirt and jeans with beaded fringed cuffs. She was a beautiful girl, but the lack of any spark dampened her prettiness.

They had all been in the high school auditorium together. Jen was painting scenery for the play. Maria was in charge of props. They had all auditioned. Kristy was the only one who had been cast. So she was the one who had left early. The one who was, by now, most probably dead. But Archie didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want them to see it on his face.

Maria walked over to the bed and flung herself down on the Mexican blanket beside Jen, who laid a skinny arm protectively across Maria’s calf. Archie walked over to the wooden desk next to the bed, flipped the desk chair around, and sat in it. Henry leaned back against the door, arms folded over his chest. Claire perched on the Mexican blanket on the corner of the bed.

Archie opened his red notebook. “Did Kristy have a boyfriend?” he asked softly.

“You already asked us that,” Jen said, twisting the alligator. She glared at Archie with contempt. Archie didn’t blame her. Fifteen was too young to find out how fucked up the world was.

“Tell me again.”

Jen glowered. The alligator looked bored. Maria adjusted herself into a cross-legged position, pulling her long ponytail over her shoulder and absentmindedly wrapping it around her fingers. “No,” she said finally. “There was no one.” Unlike her father, she had no trace of a Mexican accent.

Claire smiled conspiratorially at the girls. “No one? Not even someone maybe that her parents might disapprove of? Someone secret.”

Jen rolled her eyes. “No one means no one.”

“And you’re sure that Kristy left rehearsal at six-fifteen?” Archie asked.

Maria stopped fidgeting with her hair and looked at Archie, certainty flashing in her dark eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

“Someone saw Kristy a few blocks away almost forty minutes later,” Archie explained. “Any idea what she might have been doing?”