Free Heartsick by Chelsea Cain Page A

on the balls of their feet, leaning in toward one another, waiting. Archie could feel the woman physically shrink at all the attention. He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder blade and guided her a few steps away from the small huddle. He tilted his head next to hers, his voice gentle. “And you would have been by here about this same time? You weren’t running late or early?”

    “No. I never run late or early. I’m punctual.”

    “We won’t keep you long,” Archie reassured her. “And you think you saw Kristy Mathers?”

    “The girl in the photo? Yeah. I saw her. Up at Killingsworth and Albina. I waited for her to cross. She was walking her bike.”

    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.

    CHAPTER

    11

    T he friends were Maria 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