I’d been back since noon. He’d remained unreachable until four p.m. Revisiting Gilbert Chacon at the Prestige rental lot and getting Chacon to admit that he’d arrived late for work, found the chain propped up but the lock missing, rushed to Rite Aid on Canon and bought the cheap drugstore version we’d seen.

“Think there’s more to it?” I said.

“Someone bribed him to leave it off? Don’t think so, he offered to take a poly, cared more about losing his job than aiding and abetting.”

“However it happened, whoever picked the lock, kept it.”

“Sentimental.”

After leaving Chacon, he’d participated in a conference call with Texas authorities and detectives from six cities where Cuz Jackson claimed to have committed atrocities. Three dead ends, one unlikely, two possibles.

Plus Antoine Beverly, one big question mark.

The needle-and-gurney folk in the Lone Star State wanted to get things moving. The chief’s office had asked Milo to push on Antoine but there was no lead to follow other than locating Antoine’s boyhood friends.

No sign of either. “Hollywood unmarkeds been cruising by Wilson Good’s house for the last forty-eight hours. Definitely no one home and St. Xavier’s starting to worry.”

I said, “Maybe he got really sick and ended up in the hospital.”

“We looked into that. Zip.”

“The coach has left the field,” I said.

“Funny thing ’bout that, huh? Like I said, all the fool had to do was cooperate. Wouldn’t that be something, Antoine coming down to some creepy kid-on-kid thing.”

Thinking about that made me tired. Or maybe it was no sleep in the cell-like hotel room followed by a bone-fusing six-hour plane ride.

I swigged coffee. Milo tore open a packet of Splenda but didn’t use it. “Good was Antoine’s age at the time of the disappearance. You see a fifteen-year-old capable of something like that?”

“They’re not myelinated.”

“Who what?”

“Myelin,” I said. “It’s a substance that coats nerve cells and plays a role in logical processing. Teens don’t have as much as adults. Some folks think that’s a good reason not to execute young criminals.”

“At what age does it turn normal?”

“Differs from person to person. Sometimes not till middle age.”

“Bad living through chemistry,” he said. “But we’re not talking some low-impulse stupid homicide. Baby-gangbangers pull that off all the time. If Good’s dirty for Antoine, we’ve got a teenager stealthy enough to murder his best buddy, smoothly cover it up, and go on living as an upstanding citizen. Serving as a pallbearer and crying his little eyes out.”

“Seeing yourself as moral and living with something that evil would be a hell of a burden, but people pull it off. Or Good could be one of those highly functioning psychopaths who’s managed to avoid trouble.”

“And now trouble comes visiting,” he said. “So he freaks out and splits.”