Milo said, “What preyed on Will? He did something to Twan? You and he did something together?”

Maisonette’s head turned slowly. His eyes filled with tears. “You think that?”

“Mr. Maisonette, I’ve got a sixteen-year-old homicide all stirred up, like you said, and two supposed friends of the victim rabbiting.”

“Supposed? Here are the facts: We were best friends. Best. I didn’t do anything to Antoine, Will didn’t do anything to Antoine.”

“Antoine disappeared into thin air?”

“We didn’t do it. Not Will or me.”

“Who did?”

Maisonette worked his hands through his hair. Dandruff snowed on the table.

Milo slammed the table hard enough to twang the metal. “Enough of this bullshit! What’d happened to Antoine?”

Real rage. Maisonette parried it with long, cool stare. “Nothing.”

Milo shot up to his feet. Leaned on the table, nearly upended it with his weight. “Sixteen years, Bradley. Antoine’s parents living with the pain of not knowing. You and your so-called friend were at that funeral, pretending to be all torn up. Sixteen fucking years.”

Maisonette’s skinny frame began to shake.

“Say it!”

Maisonette’s head dropped. “Damn Will.”

“Will did something.”

“He swore me.”

“To what?”

“Silence. Not ’cause we did something. Something got done to him.”

A beat.

“And to me.”

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER
38

The man’s name was Howard Ingles Zint.

Aka Floyd Cooper Zindt. Aka Zane Lee Cooper. Aka Howard Cooper Sayder.

Sixteen years ago, he’d been the “West Coast sales professional” for Youth In Action. The company, defunct for over a decade, had turned out to be a scam, taking cash for magazine subscriptions rarely delivered.

Zint arrived in L.A. in May, after a stint in Tucson, set about recruiting students from local schools. Concentrating on minority kids, using the racist logic that dark skin equaled poverty and poverty was a great motivator. When Antoine, Will, and Bradley met Zint, he was a smooth-talking thirty-five-year-old self-described “former college jock” able to sell anything.

Now he was a middle-aged inmate at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

The mug shot revealed a gaunt, white-bearded apparition with dead eyes.

Twenty-three hours a day in your cell could do that to you. Especially with ninety-two years left on a hundred-year sentence for abducting, beating, cutting, and molesting scores of boys.

Sixteen years ago, Zint hadn’t yet progressed to violence, was content to seduce his prey with cash and promises of video games, running shoes, cool athletic gear. For the older boys, hookups with “hot babes.”

It started off simply in L.A.: Zint picked the three laughing black boys up on a street corner, outlined their routes, collected them at the end of their shifts. Advanced them money, even though it was against the rules.

After trust was built up, he began pulling them off early, one at a time, where icy cans of beer, freshly rolled joints, and pills Zint assured them were just “for relaxation” awaited.