Free Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman

make sure they weren’t taking advantage. Antoine threw a fit, jumping up and down, begging, pleading, ‘
Trust
me, Mom. Don’t
embarrass
me, Mom, no one else’s parents are putting their noses in.’ I said, ‘Everyone else is stupid so I should be?’ Antoine begs some more, turns on that smile of his.” Sidelong peek at the photo. She folded her lips inward.
    “I told Antoine, ‘That’s the trouble today, no one gets involved.’ But the boy kept working at me, saying if I showed up Will and Brad and everyone else would be dissing him all summer. Then he brings out his report card, half A’s, half B’s, perfect in Conduct. Claiming that proved he was smart, could be trusted.”
    She slumped. “So I gave in. Biggest mistake I ever made and I’ve been paying for it for sixteen years.”
    Gordon said, “Honey, I keep telling you, there’s no reason to-”
    Her eyes blazed. “You keep telling me and you keep telling me.” She got up, walked to the door, took care to close it silently.
    Projecting more rage than if she’d slammed it.
    Gordon Beverly said, “Sorry.”
    “Nothing to be sorry for, sir,” said Milo.
    “She’s a good wife and mother. She didn’t deserve what she got.”
    “What both of you got.”
    Gordon Beverly’s face trembled. “Maybe it’s worse for a mother.”
     
    “Well, that was fun,” said Milo, when we were alone in his office. “Now I got little fishhooks sticking into my heart and decent people tugging on them. Time to check out this Youth In Action, on the off chance they’re still in business and Mrs. B. missed it.”
    She hadn’t. He got to work locating Antoine’s friends.
    Wilson Good’s name pulled up several references to varsity football games at St. Xavier Preparatory High in South L.A. In addition to coaching, Good was head of the Physical Education Department.
    Bradley Maisonette’s criminal record was extensive. Over a dozen narcotics convictions, plus the predictable larcenies that fed a life of addiction.
    Maisonette’s last parole was eleven months ago. His downtown address was a government-financed SRO. Milo phoned his probation officer, got voice mail, left a message.
    Pulling a panatela out of a shirt pocket, he peeled off the plastic and wet the tip but kept the cigar in his hand. “Something else you think I should do?”
    “Why doesn’t Texas just send Jackson out here and dare him to point out the graves?”
    “Because he’s a serious escape risk – tried four times, nearly succeeded once and injured a guard in the process. No way are they gonna let him out of their custody until some local department comes up with serious corroboration. So far, three of Jackson’s claims have turned out to be bogus – crimes he didn’t know were already solved. Bastard probably scans the Internet searching for open horrors he can cop to. Unfortunately, he can’t be written off yet because the stakes are high. If I could find Antoine’s damn file it might lead me somewhere.”
    “Where are the detectives who worked it originally?”
    “One’s dead, the other’s living somewhere in Idaho. At least that’s where his pension check goes. But he hasn’t answered my calls. Meanwhile, there’s Ella Mancusi, with a body barely cold. Why do I think I’m gonna break the Beverlys’ hearts?”
    He placed the beginnings of Antoine’s new murder book in a drawer. Changed his mind and laid it next to his computer. “I’ve started surveillance on Tony Mancusi, got three brand-new uniforms who think they like plainclothes. Still no violent crime reports the night the Bentley got boosted and Mr. Heubel had the car washed and detailed the day Sean scraped it, so the chance of finding anything new is sub-nil. I’m putting
that
at the bottom of the drawer.”
    “Any luck getting Ella some media exposure?”
    “You know the
Times –
maybe yes, maybe no. Public Affairs say there should be something on the six o’clock news tonight.”
    His phone rang. He