“What I’m implying is you feel threatened by Otto. Let me try to explain the sequence of events more clearly. The body was found on the side of the Autostrade outside Bari, and I thought nothing of it at first when I heard about it. No one knew who she was, and it was believed she was a prostitute. The police speculated the killing was connected to Sacra Corona Unita—the Puglia mafia. Otto said he was quite happy the Carabinieri wasn’t involved, because he wasn’t fond of dealing with gangsters. In his words, there’s nothing redeeming about victims who are as corrupt as their killers. I believe it was a day later when he informed me he’d spoken to the forensic pathologist at the Sezione di Medicina Legale in Bari. It appeared the victim was a missing Canadian tourist last seen at a discotheque in Ostuni. She was quite drunk. She left with a man. A young woman fitting the same description was seen the next day at Grotta Bianca in Puglia. The White Cave.”

“Again, Captain Poma is omniscient, and it seems the entire world reports to him.”

“Again, you sound resentful of him.”

“Let’s talk about the White Cave. We have to assume this killer makes symbolic associations,” Benton says.

“The deeper levels of consciousness,” Dr. Maroni says. “Buried childhood memories. Suppressed memories of trauma and pain. We might interpret the exploration of a cave as his mythological journey into the secrets of his own neuroses and psychoses, his fears. Something terrible happened to him, and it probably predates what he thinks is the terrible thing that happened to him.”

“What do you remember about his physical description? Did people who claimed to have seen him with the victim in the disco, the cave, or elsewhere give a physical description?”

“Young, wearing a cap,” Dr. Maroni tells him. “That’s it.”

“That’s it? Race?”

“In both the disco and the cave, it was very dark.”

“In your patient notes—right here, I’m looking at them—your patient mentioned meeting a Canadian woman in a disco. He said this the day after her body was found. Then you never heard from him again. What was his race?”

“He’s white.”

“You say in your notes he indicated he had, and I quote, ‘left the girl on the roadside in Bari.’”

“At that time, it wasn’t known that she was Canadian. She was unidentified. It was assumed she was a prostitute, as I said.”

“When you found out she was a Canadian tourist, you didn’t make a connection?”

“Naturally, I was worried. But I had no proof.”