Parisi pocketed another ball.

“It didn’t end well,” said De Carli, murmuring again. “Let it go.”

“What happened? What did she do?” Marini asked, feeling increasingly baffled.

Parisi placed his cue stick on the pool table.

“Superintendent Battaglia does have a family. We are her family.”

De Carli copied him.

“We might never say it to her face, but we’ll always be there for her.”

Massimo was struck by their responses. He looked at the superintendent and wondered how she had managed to earn that kind of devotion. She seemed unaware of the reactions she induced in those around her, or perhaps she simply didn’t care. In any case, he thought she seemed terribly lonely. That, more than anything else, was what stuck in his mind, for he could sense that loneliness was not a condition she was involuntarily subjected to, but something that she stubbornly sought out. Parisi and De Carli guarded her secrets. They had made it clear to him that he shouldn’t ask too many questions, and that he’d do better to avoid the subject altogether. Massimo wondered again what might have happened to her family. Beyond her caustic wit and difficult personality, he could see there was a profound, sensitive humanity to her. He had noticed it while watching her deal with little Diego Valent, and again every time he saw her lay eyes on a victim. Like that boy they’d just interrogated in the hospital. She was deeply empathetic, and that same quality caused her pain.

Parisi put his hand on Massimo’s shoulder.

“Another beer?” he offered, smiling.

Marini nodded.

“One day you’ll understand,” said De Carli, turning his focus back on the game.

“Understand what?” Massimo asked him.

“Why we care so much about her. It’ll happen to you, too.”

-42-

-42-

FOREST OF
TRAVENÌ-ABERLINZ, 1988

The late afternoon sun warmed the crooked boards of the mountain shelter, releasing the aroma of old timber—a mixture of honey and hay. The forest, swaying in the warm breeze, shone with a bright, iridescent green. Spots of shimmering light floated among the blades of grass—diligent insects and feathery pollen. The birds sang their melodies from dawn to dusk, before the crickets took over with their chirping.

The child learned about the world through a gap in the beams supporting the wall, opened up by time and the alternation of hot summers with harsh winters. His tiny fingers stuck out on the other side where they twirled in the air, free at last. The animals of the forest had learned to recognize them and no longer feared them. Sometimes they would come close enough to lick them or to brush their fur against them. He would seek out those moments of searing contact and feel just beneath their skin the beating of a heart like his own.