The price of writing it down was having to admit it into her life. It was officially part of it now, a character in her story; and yet her lips still refused to breathe life into that sound, as if by letting the word lie sleeping silently between the pages of that diary, she might somehow postpone her punishment.

Two raps on the door startled her. She closed the diary, but immediately opened it again to erase the word in a feverish swipe. She wasn’t ready to face it just yet.

She opened the door to find Marini leaning against the frame. He smiled at her, holding a bag of cookies. This was becoming a bad habit of his.

“You haven’t had anything to eat,” he said.

Teresa took the cookies and read the label. Just as expected.

“They’re for diabetics,” she protested.

“Fine, I’ll have them back then . . .”

Teresa held them fast.

“I let you go home for just a few hours and instead of minding your own business, you go and buy me cookies?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

“When will you stop craving my approval so badly? It’s pathetic. I’m not your mother,” she said, though without animosity. She had begun to find him rather sweet. Irritating, but sweet.

“You’re my boss. And you’re good,” he replied.

“So I’ve been upgraded! Just yesterday I was still a glorified fortune teller.”

“I never thought that.”

“Really? Well, maybe you should have. Our investigation is at a dead end.”

She would never forget the smile that formed on Marini’s face; it wiped out days’ worth of fatigue and tension.

“We have a name, Superintendent. And it matches the profile you came up with.”

-44-

-44-

Lucas Ebran, thirty-nine. He lived with his mother in a village in the valley, off the road that led to Travenì. At the age of thirteen, he had set the school bathrooms on fire; more recently, he’d had an argument with the neighbors. They were convinced he had killed their cat. Their dog had also disappeared after being seen with him. They suspected Ebran because they thought he was odd, and they’d begun to fear the unhinged looks and the silences with which he responded to their greetings.

“Pyromania and potential animal abuse. Good work, Parisi,” said Teresa.

“His father was a hunter,” the officer added. “He killed himself with a gunshot in the mouth when his son was a teenager. Lucas was the one who found the body in the basement.”

Teresa tried to imagine how traumatic that must have been, especially at that delicate time in life when we are on the cusp of maturity, but still carry inside the impulses and insecurities of a child. She pictured him walking down the stairs that led to the basement, smelling the scent of death, opening the door into the darkness, and finding his father’s maimed body.