“A coincidence, perhaps? It could be, in a town this small.”

“On second thought, I suppose David Knauss also has a connection of sorts with the school. We saw him and those other boys outside the entrance; they almost ran some of the children over.”

That was true, though Teresa didn’t think it was the connection they were looking for.

“The attacker maimed the first, second, and fourth victim’s sense organs,” she noted. “Clearly his encounter with Knauss’s son was an accident. It wasn’t part of his vision.”

She went to the window, opened the notebook, then closed it again. Her mind was working frenetically.

“A serial killer can lie dormant for years. But then one day, he might get fired from a job, or feel abandoned by someone, or suffer some sort of humiliation—any of these things can trigger his homicidal fury. It’s never down to just a momentary loss of control,” she mused. “It’s always a process, but in this case it’s difficult to see it because the motive is not one we are used to but has a psychopathological component.”

“So maybe, in our killer’s case, we should figure out what it was that triggered his homicidal spree,” Marini reasoned.

Teresa turned to him, a surprised smile on her face.

“At long last you’re talking like a cop, Inspector,” she teased him. “Have you been studying?”

De Carli called out to them from the door.

“Superintendent, we have Lucia Kravina’s father. He tried to cross the border. They’re bringing him in now.”

Dante Kravina was a mountain lad with all the bad habits of a city boy. In his interrogation, he told Teresa that he ran away because of his prior drug dealing convictions. “I didn’t want to risk going to jail for a bit of dope,” he said—as if the fact that he’d left his daughter behind wasn’t a much more serious offense.

“Did you make Lucia clean the house to get rid of any traces of drugs?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“And you did the same yourself with your wife’s car.”

“Yes.”

“Weren’t you worried about her?”

He shrugged, his gaze empty.

“What could I have done?”

Plenty, thought Teresa. You could have gone looking for her, saved her having to wander in the forest alone and in shock. You could have looked after your daughter, protected her.

“Tell me about the man who came to your door that night,” she said instead.

“I was high. I didn’t really know what was going on. I saw that he was holding Melania’s necklace. I thought she must have been in an accident and then I thought of how there was some dope in the house and in the car. I had to get rid of it.”