“Of course it could be worse, but who gives a damn? You did the right thing to seek out your destiny elsewhere.”

“Are you expecting me to thank you?”

“You’re welcome,” she shot back.

Massimo gestured at a stack of files. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’ve found?”

“Nothing, I presume.”

“But you knew that already.”

Teresa shrugged.

“I would have remembered if there had been a similar case before.”

She had already known he wouldn’t find anything. She was as familiar with the contents of the archive as her grandfather had been with the writing in the little notebook where he kept score for all his rounds of Morra, that ancient card game of chance. Hundreds of dates and numbers. When she was a little girl, she used to sit on his lap and test him; Grandpa Pietro had never made a single mistake. Teresa had relied on the archive on a daily basis for almost forty years now. Religiously. There wasn’t a page among those thousands from which she hadn’t learned something.

One of Marini’s eyebrows shot up.

“I wasn’t expecting to have to work with a profiler,” he said.

She burst out laughing.

“I sense a hint of irony in your tone, though to be honest, I’m the only one who’s actually working here,” she replied, winking at him. “All you do is sit around and look confused.”

Marini turned his face back to the monitor and resumed rolling the wheel of the mouse. Files pertaining to a number of violent deaths scrolled before his eyes. Teresa could see them reflected in his dark irises.

“I still think the best way to solve a murder is to search for clues and evidence, not try and guess what the killer might look like,” he said after a time.

Teresa was beginning to find him funny.

“Based on what I’ve read on your report, you’re the one who’s been doing all the guesswork,” she replied. She leaned closer. “It’s true that criminology is not an exact science. Nothing about it is certain, and every case is different. Criminology is an art. The art of learning to observe and to see things someone like you could never even glimpse. It’s not magic; it’s interpretation. Probability, statistics. Never certainty.”

Marini stared at her for several moments.

“You really believe all that,” he murmured.

Teresa let out an involuntary sigh.

“Do you think we’re playing some kind of game, here? Cops and robbers?” she asked.

“I think . . .”

“No, you don’t think. That much is clear. Let me tell you a story.”

“Is it really necessary?”

“Yes, yes it is.”

He stretched his arms out and let them fall down on either side of his chair.