Marini had spoken in the faintest of whispers, as if the troubling sight of that exposed flesh were too indecent to be discussed out loud. It was the carcass of a hare, dangling from one of the windows of the house. It had been skinned, and its neck broken. Robbed of its fur, it looked fearsome: its skull was wrapped in lean, taut muscle, and its jaws hung wide open.

Teresa didn’t reply. She’d had the same thought.

Hugo Knauss, the local police chief, pulled her aside. Stocky and not particularly tall, with light skin and coppery hair, he always looked like he was smiling, even when he was dead serious. It was because of the way he moved his chapped lips, and how he always seemed to be squinting, the cold-ravaged skin around his eyes stretching them sideways.

“It was the little girl, Lucia Kravina, who called us. She was alone at home,” he told her.

Teresa nodded, her eyes on the carcass of the wretched creature.

“Has this ever happened before?” she asked.

“No, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been working here almost all my life. You might get a prankster stealing people’s washing from the line, but that’s about as bad as it gets. We’ve already had a murder this week, and now this . . .” He spat on the ground. “Do you think it’s some kind of professional criminal who did this? Could it be a warning?”

Teresa believed it was something more dangerous than that.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think this has anything to do with organized crime. What’s the Kravina family like?”

The man snorted.

“The father’s a loafer who can’t hold down a job. The mother’s a waitress at a diner in town, and she works the evening shift at the pub to make ends meet. I’ve seen better, but I suppose they’re harmless.”

Teresa refrained from noting how the most seemingly unremarkable lives could hide a sinister ferment, a putrid humus of frustration and rage.

“Harmless,” she echoed, rolling the word over her tongue as if each of its letters tasted unpleasant. “There is no creature on this earth that is truly harmless, Chief Knauss.”

The man stopped chewing the gum he’d been pushing around inside his mouth ever since they’d arrived at the scene. He seemed personally offended, as if he were the one being scrutinized instead of the little girl’s parents.

“We’re not savages,” he told her. “No one from Travenì would ever do something like this.”

Teresa understood: he harbored a misplaced sense of loyalty toward this community and felt he had to exculpate its members.

“So it couldn’t have been a local because they would be a local. An interesting observation, Chief,” she replied, though she wasn’t sure whether he could tell she was being ironic.