When she reached the hospital Teresa decided to interview his friends, who were gathered in a waiting room under Knauss’s watchful eye.

Teresa went up to the chief.

“I’m sorry about your son,” she said. “How is he doing?”

Knauss nodded in acknowledgment.

“Right now it’s the shock that’s affecting him the most,” he said.

Teresa noticed that his customary smile was gone. She wondered if he was embarrassed as well as worried. He was the chief of the local police force, and his son was the village bully.

“If you’d rather be with him . . .” she suggested.

“I’d rather be looking for the culprit, Superintendent.”

Teresa nodded, and turned to face the kids. They were not much more than teenagers. She thought they looked terrified—they were used to being bullies, but today they had become victims. An entirely new and disconcerting experience. She looked at their faces, analyzing their expressions. Fear gave them a child-like appearance, dilating their pupils and turning the corners of their mouths downwards, but something else was affecting them, something that at first she couldn’t quite identify. Terror tended to paralyze people, but this was something different, something causing a restlessness in the boys, a lack of composure in their gestures, a constant wringing of the hands, an endless exchange of worried glances. The pack was in disarray, and it was trying to rally.

What was so troubling as to overshadow their fear? The answer came to Teresa of its own accord. She might have experienced it herself, in the past.

Guilt.

She recognized them from the incident outside Diego’s school when they had almost run over a little girl in their SUV. They had gone from bullies spoiling for a fight to a bunch of frightened little boys.

“I’m Superintendent Battaglia,” she told them. “This is my team.”

The boys looked at her pleadingly. Teresa knew why they looked so worried: they had been drinking all day, the alcohol levels in their blood way over the legal limit.

Yet they seemed sober now, subdued by fear.

She had already read the statements they had given while still in a state of confusion. She didn’t want to waste time with questions she already knew the answers to; the details of the accident were clear, and they were already being verified by a team of investigators on site. There was only one thing she was interested in.

“His face. What did it look like?” she asked.

The boys seemed bewildered. They had given contradictory statements on the matter, and now she was determined to get a conclusive response. She could have split them up and questioned each of them separately, but she suspected that this would be counter-productive. They needed to be surrounded by the rest of the pack; they would not be able to cope with the tension otherwise.