There was an art to interviewing witnesses; it required a degree of self-control to avoid planting ideas into people’s heads that would hinder rather than help the search for truth. Teresa waited patiently for someone to work up the courage to speak. She could sense Marini next to her vibrating with anticipation. If it were up to him, he would have gone right up to the boys, lifted them up by their collars, and shaken them like fruit trees until they dropped some nugget of information.

One of the young men finally spoke. “I didn’t see him,” he said. He sounded like a teenager, and the braces on his teeth clashed with his leather jacket, which was embroidered with the face of a demon.

“His face was covered,” said one of the other boys, encouraged by his friend’s reply.

“Covered how?” asked Teresa.

The boy mimed the act of wrapping something around his head.

“There was light-colored fabric around his head, like this. It came down to his shoulders, too.”

“Like a bandage?”

“No. It looked like . . .”

“A turban,” said the boy who had spoken first.

“No way, that was no turban,” the third boy chimed in. “It was more like a scarf wrapped around his head and his face. Only the eyes were showing,” he explained, demonstrating with his hands.

His friends nodded.

“Are you sure?” asked Teresa.

“Yes,” they chorused.

“But then at one point we saw his mouth,” said the kid with the braces. “And it looked like . . . I swear it looked like he wanted to bite David!”

He burst into tears and neither of his friends tried to comfort him. It was Chief Knauss who put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and drew him toward his chest.

Teresa puzzled over their description, the emerging portrait of the suspect’s physical features, trying to make sense of the rudimentary picture they had obtained. A man with his face covered up and a long coat that came all the way to his calves. His feet wrapped up in thick socks and boots. His age impossible to determine. An enigma.

She thought back to the stranger she had pursued along the old railway tracks. She couldn’t say for sure whether his profile matched. She couldn’t have described him in any great detail anyway. It had all happened so fast. Or perhaps her mind was no longer sharp enough.

“Does it sound like anyone from Travenì?” she asked Knauss, more out of habit than with any expectation of a positive answer. The chief shook his head.

“No, I’ve never seen anyone like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“My eyesight’s still fine, Superintendent.”

“It’s not your eyesight I’m worried about, Chief.”

Knauss exhaled heavily, as if letting go of all the tension he’d accumulated that day.

“My son is lying on a hospital bed right now,” he said. “I think you can count on my cooperation.”