MR. SWIFT: Were you inebriated at that point?

MR. THIROUX: Not in the slightest.

Gabriel was shaking the hand of the young, personable physician in the ER who had treated Rochelle, ready to leave now that her parents had arrived, when he suddenly realized what he had never bothered to investigate. He had read all the online articles in reference to Jessie Michaels’s murder case. But he had never seen any pictures. The articles had all been text.

He wanted to see Dr. Rafe Marino, who Sara seemed to think was attractive and charming, with a heart of gold.

Gabriel had his doubts about the good doctor’s true character, especially after his conversation with the Florida journalist.

It was the biblical and Michelangelo references. They had been rolling around in his head, bothering him, nagging that something was not right.

So instead of going home, he headed straight over to the library, ignoring the fact that he’d been up all night and hadn’t eaten. He did a general search on Dr. Rafe Marino. He got what he wanted immediately. A staff picture from the hospital in Naples where Dr. Marino had worked prior to his arrest.

“Holy shit.” Gabriel sat back in his chair, heart pounding. It couldn’t be.

It was Raphael.

A fallen angel.

Once a healer.

And now, obviously, a killer.

The face smiled back at him, familiar and open. Raphael wasn’t suave yet disdainful like Alex, or quiet and intense like Gabriel. Raphael had always been the one who could put people at ease, could draw out a smile, a laugh, even from the most devastated.

How could he take that trust and destroy mortal lives?

Unbelievable, just insane. Gabriel couldn’t believe that Raphael was capable of such heinous acts. It wasn’t possible to understand how anyone could do what had been done to those women, but Raphael, a man he had known, spoken to, shared meals with. That he had committed such evil, it was incomprehensible.

But true. And he was a demon, after all. Raphael had sinned like all the rest of them. He had succumbed to the pleasure of flesh and food and wine and turned his back on his duty. In the nineteenth century he had cared more for the cut of his coat than his position as coroner. But murder? Gabriel would have never guessed. It sickened him.

Tapping quickly, Gabriel did another search. This one yielded an e-mail address and phone number. Raphael hadn’t tried very hard to cover his tracks. Working for twenty minutes, digging up everything Gabriel could—history, education, professional associations—on Rafe Marino, he hit the jackpot when he found that one Dr. Rafe Marino was the sole benefactor of a trust. The very trust that had purchased a house in New Orleans two years prior. On Dauphine Street.

It was the House of Rest for Weary Men.

Owned by Raphael.