Coletti’s eyes began to dance. Mann glanced down at the files and pretended not to watch. Then something in one of the folders caught his eye. Mann pulled out his iPhone and began to scroll through the calendar, counting days while referring back to two of the folders.

“Did you find something?” Coletti asked as he tore his eyes away from Smithson’s.

Mann spent another few seconds double-checking what he saw.

“Actually, yes,” Mann said. “The Petrov murder happened on one of the dates they wrote on Sandy’s wall. February 12, 2006—twelve hundred ninety days ago.”

“Twelve hundred ninety,” Smithson slowly repeated. “That matches one of the time frames from Daniel 12.”

“I know,” Mann said gravely. “So does December 30, 2005. That was thirteen hundred thirty-five days ago.”

“So the dates from Sandy’s wall not only match the time frames in Daniel 12,” Coletti said. “They match the dates of murders.”

“There’s only one way to know that for sure,” Smithson said. “We have to find out what happened in December 2005.”

“She’s right,” Mann said. “And the sooner the better, because the last date they wrote on Sandy’s wall was August 26, 2009. That’s today.”

By five thirty, the crowd outside the church on Cecil B. Moore Avenue filled almost half the block. Police barricades had been hastily erected to keep the gawkers at bay, but the media contingent was increasingly impatient, and the rest of the onlookers grew ever more frightened and restless. Even so, no one dared cause a disturbance.

Everyone from thugs with their low-slung pants to students with half-empty backpacks knew that this was no ordinary crime scene. People of every stripe were there, waiting for a single glimpse, and all of them were frightened enough to show reverence for what they were about to see.

The crowd spoke in hushed tones, staring up at the church as if it were a shrine. They’d all heard that the dead man had proclaimed himself the angel of death, and each of them was trying to attach his or her own meaning to that moniker.

The church folks stood next to each other and swayed, eyes closed and palms raised as they waited for divine revelation. The students on their way to the Broad Street subway craned their necks and kept their distance, afraid that God, or whoever had sent this angel, would strike those who questioned his veracity. The commuters walked slowly, hoping to catch a glimpse of this so-called angel.

Neighbors filled out the quiet crowd, standing next to the media members who only came to the avenue for occasions marked by death. The calm was eerie, and it served as an odd contrast to the smell of baked goods and brewing coffee emanating from the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. It was as if the smell of life had been attached to the stillness of death, and neither knew how to react to the other.