All that changed very quickly. The rumbling sound of a diesel engine rose above the hushed voices. The cops moved one of the barricades to allow for the truck to back up to the side door of the church.

As something upstairs began to move, the crowd pressed forward as one. With the sound of each step on the rickety wooden staircase inside the church, the flashbulbs came to life. When finally the two cops carrying the body emerged from the front door, pushing ensued. Shouting broke out. Police officers brandished batons.

The crowd, led by camera operators desperate for the definitive shot, looked to be ready to charge. Then, in a moment when almost everyone was close enough to see, the unthinkable happened. The policemen dropped the body. It rolled onto the ground and the body bag ripped, exposing an arm and part of the forehead that had been smashed by a bullet.

Suddenly everything stopped. The crowd was once again quiet and still, staring at what they’d come to see. The stillness extended for a second more, and then there was chaos. Photographers pushed for the money shot, while the crowd turned on itself with a mix of revulsion and glee. The police who’d dropped the body picked it up and hoisted it into the van, while those around them locked arms and held the crowd at bay. After ten long seconds, the door to the van was closed, and the diesel engine kicked into gear.

Police held back the crowd. Reporters waded into chaos. Cameras caught it all.

When the body was gone and the avenue was restored to order, the sound of footsteps once again echoed from the church’s rickety stairway.

Lynch emerged from the door flanked by his deputies, and personalities from national news outlets vied with hardened reporters from local newspaper and radio. The national folks were quickly marginalized, forced to ask their questions from the edges of the pack.

“Commissioner, has the man who was just brought out been identified?” asked a woman from 6ABC.

“We have a preliminary ID and we’re trying to locate his next of kin before releasing his name to the public.”

“Can you confirm an age?” a radio reporter shouted.

“He was in his early- to midtwenties.”

“And what about his claim that he was the angel of death?” said a reporter from the Philadelphia Daily News.

“We can neither confirm nor deny that,” Lynch said.

“Our sources tell us that several of the notes the killer left were addressed to Detective Mike Coletti,” said an Inquirer reporter. “Do you have any idea why?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that any notes were addressed to anyone,” Lynch said. “This is an ongoing investigation, and unfortunately, we can’t conduct it in the media.”

“Has there been any discussion of the fact that there seems to be more than one of these killers?” the Daily News reporter asked.

“No comment,” Lynch said.