“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Smart man. You never cheat on a woman with a gun.”

He laughed flirtatiously. “I’ve got a gun, too. Maybe I’ll show it to you next time I see you.”

“And when will that be?” she said with a girlish giggle.

“Whenever we find the angel of death.”

As soon as he spoke those words the laughter stopped. The flirting ceased. A tense, uncomfortable silence hung between them. When Sandy spoke, she sounded angry.

“You better hope you find him before I do,” she said ominously. “Because if I see him and his little helpers first, we’re gonna find out if they’re angels or men.”

“Sandy, don’t do anything crazy.”

“It was sweet of you to call and check on me,” she said, ignoring his plea. “I’m going in for the early shift today. I have to get ready for work. You should, too.”

Before he could say anything else the line went dead. Mann held the phone for a moment, knowing that Sandy wouldn’t rest until the men who had violated her home were caught.

Mann didn’t plan to rest, either. He quickly dialed a second number and spoke to an old friend. When he’d finished making arrangements to see him, he took Sandy’s advice and went to work.

He parked his car along Cecil B. Moore Avenue, within sight of the church on Sixteenth Street where another police detail and satellite truck stood by.

He walked north on Fifteenth, between the multilevel parking lot and Temple University’s Student Recreation Center. He walked west on Montgomery, past the police department’s north central division headquarters, then north on Seventeenth to Berks.

Along the way, he passed refurbished houses that were rented out to students and saw firsthand the uneasy coexistence of the neighborhood and the university.

Going west on Berks Street, where a wide swath of undeveloped land still lent itself to North Philly’s underground economy, Mann looked around for the drug dealers who sometimes did business in the area. They knew the rhythm of the neighborhood better than anyone, but he wouldn’t be talking to them today. They’d retreated from the corners. The TV cameras made the streets too hot.

As Mann turned on Eighteenth and headed back toward Montgomery, he took a dirt path through a weed-filled lot, his broad shoulders dipping as his Timberlands dug into the packed earth.

The path, which wove through a tract of land where houses had once stood, was one of many shortcuts that crisscrossed North Philly’s most desolate corners. Such paths helped people avoid the right angles of the sidewalks, but they rarely helped them avoid the wrong angles of the streets.

Running through vast spaces adjacent to row homes that had survived the demolitions of the nineties, the paths and the lots around them were home to loose bricks and condoms, panties, and bottles discarded by passersby.