“My name was O’Hanlon, too, before I got married and divorced,” she said. “But that marriage was just like my family. It fell apart because of what happened to me in that cathedral. I still remember the months right after the rape. I stopped talking and created my own little place inside my mind where I was a perfect angel. My parents’ marriage was disintegrating, my faith in God had failed, but as long as I stayed in that place where I was an angel, nothing could ever hurt me.”

“Mary, you don’t have to do this,” Coletti said. “Let me help you.”

“Shut up!” she screamed with an anger she’d thus far managed to mask. “If you would’ve helped me in the beginning, my mind wouldn’t have twisted the way it did. I would’ve never gone back to that cathedral to kill those people. I would’ve never believed that murder could make things right.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and sparkled in the factory’s dim light.

“If killing didn’t make things right the first time, why did you keep doing it?”

“I did it to punish you,” she said. “Each time I made it look like somebody else committed a murder, and watched you arrest the wrong people, I pulled you down a little further.”

“But it wasn’t just me you punished. You killed innocent people.”

“I exposed you for the failure you are!” she screamed.

“How? By getting four boys strung out on dope and telling them they were fulfilling a prophecy?”

“Those boys were a means to an end,” she said, her face crumpling as her eyes filled with tears.

“What about Father Douglas and Father O’Reilly?” Coletti said, as he placed his hands flat on the floor. “Why did you punish them?”

“They preached for a God who failed me.”

“And all those other people you got those boys to kill? Did they deserve to die?”

“I died in that bathroom thirty-one years ago!” she shouted. “Did anyone care about me then? Did you care about me then?”

Suddenly, Coletti rolled to his right and Smithson pulled the trigger. He scrambled to his feet and lunged at her, but she dodged him, and he landed on the floor.

“The prophecy was right,” she said as she leveled the gun at him. “Good does triumph over evil in the end.”

Just then, bright light poured in through the door, and everything slowed down for Coletti. He could hear the sound of his heart beating against his chest, and feel the air rushing into his lungs. He could see the dust particles dancing in the light, and feel the hate that filled Mary’s eyes.

Her finger tightened on the trigger. The light seemed to grow brighter. The room felt oddly silent. And then there was a gunshot.