With that, the detective leaned hard against the wall. A million fractured thoughts went through his mind: the blood on the floor of the cathedral; the shotgun in the priest’s hands; the sight of the killer’s bared teeth. Those thoughts came forth in a whirlwind. Then they disappeared in a flash of light, leaving him with nothing but anger and fear.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Smithson said.

Coletti pushed himself away from the wall. “I’m fine.”

She looked in his eyes and immediately knew he was lying. Then she looked at the note and instantly knew it was real.

“This angel of death must’ve done something terrible for you to react this way.”

“He did,” Coletti said through clenched teeth. “He got away.”

A moment later, he was on his cell phone, calling dispatch and telling them he needed an assist. In doing so, he brought every cop in the area flying to his aid. When he disconnected the call, Smithson touched his shoulder in an effort to comfort him. Coletti was too preoccupied to notice. He looked once more at the words scrawled on the paper. Then he did something he hadn’t done for nearly ten years.

He prayed.

By five forty-five, dozens of police cars lined Second Street, their red and blue dome lights flashing against the gallery’s walls as the curious looked on from nearby shops and coffee bars.

In Philadelphia’s Old City, where Betsy Ross’s house and Ben Franklin’s printing press are flanked by nightclubs and sidewalk cafés, they’d seen disturbances before, but they’d never seen anything like Mike Coletti.

“You mean to tell me you didn’t notice anything else about the guy who dropped off this confession?” an agitated Coletti snapped at the exhibit curator.

“I already told you,” the man answered, nervously regarding the two detectives and four uniformed officers who’d joined Coletti and Smithson in a back room at the gallery.

“People drop confessions off all the time—here and in the boxes we’ve placed around the city. We don’t take down people’s descriptions.”

“So how can we be sure you saw this guy?”

“He walked in the front door,” the curator said in an agitated tone. “He was kinda hard to miss.”

Coletti flipped through his note pad. “So you said he was white, kinda stocky, and wearing a dirty blue down jacket and jeans?”

“Yes,” the curator said, hoping the questioning would stop. “He looked like he could’ve been homeless.”

The description didn’t match anything Coletti remembered from ten years before. More important, it didn’t jibe with what he’d seen in his dreams. “You’re sure the guy was stocky?”

“Yeah, I looked right at him. He left the note on the desk and walked toward Market Street.”