Coletti turned to one of the uniformed officers. “Get the description on the air. Have all units use caution. This guy might have a gun.”

“Might?” boomed a familiar voice. “You called for an assist because you thought some guy might have a gun?”

Coletti’s face flushed as he turned and saw Lynch walking in.

“It’s not about a guy who might have a gun,” Coletti said, holding up the note which had been placed in an evidence bag. “It’s about a murderer who’s about to kill again.”

Lynch read it and beckoned for Coletti to follow him into another room. When Lynch closed the door behind them, he wheeled on Coletti with fire in his eyes.

“Why would you call the whole sixth district in on this?”

“I already told you. I think there’s a killer on the loose.”

“Because some crazy homeless guy wrote something on a note?” Lynch asked cynically.

“No, it’s more than that,” Coletti said, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. “I, uh, I’ve been having these dreams.”

Lynch was incredulous. “Come on, Coletti, you don’t expect me to believe—”

“The dreams are about the Confessional Murders, and in those dreams the killer isn’t the priest. He’s a skinny white man dressed in black.”

Lynch stopped at the mention of the ten-year-old case. In the context of those murders, Coletti’s reaction to the note almost made sense. Almost.

“Look, Mike, we all have cases that bother us,” Lynch said. “I mean, nobody wants to believe that a priest would kill three people in a cathedral, but…”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Coletti said. “And you’re right. I never wanted to believe Father O’Reilly was guilty, especially the way I came up, watching Father Carducci saying mass in South Philly. Back then, the priest was the most respected man in the neighborhood. Even the Mob would cease fire if he said so. But things changed over the years, and I changed, too. When I came back from the army, my parents died and Father Carducci died, and I didn’t want to go to church anymore because I felt like God had abandoned me. Then in the nineties, even before it went public, I heard whispers about priests from the guys in the special victims unit. All that made it easier to believe it when I found Father O’Reilly with that gun. But something about that case always felt wrong. Now I know why.”

Lynch looked at Coletti, and for the first time, he saw what the case had taken out of him. The commissioner tried to put it back.

“I remember coming to homicide as a young detective,” Lynch said quietly. “I was always ranting about the way we went after black suspects because they were easy to convict. Do you remember that, Mike?”

Coletti nodded.