“Commissioner, I don’t know what you think I am,” she said, speaking quickly while she marched beside him through the corridor. “I thought I was doing a nice thing for a man who needed somebody to talk to as much as I did. You’re trying to make it sound like something dirty.”

He stopped and turned to her at the elevator. “If you like him and he likes you, the two of you can pass notes in class all day. I just thought you should know that Coletti has friends in the department who actually care about him.”

“Commissioner, I like Mike, that’s all. It’s nothing serious.”

“Then I guess you’ll be leaving soon,” Lynch said as he stepped onto the elevator. “Since the shooting investigation from this morning is pretty much over, you can get a jump on traffic for the trip upstate. I’m sure they need you back at the office.”

Police officers flooded into the emergency room at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, surrounding the curtained cubicle where the suspect lay on a gurney. His wounds were superficial, but when a scowling Mike Coletti strolled in and threw the curtain aside, the suspect’s future looked undeniably bleak.

“So you’re the grim reaper,” Coletti said with a wicked grin.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” the suspect said, wincing as his bandaged head throbbed.

Coletti’s grin widened until it was almost a smile. “You know, it’s funny. About a half hour ago, I was out with a lady for the first time in years. Had a little wine, a little cheese, a little conversation. She actually seemed to like me. And these guys can tell you,” he said, gesturing toward the two officers in the cubicle, “nobody likes me.”

Coletti grabbed the suspect’s medical chart and read the name that had been scrawled there by one of the overworked emergency room physicians.

“So, Mr. Bobby Robinson,” Coletti said as he flipped through the chart, “you can imagine how pissed I am. First date in years, a woman who actually likes me, and I had to leave her to come here and deal with you.”

“I didn’t make you come here,” the suspect murmured, his face contorted in pain.

“Actually, you did,” Coletti said, pulling out the plastic bag containing the note from the Confessions exhibit. “You made me come here when you left this on the desk down at Second and Arch.”

The suspect scowled at Coletti. “I look like I hang in art galleries to you?”

There was a moment of protracted silence as Coletti smiled again. “I didn’t say anything about art galleries,” he said, moving closer to the gurney. “But since you mentioned it, why not tell me the whole story? You can start with how you committed the Confessional Murders.”