“Yeah. He said he would pay me to drop that note on that desk. Handed me fifty dollars and said I would get another hundred today if I made it to Twelfth and Race at six o’ clock.”

“How would he know whether you dropped the note like you were supposed to?”

The suspect looked up at Coletti, and the fear in his eyes turned to outright terror. “He said he knew everything. He said he was the angel o’ death.”

Coletti looked at the other two cops in the cubicle. They were hanging on the suspect’s every word.

“Did you believe him?” Coletti asked.

The suspect was quiet for a few moments. “I don’t know. With the moon behind him like it was, it almost looked like he was glowin’. I couldn’t see his body ’cause he had on this long suit jacket. I didn’t know if he had somethin’ under there or what, but I wasn’t gonna try him and find out. I couldn’t see his face either, ’cause he had this hat on. This hat with a real wide—”

“Brim,” Coletti said, feeling like he’d just seen the ghost that had haunted his dreams for the past ten years. “The brim threw a shadow across his face, and it felt kinda cold when he was near you, like a breeze was blowing through your insides.”

The suspect stared at Coletti. “Yeah,” he said, his brow knit tight by confusion. “How’d you know?”

At that, sights and sounds fired through Coletti’s mind: a piece of the killer’s face beneath the shadow of the hat; the sound of the victims screaming as their bodies hit the floor; a shotgun blast; a gravelly voice; the priest on his knees looking down at the carnage.

Coletti felt himself sinking into the abyss he’d come to know in his nightmares. The room began to spin as the past rose up to drown him. But just like in his dreams, something reached down and grabbed him before he succumbed. This time, it was a voice from the other side of the curtain.

“Get out of my way right now so I can see my patient!” a doctor shouted as the cops guarding the cubicle blocked his path.

“I’m sorry, he’s being questioned, and—”

“This is a hospital, not a police station. Now get out of my way!”

As the voices grew louder, Coletti stared at the suspect and thought back to what Smithson had told him. Indeed, this man wasn’t the killer, but he was yet another piece of the puzzle. Both he and Coletti had seen the killer in different realms, and neither of them understood how. In truth, they were both afraid of the answer.

“Back away from the cubicle before I cuff you!” an officer in the hall shouted, snatching Coletti back to the moment.