At that, Coletti thought of himself. He hadn’t finished the job, either, and now the job had made its way from dreams to reality. If he was ever going to be at peace with himself, he had to do the one thing that he’d failed to accomplish. He had to finish.

Starting the car, he turned to Smithson. “I’ve got to talk to Father O’Reilly.”

“Now? Suppose the killer strikes again while you’re gone.”

“We’ve got a whole police department to handle that,” Coletti said. “But this is something I’ve been putting off for ten years. I have to do it now, and if you really want to help, I need you to do something for me.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Come with me.”

It was seven thirty, and the man in black walked along Rockland Street near Tenth, slowly making his way through Logan, a once-prosperous neighborhood now plagued by poverty and crime.

The seemingly disconnected collection of black people, Latinos, and Cambodians who lived there knew the rhythms of the streets. They could tell when someone didn’t fit. That’s why they watched the young white man as he walked along Rockland Street. He didn’t belong there.

They often saw white men like him—young and thin and dressed in black. The Mormon church on Broad Street sent them into the neighborhood to proselytize. But those young men traveled in pairs. They wore name tags and smiles. This one walked alone. He never smiled and didn’t speak. They knew this because they’d seen him several times over the past few days.

He’d show up in the early evening, circling the neighborhood on foot, always ending up near Tenth Street. Unlike the Mormons, who wore shirt sleeves during the summer months, he wore a jacket that extended past his waist. He also wore a wide-brimmed hat that obscured part of his face.

At first, the neighbors dismissed him as yet another of the mentally ill who sometimes wandered from programs and group homes. Such people would beg in front of stores when their Social Security checks and medications were gone. This one was different. He seemed to move with a sense of purpose far beyond that of a mentally ill beggar.

There was something frightening about him, and almost everyone who saw him felt it. Still, no one thought to call the police, because cops didn’t respond to suspicions in neighborhoods like Logan. They were too busy responding to deaths.

As children on bikes rode by regarding him warily, the man in black walked calmly along the tree-lined street, watching as three people left their porch and started toward Broad Street.