When they finished eating, they rode in contented silence, speeding north on I-476. As Coletti prepared to ask the priest the questions he’d been holding on to for years, Smithson posed the question she’d been contemplating for an hour.

“So, when did you see the killer?” she asked, sipping her soda.

In an instant, the atmosphere changed. It was bad enough revealing his nightmares to Commissioner Lynch, whom he’d known for nearly two decades. Coletti dreaded sharing them with a woman he’d just met.

Taking a deep breath, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and glanced at her before he spoke.

“Have you ever dreamed about something you think might happen?” he asked.

“Of course I have.”

“Well, imagine dreaming about murders and seeing them through someone else’s eyes. Only what you’re seeing isn’t something that’s going to happen in the future. It’s something that happened in the past.”

He looked at her again to gauge her reaction. He didn’t see any, so he went on.

“I saw the killer through Father O’Reilly’s eyes,” he said. “I know it sounds crazy and I can’t explain how, but I saw him. He was dressed in black with a gravelly voice, and I watched him kill those people. Then I watched myself rushing past the bodies and pulling Father O’Reilly to his feet. He was holding the gun and looking confused, and he kept saying that the killer was the angel of death.”

Smithson was silent as Coletti turned onto Route 63. She tried her best to take it all in, but she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. “When did you start having the dreams?” she asked.

“A few months after the murders.”

“And when did you start thinking the dreams might be real?”

“When they didn’t stop,” he said quietly. “That’s when I started my own little investigation. I searched databases for thin white males and looked through files for murders in churches. I cross-referenced sawed-off shotguns with killers dressed in black, but everything I tried was a dead end, so after a year of trying to find the truth, I gave up.”

“And you never told anyone?”

Coletti laughed bitterly. “I couldn’t even tell my partner, and he was my closest friend in the department. He would’ve thought I was crazy to let dreams make me question a solid arrest and conviction.”

“So if you couldn’t tell anyone back then, why are you telling me now?”

Coletti looked at her. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a shrink,” he said with a wan smile. “I guess that means I can trust you.”

Smithson nodded slowly. Then she turned and looked at Coletti. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Sure.”

“Is trust the only thing you feel when you look at me?”

Coletti glanced at her curiously. “Why does it matter?”