“What was it like to see him again?” Smithson asked, as if she were reading his mind.

“It was like walking into one of my dreams.”

“Was it like you expected it to be?”

“No,” Coletti said. “He was much more forgiving than I thought he would be.”

“He’s had a lot of time to think about it,” Smithson said. “The killer has, too. That’s why this pattern of killing people in churches scares me. He’s established a ritual, and that’s textbook behavior for a serial killer.”

“So what else does the textbook say about serial killers?” Coletti asked skeptically.

“Most of them are white males who kill for the first time in their late twenties or early thirties,” she said, ignoring his cynicism. “They work alone, they target strangers, and they don’t venture too far from their hunting grounds. If this killer fits that mold, he would’ve been about twenty-eight at the time of the Confessional Murders. Of course, there’s another possibility. We might not be dealing with a serial killer at all. We might be chasing a copycat.”

“He’s no copycat,” Coletti said firmly. “This is the same guy from ten years ago. I can feel it.”

“If you’re right, that would mean he’s in his late thirties or early forties by now,” said Smithson. “And if he’s anything like most serial killers, this whole thing goes back to his childhood.”

“Meaning what?”

“He probably spent a lot of time alone as a child and developed a vivid imagination. Maybe he started out just thinking about the things he was going to do. Then as he got older, he might’ve gone out on a few test runs, like when he told Father O’Reilly that he cut a man on a bench and a child at a playground.”

Coletti nodded.

“He probably spent years imagining the Confessional Murders before he ever made a move. I’m guessing that’s why he’s so hard to catch. He’s a planner who imagines every contingency before he acts, and like I said before, he’s got a God complex.”

“You mean he actually thinks he’s God?”

“Not necessarily. But if he really thinks he’s an angel, he thinks he’s got the power of God behind him, and maybe killing in churches is part of his ritual because he thinks he’s doing God’s work. Frankly, with the time he’s had to map this whole thing out, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was working from God’s plan.”

Coletti was silent as the sound of the siren filled the car. He turned it off, flipped on the lights, and switched to the emergency lane.

“Funny how time affects people differently,” he said as they sped down the shoulder of the highway.

Smithson looked at him. “What do you mean?”