Mann pulled out his iPhone and clicked on the link he’d found. “Eyes of fire appear a few times in scripture when people are talking about angels. The thing that separates this from everything else is the stuff about war and Prince Michael. It’s from Daniel, chapter 10. That’s where Daniel stands by a river and sees an angel who tells him about a great war.”

Father Douglas looked up as if he was seeing things clearly for the first time. “Of course,” he said, his eyes dancing about.

“So what does it mean?” Coletti asked.

“In a practical sense, Daniel’s vision was about an angel fighting to free the Jews from slavery with the help of the archangel, Michael. But there’s a deeper meaning. Some scholars believe the vision was a prophecy about a war between the forces of good and evil.” Father Douglas paused to glance at the bodies of his dead parishioners. “I just wonder whose side this killer thinks he’s on.”

Lynch walked over to the four of them with the homicide captain beside him. “We’re going to make a statement in ten minutes,” Lynch said. “Smithson, I’ve been in contact with your barracks and you’re officially on loan to the department for now, so you’re going to stand with us to represent the state police. Mann and Coletti, I need the two of you on the street. We have to catch this killer before more people die.”

At ten o’ clock the bodies were removed amidst the incessant clicking of digital cameras. Shortly afterward, Commissioner Lynch came out for his impromptu press conference.

“Three people lost their lives here tonight,” he said as Smithson and two captains stood solemnly behind him. “We’re withholding their names until we can notify their next of kin, and we’re taking steps to find someone whom we’ve identified as a person of interest: a blue-eyed white male wearing a black suit and a large black hat and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. We’ve also been in contact with the governor’s office, and because of the similarity of this crime to the Confessional Murders of a decade ago, the governor has agreed to issue a stay of execution for Father Thomas O’Reilly while we investigate any possible connections.”

With that, the assembled press exploded, pressing forward with shouted questions in an attempt to get details on the person of interest and the stay of execution. As they did so, Mann and Coletti slipped past them and jumped into Coletti’s car for the trip to Tenth and Rockland.

They were silent during most of the seven-block ride to the victims’ house, listening as the neighborhood paid its respects to the dead. Bass-heavy hip-hop grew quieter, loud conversations on porches became muted, and all eyes trained on the detectives who had come to speak of death in a place that had already seen too much of it.