“Yeah, but how did that someone get up here?” Sandy asked. “They couldn’t have walked past me and my neighbor out front, and if they’d come in through the back, the guys from the crime scene unit would’ve found some sign of it. There was no forced entry. I just mowed the backyard, so if they came in that way, they would’ve at least tracked some grass through the house. But there’s nothing.”

“Maybe they were here all the time,” Mann said.

“Charlie, you know me. I sense things. If someone was here when I walked into my house, I would’ve known it. There wasn’t. Not when I came home, not when I went to sleep, and not when I walked outside.”

“Then who did all this?” Charlie asked.

His question was greeted by silence. It was Coletti who finally spoke.

“What did you feel in the dream?” he asked, his eyes staring straight ahead.

“What do you mean?”

“Was there something else there—something you couldn’t put your finger on?”

Mann rolled his eyes. “Come on, Coletti, this is ridiculous. Just because you think—”

“Wait,” Sandy said, holding up her hand. “I did feel something, and whatever it was, it was cold.”

She stopped to think about it, trying to determine how to best put the feeling into words.

“When everything else in that dream was dead,” she whispered with a fearful reverence, “that cold felt like it was alive. It felt like…if I stopped running, even for a second, that cold was gonna reach out and grab me.”

“I’ve felt that kind of cold before,” Coletti said. “So did the homeless guy who saw him under the bridge.”

“That’s enough,” Mann cautioned.

Coletti ignored him. It wasn’t nearly enough. “I’m gonna ask you three questions,” he said, looking Sandy square in the eye. “I want you to think about your answers carefully, but whatever those answers are, they’ll stay between the three of us. Okay?”

“No, it’s not okay!” Mann snapped.

His sharp tone made a few of the officers in the bedroom turn around. Mann saw them looking and pursed his lips in an effort to calm himself.

Sandy reached out and gently pulled Mann back. Then she looked into Coletti’s eyes, searching them for something she’d never seen there before. When she found it, she took a deep breath and allowed herself to trust. Slowly, she nodded, and Coletti asked his questions.

“Do you believe the man you saw outside is the same one who did this to your room?”

Sandy nodded.

“Do you believe he was in your dream?”

She nodded again.

“Do you believe he was something other than a man?”

She looked at Coletti. Then she looked at Mann. Then her eyes lost focus and she stared at a spot in her imagination.