“I don’t know what he was,” she said. “But I almost feel like the spirit of the one who killed himself might still be alive in the next one. It’s like they’re all one person or something. No. It’s like they’re all one thing. Something that’s alive and dead at the same time. Something that can move in a dream and move in reality, killing anytime it wants to.”

Coletti thought of his own dreams: the cold breeze blowing through the cathedral, the shotgun blasts in the confessional, the thin layer of reality separating life from death.

“I thought you guys might want to see this,” said the sergeant who was leading the crime scene unit.

The three of them looked at the sheet of paper he was holding in his hand.

“What is it?” Coletti asked.

“The dates that were written on the wall,” the sergeant said. “Four of them, beginning with July 30, 1999—the day of the Confessional Murders. The other three dates are December 30, 2005, February 12, 2006, and today, August 26, 2009.”

Chapter 12

It was four in the morning by the time the crime scene unit cleared out of Sandy’s house, leaving Mann and Coletti behind to deal with Sandy, who was still shaken but much less fearful.

Though the drama inside was beginning to die down, the streets outside were alive. A media contingent was set up at the end of Sandy’s block. They’d heard her address on their police radio scanners, and they knew that a man fitting the killer’s description had broken into her house.

The fact that the break-in happened after the body was found in the church on the avenue put the rumors of more than one killer at the forefront. Ignoring the possibility was no longer an option. Not for the media, and not for the cops.

Police cars circled the neighborhood in a manner normally reserved for high-crime areas. A detail was posted in front of Sandy’s house. A police helicopter flew overhead with its spotlight sweeping the streets.

Yet in all of this, no one had seen the angel of death or his cohorts. They’d vanished again. As Sandy, Mann, and Coletti stood in Sandy’s living room, each of them occupying themselves to avoid each other’s eyes, Coletti knew they’d be back.

He’d seen the victims and read the notes, he’d seen the killings in his dreams, and he knew that the angel of death was not the kind who disappeared. After what happened in her house, Sandy knew it, too.

“Turns out we’re more alike than we thought,” Sandy said, glancing at Coletti.

He looked up from the list of dates the sergeant had given him. “What do you mean?”

“The dreams,” she said. “You wouldn’t have known about mine if you didn’t have them yourself.”