Mann stopped scrolling on his iPhone and looked at Coletti. He expected the older man to deflect what Sandy said—to revert to the macho shell that wouldn’t allow him to expose his own fears. Mann was wrong.

“I’ve been having those dreams for years,” Coletti said. “They started a few months after the Confessional Murders.”

“So did yours ever happen like mine?” she asked.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘like mine.’”

“I mean, were they real? Did you wake up and find him near you? Did you think he might be right around the corner when you left your room? Could you feel him?”

“No,” Coletti said, pausing to consider whether he should go further. He glanced at Mann, who looked curious, and Sandy, who seemed to need to know. He decided to go on, not only to validate Sandy’s sanity, but to validate his own.

“I never saw him or felt like he might be close by, but every couple weeks or so, I’d feel this coldness in my sleep, and there he was, walking through that cathedral, killing those people all over again. I ignored the dreams, mostly, hoping they’d go away, but they never did. Instead, they seemed to get more real. I’d wake up sometimes wondering where I was. In fact, that’s how I woke up yesterday morning.”

Sandy looked at Coletti and felt a surge of empathy for a man she’d spent most of her career hating. She’d always seen him as someone who was just like the rest of them, but now he was just like her, and it was strange.

“Why didn’t you tell anybody you were having the dreams?” Mann asked.

“That’d be like standing in the middle of Broad Street yelling that I’m crazy. I don’t think that would’ve gone over too well in the department, let alone in homicide.”

Sandy looked at Coletti, whose humanity showed through in his words. Then she looked at Charlie, whose anger from the previous morning had dissipated.

She decided then and there that she would let go of her animosity, as well. She didn’t think she’d ever truly like him, but he was partnered with the man she loved, and for that reason alone, she couldn’t afford to hate him.

“You asked me something earlier, and you told me it would stay between the three of us,” she said, changing the subject. “Did you mean that?”

Coletti nodded.

“So you won’t mind if I ask you the same question. Do you believe we’re dealing with something other than a man?”

Coletti sat down on Sandy’s couch and cradled his chin in his hand. He didn’t look afraid or apprehensive. He simply looked unsure.