Hawkins nodded and Ryder led him through the dark church into his office. The big man made the room look small and fussy. Ryder gave him tea, then sat across from him.

“Are you a Protestant?” he asked.

“I guess so,” Hawkins said. “My grandmother was a Baptist,” Hawkins went on, “and my mother’s the last thing she reads about in Fate magazine.”

“Such as?”

“Born-­again Christian, Tribal Catholic, Hinayana Buddhist. Now she’s a follower of macumba . . . voodoo. Been voodoo for a few years, so maybe it stuck. Once a week she and Mrs. Duval and some other old ladies take the E train to Mrs. Williams’s house in South Ozone Park. They have tea and cut a chicken’s throat. Then they carry it, flapping and dripping blood, around the backyard while they jiggle and chant. Then they bury it.”

Ryder didn’t say anything. After a while Hawkins looked up at him. “It’s just bullshit, isn’t it,” he said, “chickens, blood, wine, wafers”—he took a breath— “candles, shawls, fringes . . . all bullshit.” Then, without any other preamble, he told Ryder about Levy, Luria, and the rest. He told him about the murders in Brooklyn and Relkin’s story from the camp. When Hawkins finished, Ryder didn’t say anything for a moment.

Then he asked, “You think they killed the Garners, like the guards in the camp?”

“I know they killed them.”

“But you don’t know how.”

“No.”

“Magic . . . Cabala . . .”

“No . . . I’m a middle-­class black man. A cop. My father was a carpenter. I don’t believe that bullshit. Neither would he,” Hawkins said.

Ryder looked at Hawkins for a minute. Then he said,

“My father was a fisherman, out of Montauk. He went out every day but Sunday . . . thunder, lightning, snow . . . once even in a hurricane. I should have admired his gallantry, but he did it for money and he came back cold, exhausted, wretched. He left my mother alone all day and most nights. For money. My brothers thought he was a hero for his persistence. I thought that was bullshit and he was a greedy fool. He died in a storm. They never found his body and I went to seminary as a sort of protest against him. But I inherited his persistence and when I found the first shreds of feeling for this plain bit of church I’m part of, I held on to them, hold on to them still, like a dog with locked teeth. It’s not bullshit to me.” He looked at Hawkins. “I’m a religious man,” he said, “which means that at some level I believe in magic.”

“I don’t.” Hawkins stood up.

“Then how . . .”

“That’s what I have to find out,” Hawkins said.

“And when you do?” Ryder asked softly.

“I’ll stop them,” Hawkins said.