The old reverend lay sprawled out on the white blanket like a morbid snow angel. It was oddly serene for a murder scene. Sad and tragic, but somehow darkly festive; maybe it was all the scarlet. And the guy was old - on that rugged, rawboned face, with its hard planes and tapestry of wrinkles, you could read the years, the decades, of hard living in a split second. But there was a quiet strength there too, a sense of dignity that not even death and a gaping bullet wound could steal away. Not an ordinary man, but he'd died a seemingly ordinary death in spite of that - season's greetings, Hudson City style.
