Furious, Dr. Catherine Hildebrant threw the student’s cell phone out the window-watched it explode in a puff of smoke on the lawn outside the List Art Center.
“Another cell phone goes off in my class and you’ll be taken out back and shot!”
Then Cathy stopped.
There’s no lawn outside my window, she said to herself. No window in my classroom either.
The cell phone kept ringing-Beethoven, Für Elise.
“Miss Hildebrant?”
Cathy turned to face her art history class, who behind her back had changed to her classmates from the third grade at Eden Park Elementary School. Mrs. Miller was staring at her impatiently-show and tell, Cathy’s turn, anger at once replaced by panic. Cathy’s classmates began to snicker at her with whispers of “Ching-chong, ching-chong!” She could feel the fear tightening in her chest as the room brightened, as she stared down at the smooth white blob in her hands.
What is this? What did I bring for show and tell today?
Amidst the laughter and the cat-calls, the white blob suddenly burst outward into snow as Cathy’s classroom dissolved into the morning sun of her bedroom-her cell phone Für Elise-ing on the nightstand beside her.
She opened it.
“Hello?”
“Hildy?” It was her boss, Dr. Janet Polk, Chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University-the only person in Providence who dared call Catherine Hildebrant “Hildy” to her face.
“Hey, Jan,” Cathy yawned. “Christ, what time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“My God, that wine must have been roofied. Was up late last night grading those final-”
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, Hil, but did that FBI guy call you yet?”
“Who?”
“I think he said his name was Markham, or maybe it was Peckham. I’m not sure. Was kind of flustered by the whole thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He just left here not five minutes ago-caught me and Dan turning the flower beds out back. He said that he was looking for information in connection with the disappearance of that football player.”
“Tommy Campbell?” Cathy asked, sitting up.
Although she was an attractive woman, Cathy could not deny that she had been a nerd all her life-never had a taste for sports; would much rather have listened to a lecture on Donatello than be caught dead at a football game in college. However, even she had become smitten with Rhode Island ’s favorite son-that dashing, blond-haired, blue-eyed lightning bolt that nobody in the NFL could seem to catch. And more and more last season Cathy found herself doing something she had never dreamed of: sitting in front of a television watching football on a Sunday.
“Yes,” Janet said. “That’s him. Tommy Campbell-the one who disappeared back in January.”
“Why did the FBI want to talk to you?”
“He actually wanted to talk to you, Hildy. Said he needed to talk to an expert on Renaissance art-Italian Renaissance, to be exact.”
“Let me guess. They found him on a beach somewhere with a stolen Botticelli?”
Since Tommy Campbell had vanished without a trace nearly four months earlier, since the Boston Rebels had lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants in early February, theories about what had happened to the wide receiver were as numerous as the Rebel fans themselves-from his drowning in the waters of Foster Cove to his having been kidnapped by the coach of a rival team to his simply disappearing into anonymity à la Elvis Presley. Cathy had always suspected the latter, for she saw something of herself in the modest, soft-spoken “Mama’s boy” who the tabloids claimed still visited his parents whenever he got the chance-that desire not for fame and fortune, but just to live his life with those he loved, in obscurity, doing what made him happy.
“The FBI agent wouldn’t say anything more about it,” Janet sighed. “When I told him that it wasn’t my area, that you were our go-to-gal for the Italian thing, he said he knew that. He asked me where he could find you. Said he’d been by your office and your house already but you weren’t home. Then I realized he meant your old house.”
Steve must have spent the night at the slut’s, Cathy thought. Still won’t bang her in our old bed. Fucking actor. Fucking spineless pussy.
Cathy gazed around the bedroom of her new digs-new to her, but built around the turn of the twentieth century; its architecture, a seamless blend of Victorian elegance and modern practicality characteristic of many of the three-story houses that line the Upper East Side of Providence. Cathy lived on the first floor; had moved in on the very same day the news broke about Tommy Campbell-less than a week after she discovered the e-mails and Steve confessed to her about the affair. And now, three months later, boxes of her former self still littered every room of her two-bedroom, overpriced condominium. She had needed to break it fast and clean from Steven Rogers, and got lucky with a spur of the moment rent-to-own on East George Street-the life she built with her husband down the drain because the childish theatre professor could not keep his dick in his pants, could not keep his hands off the only semi-good-looking graduate student to grace his presence in nearly ten years of marriage. That was the hardest part. Even at thirty-eight Catherine Hildebrant knew she was smarter and better looking than her husband’s mistress, but the little slut had one thing that Dr. Hildy didn’t: youth.
“Hildy, you there?”
“Sorry, Jan. Did you tell the FBI guy where I am now?”
“I did. I couldn’t remember the exact address, but I gave him your cell number. I’m sorry, Hildy, but I didn’t know what else to do. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Of course not. Let me get a shower and I’ll give you a ring after he calls. And thanks for the heads up, Jan. Love ya.”
“Love you, too,” Janet said, and Cathy closed her phone. She smiled. Cathy really did love Janet Polk, had thought of her as a second mother ever since she was her teaching assistant at Harvard. Indeed, it was Janet who, only days after she defected to Brown, literally stole Cathy from a junior lecturer position at her alma mater. It was Janet who, for better or worse, introduced Cathy to Steven Rogers; Janet who kept Cathy on track to see that her tenure went through; and, most of all, it was Janet who had been there for Cathy when her real mother died five and a half years ago.
“I don’t know what I’d do without ya, kid,” Cathy whispered to the boxes in the corner.
And with that she hopped in the shower.
Pulling her wet, jet-black hair into a ponytail, Cathy Hildebrant despised what she saw in the bathroom mirror that morning. Her skin looked pasty, and her normally bright, brown eyes were puffy-the half-Asian, half-German smile lines in their corners deeper and more pronounced. The wine? she wondered. Or am I just getting old? She did not remember her dream about the third grade, about her botched show and tell assignment, but felt a gnawing anxiety that she had been laughed at nonetheless. Then she thought of Steve, of their first date and the dumb joke he made: “Oh you’re half-Korean? I just thought I was putting you to sleep!”
I should have asked for the check right then. Thanks a lot, Janet.
The doorbell rang, startling her, and instinctively Cathy reached for her cell phone on the bathroom sink.
“Dummy,” she muttered, and donning her black-rimmed glasses, she slipped into her sweatpants and a two-sizes-too-big Harvard T-shirt and made for the front door.
“May I help you?” Cathy called through the peephole.
The man on her front porch looked like he just stepped out of a J. Crew catalog-the khakis, the windbreaker, the lightweight sweater underneath-a nice change from all the artsy-fartsies on the east side, Cathy thought. He appeared to be in his thirties, good-looking, with close cropped brown hair and a square jaw. Cathy understood that the man had purposefully stepped back from the door so she could get a good look at him. And just as he was reaching underneath his jacket, Cathy realized that FBI-guy Markham or Peckham or whatever-his-name-was had decided to drop by unannounced.
“I’m Special Agent Sam Markham,” he said, raising his ID to the peephole.
So it is Markham , Cathy thought. You ain’t ready for retirement yet, Janet old girl.
“I’m with the FBI, Behavioral Analysis Unit. I’d like to ask you a few questions, Dr. Hildebrant.”
Behavioral Analysis. This is serious.
Cathy had seen The Silence of the Lambs six times; had seen enough of those police dramas on television to know that the Behavioral Analysis Unit was the division of the FBI that handled murders-especially serial murders.
She opened the door.
“I’m sorry. Janet told me you were going to call.”
“Dr. Polk gave me your phone number, ma’am. But we traced your new address before we needed to call it. The Bureau likes to handle this kind of thing in person.”
The agent smiled thinly.
“I see,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “Please, come in.”
Shutting the door behind him, Cathy stood awkwardly for a moment in the tiny entryway. She recognized Markham ’s cologne-Nautica Voyage. She had bought a bottle for her husband last fall after smelling it on one of her graduate students-had all but begged Steve to wear it-but the selfish prick never even took the plastic off the box.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” Cathy said. “I’m still unpacking and I don’t have much furniture yet. Why don’t we go into the kitchen-unless you don’t mind sitting on boxes in the living room.”
“The kitchen’s fine, ma’am.”
Cathy led him down the narrow hallway to the back of the house. Special Agent Markham took his seat at the table.
“I was up late last night grading papers. Coffee isn’t on yet, but it’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
“No thank you, Dr. Hildebrant. I don’t drink coffee.”
“Some orange juice then? Some water?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t plan on us being here very long.” Cathy detected a hint of Yankee in his voice-a disarming but relaxed formality that made her like him.
“Well, then,” Cathy said, sitting down across from him. “What can I do for you, Agent Markham?”
“I assume Dr. Polk told you why I was looking for you?”
“Yes. Something about the Italian Renaissance and the disappearance of Tommy Campbell?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.” Markham produced a thin stack of Polaroids from his jacket pocket. “What I’m about to show you is confidential, though probably not for long. The Westerly Police were called to the scene first-early this morning, before the state police arrived and our Field Office in Boston was notified. Even though Campbell disappeared down at Watch Hill, given his public profile, his celebrity, the case has been ours from the beginning. We’ve been able to keep things quiet thus far, but now with the locals involved, there’s always more of a chance of details leaking out to the media before we give the go ahead. Most likely the story will break this afternoon, but can I have your word that, until then, you’ll keep what I’m about to show you between us? Meaning, you won’t repeat our discussion to anyone, including your boss, Dr. Polk?”
“Yes, you have my word.”
Agent Markham peeled off a Polaroid and slid it across the table.
“Do you recognize the figure in this photograph?”
“Of course,” Cathy said immediately. “It’s Michelangelo’s Bacchus.”
“Are you sure? Please look closer, Dr. Hildebrant.”
Cathy obliged, although she did not have to look a second time; for even though the photograph was a full body shot-taken somewhat at a distance and from the side-Dr. Catherine Hildebrant, perhaps the foremost American scholar on the works of Michelangelo, could have described the details of Bacchus with her eyes closed. There before her once again was Michelangelo’s controversial but ground-breaking sculpture of the Roman god of wine-drunk, unsteady, almost staggering off his rocky base. There was the bowl of wine raised in his right hand, and the tiger skin, the cluster of grapes by his side. Cathy could also see the goat-legged satyr behind him, smiling as he munches on the fruit which slips from the god’s left hand. Cathy knew the sculpture of Bacchus as intimately as her own body-had taught a whole unit on it at Brown; had traveled to Italy to study it for part of her dissertation on Michelangelo at Harvard. Yes, if Special Agent Markham wanted to know anything about good ol’ boy Bacchus, he had certainly come to the right place, for Dr. Catherine Hildebrant had written the book on Bacchus-literally.
“I can tell you that this is a reproduction, however,” Cathy said finally. “The background, the bushes behind the statue-this picture was taken outside. The original now lives in the Bargello National Museum in Florence. It’s a fantastic copy, I’ll give you that-right down to the coloring. But I don’t see what this has to do with the disappearance of Tommy Campbell.”
Special Agent Markham was silent for a moment, then slid another Polaroid across the table. This one was of a close-up of the statue’s head-the crown of grapes, the mouth ajar, the eyes rolling backward as the head slumps forward. However, unlike the first photograph, Cathy noticed immediately that something was off.
Then like a slap on her heart it hit her.
“Oh my God,” she gasped. “It’s him! It’s Tommy Campbell!”
“Yes. He was found this morning down at Watch Hill, in the garden of an investment CEO not half a mile from his parents’ house. They’ve already given a positive ID. It appears that whoever killed Campbell somehow preserved his body and articulated it into the pose you see now-right down to the coloring, as you said.”
Cathy felt the shock washing over her, the words sticking in her throat, but knew she had to push through it.
“Who? I mean, who would do something like this?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you’ll help us find out, Dr. Hildebrant. We’ve got a forensic team down there now doing a preliminary investigation, but we need you to take a look at the crime scene before we move the bodies.”
“Bodies? You mean the satyr? It’s a real person, too?”
“A young boy, yes,” Markham said weakly. “The top half, that is. The bottom appears to be the hindquarters of a goat.”
“Dear God,” Cathy groaned. And despite a subtle wave of nausea in her throat, despite the tears welling in her eyes, she managed to ask, “Who is it?”
“We can’t be sure-got an agent working with missing persons as we speak, but it might take some time before we get a positive ID. You see, unlike Campbell, the child’s face seems to have been significantly…altered-contorted to duplicate the expression of Michelangelo’s satyr.”
Cathy felt her stomach drop, felt herself go numb.
“Would you like to change before we leave?” Markham asked. “It’s a bit cold for April, a bit cooler down by the water.”
“Why me?” Cathy said suddenly. She was in a daze, her voice not her own. “You obviously have your own experts on the subject-people who recognized the statue, who knew it to be a Michelangelo. I mean, what could I possibly tell you that one of your agents couldn’t find on the goddamn Internet?”
Without a word, Special Agent Markham slid the last of his Polaroids across the table. Cathy gazed down in horror at a close-up of neatly chiseled letters-an inscription at the base of the outcropping on which the mummified body of Tommy Campbell was standing. It read simply:
FOR DR. HILDEBRANT
The outer shell of the carriage house was still the original brick-built in the 1880s by a wealthy textile family in what was then a more rural part of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It sat back about thirty yards off of the main house and could be accessed either by a flagstone path leading from the back porch, or by a dirt driveway that veered off its paved sister and cut through the trees at the western edge of the heavily wooded property.
The house itself was a rambling, three-story affair graced by a long, circular driveway with a waterless fountain at its center. The “front door” was actually located around the side of the house, facing a line of trees to the east. Hence, most visitors (although there were very few nowadays) climbed the steps leading up to the mud room, which was located just past the library windows that overlooked the driveway.
The Sculptor, however, almost always used the back door; for The Sculptor almost always had business to attend to in the carriage house before joining his father in the home of his youth. The Sculptor’s family had lived there since 1975-moved there just after The Sculptor was born. By that time, the carriage house had long since been converted to a two-car garage with a room above it in which the previous owner’s caretaker had lived. And as a boy, The Sculptor would often play alone in the empty loft for hours. Most of the time, however, he would just hide out there when his parents fought, or when his mother got drunk and hit him.
The Sculptor’s mother hit him quite a lot as a boy-when his father was away on business or playing golf at the country club. And when he was super naughty, sometimes his mother would fill the bathtub with ice water and hold him under until he started choking. Sometimes she would lock The Sculptor in the bathroom and pour bleach on the floor and make him breathe the fumes. Most of the time, however, she just hit him-always on the back of the head, so the bruises and lumps beneath his curly mane of dark brown hair would not show. The Sculptor’s mother told him that if he ever squealed to anyone she would die and his father would kill himself. And for a long time The Sculptor believed her-after all, The Sculptor loved his mother and his father very much and would do anything to protect them. The Sculptor’s father called him Christian back then-had no trouble remembering his name. But that was a long, long time ago, and now Christian’s father never called him Christian.
Christian almost never called himself Christian now either; hardly ever thought of himself as having been anything other than The Sculptor-only when it could not be avoided, in public, when he signed for his father’s prescriptions or when he had to purchase medical supplies over the Internet. The Sculptor hated the Internet, but had long ago resigned himself to accepting it as a necessary tool to accomplish his work. And as long as it stayed out back in the carriage house he could tolerate it-for out back in the carriage house was where the technology lived; out back in the carriage house was where all the work was done.
The Sculptor’s father did not know about his son’s work in the carriage house-did not know much of anything anymore. He spent most of his time in his bedroom-on the second floor, directly above the kitchen-looking out the window at the bird feeders his son had installed many years ago in one of the large oak trees. Sometimes The Sculptor would play music for his father on the old record player-mostly crackly 33-1/3s of classical music, the kind of stuff his father had been fond of before the accident. The Sculptor also installed a CD player inside the shell of an old Philco, jury-rigging it to play recordings of vintage radio shows from the 1930s and ’40s. This seemed to please his father greatly, who in turn would sit smiling at the radio for hours.
Mostly, however, The Sculptor’s father just sat motionless in his wheelchair by the window. He still could turn his head, still had use of his right hand, but he rarely spoke except now and then to ask for someone named “Albert.” For the first few years after the accident, The Sculptor had no idea who Albert was. But after digging into his family’s history, The Sculptor discovered that his father had an older brother named Albert who had committed suicide when his father was just a boy.
As Cathy Hildebrant and Agent Markham turned onto Route 95 on their way to Watch Hill, miles away, The Sculptor was removing an intravenous line from his father’s wrist. He usually fed his father by hand-a mixture of oatmeal and other ingredients that he had researched for optimum nutrition-but found over the years that after a night of barbiturates, this method was more effective to stabilize his father’s system. He had been out for nearly sixteen hours-had been intravenously fed a steady dose of mild sedatives while his son had been away-and now all his father needed was just a little extra TLC to bring him back around.
“That’s it,” said The Sculptor, wiping off the spittle from his father’s chin. He threw the rag into a white bin marked LINENS and with one arm lifted his father from his bed to his wheelchair. He turned the steamer beside the bed on to low, for sometimes his father’s nostrils dried out and his nose bled. Indeed, almost everything The Sculptor needed to care for his father was at hand in his father’s bedroom: boxes upon boxes of medical supplies; an adjoining bathroom that had been outfitted with a sit-down shower; a small refrigerator in the corner for his father’s medicines; and three intravenous units-each holding different bags of different liquids for different purposes. And were it not for the red wallpaper, the richly stained woodwork, and the four-poster bed, his father’s bedroom would have looked no different than a hospital ward.
“Time to watch the birdies,” The Sculptor said, parking his father before the large bay window. The Sculptor dropped a record on the turntable-Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Minor-and as the first strains of Baroque guitar washed over the room, The Sculptor headed down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen. There he rinsed his hands and fixed himself a protein drink, gulping it down with a handful of vitamins and supplements. He was hungry, ravenous from his work the night before, but resisted the temptation to eat more and stepped out onto the back porch. Yes, he must stick to his diet, must be in tip-top condition for all the hard work ahead of him.
Even back when he was known as Christian, The Sculptor always kept himself in good shape. Six-foot-five since the age of seventeen, before the accident he had lettered in both football and lacrosse for Phillips Exeter Academy. Since the accident, however, he had focused only on building up his body-what he saw from the beginning as a necessary component of caring for his father. The accident had been his mother’s fault. Christian would never know the exact details-had been away at boarding school when it all happened. But from what he could gather, there had been an incident at the country club. His father’s lawyer told Christian a week after the funeral-the same week he turned eighteen and became legal custodian of his family’s fortune-that his mother had been cheating on his father with a young tennis pro not much older than Christian himself. There had been a scene, a fist fight at the country club-Christian’s father laying out the tennis pro and dragging his wife out by the hair. They had just turned onto Route 95 when the semi broadsided them. His mother died instantly, but his father survived-paralyzed from the waist down, his left arm useless, his brain a vegetable soup.
Christian had been granted early acceptance to Brown-had planned on majoring in history like his mother-but after finishing out his final year at Phillips, opted to enroll in nursing school in order to best take care of his father. There had been a lawsuit filed against the trucking company on Christian’s behalf. The driver of the semi had been drinking when he slammed into Christian’s parents, and a settlement was reached out of court awarding Christian both compensation for his mother’s death and enough money to care for his father for the rest of his life. The judgment gave Christian little consolation, as the young man would not have needed the money anyway. No, Christian’s father had earned enough money in his lifetime to care for a dozen invalids a dozen lifetimes over. And at first Christian kept his father in an adult care facility, but after graduating from nursing school, Christian took the burden of caring for his father solely upon himself.
Besides, Christian knew he would never ever have to work for money.
No, Christian’s work would be of a different kind-would serve a different purpose. That purpose had only become clear to him in the last few years, when he fully began to understand why his mother had beaten him and cheated on his father and, consequently, caused him to become the vegetable upstairs. Yes, his own life, his own personal tragedy was only a symptom of a much larger disease. And now that he had become The Sculptor, now that he understood his purpose, the man who once called himself Christian also understood that the disease could be cured; that he could use his insight to help others; and that he was put on this planet to save mankind from its own spiritual destruction. And so, just as he himself had awakened from a lifetime of slumber, The Sculptor would see to it that others would awaken as well.
The Sculptor stepped off the back porch and headed down the flagstone path to the carriage house. He began to giggle, for even though The Sculptor hated the Internet, he could not help feeling excited about what was waiting for him.
Yes, The Sculptor had the utmost faith that his plan would succeed.
And Dr. Catherine Hildebrant would be the one to help him.
“Are you feeling better now?” asked Special Agent Markham.
“Yes, thank you,” Cathy lied, shaken. She had been staring out the window at nothing in particular as row upon row of nameless buildings whizzed past her. Then all at once Cathy realized that, despite the morning’s events, she had been unconsciously searching for the big blue bug on the roof of the New England Pest Control building. Cathy hated that big blue bug-a monstrous, tacky sculpture that appeared to have been built by a four year-old-but always found herself staring up at it, actually looking for it when she headed into Providence from points southward.
“And thank you for the coffee,” she added after a moment.
“Don’t mention it.” The FBI agent had fixed it just the way she liked it-grande, nonfat milk, two Sweet’N Lows-and had not even blinked at double parking his black Chevy Trailblazer right outside of Starbucks, right where the GPS navigation system said it would be in the middle of congested Thayer Street. A job with “perks,” Cathy thought, then quickly felt ashamed of her private joke at a time like this.
“Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions, Dr. Hildebrant?” It was the FBI agent in the backseat, a woman by the name of Sullivan-blond, early thirties, with chiseled features that Cathy envied. She was with the Field Office in Boston, Markham told her-had been waiting in the Trailblazer while he was meeting with Cathy.
“Go right ahead,” Cathy said.
Agent Sullivan produced a small, digital recording device from her jacket pocket and held it to her mouth.
“This is Special Agent Rachel Sullivan en route with Markham and Dr. Catherine Hildebrant. The date is Sunday, April 26. The time is 12:20 P.M.”
Sullivan placed the recorder between Markham and Cathy-its red light making Cathy self-conscious.
“Dr. Hildebrant,” Sullivan began, “you’re the author of the book on Michelangelo titled Slumbering in the Stone, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is that your only published work?”
“No, but the only one dedicated solely to Michelangelo’s sculptures-and the only one to cross over from the academic market to reach a more popular audience.”
“It’s sold a lot of copies then?”
“Not a New York Times bestseller by any means, no. But, as far as these things go in academia, yes, you could say it’s sold a lot.”
“And what else have you published?”
“I coauthored an introduction to art history textbook with a former colleague of mine from Harvard, as well as publishing the obligatory articles now and then in various academic journals.”
“I see,” said Sullivan.
Cathy did not like her tone. She had none of Markham ’s charm, none of his informal directness. No, Special Agent Rachel Sullivan spoke like an attorney on one of those bad spin-offs of a spin-off courtroom drama with which Cathy had become so engrossed as of late-another bit of “mindless entertainment” she once thought she’d never be caught dead watching in a million years.
“But Slumbering in the Stone is by far your most important work,” Sullivan continued. “The one that really put you on the map, wouldn’t you say?”
“Relatively speaking, yes.”
“And you require Slumbering in the Stone for your classes?”
“Only one-a graduate seminar. Yes.” Cathy suddenly felt defensive-like Sullivan was setting her up for something. She looked around the cabin uncomfortably, her eyes falling on the speedometer. Markham was doing eighty, but held the wheel as if he were coasting through a school zone.
“And when was this book published?”
“About six years ago.”
“Was this before or after your tenure?”
“Just before.”
“And you have been requiring your book for your class for how long now?”
“It’ll be five years next fall.”
“I’d like you to take a moment,” Agent Sullivan said with a calculated change of tone. “Take a moment and ask yourself if you’ve ever had a student during that time-or at any time, for that matter-that struck you as particularly odd. One that said or did or perhaps even wrote something out of the ordinary-something that went beyond a creative extreme into the realm of-well, something else. Perhaps a drawing or an essay or even an e-mail that you found particularly disturbing.”
Cathy’s brain began to spin with a kaleidoscope of faces-nameless, dark, and blurry-and the art history professor felt a wave of panic upon realizing she could not recollect even what her current students looked like.
“I can’t think of anyone,” she said finally, her voice tight. “I’m sorry.”
“What about a colleague? Someone in the department? Anybody ever mention to you that they had a student by whom they felt threatened?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Have you ever felt threatened by one of your colleagues in your time at Brown or at Harvard? Anyone with whom you didn’t get along? Perhaps someone who was fired? Someone who may have had a grudge against you?”
“No, not at all.”
“Any of your students ever make a play for you?” asked Agent Markham. Despite the gist of his question, Cathy found his sudden presence in the conversation a welcome relief from the prosecuting attorney behind her. “Any of them ever go beyond what could be termed as innocent flirting? Something that was perhaps a little more aggressive?”
Cathy had always been a bit shy, but never a bit stupid; and even though before her husband she had dated only a handful of men, had only one semi-serious relationship while at Harvard, she was not ignorant to the “vibe” she got from some of her male students. However, in her twelve years at Brown, only two of them ever got up enough nerve to ask her out for a cup of coffee-and both times Steven Rogers’s dutiful wife politely declined.
But then there were the notes.
“Yes,” Cathy began. “About five and a half years ago. At the beginning of the fall semester-just after my mother died-I started receiving some anonymous notes.”
Cathy saw Markham catch his partner’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“Love notes?” Sullivan asked.
“Not really. They were little quotes at first, one-liners that I took to be, well, gestures of encouragement and support in the wake of my mother’s death. Then later on I received the sonnet.”
“A sonnet?” asked Markham. “You mean like a love sonnet? A Shakespearean sonnet?”
“Not a Shakespearean sonnet, no, but one written by Michelangelo.” Markham looked confused. “In addition to being a painter and a sculptor, Michelangelo was an accomplished, albeit second-rate poet. He wrote hundreds of poems on subject matter across the board. However, the most famous of his poems are the sonnets he wrote to a young man with whom he was in love-a young man by the name of Tommaso Cavalieri. The sonnet that I received was originally written for Cavalieri around 1535 I think, during the first couple years of their friendship when Michelangelo was about sixty years old and Cavalieri in his early twenties.”
“So how many notes would you say you received?” asked Sullivan.
“Four-one sonnet and the three little quotes, which were also written by Michelangelo. I got one every other week or so for about a month and a half-at different times, in an envelope under my office door when I was out. Then they just stopped appearing. And I haven’t received another note since.”
“You said the notes were anonymous. Did you ever find out who sent them?”
“No, I did not.”
“Any ideas?”
“The handwriting was feminine. And as Michelangelo’s sonnets to Cavalieri were of a homosexual nature, I assumed that my admirer was a female.”
“A homosexual nature?” asked Markham.
“Yes. It has been well established for some time now that Michelangelo was a homosexual. The only argument thrown around academic circles nowadays is whether or not he was exclusively a homosexual.”
“I see,” said Markham. “And, if I may ask-the content of the sonnet you received, did it deal with unrequited love?”
“Sort of. There’s every indication that Cavalieri actually returned Michelangelo’s affection, but the evidence also supports that the two never consummated the relationship. The sonnet therefore dealt with more of an unattainable spiritual love than any sort of carnal desire-the kind of love that could not be pursued or even named in Michelangelo’s time. And even though the two remained the closest of friends, the relationship with Cavalieri caused Michelangelo great anguish until the artist’s death.”
“Do you still have these notes?” asked Markham.
“I kept them for a while,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “But when I showed them to my husband, he asked that I get rid of them. I did. That was foolish of me, I know. I shouldn’t have listened to him.”
If only you didn’t listen to him the night he proposed…
“Do you remember the title of the poem this person sent you? Was it numbered or something like Shakespeare’s sonnets?”
“Scholars have numbered some of them, I think, but not with the kind of agreed upon consistency as Shakespeare’s sonnets. I could be wrong, as it is not really my area of expertise. But I can tell you for sure that there was no number or title on the poem I received. I remember that. If you’d like, I can give you the gist of it and the quotes-”
“But you’d recognize both the poem and the quotes if you saw them?”
“Yes.”
Agent Markham switched off the recorder.
“Sullivan, call your tech-guy down at the crime scene. Make sure he has a laptop online and ready for us so Dr. Hildebrant can conduct a search on the Internet. And see if you can get someone to dig up a hardcopy of Michelangelo’s poetry, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m also going to need class rosters for Dr. Hildebrant and all her colleagues in the History of Art and Architecture Department going back over the last ten years. Hell, get me a roster for every class with art or history in the title. It’s Sunday, but get someone on the go ahead today-so we can be there when the offices open tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sullivan, and began dialing her cell phone.
“Agent Markham,” Cathy said, the discussion about Michelangelo had grounded her, made her feel more like herself. “I realize that, because my name was on the base of that wicked thing, you think I might be somehow connected to this psychopath. But do you really think the person who sent me those notes could be the same person who murdered Tommy Campbell and that little boy? Couldn’t it have been just some nut job who read my book? I mean, do you really think that this person could have been one of my students?”
“I don’t know,” said Markham. “But Tommaso is Italian for Thomas. And I’ll tell you that, at the very least, I think it’s a bizarre coincidence that you were given a poem originally intended for a young man named Tommy, and that you now have a statue of a young man named Tommy dedicated to you as well.”
Cathy suddenly felt afraid; but more so she felt stupid-felt her cheeks go hot for not making the connection between the two names when she first mentioned Cavalieri.
But mostly Cathy felt stupid because Special Agent Sam Markham had.
The carriage house loft was covered in soundproof foam that ran up the walls to the peak of the low-pitched ceiling. The windows had long ago been blocked out, and even when all the fluorescent lights were on, the black of the foam bathed the room in an overwhelming and seemingly infinite darkness. During his renovations, The Sculptor had purposely exposed the building’s trusses to give the space a little more height. These, too, were painted black, and at the far end of the loft, where the original carriage hoist had hung, The Sculptor outfitted the beams with an automatic winch system. This allowed the old mortician’s table to be raised and lowered through a trap à la Frankenstein ; and sometimes, when he was feeling a bit silly, The Sculptor would allow himself a ride between floors.
On the other side of the room, where the door was located, in one corner lived The Sculptor’s technology: an L-shaped desk with two computers, three flat-screen monitors, and a printer; a flat-screen television with cable; digital and video cameras; and various other gadgets that The Sculptor needed from time to time to accomplish his work. In the other corner The Sculptor stored some of his medical equipment-equipment not at all like the type in his father’s bedroom, equipment for an entirely different purpose altogether.
The Sculptor turned on the monitor that displayed the video feed from his father’s bedroom. There was his father as he left him, sitting by the window, staring out at the birds. The Sculptor turned on the sound feed as well, and the loft was at once filled with the sweet sound of Scarlatti.
The Sculptor booted up his two computers and hit the remote for the television-Fox News, no sound, just as he left it. There was nothing yet about his first showing-what he knew was going to be a spectacular entrance into the public eye-but that was all right. Nothing to dampen his mood. No, The Sculptor was confident that news of his creation would dominate all the media outlets very soon. He smiled at the thought of it, wishing that the details would trickle out slowly as they often did in cases like this. That would pique the public’s curiosity; that would whet the public’s appetite for more.
Above all else, however, The Sculptor was excited for Dr. Hildy to see his work-for Dr. Hildy was really the only person who could truly understand his Bacchus. And once the news got out about the inscription, once the public learned of the connection to Dr. Hildy, well, that certainly would make them want to know more about her. Perhaps all those big-shot journalists might even want to interview her-now wouldn’t that be something! At the very least, the public would want to read her book on Michelangelo. Then they would all begin to understand; then they would all begin to finally wake up.
With both of his computers logged onto the Internet-Drudge Report and CNN-The Sculptor removed from the desk drawer the only book he allowed in the carriage house: his copy of Slumbering in the Stone. He flipped through it-the cover tattered, the pages dog-eared, underlined, with notes in the margins-until he reached the back jacket flap. There was the picture of Dr. Catherine Hildebrant. She wore her hair shorter six years ago. Looked a little heavier, The Sculptor thought. Perhaps it was the black and white of the photo; perhaps her glasses-yes, the black frames she wears now look much better on her than those old wire-rims. Objectively, The Sculptor thought Catherine Hildebrant to be attractive material, but in the long run such superficialities in women did not matter to him. No, The Sculptor knew that, like the material he used for his sculptures, Dr. Catherine Hildebrant’s real beauty lay within, slumbering in the stone.
Smiling, feeling a little silly, The Sculptor returned his book to the desk drawer and rode the mortician’s table down to the first floor. The gears were a bit noisier than usual. “Need a little oil,” The Sculptor said to himself as he sent the table back upstairs. He would get to that next, after he finished tidying up his studio.
The first floor was drastically different from the loft above it. Here, too, the windows had been blocked out, but the walls were the original exposed brick. On one wall was a tool rack, while on another was a sheet of corkboard on which the plans for The Sculptor’s Bacchus still hung. A large white van, which could be driven in and out through one of the two overhanging doors, took up nearly half the space; while the other half was reserved solely for The Sculptor’s studio. There was a narrow stand-up shower and slop sink, as well as a small floor drain which his father told him had been used in the 1800s to catch the blood from deer carcasses. On this side, too, was all the necessary equipment for The Sculptor’s work, including a drafting table and chair, an arc-welder and power supply, a small anvil, a vat of “special paint” and a pump sprayer, ultraviolet lamps, rolls of plastic sheeting, and, at the rear of the carriage house, a large stainless steel hospital tub. The tub was the most complex piece of The Sculptor’s equipment, for he had outfitted it not only with an airtight cover, but with a refrigeration unit and a vacuum pump as well. In a small lean-to behind the carriage house were stored the barrels of chemicals The Sculptor brought up from the cellar when he was ready to prepare his material.
The Sculptor clicked on the video monitor that sat atop the drafting table-his father by the window, the Baroque guitar now filling the entire carriage house-and proceeded to pull down his plans from the corkboard. He twisted them into a tight log-the sinews of his powerful forearms rippling through his skin. He would light a fire in the parlor this evening; would bring up a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino from the cellar and watch the plans burn. Why not? I’ve behaved myself. I can have a little reward for all my hard work. Yes, surely the news about his first showing will have broken by that time. If not, he could always tip off the media himself-after, of course, he was sure Dr. Hildy had seen his work; after he was sure she got his “thank you” note.
Perhaps she’s on her way down there right now, he thought, smiling.
And as The Sculptor began to straighten up his studio, he concluded that it was too risky to check for himself, to follow Dr. Hildy around like he had in the past. No, surely the FBI would be expecting something like that; surely it was smarter to find out through the media like everybody else.
“Besides,” The Sculptor said out loud, “I won’t have time to spy on Dr. Hildy. For tomorrow is Monday. And Monday is the day I begin my next project.”
Special Agent in Charge William “Bulldog” Burrell had mixed feelings about the hand that fate had dealt him. As the newly appointed SAC of the FBI’s Boston Field Office, the Tommy Campbell case had been his baby from the beginning-one that he had seen to personally. A twenty-two-year veteran of the FBI, Bill Burrell knew his way around an investigation. He had served in the Washington, Chicago, and Dallas Field Offices, as well as held a number other of high-profile SAC positions, including section chief of the Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI Headquarters, before landing the gig in Boston. The six-foot-three former Marine with the buzz cut had been called “Bulldog” since his football days at the University of New Hampshire-not only because of his hulking frame, his heavy jowls, his menacing stare, and his hot temper, but also because of the way he always tore into his opponents: straight ahead for the red until he ripped his man to shreds.
However, in the three months since Tommy Campbell’s disappearance, Bulldog had not a shred of evidence to show for himself. He had long ago exhausted his leads, had long ago begun to feel desperate, and had since lost countless hours of sleep over what had been sizing up to be his first big failure since he took over the Boston Office the previous November-the first big failure of his career. What a mixed bag it was then that the kid’s body should have turned up on the very same weekend Supervisory Special Agent Sam Markham had arrived in preparation for a three-day seminar on the latest forensic and profiling procedures at Quantico; what a mixed bag that Markham had gotten to the crime scene before he had; and what a mixed bag that Markham should be the one to jump on their very first lead now that the disappearance of Tommy Campbell had been deemed a homicide.
Yes, now that they had two bodies and a serial killer on their hands; now that it was clear that they were dealing with something much, much bigger than just a murder or a suicide, Burrell, whether he liked it or not, would need Sam Markham. And although it had not yet been six hours since the horrific white sculpture had been discovered down at Watch Hill, already Special Agent in Charge William “Bulldog” Burrell was not happy about the way the investigation was moving ahead.
It was not that Bulldog had anything personal against Markham. On the contrary, Bulldog actually admired the legendary “profiler,” the man who had brought down Jackson Briggs, aka “The Sarasota Strangler”-that son of a bitch who killed all those old ladies in Florida. And then, of course, there was that nasty little business in Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah, no one would ever forget what happened there.
Indeed, word on the street said that it was only a matter of time before Markham took over as chief for the Behavioral Analysis Unit-2 at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. However, Bill Burrell knew such a position was not one the forty-year-old Markham was gunning for. No, Markham was like him-happier with his boots on the ground, slugging it out in the trenches himself. And now that the Tommy Campbell disappearance had been deemed a homicide, if Burrell had to work with somebody from Quantico, he was glad that it was Sam Markham.
Nonetheless, the fifty-year-old lifer could not help but feel cheated that the first and only break in the biggest case of his career had fallen into Markham ’s lap, for no matter how much he admired Markham, Bill Burrell was instinctively territorial. Like a bulldog. And this was his junkyard.
It was for this reason that the phone call from Special Agent Rachel Sullivan, Burrell’s NCAVC coordinator, went right up his ass. His technician had briefed him on their conversation as soon as Burrell arrived at the crime scene-a scene that had pulled him away from a visit with his sick mother in New Hampshire; a scene that demanded the hardnosed SAC show up at Watch Hill in person. And although Bulldog was pleased with the way his forensic team had secured the site, that Markham should have given orders to his men was simply unacceptable.
Burrell stood at the bottom of the gravel driveway, frowning over a Marlboro. He dared to smoke only on a case-when he knew he would not be home for a while and his wife would not be able to smell it on him.
But how the hell did he get them in here? Burrell asked himself, gazing out over the impeccably landscaped property.
The mansion belonged to a wealthy investment CEO by the name of Dodd, who had been sleeping soundly with his wife when his caretaker discovered the statue in the southeastern corner of the topiary garden. A row of high hedges separated almost the entirety of Dodd’s estate from his neighbors on either side-except for the eastern stretch, which sloped down toward the beach. It was in this area that, upon their initial sweep of the crime scene, Burrell’s team discovered a set of fresh footprints running back and forth in the sand from the property next door. The neighbors on this side were summer folk-not “year rounders” like Dodd and his wife-and consequently the house remained unoccupied in the off-season. The man who made the footprints in the sand had known this. However, the man who made the footprints in the sand had also known to wear something-probably plastic bags-over his shoes; for in all the prints not a single tread could be found.
“Yes,” Burrell whispered in a plume of smoke. “He had to have parked next door. But then that means he also had to carry Campbell and that boy around the back, across that narrow span of beach and up the grassy slope. Now that’s one strong, one determined son of a bitch.”
Burrell heeled his cigarette into the gravel and crossed the large expanse of lawn to the entrance of the topiary garden. He looked at his watch: 12:58 P.M.
Where the hell is Markham? he thought, scanning the sea of blue FBI jackets.
The topiary garden was roughly a thirty-by-thirty-meter courtyard divided into quarters by a brick path with a marble fountain at its center. And save for the wall of twelve-foot high hedges that separated Dodd’s property from his neighbors, a series of arched “windows” and “doors” had been cut into the remaining three sides, giving people inside the garden a lovely view of Dodd’s property-including the beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it-while at the same time enclosing them in a separate space altogether. In addition to the classical marble sculptures that occupied the arched windows, the interior of the garden was peppered with a number of exquisitely trimmed topiary sculptures, including a bear, an elephant, a giraffe, and a horse.
It was in the farthest corner of the garden that the killer had mounted his exhibit, an exhibit that, despite its gruesomeness, Burrell thought looked strangely at home among its marble and spring-green companions-knew instinctively that the killer wanted everyone to see not just Tommy Campbell, not just his statue, but the totality of its context as well.
“She’s here, Bill,” said a voice behind him.
It was Sam Markham.
Turning, Burrell’s gaze fell upon a petite, attractive young woman shivering beside the Quantico profiler. He right away pegged the eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses to be Korean-the same as his wife’s.
“Can I have one of my people get you a cup of coffee, Dr. Hildebrant?” he said, dispensing with the formalities of an introduction. Bill Burrell knew his team well; knew that Special Agent Sullivan, who was now speaking with their tech guy by the fountain, had already briefed the art historian as to who he was.
“No thank you. I’d like to see the sculpture.”
“This way,” said Burrell, leading her across the courtyard. If it had been unclear to Cathy Hildebrant who was in charge of this shindig, the way the sea of blue jackets immediately parted to let Bill Burrell pass left no room for doubt.
Upon the FBI’s arrival, the forensic team had quickly set about erecting a bright blue canopy over Tommy Campbell and his young companion, and thus Cathy did not have a clear view of the sculpture until she was directly upon it. And for all her anxiety leading up to this moment, despite the reality of the tableau of death before her, Cathy felt numbly detached and analytical, while at the same time overcome with a buzzing sensation of awe-a feeling eerily reminiscent of the first time she encountered the original Bacchus in Florence nearly fifteen years earlier.
Indeed, the reproduction of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture was even more-oh God, how Cathy wished she could think of another word for it!-impressive than in Markham ’s Polaroids. The pose, the attention to detail-the lion skin, the cup, the grapes-were nearly flawless, and Cathy had to remind herself that she was looking at a pair of bleached dead bodies. Nonetheless, she automatically began to circle the sculpture as she knew Michelangelo had intended viewers of his Bacchus to do-an ingenious artistic ploy woven into the statue’s multiplicity of angles that subliminally transmitted the dizzy unsteadiness of the drunken god himself. Cathy’s eyes dropped to Bacchus’s half-human counterpart, the as-of-yet nameless little boy who had been mercilessly contorted into a satyr. Here, too, the creator of this travesty had captured the essence of Michelangelo’s original-that mischievous, goat-legged imp who smiles at the viewer while imitating the god’s pose and stealing his grapes.
Cathy continued around the statue, glancing quickly at the dreaded inscription to her at its base, until her eyes came to rest on Bacchus’s groin. Beneath the marble-white paint-if in fact it was paint-Cathy noticed the vague outline of what appeared to be stitches where Tommy Campbell’s penis had been removed. However, as her eyes traveled up his torso to his face, what disturbed Cathy the most was how accurately Tommy Campbell’s killer had captured even the subtlest nuances of the original. It was clear to Cathy that whoever had made this heinous thing had gone to great lengths not only to murder Campbell and that poor little boy, but also to transform them into the very essence of Michelangelo’s Bacchus.
“You see, Dr. Hildebrant,” began Burrell. “Our preliminary analysis indicates that the killer somehow preserved the bodies and mounted them on an internal metal frame. This means that whoever did this not only has a working knowledge of taxidermy, of embalming and such, but also knows something about welding. This sound like anybody you know? Maybe one of your students who was also involved in metalworking?”
“No,” said Cathy. “I don’t know anyone who could do this.”
“And you have no idea why someone would want to dedicate this statue to you specifically?”
“No. No idea.” In the awkward silence that followed, Cathy suddenly became aware that the entire FBI team-what had to be two-dozen of them-was staring at her. She felt her face go hot, felt her stomach leap into her chest, and then a flash of memory, a dream-the third grade, show and tell, and distant taunts of “Ching-chong! Ching-chong!” echoing in her head.
It was Sam Markham who stepped in to save her.
“Dr. Hildebrant, is there anything else you can tell us about the statue before the forensic team removes it? For instance, why Tommy Campbell should be missing his…well, why he’s missing his penis?”
Cathy had the vague suspicion that Markham already knew the answer to his question-that he was trying to get her to talk about Bacchus the same way she talked about Michelangelo in the car in order to calm her. And, for the briefest of moments, Cathy Hildebrant loved him for it.
“Well,” she began. “There’s some debate about this, but the original is also missing its penis. We know that at some point Bacchus’s right hand, the one holding the bowl of wine, was broken off to give the sculpture the appearance of antiquity-as for a time it lived among a collection of Roman artifacts belonging to a man named Jacopo Galli. The hand, however, was restored by about 1550 or so, but the penis, well, some scholars believe that it was never there to begin with, or that it was chiseled off by Michelangelo himself soon after the statue was completed.”
“Why?” asked Markham.
“Both the Roman and Greek mythological traditions-the Greeks called their version of the god Dionysus-held that Bacchus was not only the god of wine and excess, but also the god of theatre, and thus possessed all powers apropos to early Greek theatre’s original ritual and celebratory purposes. Although scholars still debate the true nature of these early rituals, given that sex was part of the excess over which Bacchus reigned supreme, some scholars conclude that there was a sexual component to these early theatrical rituals as well. Hence, in both Roman and Greek mythology we often see Bacchus represented with both male and female genitalia, and thus the ability to govern the excesses of both male and female sexual desire. It has long been believed that Michelangelo purposely sculpted his Bacchus’s body with a fleshy, almost androgynous quality-the swollen breasts, the bloated belly-and some scholars suggest that Bacchus was purposely completed without a penis to represent this. I tend to disagree with them, however.”
“You ever seen anything like this, Sam?” asked Burrell.
“No. Serial killers sometimes pose their victims-put them on display, if you will-either for their own sick benefit or for the others who come afterward. But no, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“And the missing penis? That mean anything to you, Sam? Killer’s got a problem with his gender? Wants to be a woman or something?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps he’s just trying to make the sculpture look authentic like the one in Florence.”
“That would explain why the killer put the sculpture on display here,” said Cathy.
“What do you mean?” asked Burrell.
“Agent Markham, you told me that the owner of this property is the CEO of an investment firm?”
“That’s right. His name is Dodd. Earl Dodd.”
“Michelangelo’s Bacchus was originally commissioned in 1496 by a cardinal named Riario, who intended to install it in his garden of classical sculptures. The cardinal ended up rejecting the statue-thought it distasteful-and we know that by about 1506 or so it had been given a home in the garden of Jacopo Galli, a wealthy banker.”
Burrell and Markham exchanged a look, and Cathy suddenly felt self-conscious again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me if I’m playing detective. Too many nights alone watching CSI, I guess.”
“What are you thinking, Sam?” asked Burrell.
“Dr. Hildebrant,” Markham said, “was Bacchus Michelangelo’s first statue?”
“Heavens no. He was only twenty-two when it was completed, had sculpted a number of others, but Bacchus was indeed Michelangelo’s first life-size statue-the sculpture that really thrust him into the public eye and garnered him recognition as a talented marble carver.”
“Then you’re thinking this is an introduction, Sam?” asked Burrell. “The first of more to come?”
“Perhaps.”
“But why Campbell?” countered the SAC. “And why this boy?”
“I’m not sure,” said Markham, squatting by the inscription at the base of the statue. “But I suspect that’s something the killer wants Dr. Hildebrant to tell us.”
The motto on the side of the new Westerly Police cruisers read, PRIDE, INTEGRITY, AND COMMITMENT-to which the police chief always added in his mind, “Tight-lipped.” Indeed, if there was one quality the citizens of Watch Hill appreciated in their chief, it was that he knew how to keep his men quiet. And as the secluded seaside community had long been a vacation retreat for the rich and famous, there had always been an unwritten rule in the department that officers should turn on their cruiser lights and sirens only when absolutely necessary. Over the years, the Westerly Police had even developed a sort of informal “code” in order to avoid the attention of local reporters, who were constantly monitoring the police bands with the hopes of catching a juicy story.
Yet following the disappearance of Tommy Campbell-the juiciest story to hit Watch Hill in decades-unbeknown to the police chief, one of his officers had jumped “on the take”-five hundred dollars cash, no questions asked, to be paid upon delivery of any “credible, first dibs info” relating to the wide receiver’s whereabouts. Thus, when rookie WNRI Channel 9 Eye-Team Investigator Meghan O’Neill’s cell phone rang with a tip that Tommy Campbell’s body had been found down at Watch Hill, the ambitious young reporter knew that her money had been well spent.
And so it was that, as Cathy Hildebrant concluded her examination of The Sculptor’s Bacchus, O’Neill and the Channel 9 Mobile News Room pulled up outside of Earl Dodd’s wall of high hedges. The stretch of Ocean View Highway in front of the mansion looked to be deserted, and for a moment the Eye-Team’s star investigator thought she had been duped. However, when she caught sight of the two Rhode Island state troopers standing guard beyond the iron gate, when she glimpsed the line of unmarked FBI vehicles that snaked up the driveway, Meghan O’Neill called in the confirmation to Channel 9 herself.
Yes, that up-and-coming anchor slot was as good as hers.
And although the Westerly Police Chief would never have believed it, although only a handful of his men had known what really was going on in the wealthy investment banker’s topiary garden before the state police arrived, as soon as the two troopers saw the pretty redhead scramble out of the van, they knew a local boy had rolled.
“I’ll call it in,” said one of the officers. “You go tell Burrell.” And in a flash his partner was off across the lawn as the other radioed for backup.
“I want to be live in thirty seconds,” said O’Neill, straightening her blouse and taking the microphone. “We’ll start here on the sidewalk, and then you follow me to the front gate.” With only a year on the Rhode Island beat under her belt, Meghan O’Neill learned early on that it was best to get the cameras rolling as soon as possible-that people “behaved better” when they knew they were being recorded.
And judging from the look on the trooper’s face at the end of Dodd’s driveway, her two-man crew needed to get things moving fast.
“They’re ready for us back at the station,” called the driver from the van, and the cameraman began Meghan O’Neill’s countdown.
“Breaking news in ten, nine, eight…”
Taking her cue, O’Neill positioned herself by one of the stone pillars that flanked the entrance to Dodd’s property-her cool exterior betraying none of the nervousness, the excitement raging within her.
“Five, four, three…”
The audio cut into her earpiece right on time with the cameraman’s silent one count-audio that O’Neill had been waiting to hear ever since she landed the Eye-Team gig fresh out of college:
“-have some very big breaking news. Channel 9 has just learned that Tommy Campbell, the missing wide receiver for the Boston Rebels, has been found dead about a mile from where he disappeared back in January. Let’s bring in our Eye-Team Investigator Meghan O’Neill, who is first on the scene, first to break what sounds like a tragic turn of events in this shocking case. What’s happening down there, Meghan?”
“Good afternoon, Karen. I’m here outside the estate of wealthy Watch Hill resident Earl Dodd. Although we have yet to receive official confirmation from the authorities or from Campbell’s representative, anonymous sources close to the investigation told us that early this morning two bodies were discovered somewhere on the grounds behind me, and that one of these bodies has been identified by relatives as the missing Boston Rebels wide receiver, Tommy Campbell.”
“I’m sorry, but you said two bodies, Meghan?”
“That’s right, Karen,” said O’Neill, making her move to the front gate. “All we know right now is that another body was found with Campbell ’s, but who this person is, if in fact his or her identity is known at this point, our sources could not tell us. I’m not sure if you can see behind me, Karen, but it looks like both federal and local authorities have been on the scene for quite some time now. Keep in mind that information is pretty scarce at present, and given that there has been no official statement made as of yet, we haven’t been able to confirm whether or not the authorities believe foul play was involved.”
“But this certainly is some incredible news, Meghan. Have your sources told you anything about the circumstances surrounding the discovery? Where or how the bodies were found? Perhaps how the victims died and what connection they have to this-you said his name was Dodd?”
“That’s right, Karen. Earl Dodd, a wealthy investment banker whose family has lived in the area for generations. Our sources were unable to confirm such details as of yet, including whether or not Dodd is somehow connected to Campbell ’s disappearance or the discovery of his body. But here we have a Rhode Island state trooper who’s been standing guard by Dodd’s front gate. Officer, is it true that a pair of bodies has been found on the grounds inside, and that one of these bodies has been identified as the missing Rebel wide receiver, Tommy Campbell?”
Before the trooper could fumble over a reply, a voice from behind him answered on his behalf.
“The FBI will make a statement later this afternoon,” said Special Agent Rachel Sullivan. “We’ll keep you updated as to when it’s time for a press conference.”
A pair of FBI agents hung a blue tarp across the front gate.
“Well there you have it, Karen,” said O’Neill, unfazed. “Investigators are still being pretty tight-lipped about what’s happening. I’m sure our viewers are aware of the kind of worldwide attention this case has gotten ever since the wide receiver disappeared before the Super Bowl back in January. We have known for some time that, given Campbell ’s notoriety and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance, the FBI has been handling this case from the beginning. And now, Karen, judging from what our sources have told us and the number of federal agents on the scene, I think it’s safe to say that this case has taken a turn for the worse down here in the sleepy seaside community of Watch Hill.”
“I think we’d all tend to agree with you, Meghan. And certainly, if what you’re saying is true, our thoughts and prayers go out to the Campbell family. Hats off to you and the Channel 9 Eye-Team for being the first to break this incredible story. You’ll keep us updated as things progress?”
“Thank you, Karen. And yes, our Channel 9 Mobile News Room will remain here on the scene to bring you the news first as it breaks. Back to you for now, Karen.”
“Thank you, Meghan. Well there you have it, folks. Meghan O’Neill, first with what is sizing up to be perhaps the biggest story of the year. Keep it tuned to Channel 9 for all the latest news on what appears to be a tragic turn of events in one of the most bizarre cases in recent memory. Once again, for those of you just joining us-”
The audio in Meghan O’Neill’s earpiece cut out just as what looked like the entire Westerly Police force-lights flashing, sirens wailing-rounded the corner.
“You’re going to have to clear away from that gate, ma’am,” said the chief of police, emerging from his car. “And get this van the hell out of here.”
And while Westerly’s finest proceeded to cordon off the street outside of the Dodd estate, little did the chief of police know that-even as Meghan O’Neill and her crew set about removing their equipment-the producers at WNRI Channel 9 and about a half dozen other New England stations were already mobilizing their news choppers.
No, there would be no way to keep things quiet now.
Back inside the topiary garden, Bill Burrell hung up with Tommy Campbell’s father. The SAC called the well-known businessman personally to warn him and his wife that the media had gotten wind of the story, and to once again expect a pack of reporters at the end of their driveway. He would send over two of his men to help keep the wolves at bay-would drop by later himself to offer his condolences in person, and to see if there was anything he could do for them.
Yes, he owed them that.
Thomas Campbell Sr. and his lovely wife Maggie had endured a lot since their son vanished back in January-the least of which being the initial onslaught of reporters who hounded their every movement. Indeed, for a time the elder Campbell had even been a suspect in his son’s disappearance-an unfortunate and now ludicrous detail of the investigation about which Bill Burrell still felt guilty. He had gotten to know Thomas and his wife quite well; had often sat with the couple on their porch, drinking hot chocolate and looking out over Foster Cove-the waters of which divers had combed countless times in search of Tommy Campbell’s body.
But now, all that was over. Yes, now that Campbell ’s body had finally been found, Burrell felt a heavy wave of guilt for not having been on the scene when the boy’s parents arrived at Dodd’s estate, when they gave the positive ID of what had become of their only son.
And what exactly had become of their only son?
Burrell watched his forensic team begin the somber task of removing Tommy Campbell and his young companion from their station in the corner of the topiary garden. His gaze now and then wandered up to the sky, on the lookout for the news choppers that he knew would be arriving any minute. It took three of his men, three big men, almost ten minutes to carry the shrouded tableau of death across the courtyard and into the transport van that had been pulled up on the lawn outside the garden.
Damn, Burrell thought. Whoever did this really is one strong son of a bitch.
And as the heavy metal doors slammed shut, as the van started on its way across the lawn, Bulldog heaved a sigh of relief that he had been able to get the bodies off-site before the vultures started swarming overhead. Yes, that really was his only break in the case thus far. That meant the medical examiner could work in peace, and that Burrell’s office would not have to comment on any press footage of the scene until the official cause of death had been determined.
Burrell lit a cigarette and telephoned his wife-told her not to expect him home until late that evening, perhaps even tomorrow morning. She responded like she always did-an empty, Korean-flavored “I’ll leave the light on” that had been hardened by two kids and twenty-five years of marriage to “the life.” And as he joined Markham and Cathy in the back of the FBI surveillance van, when he saw the pretty professor’s half-Asian features in the soft light of the computer screens, the guilt Bill Burrell had felt for abandoning the Campbells all at once transformed into a longing for his wife.
Yes, at fifty years old, the Bulldog was getting soft.
“Tell me what we got,” Burrell exhaled in a plume of cigarette smoke.
“Well,” Markham began, “our agents were able to track down a collection of Michelangelo’s poetry at the Westerly Library, as well as a copy of Dr. Hildebrant’s Slumbering in the Stone.”
“And?”
“I haven’t had a chance yet to go over her book, but Dr. Hildebrant has identified the poem and the quotes.”
“The ones Sullivan told me about? The ones that were slipped under Dr. Hildebrant’s office door almost six years ago?”
“Yes, sir,” said Markham, looking down at a sheet of paper. “We found the three quotes online. And at first glance, they appear to be what Dr. Hildebrant took them as-words of wisdom and support in the wake of her mother’s death. This at the very least tells us that whoever gave them to her was aware of her personal life. The quotes arrived in the following order. ‘If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master,’ ‘The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms,’ and finally, ‘To confide in one’s self and become something of worth and value, is the best and safest course.’”
“So what’s your take on them, Sam?”
“A definite attempt at intimacy, I’d say, as well an implied understanding by the writer of the grief that Dr. Hildebrant was going through at the time. In this light then, the last quote seems somewhat odd, given that the first two deal with death and the afterlife, and actually contrast this world with the next. Upon further research, however, Dr. Hildebrant and I have found that the third quote is often cited as a continuation of the second. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but taking it into context with the sonnet, which was the last note she received, perhaps it signifies not only advice on how she should deal with her loss, but also a change of focus-both with regard to where Dr. Hildebrant should now focus her energy, and where her admirer should now focus his.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The sonnet that came next,” said Markham, thumbing through the book of poetry. “The one that was originally written to the youth Tommaso Cavalieri, is a much more intimate correspondence than the previous notes. Yes, like the first two quotes, it implies an unspoken and private knowledge of the other-but this time the sender seems to be speaking from both his and Dr. Hildebrant’s point of view.”
“How so?”
“The first four lines read as follows:
We both know, my lord, that you know I come near to have my pleasure with you; And we both know that you know my name; So why do you wait to introduce yourself?
“As Dr. Hildebrant had to explain to me, Michelangelo was a homosexual, and his relationship with Cavalieri-a relationship that was never physically consummated but that was nonetheless reciprocated-caused the artist, and presumably Cavalieri, great anguish. Michelangelo is speaking then for both of them, saying that he knows they both love each other, and therefore wants Cavalieri to acknowledge it, too. Given that knowledge-that is, the story behind the sonnet-we thus have an overt statement from Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer that says in effect, ‘Not only do I know what you’re thinking, but I also know that you know what I’m thinking.’”
“‘I come near to have my pleasure with you,’” repeated Burrell. “So the person who wrote the note is admitting that he had gotten physically close to Dr. Hildebrant?”
“Maybe,” said Markham. “But it could be meant to be taken figuratively, as in close to her through her work-her book, which was published about six months before the notes began arriving.”
“But the line about knowing his name, isn’t that an overt statement as well? That the writer of the note is saying, literally, you know who I am?”
“Perhaps,” said Markham. “But again, her admirer could be speaking figuratively-given the context of the original sonnet to Cavalieri, that it was a sort of homosexual code for something else, a spiritual love that could not be named. If we were to take the first four lines literally, the line, ‘So why do you wait to introduce yourself?’ seems inappropriate in any context other than Dr. Hildebrant avoiding an advance from someone. And as she has told me nothing like that happened before the notes were delivered, I am inclined to think there is some hidden meaning behind the first four lines, as there was for Cavalieri in Michelangelo’s time. What that meaning is for Dr. Hildebrant, I can’t be sure. But given the rest of the sonnet, I would tend to think that Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer, like Michelangelo himself, meant the poem as more of a spiritual overture than an actual love note-that is, in appreciation of her soul rather than her beauty.” Markham turned to Cathy. “You said that your admirer made no attempt in his correspondence to change the subject of the poem-a man, a lord-to a lady, is that correct?”
“Yes,” said Cathy.
“An odd choice if Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer meant the correspondence to be a love sonnet. Wouldn’t you agree, Bill?”
“Read me the rest of it,” he said.
“The next section does in fact seem to support the idea of a figurative, spiritual attraction rather than a physical one. It reads
If your gift to me of hope is true,
As true as the desire I’ve given you,
May the wall between us crumble down.
For nothing is more painful than hidden sorrow.
If I love in you, my lord, only that
Which you yourself do love, do not despise
The spirit for the love it bears the other.
“Here again, as in the original, Dr. Hildebrant told me her admirer addressed her as ‘lord.’ There is also the obvious statement of their spirits loving each other. However, given that context-that is, the context of a love, a desire that is not physical, not sexual-the last three lines seem out of place. They read
What I wish to learn from your beautiful face
Cannot be understood in the minds of men:
He who wishes to learn can only die.”
A heavy silence fell over the tech van.
“May I see that?” asked Burrell finally. Markham handed him the book of poetry. “‘He who wishes to learn can only die,’” the SAC read out loud.
“Yes,” said Markham. “At the very least a strange coincidence-given the recent turn of events, that is.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” said Burrell. “ What I wish to learn from your beautiful face cannot be understood in the minds of men. He who wishes to learn can only die?’ Do you really think, Sam, that Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer told her that he was planning to kill someone? That he actually waited five and a half years to carry it out?”
“I don’t know, Bill.”
“And what does Michelangelo mean in his poem when he says what he wants to learn cannot be understood in the minds of men?”
“Michelangelo is saying that people not only misunderstand him,” said Cathy, “but also the kind of love he feels for Cavalieri. He is telling Cavalieri that, although their contemporaries could not comprehend of Michelangelo’s desire for him as anything other than lustful and sinful, in reality it goes far beyond that into the realm of the divine-a love that can only be fully understood when one dies, when one comes to know God.”
“I guess that’s what I don’t understand,” said Markham. “Why those last three lines are so troubling to me-that is, if this poem was meant only as a spiritual overture. Although the foundation of Michelangelo’s love for Cavalieri went much deeper than just the physical, from what you’ve told me, Dr. Hildebrant, there was a sexual, homoerotic component to it as well. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“So the line about the beautiful face,” interrupted Burrell. “Are you saying, Sam, that that line doesn’t make sense in conjunction with the rest of the poem unless Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer is a homosexual? Unless she’s a woman?”
“Perhaps. That is, if Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer did in fact understand the original context of the sonnet, the history behind it. And banking on my experience in such things, I think it’s safe to assume that he or she did.”
“But then that means Dr. Hildebrant’s admirer and Campbell’s killer could not have been the same person. Judging from the size of those footprints in the sand, Campbell ’s killer was well over six feet tall. Any six-foot-five lesbians in your department, Dr. Hildebrant?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“And that sculpture weighed a ton-was almost impossible for one person to handle-and there’s every indication that it was brought to the location intact. You saw for yourself, Sam. It took three of my guys ten minutes to load that thing into the van. That means that the person who carried it all the way from the house next door and up the hill out back is one strong SOB-and we know it was one SOB from the single set of footprints in the sand, a set of footprints that went back and forth only once.”
“Yes.”
“So what’s your opinion now, Sam? You still think the person who sent Dr. Hildebrant those notes is the same person who killed Tommy Campbell? And that this person has to be a homosexual?”
“Perhaps a homosexual,” Cathy interrupted. “But not necessarily a woman.”
“What do you mean?” asked Markham.
“Agent Markham, you said that you thought Michelangelo’s line about coming near to me might not have been meant to be taken literally, right? That maybe my admirer was referring to my work, specifically to my book?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe then my admirer was referring not to my face, but to someone else’s.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Burrell, but Cathy saw that Special Agent Markham understood. His eyes at once dropped to the book in his lap, to the copy of Slumbering in the Stone which had been checked out for him at the Westerly Library.
On its cover was the face of Michelangelo’s most famous sculpture.
On its cover was his David.
The Sculptor stepped out of the shower and toweled off in the middle of his studio. His skin smelled clean, industrially so-like hospital disinfectant, like a job well done. Yes, the only thing out of order now was the pile of dirty clothes in the slop sink. He would not don them again, would not even touch them until it was time to go back to the house. Then he would drop them in the washer and give his father his supper. The Sculptor would not put on a fresh set of clothes either, for The Sculptor loved being naked-looked forward to remaining that way well into the evening, when he would sit in the dim light of the parlor watching his Bacchus plans burn in the fireplace as he sipped his Brunello.
But first The Sculptor needed to check his technology, needed to see if his premiere exhibit had made the news yet. He had been patient, had resisted looking at his monitors until he was finished tidying up his workspace. And so the man once called Christian rode the mortician’s table up to the second floor-the gears of the winch system much quieter now that he had oiled them. He turned off the audio feed from his father’s bedroom-the A-side of Scarlatti now on its fourth time through-and sat naked at his desk, flicking on the sound of the flat-screen TV just as the Fox News Channel was turning over the broadcast to its local affiliate.
The Sculptor did not recognize the pretty young woman with the red hair and emerald green eyes-for The Sculptor never watched the local news, almost never watched TV at all-and thus did not consider it anything special when the Fox News anchor mentioned that WNRI’s Meghan O’Neill had been the first to break the story. And of course, like the rest of Channel 9’s loyal viewers, there was no way he could have known about the reporter’s anonymous source inside the Westerly Police Department. If he had, he might have decided to wait; might have decided to let O’Neill’s man tell her what she needed to know. But just as The Sculptor was in the dark with regard to that, so was Meghan O’Neill. Her five hundred dollars had landed her only half a story-a rookie, like herself, who was on the periphery of the investigation; one who got his information secondhand back at headquarters, and who was kept out of the loop about the specific details regarding Campbell’s remains.
And so The Sculptor felt somewhat disappointed to learn from the breaking news report that-unless they were doing a good job of hiding it-all the media seemed to know thus far was that the bodies of Tommy Campbell and an unidentified person had been discovered down at Watch Hill, and that both of them had been moved from the site to an “undisclosed location.” And from the way the pretty redhead and the Fox News anchor were trading theories as to Campbell’s connection with Dodd-a connection that The Sculptor knew went only as far as the millionaire’s lovely topiary garden-The Sculptor also knew that the media had not captured any footage of his exhibit-not even a picture! That was unfortunate; that was not part of his plan; for that meant it might be days, perhaps even a whole week before the details of his Bacchus were made public. And although The Sculptor was a very, very patient man, the idea that the media might miss something suddenly did not sit well with him.
However, it was not impatience that influenced his decision to telephone the pretty young reporter’s home station, but the sight of a familiar face behind her-more of a grainy shadow, really-in the front seat of what he knew to be an unmarked FBI vehicle. The glimpse of her lasted only a millisecond-would probably have gone unnoticed even by the art history professor’s ex-husband-but could not escape The Sculptor’s keen eye. No, as Meghan O’Neill directed her cameras across the street to Dodd’s front gate, just as it was opening three Chevy Trailblazers emerged from behind the high wall of hedges. And for the briefest of moments The Sculptor was sure he had spied the figure of Cathy Hildebrant through the windshield of the lead car. And despite his excitement, despite his joy that Dr. Hildy had finally seen his work, The Sculptor was at the same time struck with an idea.
He would make the telephone call from his cell phone, with a Wal-Mart calling card that still had plenty of minutes left on it. His number would be blocked anyway, but this was just a little more insurance. And of course, there was no need to worry about the ping off the local cell tower. No, he himself had designed the phone’s encrypter to cloak all his calls in and out of the carriage house just in case. Yes, for as much as The Sculptor hated technology, he had resigned himself long ago that he would have to master it in order to complete his work. And so, after a quick search online-a search with a rerouted IP address, of course-The Sculptor muted the television and placed his call.
“Thank you for calling the WNRI Channel 9 Eye-Team Hotline,” droned the recorded voice on the other end. “Your call is important to us, but due to the heavy amount of traffic at present, your wait time to speak with an investigator is approximately-se-ven mi-nutes.”
The Sculptor refreshed his computer screens; whistled Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Minor as he read the headlines on the Drudge Report and CNN.com. While he had been tidying up his studio, a spokesperson for the FBI had confirmed with the Associated Press that the body of missing Boston Rebels wide receiver Tommy Campbell, as well as another unidentified person, had been found on the property of a wealthy businessman in Campbell’s hometown of Westerly, Rhode Island-blahdy-blahdy-blah, details to follow in a press conference at 5:00 P.M.
That’s good, The Sculptor thought. A little over two hours to plant the seeds; a little over two hours to make sure the press would ask the right questions come conference time.
The broadcast on the Fox News Channel switched to an aerial view of Dodd’s estate, and as the line of FBI vehicles snaked down the driveway, The Sculptor could make out the handful of agents and state troopers who still littered the scene. His Bacchus, however, was gone-already on its way to the medical examiner’s office, no doubt. The Sculptor shivered with excitement, felt his nipples grow hard at the thought of the FBI analyzing his work, of them dismantling his exhibit and deciphering the connection between his Bacchus and Dr. Hildy’s Slumbering in the Stone. Yes, it was only a matter of time before everyone would begin to understand the message behind his work; only a matter of time before everyone would begin to finally wake up.
The Sculptor knew, of course, that the media and the FBI would soon brand him a serial killer, for like Michelangelo himself, his contemporaries did not have a name for what he really was; could not begin to grasp the depth of his tortured soul-that fountain of love and anguish, of beauty and divine insight from which his genius flowed, and from which his artistry craved release. Yes, they would think him a monster; would group him with other monsters and misinterpret his work as some demented, selfish pursuit in the vein of a Dahmer, a Gacy, or a Nilsen. The Sculptor had understood that from the beginning; had long ago resigned himself to the fact that only after his death-perhaps hundreds of years after-would the true nature of his artistry be fully comprehended by everyone.
Everyone, that is, except Dr. Catherine Hildebrant.
Yes, here in the present, only one person possessed an understanding, a genius on par with his own. And that person would soon become his mouthpiece-the vehicle through which he would get his message out to the world; the vehicle through which The Sculptor would wake them all from their slumber.
“Eye-Team Hotline,” said the voice on the other end of the phone-a deep, male voice that The Sculptor immediately found alluring.
“Greetings,” said The Sculptor. “And congratulations to WNRI and the Eye-Team for being the first to break the news on the discovery of Tommy Campbell. Judging from the amount of time I had to hold the line, I assume your operation there in Providence is being flooded with calls about the case, am I correct?”
“What can I do for you, sir?” said the voice impatiently-an impatience that The Sculptor found endearing.
“Perhaps you should be asking what I can do for you,” chuckled The Sculptor. “You see, my friend, as a reward for WNRI’s tenacity, I would like to offer you some information pertaining to the case-a tip, as those in your line of work are apt to call it.”
“May I have your name?”
“If it’s all right with you, my friend, I would like to remain anonymous. Surely that is par for the course on a day like today-a day when a lot of tidily-squat about what’s what must be clogging up the pipes down there at W-N-R-I.” The manner in which The Sculptor sang the station’s call letters, like a cheesy radio announcer, had the unintended effect of irritating the investigator on the other end.
“Look, pal, we got a lot going on down here. I don’t have time today for nonsense-”
“Now, now, let’s not get testy. I could always call one of your competitors, and just think what your superiors would do to you if they found out you turned your back on perhaps the biggest story in your station’s history.”
“All right,” sighed the investigator, unimpressed. “What have you got for me?”
“The FBI has brought in an expert to assist them with their investigation of Tommy Campbell’s demise. Her name is Dr. Catherine Hildebrant-H-I-L-D-E-BR-A-N-T-and she is a professor of art history at Brown University.”
“I’m sorry, you said art history?”
“That is correct. This can easily be confirmed by a quick tour of the school’s Web site, and if you hurry-that is, if you’re a real go-getter like that pretty redhead on the beat-you can confirm for yourself Dr. Hildebrant’s involvement in the case. An unmarked FBI vehicle, a black Chevy Trailblazer I believe, will soon drop her off at her place of residence. If you review your latest footage of the crime scene, you’ll be able to see the truck exiting the property. From what I can tell, the good doctor left Watch Hill not even ten minutes ago, and unless our friends with the Federal Bureau of Investigation have more goodies in store for her today, I expect that the same Chevy Trailblazer will put her back at 311 East George Street in about forty to fifty minutes-depending on traffic, of course.”
“You said 311 East George Street?”
“I most certainly did.”
“Why would the FBI be consulting an art history professor?”
“The bodies of Tommy Campbell and his companion were found in that wealthy banker’s garden painted white like marble and posed upright in the form of a classical sculpture. Michelangelo’s Bacchus, to be exact.”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
“I’m sorry, I cannot. Hopefully, the powers-that-be at W-N-R-I are smart enough to record their hotline. Therefore, I suggest you review the tape and that footage and get a reporter over to Dr. Hildebrant’s house as soon as possible. The arrival of the black FBI vehicle will be confirmation that I’m not full of poop.”
The Sculptor hung up. His pulse had quickened-not because he was worried about getting caught; not because he was excited about all those pointed questions he imagined the press would soon be asking the FBI. No, The Sculptor’s heart knocked at his chest because of his conversation, his flirtation with the man on the other end of the hotline-a man whose voice had aroused him greatly.
Indeed, The Sculptor was already erect-could feel the hard nakedness of his penis pressing against the underside of the desk. And like a blushing-pink Pria-pus he sauntered over to the mortician’s table. From the space underneath, he unfolded a three-sectional arm, at the end of which was attached a small, flat-screen television. The Sculptor maneuvered it into place-adjusted the arm so the screen hovered about three feet above the head of the mortician’s table-and then uncoiled the accompanying cables. He laid them carefully on the floor, plugging one into the wall and the other into a monitor on his computer desk. The screen above the mortician’s table at once flickered into life, its image the same as the monitor before him. The Sculptor minimized the CNN.com Web site and double clicked on one of the desktop icons-a marble hand holding a bowl titled “Bacchus2.” The screen went blank for a moment, and then the countdown began-thirty seconds, grainy black and white that The Sculptor had designed to look like an old, wipe-style film countdown.
30…29…28…27…26…
The Sculptor turned on the baroque guitar music from his father’s bedroom and flicked off all the monitors-all except the monitor above the mortician’s table.
Then he turned out the lights.
19…18…17…16…
The Sculptor crossed the darkened room and slid under the television screen onto his back-the cold steel of the mortician’s table sending a shiver through his buttocks; the black and white numbers above him wiping into each other like circle ghosts on a clock.
11…10…9…
The Sculptor smiled, took his shaft in his hand, and waited.
At “ 2” the screen went blank-the room, black-and a second later, just as it had materialized for Tommy Campbell, The Sculptor saw what he had been waiting for: a statue, dirty white against black, so that it appeared to be floating just inches above his face. However, whereas it was Michelangelo’s Bacchus that had emerged from the darkness for Tommy Campbell, before The Sculptor now was HIS Bacchus, HIS creation. And as the marble white effigy of the Rebels wide receiver and his satyr companion began to rotate, unlike the mortician table’s former occupant, The Sculptor felt no fear, no confusion at all.
No, in the three months since he had taken the life of Tommy Campbell-especially in the last few weeks-The Sculptor had been in this position many, many times.
The Sculptor began to stroke his penis-hard, but slow at first, as he had learned to do in order to time things perfectly. And just as Michelangelo’s Bacchus had done for Tommy Campbell, the image before The Sculptor suddenly morphed into a close-up of the statue’s head: the grapes, the leaves, the curly hair surrounding the wide receiver’s drunken face-a gleaming white face with blank, porcelain eyes and a half-open mouth. The camera then panned down over Campbell ’s chest, over his bloated belly, and finally to his groin-to the place where The Sculptor had carefully removed the young man’s penis.
And in a fortuitous stroke of timing-an almost divine coincidence that The Sculptor did not fail to notice-as the all-enveloping sound of Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Minor faded into his Sonata in E, the image on the screen above faded into something else as well. Now it was just the face of Tommy Campbell-strapped to the table-filmed with a second, stationary camera that The Sculptor had set off to the side of the mortician’s table.
“Pop, you there? Did I fall on the porch? They got me in traction or something?”
Once again there was the look of confusion on the star Rebel’s face as the video above him commenced, as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing there in the darkness. The Sculptor instinctively focused his attention on Campbell ’s neck-had learned over the past month to watch his jugular vein, to time the strokes of his penis with the beating of the young man’s heart. He kept his rhythm steady, mimicking Campbell ’s pulse while the wide receiver watched the image of Michelangelo’s Bacchus rotate and morph above him.
“That’s it,” The Sculptor heard himself say off camera. “Shake off your slumber, O son of Jupiter.”
The Sculptor literally skipped a breath when he saw Tommy Campbell attempt to turn his head-actually felt his stomach spasm with delight when he saw the young man’s heart begin to beat faster in his neck.
“Who are you? What am I doing here?”
The Sculptor’s breathing quickened as he watched Campbell begin to panic, watched him struggle against the straps. The Sculptor knew that the image above the muscle-bound footballer was moving again, panning down over Bacchus’s chest, over his belly, to his hairless groin-to the place where his penis should have been.
“What the hell is going on?”
The Sculptor increased the speed, the intensity of his stroke-did not pause at the point in the video when the image above Campbell changed, when the young man finally saw himself, the clusters of grapes and vine leaves surrounding his face.
“What the fuck is-”
And as Tommy Campbell began to tremble violently on the screen above him, the heavy pounding of The Sculptor’s hand finally joined him with his Bacchus’s heart.
“This can’t be happening. I must be dreaming!”
“No, my Bacchus. You are finally awake.”
And thus, as he had done so many times before, at the precise moment of his Bacchus’s release, The Sculptor once again released himself into the darkness of their divine communion.
The two of them were alone again, and when Special Agent Sam Markham finally spoke to her, Cathy Hildebrant felt as if she had been interrupted while watching a primetime crime drama-one of those woodenly acted, corpse-ridden soaps with which she had become so infatuated, and which she was so embarrassed to admit to her colleagues she actually followed. Even upon hearing Markham’s voice, even upon recognizing the traffic light at which they were stopped-a traffic light that subliminally spoke to her of the silent twenty minutes she and the FBI agent had traveled from Watch Hill-Cathy still had only a vague, detached awareness that the movie she had been watching in her mind had been real and that she had been its star.
“You ever been there?” Markham asked.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“The University of Rhode Island. Sign back there said you make a left at the light. Your head seemed to follow it as we passed.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was looking at it.”
“College town means there’s probably a Starbucks nearby. Interested in a cup of coffee? Want me to check the GPS?”
“No, thank you.”
The light turned green and Markham drove on.
“Yes,” Cathy said after a moment.
“Change your mind?”
“No. I meant, yes I’ve been to the University of Rhode Island. Only once. As a guest speaker a few years back when my book came out.”
“You had a lot of speaking engagements? After your book was published, I mean?” The FBI Agent made no attempt at delicacy; no attempt to conceal that he was looking for yet another connection between Dr. Catherine Hildebrant and the killer in the movie of her mind. And all at once the weight, the reality of the last few hours came rushing back to her; all at once the tears overwhelmed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Markham. Cathy swallowed hard, and turned again toward the window. A long, uncomfortable silence followed.
“Been almost fifteen years since I was there last,” Markham said finally. “At URI, I mean. Hardly remember it, really. Like you, I was there only once. With my wife, for homecoming during the fall. She was a graduate of their oceanography program. Had a real love for that school. Wasn’t too crazy about it myself-football stadium was kind of dinky, I thought. I guess it was supposed to be a pretty good one back then-their oceanography program, I mean. Not sure what the story is now, though. Lot can happen in fifteen years.”
Cathy suddenly realized that the FBI Agent had opted to take the longer route back to Providence-Route 1 instead of I-95-and more than the sincerity of his attempt at small talk, more than his disclosure of something personal, what settled Cathy’s tears was Sam Markham’s tone-a tone that for the first time that day was hesitant and awkward; a tone that for the first time that day made him seem human.
“That’s an interesting pairing,” said Cathy-surprised at the sound of her voice, at how eager she was to talk about anything but the day’s events. “How does an FBI agent end up marrying an oceanographer?”
“I wasn’t with the Bureau back then. Was actually a high school English teacher when I met my wife.”
“Aha. So that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“The sonnet.”
“The sonnet?”
“Yes. I thought your analysis of Michelangelo’s poetry seemed a little too erudite, a little too insightful even for an FBI profiler.” The special agent nodded his approval-playfully and with exaggerated admiration. “My first clue should have been during our initial drive to Watch Hill, when you asked me if the sonnet that I received had been numbered like a Shakespearean sonnet.”
“Nonetheless,” said Markham, smiling, “an admirable analysis of the evidence, Dr. Hildebrant.”
Cathy smiled back.
“I have to admit,” he continued, “I’m a bit ashamed that I didn’t know about Michelangelo’s poetry. Perhaps I did at one time-way back when. But I’ve been with the Bureau for almost thirteen years now, and I guess you forget all that stuff if you don’t keep up with it.”
“You forget it even if you do keep up with it. At least that’s the way it’s been for me since about thirty or so.”
“Forty’s no better.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I still got four months.”
“I’ve got one year, six months, and twenty-three days.”
Markham laughed-and, unexpectedly, Cathy joined him.
“Ah well,” the FBI agent sighed. “I guess I’ll buy a convertible. Or maybe a motorcycle. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when you turn forty?”
“I’m not going to find out-going to stop counting at thirty-nine.”
“Sounds like a plan. But I’d buy twenty-nine from you in a heartbeat.”
Cathy was unsure if Markham had meant his last comment as a compliment-that is, if he was saying he would peg her for twenty-nine-years-old, or that he would figuratively “purchase” the age of twenty-nine from her for himself. And suddenly Cathy was transported back to college, to those rare but awkward one-time dates with men who mistook her shyness for aloofness, her intellect for arrogance. And despite the anxiety such memories brought with them, Cathy could feel herself beginning to blush as the FBI agent drove on in silence.
She hoped he didn’t notice.
“So how does a high school English teacher end up marrying an oceanographer?” Cathy asked at the next traffic light-her need to keep the conversation going, to push through her discomfort outweighing her usual bashfulness.
“I wish I had a romantic story for you, Dr. Hildebrant-”
“Please, call me Cathy.”
“All right. I wish I had a more romantic story for you, Cathy. But my wife and I met at a cookout in Connecticut -one of those mutual-friend-of-a-friend deals. She was still in graduate school at the time, but was working at the Mystic Aquarium in their Institute for Exploration. I had just landed a part-time teaching job in a little town nearby. You know the story. ‘Hey, I’ve got a friend I want you to meet,’ one thing leads to another, the hand of fate and all that. You get the idea.”
“Sounds familiar, yes.”
“Same for you?”
“Oh yes. My boss, Janet Polk. The woman you met this morning-the hand that pushed me.”
“Aha.”
“Twelve years ago. She was the friend of my husband’s friend who introduced us-my soon to be ex-husband, I should say.”
“I’m sorry about that. Dr. Polk didn’t come right out and say what happened, but I put two and two together when we traced your address to East George Street. You’ve always kept your maiden name? Never took your husband’s for professional reasons?”
“Never took it, no-partly for professional reasons, partly because my mother always kept her maiden name. Korean tradition. Most Korean women keep their family name. She never asked me, but I knew it would make her happy. So, like she had done for her father, I kept my father’s name. Nonetheless, an admirable analysis of the evidence, Agent Markham.”
The FBI agent smiled with a touché.
“Please, call me Sam.”
“All right then, Agent Sam. And please don’t be sorry. Best thing to happen to me in ten years of marriage will be my divorce decree next month. Janet’s the one for whom you should feel sorry. Really. She feels worse about it than I do-almost like she’s the one who’s responsible for the whole thing. Even asked me if I wanted my ex’s legs broken. And you know what? I think she meant it, too-think she meant to do it herself.”
Markham laughed.
“Don’t let her size fool you. She’s a real ass kicker, that Janet Polk. Didn’t get to where she is today on just her smarts, I’ll tell you that much.”
“A bit protective of you, is she?”
“Oh yes. Been that way from the beginning-ever since I was her assistant at Harvard. And when my mother died…well…let’s just say Janet was the only one who was really there for me.” Cathy felt her chest, her stomach tighten at the thought of Steve Rogers’s ultimatum; the teary-eyed, whimpering “end of his rope” speech that he delivered not even two months after her mother’s death, when the length and depth of Cathy’s grief had simply become too much for him.
“I’m begging you, Cat. You’ve got to snap out of it. I’m at the end of my rope with you. This isn’t good for us. You’ve got to try to move on, get past it. For us, Cat. For us.”
It wasn’t so much what her spineless excuse for a husband had said that still bothered Cathy, but that she, a Harvard educated PhD-perhaps the foremost scholar on Michelangelo in the world-had actually bought into his selfishness. Yes, what really set Cathy’s blood boiling there in the Trailblazer was the thought that, at the very moment when her husband should have been there for her, she abandoned her mourning to take care of him-not because he needed her, but because she was afraid of losing him.
That was the beginning of the end. Should have handed the selfish motherfucker his balls back right then and there.
“May I ask how it happened?”
“He cheated. With one of his graduate students.”
“I’m sorry. But I meant your mother.”
“Oh,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “Forgive me-my mind is going in a thousand different directions. Breast cancer. Fought it for years, but in the end it took her quickly. I suppose you could say she was lucky in that respect. You know, the statistics say that Korean women have one of the lowest incidences of breast cancer in the United States. I guess nobody got around to telling my mother that.”
“I’m sorry, Cathy.”
“Thank you.” Cathy smiled, for she knew Markham was sincere. “Anyway, Janet was the one who really helped me get through it all, from the time my mother was first diagnosed until the end-and afterward, of course. Helped me stay on track to get the book published, to get tenure and all that. Even before everything happened, I always thought of her as sort of a second mother.”
“And what about your father?”
“Retired military. Army. Lives somewhere down in North Carolina now with his second wife-the woman with whom he was cheating on my mother. They divorced when I was in the third grade-he and my mother, I mean-right after she and I moved to Rhode Island.”
“So you grew up around here?”
“Since the third grade, yes. My mother had a cousin who lived in Cranston -helped the two of us get settled-and she ended up getting her degree in computers. Carved out a nice little life for the two of us. Before that, I moved around like the typical Army brat. We were all stationed in Italy, near Pisa, when my father met his second wife. She was Army, too. It was after all that went down that my mother and I settled back in the States.”
“ Italy. Let me guess. Is that where you first became interested in Michelangelo?”
“Yes. My mother was only eighteen when she married my father-met him while he was stationed in Korea. Ever since she was a child she had wanted to become an artist, but back then things weren’t so easy for Korean girls. And being one of five sisters, well, her parents were more than happy to marry her off to an American GI. Anyway, ever since I can remember-since the day I was born, I think-no matter where we were stationed, she used to take me along with her to all the local museums. And during the two years we were stationed in Italy, well, you can imagine the time we had together. I don’t remember much from our first trip to Florence, but my mother used to say that the first time I saw Michelangelo’s David I actually started crying-that I thought the statue was a real man, a giant who had been frozen in ice, and that I cried for him out of pity.”
Markham laughed.
“It was funnier to hear her tell it. She was a lovely woman, my mother-very bright, very witty. Never remarried, either. Everything for her daughter. She was only fifty-two when she passed.”
“I really am sorry, Cathy.”
“I know.”
“And your father?” Markham asked after a moment. “You talk to him much?”
“Once in a great while,” Cathy shrugged. “Even before my parents divorced we were never very close. Last time I saw him was at the funeral-was surprised he even showed up, to be honest with you. Paid his child support over the years, but that was pretty much the extent of our relationship. Didn’t really want anything to do with my mother and me after the divorce. At least, that’s how my mother put it. I know my father would probably tell you different, that it was my mother that took me away from him, but…well, you know, actions speak louder than words and all that. I haven’t talked to him in almost two years now, I think. Has no idea about what happened with Steve.”
“Steve?”
“My ex.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
“And what about you? You said you were working in Connecticut when you met your wife. Did you grow up there?”
“Yes. Waterford. Parents are still there, too. Happily married now for almost fifty years.”
“And your wife? How long you two been married?”
“My wife and I are no longer together,” Markham said flatly. “But we were married just over two years.”
“Wish I had signed up for the two-year plan. Less investment; less time wasted-get out of it while you’re still young. At least you can look at it that way. I do hope yours wasn’t like mine, though-hope it ended amicably.”
Markham smiled but said nothing, and suddenly Cathy felt as if she had said something wrong-as if she had gotten too personal, as if she had somehow offended the FBI agent. They drove on in silence for what to Cathy seemed like an eternity-her mind scrambling for a segue to continue their conversation. She had just settled her mind on “I’m sorry” when Markham finally spoke.
“You must be hungry. Shall I pick you up something before I drop you off back at your house?”
“No, thank you. I have some leftovers in the fridge that I want to finish before they spoil. But thanks anyway.”
Markham and Cathy exchanged sporadic small talk for the rest of the trip back to Providence-pleasant for the most part, but lacking the spontaneity, the easiness of their earlier conversation. And by the time Sam Markham reached the Upper East Side, Cathy was filled with a vague sadness reminiscent of those late hours alone in her dorm room at Harvard-that disappointed “postgame analysis” wherein the shy young woman would pick apart her date over and over again in an attempt to figure out why things had gone south. And even though over the course of the day she had hardly begun to think of her time with the FBI agent as romantic, as anything other than professional, when Markham turned onto East George Street, as much as she hated to admit it, Cathy was worried she might not ever see him again.
“I’ll be in touch with you soon, Cathy,” he said, reading her mind. “Word’s already come down from Quantico that I’ll be working local for a while. Until the Boston off-”
Had Cathy not been looking at Markham, had she not been so relieved by what the special agent had told her, she most certainly would have spotted the Channel 9 Mobile News Room before he did. And upon following the FBI agent’s gaze, Cathy immediately recognized the white van pulling up to the curb about a hundred feet up the street. There, in front of her house, was the obnoxious yellow 9 with the big blue eye at its center-the same big blue eye that had stared back at her so many times from her television set; the same big blue eye that had watched her leave Dodd’s estate less than an hour ago.
“I was afraid of this,” said Markham, pulling over. “Damn small town police.”
Cathy did not need the FBI agent to tell her that the big blue eye had seen them coming, for even before she and Sam Markham emerged from the Trailblazer, a cameraman and a reporter with a microphone had already positioned themselves at the end of Cathy’s walkway.
Markham ’s cell phone rang.
“Yes? Yes, I see them. No, I’ll take care of it. Uh huh. Okay.”
Markham hung up.
“I’ll deal with these clowns,” he said, turning off the ignition. “But let’s get you inside first. Don’t say anything.”
Markham put his arm around Cathy and quickly escorted her to her house, shielding her from the reporter’s microphone as they passed.
“Ms. Hildebrant,” the reporter shouted. “Can you tell us why you were brought in by the FBI to help with the investigation into Tommy Campbell’s murder?”
Cathy felt her stomach drop, felt her heart leap into her throat as she and Sam Markham mounted the front steps to her porch.
“Ms. Hildebrant,” the reporter called again. Cathy could not see him, but could tell by the proximity of his voice that the reporter was following her up the walkway. “Is it true Tommy Campbell’s body was found posed like a statue in Earl Dodd’s garden? A statue by Michelangelo?”
Cathy-at the door fumbling with her keys-felt Sam Markham leave her.
“This is private property,” she heard the FBI agent say calmly. “Please move back to the sidewalk.”
The reporter ignored him.
“Ms. Hildebrant, is it true Tommy Campbell’s body was painted white like a statue by Michelangelo called Bacchus?”
Cathy did not see Sam Markham push the camera, did not see him make a grab for the reporter’s arm as she entered her apartment.
“Hands off the equipment, pal,” Cathy heard the reporter say. She turned around only when she was safely behind the storm door, and saw that the Channel 9 Eye-Team was now backing away from Markham down the walkway.
“I’m a federal agent and you’re trespassing on private property,” said Markham, holding up his ID badge. “If you won’t comply with my verbal command, I have the legal authority to escort you from the premises by force. Now I’ve warned you once. Please stay off this property.”
The reporter was unfazed.
“Can you tell us whether or not there is any truth to the claim that the bodies of Tommy Campbell and another person were posed like this Bacchus? Are you aware of what this statue looks like? That the other body could be that of a child?”
“I am not at liberty to comment on the case at present. A press conference has been scheduled-might have even started. If you hurry, you might be able to catch it.”
Special Agent Sam Markham headed back toward Cathy’s house, leaving the reporter on the sidewalk to call after him with a barrage of unanswered questions.
“Sorry about that,” Markham said once he was inside. “Someone, a local cop probably, must have leaked your involvement with the case. I didn’t expect them to find out so soon-didn’t expect them to come after you.”
Cathy was shaken; she just stood there in the front hall-arms folded, heart racing.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at the floor. “I really am involved in this, aren’t I?”
“I’m sorry, but yes.” Markham reached into his jacket pocket. “Here’s my card. Call me on my cell anytime if you need anything-if you get spooked, if you think of something down the road that might help us with our investigation, or even if you just need to talk. We’ve had some agents watching your place since this morning. That’s who called me a few minutes ago-said the news van had arrived only seconds before we did. Bad timing for you and me, but that’s just the way things are. Now listen, Cathy, these agents are going to keep an eye on you for a while-for your safety, and in case Tommy Campbell’s killer tries to approach you. You most likely will never see them, so please try to forget they’re around, okay?”
“Forget? You mean, you’re saying you think Tommy Campbell’s killer will come after me now? And you want me to forget?”
“No. Actually, Cathy, I don’t think he’ll come after you at all. In fact, judging from my experience, I would say that the circumstances suggest just the opposite. Campbell ’s killer went out of his way to draw attention to you. The last thing he’d want now is to see something happen to you. No, he’ll most likely stay away from you for a while now that he’s finished his work and now that other people are aware of his connection with you. All this is just a precaution, Cathy, in case he tries to make contact with you, to leave you another note-that is, if the notes you received five years ago are related to Campbell ’s murder to begin with.”
“They are, Sam. You know they are.”
“I can’t be sure-might be just a strange coincidence. However, since it’s all we have to go on right now, we’ll see how far that road leads us. Now listen carefully, Cathy. Even though the press somehow got wind of what happened to Campbell and that boy, and even though they know you’ve been brought into the investigation, I’m not sure if they know yet about the inscription at the base of the statue. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep that detail quiet for a while. That said, even after the press conference this afternoon, I suggest you don’t say anything to anyone about the case-more for your own sake than for the integrity of the investigation. Say you’ve been advised not to discuss the case with the press. That’ll usually send them packing after a while. Trust me, Cathy, the last thing you want right now is for the press to know the extent to which you’re involved in this. In fact, if my gut is right, I think that’s just what the killer wants to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s obvious that whoever murdered Tommy Campbell and that boy had been planning this crime for a long time-perhaps even years. Although I’m sure there must be a deeper reason as to exactly why the killer chose Campbell for his Bacchus, one cannot deny the superficial resemblance between the football player and Michelangelo’s original. That means, in addition to my earlier theory about the connection with Tommaso Cavalieri, the killer could possibly have selected Campbell simply for the reason that he looked like Bacchus. He wanted to use him, like Dodd’s topiary garden, specifically for aesthetic purposes, and was willing to go to great lengths to do so-would not settle for a more, I hate to say it, convenient victim. So, you see? Even though we’re not sure yet of his motives, we can nonetheless conclude that we’re dealing with a very patient and methodical individual-obsessively so on both accounts. These types of killers are the hardest to catch because they plan so well-pay so much attention to detail and don’t leave many clues behind. And until the autopsy results come back, until we get an idea of exactly how this person murdered and preserved his victims-how he actually created that sick sculpture of his-the only window into his motives right now is you. You and your book.”
“So you’re saying you think this maniac is using me?”
“Perhaps. I’ll have a better idea once I read your book. But judging from the great lengths to which the killer went to put his sculpture on display in Dodd’s garden-a display that the killer obviously intended as some kind of historical allusion publicly dedicated to you-well, it’s clear to me, Cathy, that whoever did this horrible crime thought you of all people would understand his motives. And therefore it would also fall to you to help us-the FBI, the press, the public-understand his motives as well. So you see, Cathy, it appears the killer wants you to be his mouthpiece.”
Cathy was silent, dumbfounded-her mind swept up in a tornado of questions that numbed her into disbelief.
“I’ll be in touch very soon, Cathy. And remember to call me if you need anything, okay?”
Cathy nodded absently; heard herself say “thank you” in a voice far away.
A blink forward in time to her cell phone ringing in the kitchen, upon which she realized she’d been zoning in the hall.
However, only when Cathy heard Janet Polk say “Hildy?” on the other end did she realize Sam Markham had left.
Laurie Wenick stood before the open refrigerator and began to tremble. It had been seven months since her son’s disappearance, seven months since he failed to come home for dinner one afternoon-a cool, otherwise lovely September afternoon when his friends said they left him playing in the woods around Blackamore Pond. And so it happened that, when Laurie stared down at the cold jar of Smucker’s in her hand, when she realized that for the first time in seven months she had unconsciously gone to the refrigerator to prepare her son’s lunch for the next day-peanut butter and jelly on homemade bread that her son said made all the other fourth graders at Eden Park Elementary School jealous-more than grief, more than the profound loneliness to which she had grown accustomed, the single mother of one was overwhelmed with a sweeping sense of panic-a premonition that something very, very bad had happened.
She had gone to bed at 8:00 A.M. like she usually did on Sundays; had worked the night shift at Rhode Island Hospital as she had done now for months-for it was the nighttime, the darkness of her Cranston duplex that had become too much for Laurie Wenick to bear. And on those rare occasions when she took the night off, the pretty young nurse would spend her evenings next door at her father’s-alone, watching TV until the sun came up, at which point she would return to her apartment and sleep through the day. She was like “a vampire” her father said-a rare and ineffectual stab at humor in what for both of them had become a dark and humorless world.
Indeed, despite her anguish, Laurie had understood from the beginning that her son’s disappearance had devastated her father almost as much as it had her; and over the last seven months the two of them had often traded shoulders for each other in their moments of greatest weakness. At first their sorrow had been colored with the hope that Michael Wenick would be found, for this was Rhode Island, and children simply did not go missing in Rhode Island, did not disappear into thin air without a trace. Oh yes, Laurie had read the statistics, had spoken with the state police countless times about her son; and as far as she could tell there was only one missing child case still unsolved in the Ocean State-and that one went all the way back to the mid-1980s.
However, as the days then weeks plodded on, as divers scoured Blackamore Pond a second and then a third time, as the volunteer searches ended and the pictures appeared on the news less frequently, the statistics that claimed young Michael Wenick would return to Laurie and her father safe and sound were soon overshadowed by the grim reality of the contrary. And when the months began to pile up, when Christmas came and went without a single clue to her son’s whereabouts, Laurie and her father fell deeper and deeper into a state of numb detachment. It was as if the two of them existed in a zone somewhere between life and death-a pair of zombies, Laurie thought, who had the unique ability to watch themselves as they mechanically went through the motions of living.
Ever since Michael Wenick was born it had been just the three of them in that duplex on Lexington Avenue -the cute, two-story one at the bottom of the hill not even fifty yards from the shores of Blackamore Pond. Laurie’s parents divorced when she was in kindergarten, but she had only lived with her father since her senior year of high school-moved in with him when her mother threw her out of the house for getting herself pregnant. Laurie’s boyfriend, Michael’s father, took off to live with relatives in Florida never to be heard from again-a bit of pretty luck for which John Wenick was always secretly thankful. The burly ex-club boxer never liked his daughter’s boyfriend-that rap-loving, baggy-panted punk with the license plate GNGSTA1. In fact, John Wenick had actually gone after the son of a bitch with a baseball bat when Laurie showed up in tears on his doorstep-her boyfriend, she had said, had denied the baby was his. Yes, John Wenick would have buried his Louisville Slugger deep in the scrawny Eminem-wannabe’s head had he found him; most certainly would have ended up in jail for murder. And only after he calmed down, only after the little fucker ran away to Florida two days later did John Wenick wonder if it also hadn’t been a stroke of luck that “Gangsta Number One” had been off getting stoned with his friends when he had gone looking for him.
John Wenick worked for the state; had been a supervisor at the landfill for over twenty years. And after his grandson was born, he scraped enough of his savings together to place a down payment on the duplex at the bottom of the hill-the same duplex in which he had lived ever since his divorce from Laurie’s mother. Between himself and his ex-wife, John Wenick knew that he had always been Laurie’s favorite, for he had a special bond with his daughter that his alcoholic ex could never understand. And even though Laurie’s mother retained custody of her after the divorce, their relationship at best had always been strained. And so it was only natural that Laurie should have spent the majority of her time at her father’s-that is, until she started hanging out with Gangsta Number One. And so it was also only natural that John Wenick should have felt somewhat responsible for his daughter’s predicament-that if only he had kept an eye on her, if only he had kicked Gangsta Number One’s ass at the beginning, all this would never have happened. Hence, John Wenick decided to let Laurie live with him for good-was more than happy to set up his daughter and little Michael next door; actually considered it his duty to look after the boy when Laurie enrolled in nursing school.
But more than a sense of responsibility, more than a sense of obligation, John Wenick looked after his grandson because he loved him as if he were his own. And ever since little Michael was five years old, almost every Saturday morning during the summers the two of them could be found fishing at the end of the short driveway that branched off from Lexington Avenue to the woody banks of Blackamore Pond. Without a doubt, Michael Wenick loved to fish more than anything else in the world-even more than the Nintendo Wii his grandfather had bought for him the previous Christmas. And how thrilled Michael had been when, the summer before he disappeared, his grandfather took him fishing on a boat off the coast of Block Island! For young Michael Wenick it had been the experience of his short lifetime; for his grandfather, it had been only one of the many happy chapters fate had written since his daughter moved in with him for good nine years earlier.
And so it came as an unfathomable shock to the Wenicks-to the entire community, to the entire state-when on a cool September afternoon sometime between 4:30 and 6:00 little Michael Wenick vanished without a trace from the woods around Blackamore Pond. The Wenicks and the people of Lexington Avenue could never have dreamed of such a thing happening in their neighborhood-in the very woods where their children played; in the very woods where they themselves had played when they were children, too. No, the Wenicks, the police, the people of Cranston had no idea that a stranger had entered their midst; had no idea that The Sculptor had been watching little Michael Wenick for weeks-ever since he randomly spotted him walking home from the Cranston Pool one day with two of his companions. Yes, The Sculptor knew immediately that the boy’s slight, somewhat small-for-his-age torso would be perfect for the upper half of his satyr. And whereas Laurie and John Wenick would never have been able to comprehend the possibility that fate would soon snatch their little Michael from their lives, The Sculptor had understood upon the sight of him that he and his satyr had been destined to come together that day.
And so The Sculptor studied his satyr’s movements-followed him home, always at a distance, at first from the pool during the summer, and then from Eden Park Elementary School in the fall; watched him from across the water as he fished with an older man with forearms like Popeye; spied on him with binoculars while he played with his two friends by the big drainpipe in the woods at the northern edge of Blackamore Pond. The satyr was the smallest of the three boys, but he more than made up for his size in daring. Someone, perhaps an older kid, had attached a rope to one of the larger branches, and on many occasions The Sculptor watched the two bigger boys look on in awe as his satyr swung like Tarzan farther and farther out over Blackamore Pond. One afternoon, the tallest of the three boys brought some firecrackers, and The Sculptor could not help but laugh out loud when he saw his satyr drop one into an empty beer bottle and then dive behind a tree.
Yes, The Sculptor had thought. My satyr certainly is a mischievous one.
And perhaps it was ultimately Michael Wenick’s mischievousness that brought him and The Sculptor together on that cool September afternoon. The Sculptor had discovered that often his satyr would remain behind in the woods after his companions had gone home for dinner, whereupon he would throw various objects out into the water-usually just large stones, but sometimes bottles and cans, and once even a rubber tire. But always his satyr stayed close to the big drainpipe, or to the tiny, open shoreline beneath the high cement retaining wall of one of the backyards that directly overlooked the pond. And so The Sculptor decided that the safer of the two areas would be by the big drainpipe, for in order to capture his satyr he could not allow himself to be seen; yes, in order to acquire the first figure for his Bacchus he would have to be very, very careful.
The Sculptor had studied the satellite imagery of Blackamore Pond many times on Yahoo! Maps, but the first time he actually set foot in the surrounding woods was at night-after the older kids who smoked cigarettes and drank beer by the retaining wall had all gone home. He parked his blue Toyota Camry-one of two cars he owned in addition to his big white van-on a street nearby and used his night vision goggles to negotiate his way through the dense terrain.
The mouth of the drainpipe was large enough even for him to crouch into, and with his night vision The Sculptor had no trouble seeing down almost half the length of the shaft. He slipped a plastic bag over each of his sneakers, a plastic glove over each of his hands, and entered the pipe. The smell was not too bad-musty and swampy-but the air felt uncomfortably thick and damp in The Sculptor’s lungs. Fortunately, The Sculptor had to go only about forty yards before he found what he was looking for: the manhole cover and the runoff opening to the adjoining street. Here, in the storm drain at the end of the pipe, The Sculptor could stand up straight; could see his tires through the narrow slit in the curb-right where he parked his car not even fifteen minutes earlier. And with a heavy push, The Sculptor lifted the manhole cover and peeked out.
The location was perfect.
As he had learned from Yahoo! Maps, the storm drain was located at the end of a street named Shirley Boulevard -a quiet, middle-class lane just two blocks over from Lexington Avenue, the street on which his satyr lived with the Popeye-armed fisherman and the pretty blond nurse who drove a Hyundai. The Sculptor had cased this part of Shirley Boulevard during the daytime; knew that most of the people did not return home until around 5:15 P.M.; knew that even in broad daylight the surrounding foliage would conceal him from the nearby houses when he emerged from the manhole-a manhole that was just big enough for the massively muscled Sculptor to squeeze through. There was no sidewalk here, only a concrete slab that capped the sewer opening. And thus The Sculptor also knew that he would be vulnerable only from across the street; knew that it would be safer to get in and out of his car from the passenger’s side, upon which he could drop directly into the manhole.
It was almost too good to be true.
And so it was that The Sculptor waited in the drainpipe on four different occasions before he finally abducted Michael Wenick. Yes, there was always the chance that the satyr and his companions might venture into the drainpipe and discover him. And even though in the weeks that The Sculptor had been watching the boys he never once saw them step into the mouth of the dank, dark tube-probably already conquered that fear years ago, The Sculptor thought-nonetheless he was prepared with his night vision goggles and the silencer on his Sig Sauer.45 just in case. He did not want to kill the satyr’s companions-did not want to waste good material that others might want to use someday. However, The Sculptor had resigned himself from the beginning that he would do whatever was necessary to capture his satyr. Most of all, if he did as a last resort have to kill the satyr himself before he could get him back to the carriage house, he would try to aim for the back of his head. Yes, more important than his satyr’s awakening was The Sculptor’s desire not to damage his material.
Besides, The Sculptor thought, it is only through Bacchus’s awakening that the world shall be enlightened.
In the end, however, The Sculptor’s contingency plan was unnecessary. For on the last of the four consecutive afternoons in which he had waited in the sewer, when he saw by his watch that it was 4:35, when he crept to the edge of the shadows just shy of the entrance to the pipe, The Sculptor had a clear view of his satyr a few yards away at the shore. Finally he was alone-had thrown a beer bottle filled with dirt into the water and was trying to shatter it with rocks before it sank into the murky, polluted depths of Blackamore Pond. And before poor Michael Wenick had time to turn around at the sound of footsteps behind him, like a snake The Sculptor snatched him from the woody shoreline and pulled him back into the drainpipe.
The boy tried to scream, tried to struggle against his abductor’s grip as the darkness of the drainpipe closed in around him, but the catcher’s mitt-size hand over his mouth, the vicelike grip around his neck and torso was too much for him-so much so that by the time The Sculptor got Michael Wenick back to the storm drain at the other end the boy was already dead.
No, not until he released Michael Wenick and the boy’s lifeless body fell to the ground did The Sculptor realize that, as he had struggled and twisted with his satyr down the drainpipe, he had inadvertently snapped the boy’s neck; no, not until that very moment did The Sculptor truly understand his own strength. And just as he had not needed to use his.45 on the satyr’s companions, the nylon cord and the bottle of chloroform that he had brought with him would now be unnecessary also. The Sculptor thus stuffed the boy’s body in a duffel bag and slid off the manhole cover. The coast clear, he pushed the bag onto the concrete slab and lifted himself out of the sewer.
In less than a minute The Sculptor had gathered his things and was speeding away down Shirley Boulevard -his satyr stowed safely in the duffel bag on the backseat. And although he was somewhat disappointed that his little satyr would not be able to see what lay in store for him, would not be able to awaken before the image of what he was to become, as The Sculptor drove back to his home in East Greenwich, he nonetheless felt a bit giddy that the first part of his plan had been so successful.
Yes, it had almost been too easy.
Had Laurie Wenick known at that moment exactly what had happened to her son; had she known on that cool September afternoon that her little Michael had been spared the terror, the brutality of The Sculptor’s plans for him back at the carriage house, she most likely would not have been comforted. Indeed, as she stared down at the jar of Smucker’s jelly in her hands, the pretty young nurse felt all at once as if the ordeal of the last seven months was suddenly tumbling down on her. She began to hyperventilate, to tremble, and nearly dropped the jar of jelly before she fumbled it onto the counter.
Something had happened. Something was wrong.
Laurie could feel it.
She had not turned on the television since before going to bed that morning-had been sleeping her vampire’s sleep when the news of Tommy Campbell made the headlines. And so it happened that, as she stood shivering with panic in the kitchen, Laurie Wenick was entirely unaware that the star Rebel’s corpse had been discovered down at Watch Hill. Even if she had been watching TV when the story broke; even if she had learned that another body had been found along with Campbell’s, Laurie would not have made the connection with her son-for the state police, the FBI had long ago ruled out any link between the disappearance of Tommy Campbell and that of little Michael Wenick. In fact, the authorities had insisted on just the opposite, and even though she was more than willing to believe them, in the months following the wide receiver’s disappearance Laurie began to resent the constant media attention given to the case-a case that completely overshadowed her own. Indeed, the Campbell case made Laurie feel as if her son had been abducted all over again-even if it was only from the minds of her fellow Rhode Islanders.
On any other day, had Laurie Wenick not reached for the jar of jelly, had she gone instead for her coffee and settled herself in front of the television as she usually did before work, the press conference that was beginning on the steps of the Westerly Police station might have actually come as a relief to her-for now, with the discovery of Tommy Campbell, the authorities and the media would once again focus on the search for her son. Today, however, in the wake of her panic, in the wake of her premonition, had she had time to get to the remote before the doorbell rang-despite what the authorities had told her in the past, despite all the assurances that the disappearances of Tommy Campbell and her son were not related-Laurie Wenick would have understood at once that the unidentified body of which the FBI Agent was speaking was her son Michael.
Instead, Laurie stood frozen before the refrigerator as the doorbell dinged a second time-the chimes from the other room clanging in her ears like church bells. And like an egg, Laurie’s mind suddenly cracked with the numb realization that it could not be her father-that it was too early for him to have returned from hunting crows in Connecticut with her uncle.
Here again was the zombie-her movements not her own, watching herself as she made her way to the front door. Through the peephole, she saw two men-serious looking men with short hair and blue jackets. Laurie did not recognize them-had never met them before-but knew them nonetheless; had seen many others like them in the last seven months. A voice somewhere in the back of her mind assured her that the storm door was locked just in case (for her father taught her always to lock the storm door) and Laurie watched herself-that woman in the bathrobe, that woman who looks so tired and hollow-turn the dead bolt.
“Yes?”
The man on the front steps held up his ID. His lips were moving but Laurie could not hear him through the glass; for upon the sight of those three little letters-FBI-Laurie Wenick went deaf with the overwhelming terror of understanding.
No, little Michael Wenick’s mother did not need the FBI, the press conference in Westerly to tell her why she had reached for the jar of jelly. She would have been unable to hear them anyway; for just as her fragile eggshell mind cracked again under the weight of her anguish, the once pretty young nurse watched herself collapse into the black.
Yes, all at once Laurie Wenick fainted, for all at once she knew that her son was dead.
Bill Burrell sat with Thomas Campbell Sr. in his den, their coffee long gone cold. Neither of them had drunk much, for their cups were only props in a scene they had played many times over the last three months. The set was the same-the comfy leather chairs, the bookcases, the warm paneled walls peppered with family photographs. Today, however, the mood, the color of the scene was different, for today the wealthy businessman had finally learned what had become of his only son. And as Special Agent Rachel Sullivan concluded her press conference on the television in the corner, as if on cue a thud was heard above Burrell’s head.
“She’ll be fine,” said Campbell, clicking the remote. “Her sister is up there with her. Probably dropped something is all.”
In the awkward silence that followed, Burrell took a sip of his cold coffee. Instant. Bitter. Maggie Campbell did not make it for him today; did not brew her special blend of Sumatra as she usually did on the SAC’s visits. No, Burrell had learned from Agent Sullivan that, upon identifying her son, upon seeing him frozen white in the horror that was Bacchus, Maggie Campbell had gone first into shock, then into a fit of inconsolable hysteria-so much so that by the time Burrell arrived at the house on Foster Cove later that afternoon, Tommy Campbell’s mother had since collapsed into her bed upstairs, exhausted from her bout with borderline madness. And save for the handful of reporters that still lingered at the end of the driveway, the house in which Rhode Island ’s favorite son grew up was as quiet as a tomb.
“Someone was found dead on this property, too,” Campbell said. “Did you know that, Bill?”
Burrell looked up from his coffee. Thomas Campbell was staring back at him blankly-his eyes like slits, red from weeping; a haggard shell of the man standing with his son in the photograph on the bookshelf behind him.
“In the summer of 1940,” Campbell continued. “Out on the front lawn, a caretaker for the family who owned the house before us. Story goes he was attacking their boy, and a couple of strangers just happened to be passing by. Stabbed the guy dead and then took off. The boy was there the whole time-saw the whole thing. Went on to become a famous movie director-made all those horror pictures in the sixties and seventies. Died last year. Remember him?”
Burrell nodded vaguely.
“Saw a bunch of his movies when I was a kid-scared the hell out of me. We bought the house from his uncle-gosh, going on almost thirty years ago now. Nice old fella-his uncle, I mean. A lot of those old-timers around here still remember all that-the story about the murder and all. Tommy had heard that story, too. When he was a kid. And for years he used to swear that there was a ghost in this house. You know how kids are. But you know what, Bill? I remember him telling me, even when he was little, that he wasn’t afraid-that he hoped they could be friends someday, he and the ghost. Isn’t that something? A little kid not being afraid of ghosts?”
Burrell nodded, looking down again at his cup.
“That’s the kind of boy my Tommy was,” Campbell said, his voice beginning to break. “A good friend to everybody. Not afraid to love even a ghost.”
“I know, Tom. He was a good kid. The best.”
“It’s why they took advantage of him out there in that world of his-those people, that slut model he asked to marry him. He was so trusting. He just thought that everybody who smiled at him meant it the same way he did when he smiled back-that’s why that whoring cunt was able to break my boy’s heart.”
Burrell was silent. They had been over it before-had long ago exhausted the possibility that Tommy’s ex-fiancée, Italian supermodel Victoria Magnone, was somehow involved in the star Rebel’s disappearance. Even before Burrell had met Tommy Campbell’s father, even before the wide receiver had gone missing, the SAC had followed the young couple’s very public romance and breakup in the media-couldn’t help but hear about it every time he turned on the TV or clicked on his goddamn Yahoo! homepage to check his stocks. But what the media hadn’t told him, what Burrell hadn’t learned until he met Tommy Campbell’s father, was the degree to which the ending of their relationship had broken the boy’s heart. Only after spending time with the Campbells at their house on Foster Cove, only after learning about the loving son behind the image portrayed of him in the media did Bill Burrell begin to feel guilty. For as many times as he had watched him play for the Rebels on TV, as many times as he had seen his image splattered across the Internet and on the covers of magazines, only after Bill Burrell met the missing footballer’s grieving parents did he start to think of Tommy Campbell as human.
“Tell me, Bill-tell me you know why somebody would want to hurt my boy.”
Burrell could say nothing-could only drop his gaze back into his cup-for now that Tommy Campbell had been found, now that the moment for which they had waited three months had finally arrived, incredibly the SAC could not bring himself to comment, let alone ask his friend any more questions. Thomas Campbell Sr. thus turned once again to the television-his eyes as blank as the screen on which only moments before Rachel Sullivan had confirmed for the rest of America what he already knew.
Special Agent in Charge Bill Burrell was satisfied with the way his girl had fielded the press’s questions, but at the same time he was deeply disturbed-angry, of course, because they had to put on the fucking sideshow in the first place and because the news of Tommy Campbell’s murder had been leaked to the press before he gave the go. Oh yes, he would find out who opened his mouth; and when he did, Bulldog would take great pleasure in personally shutting it for them.
However, it was the flurry of questions at the end of the press conference that really bothered the SAC-questions that seemed to bother even the reporter who asked them. Burrell, of course, had no way of knowing that O’Neill had just been fed the information through her earpiece. He had no way of knowing that the reporter was at the same time irritated that her five hundred dollars had failed to yield this little tidbit of information: that Tommy Campbell and the unidentified person with whom he was discovered had been posed to look like a statue. A statue by Michelangelo. A statue by the name of Bacchus.
Even though only a handful of Westerly policemen knew the details about the statue, even though over a dozen state troopers had been brought in immediately to help secure the area around Dodd’s estate, it had been the FBI who-upon their initial forensic inspection of The Sculptor’s exhibit-discovered the dedication to Dr. Hildebrant beneath a light covering of beach sand on the base of the statue. And so it happened that, prior to Burrell’s arrival at the crime scene, Special Agent Sam Markham had given strict orders not to mention the art history professor’s name in the company of anyone other than federal agents. And so, as Burrell had watched Rachel Sullivan refuse to comment on the WNRI reporter’s questions, one thing became painfully clear: that even if a policeman, local or state, had recognized the statue to be a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Bacchus, it would have had to have been one of his guys that spilled the beans about Hildebrant-unless, of course, the killer had telephoned the media himself.
Either way, neither option sat well with him.
The only bonus about the whole mess, however, was that the WNRI reporter asked no questions about the inscription itself-did not seem to know exactly why Dr. Catherine Hildebrant had been called to the crime scene other than as an expert consultant. That was good, for that meant the FBI still might be able to do their job without a bunch of media attention on Hildebrant and her book. The media might leave her alone once the initial story blew over. Burrell liked the pretty professor-not because she reminded him of his wife, but because he could tell by the way she examined the bodies of Tommy Campbell and the boy that she was strong. Burrell liked that. Yes, indeed. One could say that Bill Burrell even admired her.
Thomas Campbell, on the other hand, was oblivious to Dr. Catherine Hildebrant-did not even ask Burrell who she was when Meghan O’Neill mentioned her name. In fact, Tommy Campbell’s father seemed to accept the media frenzy in front of the Westerly Police station as simply the next necessary step in the mourning for his son; did not even question Burrell as to how the information about the statue leaked out to the public-information that he himself had known since early that morning. No, his thoughts were only for his son-his son and someone else’s.
“Once they see that statue,” Campbell said, staring at the empty television screen, “the real one, I mean. Once they look it up online and see that the figure behind my son looks like a child, they-the people of Rhode Island at least-they’re going to know it’s that Wenick boy.”
“I know. We’ve got some people at her house now. Just glad they got there before all this about the statue came out.”
Although in the creation of his satyr The Sculptor had significantly altered Michael Wenick’s face-the tiny horns atop his forehead, the pointy ears, the mischievous half grimace of his mouth on the grapes-it had been a Rhode Island state trooper who, upon the FBI’s arrival, had first alerted them to the boy’s possible identity. And after the obligatory search of the missing person databases, after all the pictures and physical descriptions had been compared and analyzed, all signs did indeed point to little Michael Wenick. Burrell knew, however, that they had to be sure before they approached the boy’s mother, and that they would then need a positive ID from her before any information could be presented to the public requesting their assistance.
But how do you tell a mother her son has been sawed in half? How do you tell a mother her child has been given a pair of goat’s legs and been stuffed to look like a devil? What’s even worse, how do you show her? And although Bill Burrell had initially felt guilty for arriving at Dodd’s estate after Thomas and Maggie Campbell had left-after it took two state troopers, in addition to Thomas and his sister-in-law, to get the hysterical mother back home-now, sitting as he was in the den with the man who had in three months become a valued friend, the SAC felt even guiltier for his secret relief at not having had to break the news to the Campbells himself.
No. Even after twenty years with the Bureau, things just never got any easier.
“She’s sleeping now,” whispered a voice from the hall. In the doorway was Maggie Campbell’s twin sister-or a ghost, Burrell thought. A ghost of what Maggie Campbell looked like before her son’s disappearance, before she lost all that weight. He had met the woman before-had mistaken her once for Maggie-but for the life of him could not remember her name.
“Anything else I can do for you, Tom?” she asked. “Before I lay down for a bit?”
“No. Thank you, love. Please, get some rest.”
The ghost smiled wearily, nodded to Burrell, then disappeared back into the shadows outside the den.
“She’s a good girl,” Campbell said. “Been a big help to us from the beginning.”
Tommy Campbell’s father offered nothing more about his sister-in-law-no name to bail Burrell out of his embarrassment for forgetting.
No, the sad-eyed father with the snow white hair just stared silently into the empty television screen as if he were waiting for a commercial to finish-the prop that was his coffee cold and unmoved in his lap as it had been now for almost an hour.
No, Burrell thought. After twenty years with the Bureau it just never gets any fucking easier.
“Here you go, Hildy,” said Janet Polk. “This is the stuff I was telling you about-the stuff my friend over in Anthropology gave me. It smells funky, but it’ll relax you. I promise.”
Cathy held the cup of tea to her nose-a powerful odor reminiscent of curry making her wince.
“Just drink it, wimp.”
Cathy took a sip. It tasted wonderful. “Thank you,” she said.
“First fix is free,” said Dan Polk. “That’s how she rolls. Gets you hooked, then pimps you out on the street like the rest of us bitches.”
Cathy smiled for the first time since she left Sam Markham-had almost called him when the reporters began showing up at her door. But, as usual, it was Janet who came to her rescue; Janet who packed up her things and brought her back to her place across town. Cathy always liked coming to the Polks’ house in Cranston, especially in the evenings-the way the muted lamplight played off the antique furniture, off the leaves of their countless plants and the richly colored wallpaper that enveloped everything. But more than the house itself, more than coming back to the neighborhood where she grew up, Cathy just liked being with the Polks. She instantly became calm and centered around them-ol’ Jan n’ Dan, her best friends and surrogate parents. Dan was a retired real estate broker-an odd match for the brainy Dr. Polk, but somehow they made it work. Married for almost forty years, no children, but one of the happiest couples Cathy had ever met. And not since her mother’s death had Cathy felt so grateful to be with them.
“You’re going to have to talk to them sooner or later,” Janet said, settling herself next to her husband on the sofa. “You know that, right?”
“Yes,” said Cathy.
Janet had insisted on picking Cathy up after seeing the clip of her and Sam Markham on the news; got a little taste of media attention herself when she backed out of Cathy’s driveway and a reporter-the last remaining holdout after Cathy turned off her lights-asked her who she was. “None of your damn business!” she had snapped. And despite the gravity of the situation, Dan Polk could not help but laugh out loud when he saw that clip on CNN later that evening.
As was the case for the majority of Americans that evening, Cathy and the Polks sat glued to their television set as the media once again devoured their scraps of Tommy Campbell. The identity of the second body was released to the public around eight o’clock. Michael Wenick. The boy who had gone missing back in September, who had lived seven streets away from the Polks-only two streets away from the street on which Cathy grew up!
Unlike the rest of Rhode Islanders, Cathy had followed that story only superficially-did not watch or read much news the previous fall; had spent way too much time on her latest journal article. And in the months following her separation from Steve and the disappearance of Tommy Campbell, she had simply forgotten all about the little boy who had vanished from the woods around Blackamore Pond-the very same woods in which her mother forbade her to play as a child.
For that, for forgetting, Cathy felt ashamed.
What Cathy found even more disturbing was that she had not put two and two together when she saw the heinous sculpture in person. Had the figure in the background been only incidental to her? Had she been that overwhelmed by Tommy Campbell, by Bacchus, by the star of the exhibit?
And so, while the Polks watched the news in stunned silence, Cathy sat across the room staring past the TV-her mind secretly scrolling with passages from Slumbering in the Stone. She had not told Janet about the inscription at the base of the statue or about the possible connection between this nightmare and her book-a book that she had written not only as a testament to Michelangelo’s genius, but also as a critique of a celebrity obsessed culture asleep on a featherbed of mediocrity. Had her experience with the sculpture down at Watch Hill been a mirror of that very dynamic? Had she been so taken, so fascinated with Tommy Campbell-the football player, the celebrity she had once made time for on Sundays-that she did not even think about little Michael Wenick, the little boy whose disappearance got nowhere nearly as much attention as Campbell’s, and who ultimately, literally ended up taking a backseat to him-both in the minds of Rhode Islanders and the tableau of death in which he played a supporting role?
In essence, Cathy thought, is this psycho, the sculptor of this Bacchus trying to say the same thing I was? Is he holding up Michelangelo’s genius as the standard by which everything else should be judged? Is he, too, saying, “Shame on you world!” for accepting, for worshipping anything less?
Worship, Cathy said to herself, turning the word over and over again in her mind. They once worshipped Bacchus, god of wine, of celebration and theatre, of sexual excess; and now they worship Tommy Campbell, god of a meaningless game, of empty celebrity hookups and breakups, and now the worst of all media excesses.
Perhaps, answered another voice in Cathy’s head-a voice that sounded a lot like Sam Markham’s. But perhaps you’re looking too deeply in the wrong direction. Perhaps the killer not only chose his victims because they looked like the figures in Michelangelo’s original, but also because only the death of a public persona like Campbell’s, or the incomprehensible death of a child, could draw the kind of media attention you’re witnessing now. Maybe it takes that much nowadays to get through to us. Maybe the killer is trying to show us not only where our values are, but also, by virtue of his actions, how much it will take to wake us up.
Wake us up. Yes. Wake us up in some sick way to remind us of our own potential.
What do you mean? asked Sam Markham in her mind.
The deeper message in Slumbering in the Stone-the quote by Michelangelo upon which the title of the book is based.
Of course. The quote.
“The quotes,” Cathy said out loud.
“What’d you say, Hildy?”
“Excuse me, Jan. Is it okay if I use my cell phone in the kitchen?”
“Is everything all right, dear? Do you want us to turn off the television?”
“No, no, please,” Cathy said. Had she known that the FBI agent had already finished reading her book in his hotel room, that he, too, had drawn his own conclusions about the killer’s motives, Cathy might have had second thoughts about calling him. “I just remembered something I forgot to tell the FBI. But I’d like a little privacy. Is that okay, guys?”
“Of course,” said Dan Polk. “And while you’re in there, call the escort service for me. Tell ’em to send over Helga. Tall, blond, and a little Hulk Hoganesque is what I’m craving this evening.”
Janet elbowed him and Cathy disappeared into the kitchen-found her purse on the table and retrieved the FBI agent’s card. Samuel P. Markham, it read beneath the official seal. Supervisory Special Agent, Behavioral Analysis Unit-2.
“ Markham,” Cathy said to herself à la James Bond. “Samuel P. Markham. The ‘P.’ stands for ‘Pretty Damn Cool.’” Cathy smiled-felt the blood go warm in her cheeks-and dialed the number.
“Hello?” said the voice on the other end.
“Hello, Sam?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Cathy. Cathy Hildebrant.”
“Hi, Cathy. I was going to call you to see how you were doing, but I didn’t want to bother you. You’ve had quite a day. The reporters have left you alone, I take it?”
The FBI agent sounded different, Cathy thought-his voice tired and tight.
“Yes,” Cathy said. “I’m spending the night in Cranston with Janet Polk and her husband.” Markham did not say anything, and Cathy had the sneaking suspicion he already knew. “Anyway, we were watching TV and I saw they released the identity of that boy-the one who was murdered along with Tommy Campbell. Michael Wenick is his name.”
“Yes. We suspected it was him from the beginning, but couldn’t alert the public until we got confirmation from the medical examiner and the boy’s mother. It all came together shortly after I dropped you off.”
“He was a local, Sam-grew up in the same neighborhood as I did. And I feel awful for not recognizing him when we were down there at Watch Hill. It’s why I’m calling you.”
“What’s up?”
“I just remembered that, when we were talking about the anonymous quotes in connection to my book, well, I forgot to mention that the title of the book itself, Slumbering in the Stone, was also taken from a quote by Michelangelo.”
“‘The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell,’” Markham said. “‘Only the sculptor’s hand can break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone.’”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Cathy, flustered.
“I have your book right here in front of me. Just finished skimming through it about a half an hour ago. Interesting stuff.”
“Thank you,” Cathy said, suddenly nervous. “Well, you see, Sam, upon its initial publication, Slumbering in the Stone was met with quite a bit of controversy in academic circles-beginning with my interpretation of that quote. What I mean is, the traditional translation of Michelangelo’s Italian held that the word ‘only’ in the last half of the quote came after the word ‘can.’ Thus, for years the statement was thought to have read, ‘The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone.’ I won’t bore you with the details, but through my research I discovered that the word ‘only’ should actually come at the beginning of the sentence. Therefore, the quote should really read, ‘Only the sculptor’s hand can break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone.’ You see how it changes the meaning?”
“Yes,” said Markham -distantly, studying the quote. “It changes the emphasis entirely. The sculptor himself becomes of supreme importance, making him much more special-that he and only he has the power to release, to awaken the figures from their sleep inside the marble.”
“Exactly. Of course, Michelangelo is speaking metaphorically of the potential in a block of marble to become something beautiful, as well as the fact that only through the lens of true genius can this potential be seen. But the artist is also speaking of the magical, nothing short of divine connection that he felt between himself and his creations, for it was from God that Michelangelo received not only his talent and inspiration, but also his torment.”
“Go on.”
“The classical tradition in which Michelangelo’s artistry is steeped-that is, the humanistic tradition hearkening back to the ancient Greeks-held that the male body was aesthetically superior to the female. It is a well-known fact that homosexuality was an integral part of ancient Greek culture, but not in the way we think of homosexuality today-or during Michelangelo’s time, for that matter. And remember, of course, that we are just talking about men here, for women in ancient Greece were viewed as little better than livestock. You see, although pretty much any type of sexual exploit was open to the male, exclusive homosexuality was actually frowned upon in ancient Greece. And they most certainly didn’t define a man by his sexual orientation the way we do today. In fact, sexual relations between men-usually between an older man and an adolescent boy between the ages of thirteen and nineteen-were not necessarily seen as a sexual act at all, but as an educational rite of passage into manhood. It was through the exploration of the male body that Greek men could experience the highest form of divinely inspired beauty-a realm, if you will, in which they could walk in the light of the gods. Sometimes the relationship between two males evolved into the deep, spiritual connection of love, and it is for this reason we see in Greek mythology love between two males much more highly prized than love between a man and a woman.
“We see such a dynamic in Michelangelo’s sculptures as well-the majority of which are male. The figure of the woman is only incidental for him, and Michelangelo’s lack of understanding of the female anatomy-such as his awkward placement of breasts and the rendering of female figures with large, manly frames-is evident throughout his career. For example, in another one of his famous sculptures, the Rome Pietà, we see the Madonna not only with oddly shaped breasts and an unusually large frame out of proportion with the Christ figure, but the entirety of her body is covered in heavy robes-almost as if Michelangelo is hiding her.”
“Yes,” said Markham. “You have some lovely photographs of it in your book.”
“I’m sorry if I’m getting off track, Sam, but what I’m saying is that the male figures in Michelangelo’s work are always exquisitely rendered with a kind of detail and authenticity out of proportion to the female-detail that indisputably proves the artist’s obsession with the male anatomy. And so it is also through such flawless rendering that we see the classical dynamic of ancient Greece played out not only in the final execution of Michelangelo’s sculptures, but also in his experience of sculpting them, for it was only through his work that Michelangelo could come close to communing with what he saw as divinely inspired beauty-a beauty, for him, accessible only by the sculptor’s hand.”
“So, if I follow you, you’re saying that, for Michelangelo, it was as much the experience of carving as it was the finished product?”
“Yes. Think of the torment the artist must have gone through, born as he was with an inherent appreciation, an inherent love for the male-both spiritually and sexually. A love that he saw bestowed upon him by God and intrinsically woven into the very nature of his gift-that miraculous gift, given only to the sculptor, to release the figures slumbering in the stone. And thus it was the very nature of this gift that was both Michelangelo’s sanctuary and his prison. This was a gift bestowed upon him by a God who at the same time forbade him to commune with his figures in the flesh-a God who condemned the kind of deep, spiritual love that Michelangelo so desperately craved with Tommaso Cavalieri; a God who gave Michelangelo the power to create beauty, but, in essence, not the permission to touch it.”
“So then Michelangelo is also speaking about himself. That he, too, is a figure trapped in the stone-a figure imprisoned in the marble shell of his homosexuality, and that only through the act of carving could he, for lack of a better phrase, make love with another man.”
“You could put it that way, yes.”
Markham was silent for a long time-a silence in which Cathy thought she could hear the special agent’s brain ticking; a silence that made Cathy so uncomfortable that she told Markham the gist of her Socratic dialogue on the sofa-neglecting, of course, to tell him that he had played Socrates to her Gorgias.
“Yes,” said Markham when she had finished. “In your book you quite often contrast Michelangelo’s artistry, as well as the world of the Italian Renaissance, with the artistic output of our culture today-specifically with regard to the media. How it dominates our culture, how it dictates what is important, but most significantly, how it physically shapes our intellect-literally, our physiological capacity not only to process information, but also to appreciate beauty. You speak of the detrimental effects of the Internet, of television and movies, and how they are altering, actually conditioning our brains not only to focus for shorter periods of time and with less efficiency, but also to accept a standard of excellence that gets progressively lower and lower. In essence, you are saying that, today, the quality of the marble from which we as human beings are shaped is meager stuff compared to the metaphorical marble of Michelangelo’s time.”
“That’s a lovely way of putting it, yes.”
“And only the sculptor’s hand-whether it’s Michelangelo’s or the twisted psychopath’s who murdered Campbell and Wenick-can free us from the marble prison that is the media. Our society today, we children of this celebrity infatuated culture, we are the figures slumbering in the stone.”
“Yes, Sam. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That would explain why he chose Campbell, and perhaps even that little boy. Or maybe, as you experienced in your examination of the statue, why he chose to portray them as Michelangelo’s Bacchus in the first place; a sculpture in which the god, the celebrity-by virtue not only of his size and orientation but also of the mythology he carries with him-dominates our thoughts.”
“It would also explain his contacting me via the quotes, don’t you think? Like the sculpture, the medium itself was part of his message-just as the quote at the beginning of my book was part of mine. In essence, the killer was saying to me, ‘I understand.’”
“And so the inscription on the base of the statue could just be the killer’s way of simply saying, ‘Thank you.’”
“Yes, I guess it could.”
Sam Markham was silent again-the flipping pages on the other end of Cathy’s cell phone the only sound.
“Thank you for calling me, Cathy,” he said finally. “You can’t imagine what a help you’ve been. I’ll be back and forth between Providence and Boston over the next few days while the autopsies are being performed. Procedure dictates that we collect as much evidence as possible and then send it off to our labs at Quantico for analysis. The way these things go, it’s better for the families to get their loved ones interred as soon as possible. I’ll be in touch. Try to get some rest, okay? Good night, Cathy.”
“Good night, Sam.”
Click.
Cathy stood in the kitchen feeling more at ease than she had all day, and despite the topic of their conversation, Cathy hated to admit that she had actually enjoyed talking to the FBI agent.
Must be the tea, said the voice in her head, and Cathy promptly told it to fuck off.
The Polks’ phone rang, and Cathy could hear Janet in the living room telling Steve Rogers that yes, Cathy was there, and no, she didn’t want to talk to him. Prick must have seen me on TV, Cathy thought. Then she smiled, for the scene playing out in the living room was one she had seen many times over the last few months. Yes, Janet knew all too well that, no matter what the occasion, when Cathy retreated to her home the last person in the world she would ever want to speak with was Steve Rogers.
“For the last time, Steven,” she heard Janet say. “I’m not going to give you her number. Now good night!”
Cathy returned to the living room to learn the Associated Press had confirmed that Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick had indeed been found painted and posed like Michelangelo’s Bacchus. And as Janet and Dan followed the details with shock and disgust, Cathy was secretly relieved when nothing was mentioned about the little dedication to her at the base of the statue. However, after CNN showed a picture of Michael Wenick on a split screen next to a close-up of Michelangelo’s satyr, the reality of what had happened that day once again came rushing back to her.
And tea or no tea, Cathy knew that, when the lights were out in the Polks’ guest room, it was the marble face of Michael Wenick that she would see hovering over her in the darkness.
It was not Michael Wenick that Sam Markham saw when he closed his eyes that night, or even the Bacchanalian visage of Tommy Campbell. No, there in the gloom of his Providence hotel room was only his wife Michelle. She came to him as she usually did, her presence inextricably linked with his solitude; a jigsaw puzzle of memory-some of which was jumbled into fuzzy pieces, while other parts fit together in segments of some larger picture, the border of which was never quite finished. Tonight, however, the memories of his Michelle brought with them the dull but crushing pain of longing-a pain that was always there for Sam Markham, but that most often lurked only in the deepest catacombs of his hardened heart.
It had been fourteen years since his wife’s murder at the hands of a serial rapist by the name of Elmer Stokes. Stokes-a brutish-looking but charming singer whose specialty was traditional sea shanty songs-had been performing for the summer at Mystic Seaport when he saw the pretty, twenty-six-year-old “scientist lady” taking some water samples with her colleagues. Stokes would later tell police that he had followed “the bitch and her scientist friends” back to the Aquarium, where he waited for her in his car until long after dark. His intention, he said, had only been to watch her, to “get a feel for her.” But when he saw the lovely Markham emerge from the Aquarium alone, he was overcome with the irresistible urge to take her then.
Elmer Stokes stated in his confession that he wore a ski mask and “pulled a pistol on the bitch.” When he ordered Markham into the backseat of her car, she screamed, and Stokes tried to subdue her. Michelle Markham fought back-kicking Stokes in the groin and biting him hard on his forearm. She managed to tear off the ski mask, and Stokes said it was then that he panicked. He shot her twice in the head and fled the scene in his beat-up ’85 Corolla. A coworker at Mystic Seaport spotted the bite marks on the shanty man’s forearm a couple days later and called the police. At first Elmer Stokes denied any involvement in the murder-a murder that rocked the sleepy little town of Mystic, Connecticut, to its core. However, when police recovered the pistol from the trunk of Stokes’s car, the lovable singer who had been such a hit with the kiddies that summer confessed. The authorities were eventually able to tie Elmer Stokes to nine rapes in four states going back over a decade.
Michelle Markham, however, had been his first and only murder.
It was Sam Markham who discovered his wife’s body lying next to her car in the Mystic Aquarium parking lot-had gone looking for her when she didn’t come home that night. The couple was less than a week shy of their two-year wedding anniversary, for which Markham had saved enough money from his meager English teacher’s salary to surprise Michelle with a weekend in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Their courtship had been brief-a six-month whirlwind of passion and romance followed by an elopement and the happiest two years of their lives. And so it was inevitable that, as Sam Markham sat cradling his wife’s head in a pool of blood, his entire world imploded into a downward spiral of grief.
Under Connecticut law, for the murder and attempted rape of Michelle Markham, Elmer Stokes received the death penalty. It was of little consolation to Sam Markham, who sat numb-eyed in the courtroom while his parents and Michelle’s family wept with relief at the judge’s sentence. Years later, when Markham’s sorrow had leveled, he would look back on that time following the trial of Elmer Stokes and invariably think of a crappy Disney movie he saw as a boy called The Black Hole, in which the main characters, protected by a special spaceship designed to resist the gravitational forces of the title entity, get sucked down into a hokey and ambiguous sequence where they travel through Heaven and Hell, only to emerge on the other side of the black hole in what appears to be another dimension.
And so it had been for Markham, for the black hole that had been the year following his wife’s murder compressed time into a confusing and hazy journey in which he felt like a bearded spaceship drifting aimlessly through the universe of his boyhood bedroom at his parents’. And although, unlike the characters in the Disney movie, Markham could remember little of the black hole that had been his mourning, he emerged on the other side with a decision to apply for a career as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Yes, a new dimension in Markham ’s life had begun.
With his newfound sense of purpose, the physically fit and always intellectually superior Markham quickly moved to the head of his class at the FBI Academy at Quantico. After graduation, over the next few years he followed the normal routine of rotating assignments until, while working as a special agent with the Tampa Office, he single-handedly brought down Jackson Briggs, the man the press had dubbed “The Sarasota Strangler”-a vicious serial killer and rapist who had been terrorizing Sarasota retirement communities for almost two years, and who, by the time Markham caught up with him, had a string of seven victims to his credit. Markham ’s efforts not only earned him a citation of merit from the FBI director himself, but also secured his position as a supervisory special agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico.
Yet through it all, Sam Markham walked alone. Thought simply a solitary man by some, perhaps aloof and arrogant by others, life for the special agent was his job and only his job. Unlike those who knew him, however, Markham was keenly aware of his own psyche-knew that it was his work that brought him closer to his wife; knew that, like a character in a movie, he was on a mission to avenge her death by sparing others the heartache he had suffered. And it was for this very reason that Sam Markham watched himself in his role as an FBI special agent with the same sense of detached cliché and boredom with which he had watched The Black Hole as a child. For underneath it all was a nagging sense of futility; an inherent cynicism and understanding that, even at the end, the movie would simply not pay off. Yes, when it came right down to it, Sam Markham knew as well as anybody that, no matter how many serial killers he brought down, he would never find peace until he joined his wife in the afterlife.
And so-even though it had been almost fifteen years since his wife’s murder and he had learned to accept his grief-Markham found it strange that, as he watched himself lying there in his Providence hotel room, the jigsaw puzzle that was the memory of his wife had been scattered across a tabletop of guilt. For tonight, mixed in with the images of Michelle were pieces from another puzzle-one that took Markham completely by surprise.
Of course, there had been other women over the last few years, but the FBI agent never allowed himself to get too close, never allowed himself to betray the memory of his wife in his heart. But now, with this art history professor from Brown, Markham was aware that something had happened; that something else besides his grief was stirring deep down in the catacombs of his heart-a something, for all his self-awareness, Markham did not quite understand, but at the same time in the role of detached moviegoer knew all too well. And so it was that, as he gazed down at the picture of Cathy Hildebrant on the back cover of Slumbering in the Stone, Markham watched himself for the first time long in his heart not only for his wife, but for another woman as well; and so it was that the FBI agent had also watched himself swallow his tears of guilt upon the art history professor’s phone call-a detail, Markham thought, that only added to the cliché of the movie that had become his life.
By the time he hung up with Cathy, however, Markham ’s mind was back on his work. The conversation-as much as it had settled him, as much as he had actually enjoyed speaking with the art history professor-confirmed for him the conclusion he had drawn from reading Slumbering in the Stone: that the murderer of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick was sending a message that was part of a much larger purpose-a purpose that involved the public. But rather than delving back into Cathy’s book, rather than contemplating the merits of Dr. Hildebrant’s theories as to just what that purpose was, after he closed his cell phone Markham found himself unable to take his eyes off the book’s cover-specifically, the close-up of David’s piercing but delicately carved eyes. Indeed, for almost ten minutes did Sam Markham become mesmerized by the visage that was Michelangelo’s David-so much so, that when his cell phone startled him from his trance, it took a moment for Markham to remember where he was.
“Yes?”
“You see the news?”
It was Bill Burrell.
“Not in the last couple of hours, no. I’ve been reading Dr. Hildebrant’s book.”
“Damn press,” grunted Burrell. “Already calling the son of a bitch ‘The Michelangelo Killer.’ And worse than all the pictures of that goddamn statue floating around is the word getting out about Hildebrant, about her involvement in the case. You think one of our guys could have rolled?”
“It’s possible. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer notified the press himself.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, it’s obvious that he wants attention, obvious that he’s sending a message, and that he wants the public to understand this message via the lens of Hildebrant’s book-almost like he intends Slumbering in the Stone to be some sort of owner’s manual for his creation. He went through a lot of trouble to execute this, Bill-to plan the murder of a celebrity like Campbell, to construct his Bacchus down to the minutest details, and to risk being discovered while installing the sculpture in Dodd’s garden. Consequently, I don’t think the killer would want to run the risk of the public misinterpreting his efforts.”
“All right, what have you got for me?”
“Half textbook, but the other half is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Beginning with the boilerplate stuff, he’s of the highly organized, highly intelligent variety. Other than what we’ll learn as a result of the autopsies, the only evidence the killer has left behind so far are those footprints-but he anticipated the possibility of a tread match and took the time to cover them. However, unless he was intentionally wearing bigger shoes, judging from the size of those footprints I’d peg him to be between six-three and six-six-most likely a white male, probably in his mid-to-late thirties, and definitely a loner. Would need a lot of time to accomplish his work, as well as a space in which to do so-perhaps a cellar or a garage. He’d also need a truck or a van to transport his creations. I would say that’s where the stereotype ends, however.”
“Go on.”
“The fact that he carried his statue alone tells us that he’s a man of incredible strength-probably either holds a job doing some kind of menial labor, or is perhaps a bodybuilder. I would tend to lean toward the latter, for not only is the killer very bright and apparently well educated, but also his apparent identification with Michelangelo in terms of both the artist’s homosexuality and his genius as a sculptor might indicate a desire for the same aesthetic quality in his own physique as well.”
“So you’re saying now you do think this guy is gay?”
“I can’t say one hundred percent, Bill. But judging from my conversations with Dr. Hildebrant and my cursory reading of her book, my gut tells me yes.”
“That’s good enough for me. What about the motive?”
“Well, barring any connection between Campbell and Wenick of which we’re presently unaware, again we have a situation where our man does not fit neatly into the usual categories. Other than the fact that both his victims were male-perhaps, one could argue, only an incidental criterion that Michelangelo’s Bacchus demanded of him-on one level, the killer seems to have chosen Campbell and Wenick simply because they looked like the figures in the original.”
“What’s the other level?”
“The killer’s message. Why he went through all the trouble to kill specifically Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick in the first place. Why he juxtaposed the wide receiver’s body with that of the boy’s, and then made the effort to exhibit his Bacchus in the garden of a wealthy banker down at Watch Hill-an obvious historical allusion to the exhibition of the original.”
“And the message you’re talking about is what?”
Markham gave Burrell a quick rundown of his conversation with Cathy, as well as their theories about the killer’s motives-that deeper message that The Michelangelo Killer had chiseled out of Cathy’s book: Only the sculptor’s hand can free the figures slumbering in the stone.
“So you think then that he’s a type of visionary killer?” asked Burrell. “You think he’s delusional? That he read into Hildebrant’s book a deeper message that told him to make statues out of people?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call him entirely delusional, Bill. Too much self-control, too much patience. No, I’d peg him somewhere between the visionary and missionary type, for I think Slumbering in the Stone clarified an urge to kill that was already there to begin with. It gave him a sense of purpose-not only, as I explained to you, in terms of ‘waking us up,’ but also, in light of his attempt to mimic the historical context of the original’s exhibition, perhaps to usher in a new Renaissance of thought. Maybe he’s trying to shock our culture into its next stage of evolution by harkening back to what he sees as an intellectually superior point in history. Perhaps he’s reminding us of a standard of excellence that has been lost, or at the very least, in his eyes, clouded by the mediocrity of media worship and empty celebrity.”
“And you don’t think sexual gratification is a factor?” asked Burrell, frustrated. “Even though both the victims were male and the killer, as you say, is a homosexual?”
Markham could tell by the sound of Burrell’s voice that the SAC did not want to entertain his hypothesis. Either all this intellectual nonsense was going over Burrell’s head, or the scope of Markham ’s theory on The Michelangelo Killer’s intentions was just too much for Bill Burrell to wrap his mind around.
“I hate to say this, Bill, but in a way I hope there is a sexual component to these murders-might actually make them easier to solve if we could follow a more visceral motive as opposed to an intellectual one. Yes, I think the killer does receive some kind of psychological gratification from his work, but the pattern of behavior thus far seems to indicate something else, something beyond his own, selfish interests-the totality of which we’ve never seen before. If, as I explained to you, the killer is in some sick way trying to imitate Michelangelo through his creations, then, although he may be sexually attracted to them, it would be inappropriate for him to consummate his relationship with them via the sexual act itself. Of course, I could be wrong. We won’t know for sure if there was any sexual assault until the autopsies are finished, let alone exactly how Campbell and Wenick were killed. And even then, given the state of the bodies, given the amount of chemicals and preservatives the killer must have used to achieve his goals, we might never know exactly what this guy did to his victims-if in fact Campbell and Wenick were his first victims.”
“You think he may have killed before?”
“Maybe not a human being, but I would be willing to bet the farm that the goat-the one from which he got the legs-had been the first to go. I’d also be willing to bet that the killer has a couple of cats and dogs to his credit, too. He knew what he was doing, Bill-chose Campbell and Wenick not only because they fit the vision of his Bacchus perfectly, but because he was ready for them. I don’t think he would let all the planning, all the effort he put into finding the perfect specimens go to waste unless he was completely sure that, at least in theory, his sculpture would work. Remember, Michelangelo had been carving reliefs and smaller sculptures for years before he broke onto the scene with his first life-size statue.”
“So what are you saying, Sam? You think this nut job is going to kill again? You think his message, as you say, goes beyond Campbell and that boy?”
“I hope to Christ no, Bill,” said Markham, flipping through his book. “I hope the same warped sense of purpose that caused him to murder Campbell and Wenick will also magnify in his mind the cultural significance of his creation to the point where he thinks he’s achieved his goal-that he thinks he’s done enough. But I’ll tell you this-if our man is in fact intent on killing again, it’ll be against the canon of Michelangelo’s sculptures from which he’ll select his victims. And, although I may be wrong, there’s a good chance those victims will be male. I just hope we can nab him before he begins his next project.”
Burrell was silent for a long time.
“I’m heading back to Boston as we speak,” the SAC said finally. “But I’ll be in the Providence office tomorrow. We got our team working with the state medical examiner on those autopsies, so hopefully we’ll get some solid leads to follow in the next couple of days.”
“Okay.”
“I assume Washington is going to put you on reassignment-that you’ll be joining us here at the Boston office for a while?”
“You know how those things go. If Gates feels I can better serve the investigation at Quantico, he’ll want to keep me there to help oversee things. Depending on what happens, there’s a good chance they’ll eventually want me back.”
“Then, off the record, it’s square with you if I personally ask Gates to have you reassigned to the Boston office, have you set up to work out of the Resident Agency in Providence-temporarily, that is?”
“I’d rather be local-do my best work on the street, yes.”
“Good. We’re going to need you on this one.”
“Okay.”
“And thanks, Sam.”
“Okay.”
Burrell hung up, but Markham did not bother to close his cell phone. No, once again the special agent found himself instantly transfixed by Catherine Hildebrant’s Slumbering in the Stone-only this time it was not the determined eyes of David that had captured his gaze. No, there on the page to which he had intentionally flipped during his conversation with the SAC was a picture of Michelangelo’s second major sculpture.
Yes, there lying in Sam Markham’s lap was the Rome Pietà.
Stretched out naked on the divan, The Sculptor let the last of his Brunello play over his tongue-the smoothness, the fruit driven warmth of the San-giovese grape a nice pairing, he thought, with the remaining heat from the fireplace before him. It was late and he was sleepy; he felt so relaxed, as if he were floating-the soft classical music surrounding him like a saline bath drawn especially for him. The Sculptor had allowed himself that evening a celebratory meal of lamb and risotto-a nice change of pace from all the protein shakes and nutritional supplements that made up the majority of his diet. Yes, he had earned this indulgence-the fatty lamb, the sugary wine, the carb-ridden risotto-but that meant he would have to work doubly hard in the cellar tomorrow, putting an extra ten pounds on each side of the bar during his bench press, for Monday was his chest, back, and shoulders day.
With the last of the fire fading, with the plans for his Bacchus long ago in ashes, The Sculptor heaved a heavy sigh at the thought of having to rise. The grandfather clock in the corner chimed its warning for the half hour-11:30-but The Sculptor wished to stay on the divan forever; wished to bask in his moment of triumph just a little bit longer.
Oh yes, it had been a lovely evening. After giving his father his supper and putting him to bed, while his lamb cooked and his risotto simmered on the stove, The Sculptor spent over an hour in the library-sat back naked in the big leather chair with his feet on the desk, sipping the last of some Amarone and nibbling from a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Quite a few books passed through his fingers, mostly older volumes in Italian, the pages with The Sculptor’s favorite passages long ago dog-eared-Boccaccio, Dante, Machiavelli. He read them slowly, sometimes twice-savoring the language with a sip of wine or a bite of cheese-and then moved on to others amidst a serenade of classical music by Tomaso Albinoni. It was the old routine The Sculptor relished, but one he had neglected as of late due to his work in the carriage house; and the library was filled with stacks of books in some places as tall as The Sculptor himself.
It was well after eight o’clock by the time The Sculptor finally sat down in the parlor with his lamb and his Brunello-the fire roaring, all but begging him for his Bacchus. And thus it was with no particular ceremony that The Sculptor threw the twisted log of plans into the flames-for his mind was already on his next sculpture. And there he sat alone for over three hours, eating his lamb and sipping his wine as the music from the library became a soundtrack for his thoughts-for what he imagined to be happening outside now that the world had received his Bacchus, and for what he imagined would happen in the future when the world received his next creation.
Soon, The Sculptor thought. Very, very soon.
His dinner done, his dishes washed, and the parlor clean, The Sculptor stepped out into the night-the cool April air popping his naked flesh into goose bumps as he made his way across the flagstone path toward the carriage house. He had not been back there since telephoning WNRI and communing with his Bacchus atop the mortician’s table. No, The Sculptor had wanted to prolong the anticipation of checking his technology until the very last minute, when he knew the totality of his exhibit would dominate the news. And as he climbed the stairs to the second floor, with every step The Sculptor’s heart beat faster and faster with excitement.
He entered the carriage house and immediately went for the computers. While they were booting, he turned on the television-Fox News, some blond lady live in front of Dodd’s estate blahdy-blahdy-blahding about a possible motive for the murders, about a possible connection to Earl Dodd. Yes, he had expected something like that-only a matter of time before that theory is put to rest, he thought. But when the blahdy-blah was soon accompanied by a picture of Michelangelo’s Bacchus, The Sculptor’s heart leapt with joy into his throat.
And so, instead of moving on to the Internet, The Sculptor waited-listened for the one word in the blahdy-blah that would confirm for him his triumph; the one word that would give him permission to proceed with his next project the following morning. And after about ten minutes, it fell from the blond lady’s lips like an angel from Heaven.
Hildebrant.
Yes, the blond lady was saying that a Brown University professor by the name of Catherine Hildebrant-“an expert on the works of Michelangelo”-had been brought in by the FBI as a consultant for the investigation. And although she could not be reached for comment, Hildebrant, the blond lady explained, had written one of the most widely read books on Michelangelo to come along since Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. The blond lady also explained that, even though Slumbering in the Stone had been met with some controversy in certain academic circles, it was a good primer for anyone interested in the artist and the relevancy of his work today.
It’s almost too good to be true, The Sculptor thought.
The Sculptor had known from the beginning that he would have to play the Hildebrant card carefully, for although he had wanted the media to know of her involvement in order to draw attention to her book, The Sculptor also knew that his plan might backfire if the public knew that Slumbering in the Stone had been the inspiration for his Bacchus. Yes, The Sculptor wanted to thank Dr. Hildy for all her help; yes, he wanted her to speak publicly about her book; but The Sculptor understood that if too much attention was paid to Slumbering in the Stone itself-that is, if the book became inextricably woven in the public consciousness with the murders as the Beatles’ White Album had over the years become with the demented intentions of Charles Manson-then the simplicity, the clarity of his message would be lost.
In addition, such a bombardment of misguided media attention might cause the shy Dr. Hildy to retreat from the public eye entirely. And how much better would it be if she didn’t? How much better would it be if the pretty art history professor went on television to talk about Michelangelo and perhaps about her book, too? Thus, the reason for the sand over the inscription at the base of the statue-a detail The Sculptor hoped would be discovered by the forensic teams after the police arrived; a detail that The Sculptor hoped could be kept from the public for a while-or at least until the interest in Slumbering in the Stone and Michelangelo had solidified.
Besides, The Sculptor thought, in the grand scheme of things, it was unimportant that the general public should catch on to-let alone understand completely-the deeper meaning, the deeper genius of his work in connection with Dr. Hildy’s book. No, of supreme importance was the public’s interest in the murders, for only through that interest could they be drawn closer to Michelangelo; only then could The Sculptor begin-without them even knowing it-to chisel away at the marble of confusion and misguided values that had become their prison.
Yes, only The Sculptor’s hand could free them from their slumber in the stone.
And so The Sculptor double-clicked on the desktop icon labeled Yahoo! The headlines, as he expected, were about the murders of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick. That was wonderful, but he would read them later-perhaps tomorrow morning after his 6:00 A.M. workout and before commencing the research for his next project. No, what The Sculptor was interested in at present lay in the bottom right hand corner of the Yahoo! homepage in the box titled, Today’s Top Searches.
At Number 2 was Tommy Campbell.
At Number 1 was Michelangelo.
The Sculptor smiled.
It had begun.