Two weeks later
Sam Markham sat at his desk in downtown Providence. He felt sick as he watched the police video for at least the hundredth time-pausing, rewinding, and playing in stop motion every move The Michelangelo Killer made. As with the video of Steve Rogers, the team in Boston had immediately set about enhancing the footage, and Markham could see everything that had happened in front of the Temple of Divine Spirit-not only the calm, methodical way in which The Michelangelo Killer slaughtered the two policemen, but also the Channel 9 Eye-Team logo streaking out of camera range.
Markham remembered seeing the van on the highway that night-oh how he remembered! Felt the urge to vomit every time he thought about how close he had been to the killer-just a few yards across the grassy median. But more than watching over and over again the brutal murders of the two Exeter policemen-murders for which the supervisory special agent felt partly responsible-what really made Markham sick was that, as was the case with the video of Steve Rogers, he could get no clues from it-could not determine anything other than the make of the van and the killer’s size and height.
Yes, even though The Michelangelo Killer was dressed entirely in black-a black ski mask, black gloves, and a tight fitting long-sleeve black shirt-Markham could clearly make out the killer’s physique against the white of the phony Eye-Team van: about six-five and very muscular-a bodybuilder, just as the celebrated profiler had suspected all along.
Of course, in the two weeks following the shocking exhibition of The Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà down at Echo Point Cemetery, the ballistics tests on the killer’s.45 caliber bullets and the leads on the van-a Chevy 2500 Express model that most likely was the same one reported stolen three years earlier-had so far turned up nothing. In addition, a still from the police video had been released on the Wednesday following the discovery of the Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà, but the public had given the FBI nothing but red herrings.
The public.
Markham sighed and closed his computer’s video player. And just as he expected, when he clicked on the Internet Explorer icon, the first picture on his AOL homepage was of Michelangelo’s Pietà. The media firestorm that followed the discovery of the grisly scene in Exeter made the fallout from The Michelangelo Killer’s Bacchus seem like a snowball fight. Indeed, as soon as the real Channel 9 Eye-Team van showed up outside of Echo Point Cemetery, it seemed to Markham as if a war had broken out-the news choppers hovering above and the media frenzy outside the cemetery gates reminding him of a scene right out of Apocalypse Now. There was no keeping anything from the press this time-not even the most telling details of The Michelangelo Killer’s Pietà, which the killer had actually signed.
Yes, unbelievably, The Michelangelo Killer had chiseled another message into his work-this time not to Catherine Hildebrant, but to the public in general. Markham remembered from his reading of Slumbering in the Stone that the Rome Pietà was the only work Michelangelo ever signed-the legend of which claimed that, upon overhearing a visitor to the Chapel of St. Petronilla attribute the statue to another artist, Michelangelo returned later that night and chiseled in Latin a message on the sash across the Virgin’s chest: “Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine, made this.” Hildebrant went on to state in her book that the legend was fictional, and that the signature had been there from the beginning. “A bold stab at fame,” she had called it. “Michelangelo’s most blatant attempt ever for public recognition.” And although Sam Markham had since learned from Cathy that there was still much scholarly debate as to the reason why Michelangelo signed his Pietà, both of them agreed that there could be no doubt as to the reason why “The Sculptor” had signed his.
“The Sculptor from Rhode Island made it.”
“Just like the legend,” Cathy had said to Markham when she first laid eyes on the inscription. “He’s telling the press what to call him. He’s correcting them.”
And the press obeyed.
They called him “The Sculptor” now in the papers and on TV, on the Internet and on the blogs and the sick homepages that had sprouted up in dedication to him since the discovery of Tommy Campbell. Indeed, the media seemed to talk of nothing else; and Markham felt a palpable anxiety every time he turned on his computer and his television. Worst of all was the public’s infatuation with Catherine Hildebrant-the woman Sam Markham now knew he loved; the woman that the public loved for her now indisputable connection to The Sculptor. Yes, once the media got wind that the pretty art history professor’s ex-husband had been used for the body of The Sculptor’s Virgin Mary, the FBI knew they could no longer keep her sheltered from the press, knew they could no longer mask the connection between the killer and her book. And thus, the FBI also knew they could no longer use her effectively as a consultant on the case.
At least not in public.
Cathy had recovered quickly from her knock on the head-seemed to awaken with a newfound strength, a newfound understanding of the role she must now play in catching the man who had become so obsessed with her. She had insisted on seeing The Sculptor’s Pietà at the morgue in person, had examined it with an even more discerning eye than she had the Bacchus down at Watch Hill-even though she was well aware it was her ex-husband’s body holding up the Virgin’s flowing robes. Markham was in contact with Cathy a dozen times a day-spoke to her on his cell phone during the countless hours she spent doing research for him on the computer, while he followed up on his leads all over New England. Yes, Cathy seemed to be holding up well, but Markham was very worried about her. She was safe, of course, in protective custody-had been moved immediately upon her release from the hospital to an FBI safe house just outside of Boston. But Markham was afraid of the toll the ordeal was taking on her, was worried about that moment when the totality of what happened to her ex-husband-what happened to the others as a result of her book-really hit her.
Don’t worry, whispered a voice in his head. She’s a fighter-just like her mother.
Rachel Sullivan had given a statement to the press in Boston a week earlier, in which she officially released the names of the victims whose body parts The Sculptor had used for his Pietà.
There were four in all.
Of course, the FBI knew from the beginning about Rogers, whose headless, handless body-sans breast augmentation-was still awaiting release to be flown back to Chicago for burial by his family. As for the other victims, once the medical examiner removed the paint from the victims’ fingertips and forensics was able to get some solid prints, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) returned a match on the Virgin’s hands and those of the Christ figure-respectively, Esther Muniz (aka Esther Munroe, Esther Martinez) twenty-eight years of age at the time of her disappearance, a resident of Providence, and Paul Jimenez, eighteen (aka Jim Paulson) from Boston and Virginia Beach.
Both were known prostitutes.
The fourth victim was also a prostitute, and after the FBI Forensic Science Unit released a photograph of the Virgin’s head-digitally altered and colored to make the victim appear as she might have been “in life”-authorities quickly confirmed an anonymous tip that the victim’s name was Karen Canfield (aka Karen Jones, Joanie Canfield)-originally from Dayton, Ohio-nineteen years old when she disappeared off the streets of Providence three years earlier. DNA testing matched her head to the breasts found on Steve Rogers’s torso.
Of the two women, only Muniz had been reported missing by an abusive boyfriend who, shortly after his girlfriend’s disappearance, had died in a botched drug deal. In addition to being a prostitute and a convicted felon, Muniz was also on the books as a habitual drug offender, and had three children by as many fathers.
All of her children had been in foster care since the day they were born.
Canfield, aged fourteen at the time she ran away from Dayton, was last seen by her alcoholic mother five years before her disappearance. Canfield’s mother told the FBI that she had no idea her daughter was even missing-and from what Markham could gather, most likely would not have lost any sleep even if she had. As was the case with the movements of Paul Jimenez in Boston, the details of Karen Canfield’s life in Providence were at this point still sketchy-the sad but typical nowhere story of a runaway-turned-underage-stripper-turned-crackhead-turned-prostitute-and a week’s worth of investigation had turned up enough for Markham to see the Dead End sign at the end of that street. Indeed, the handful of Canfield’s former acquaintances with whom the FBI had so far spoken claimed that she had often talked about getting clean and going to live with an aunt in North Carolina; and thus, when she stopped appearing on the streets of South Providence, they had just assumed that their friend had moved on-never even thought to report her missing.
The one bright spot in the tragedy that had been Karen Canfield’s life was that her estranged mother requested her daughter’s head and breasts be sent back to Dayton when the FBI was through with them.
Paul Jimenez’s family, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with him; and thus, the FBI would hang on to his body and Esther Muniz’s hands indefinitely.
Markham quickly scanned his e-mails, promising himself he would get to them upon his return from Boston-after the teleconference with Quantico, in which he and Burrell’s team would once again be briefed on the ongoing forensic and coroner’s reports, as well as the joint investigations that had begun into the lives of the latest victims. Yet Markham could not ignore the nagging feeling that it was all a waste of time; he could not ignore that little voice in the back of his head that told him The Sculptor was too smart to allow himself to be caught that way-that is, by allowing himself to be traced to his material. Indeed, it seemed to Markham that The Sculptor had thought of everything: from the phony license plates and the fake satellite dish on his Eye-Team van, to the way he left absolutely no trace evidence in the material he used for his sculptures-other than that of which he was obviously consciously aware.
But there must be something he’s overlooked, Markham thought. Something that perhaps goes all the way back to the murder of Gabriel Banford, or to the theft of the Pietà at St. Bart’s; something that The Sculptor had done when his plan was not yet fully formed-or perhaps something from the period when he was still experimenting.
Yes, Markham felt instinctively that The Sculptor’s latest exhibit had somehow gotten him off course-that he’d had enough information to catch The Michelangelo Killer from the beginning.
Slumbering in the Stone, Markham said to himself. It was Cathy who led me to the exhibition of The Sculptor’s Pietà-her book that got me so close I could have spit on him that night. Perhaps everything I need to catch him is right there.
Suddenly Markham understood that he did not need to hear anything more from Quantico. He already knew that the preliminary coroner’s reports would show that Steve Rogers and Paul Jimenez had died from an overdose of epinephrine, and that the glossy white Starfire paint which had covered The Sculptor’s Pietà would show traces of finely ground Carrara marble-marble that undoubtedly had been pulverized from the stolen Pietà at St. Bart’s. Perhaps something might be learned from the heavy starched canvas The Sculptor had used for the Virgin’s robes, or the rock of Golgotha.
But still…
Slumbering in the Stone, Markham said to himself. The key has to be in Slumbering in the Stone.
Markham checked the time in the corner of his computer screen-would have to leave soon if he was going to make the meeting in Boston. He was torn; he felt like he needed to stay in Providence-just knew that the answer to catching The Michelangelo Killer was right there on his desk, right there in the book in his briefcase. But Markham also knew he needed Cathy; and Christ was he tired-couldn’t think straight. He had slept for only a couple of hours in his office between working on his computer and reading over and over again the printouts from Boston and Quantico. He had spoken to Cathy before drifting off-had whispered her to sleep with “I miss you” and “I’ll see you tomorrow” instead of the three words he had really wanted to say-those three words he had not said to another woman since the death of his Michelle. They had slept together in the same bed only once in the two weeks since they first made love at Cathy’s East Side condo, stealing kisses and passionate exchanges here and there when the coast was clear at the safe house. If Bill Burrell and his team knew about his affair with Cathy Hildebrant, if they thought it improper, they weren’t saying. And to be honest, Sam Markham didn’t give a shit if the whole fucking Federal Bureau of Investigation knew. No, in the two weeks since he first began to admit to himself his love for Cathy Hildebrant, Markham began to feel more and more that he was working not for them, but for her.
The only e-mail Sam Markham chose to open that morning was from Rachel Sullivan. He responded with a short Yes to her question as to whether or not he wanted to donate to the fund she was organizing for the slain officer’s families. She was a good egg, that Sullivan, and a damn fine agent-would soon be a SAC herself, Markham thought; she was doing a bang-up job of scraping the shit from the toilet bowl that was South Providence. No doubt she would be giving a presentation today on her missing persons report-had already informed Markham that, after weeding through the databases, she was presently working with a list of at least eight names of prostitutes who were known to have disappeared from the Rhode Island area in the last six years, and whose circumstances might tie them to The Michelangelo Killer.
Eight, Markham had said to himself. How many are The Sculptor’s? And how many others went unreported?
Markham felt his stomach knot at the thought of The Michelangelo Killer going shopping for material on the streets of South Providence like it was Wal-Mart. But a smart place to buy, Markham thought-a typical hunting ground for serial killers because so many of their victims go unnoticed. But whereas Markham knew that most serial killers hunted out of the need to satisfy some kind of selfish sexual or psychological urge, he also knew that The Sculptor only hunted out of a need for supplies.
“Put me down for 500,” Markham added in his e-mail, and then shut down his computer.
Five hundred dollars, he said to himself. Two hundred and fifty each for their lives. Pathetic.
At that moment, Markham would have given his whole salary to the policemen’s widows. But at the same time he understood that anything more than his five hundred dollars would make him and the FBI look guilty. He had attended the double funeral that week-actually wept when he saw the slain policemen’s children place their flowers on their fathers’ caskets. In hindsight, it had been foolish for the FBI to put out an APB-foolish to unleash the cunning Sculptor on a couple of unsuspecting locals.
But then again, two weeks ago, how could the FBI have known what they were really dealing with?
A killing machine, Markham thought. Built like the fucking Terminator, and who won’t stop until he finds his man.
Yes, as vivid as were those teenage memories of Arnold Schwarzenegger blasting his way through the streets of LA in pursuit of Sarah Connor, Special Agent Sam Markham could see so clearly the man for whom The Sculptor would be searching next-a dark and grainy movie in his mind, in which a ski-masked Terminator chased a marble white statue through the streets of downtown Providence.
A movie starring Michelangelo’s David.
The plan from the beginning had always been David, but it was the Pietà that had inspired him to actually start working-yes, the Pietà around which the development of his skills had evolved. And so, that it should have been the Pietà that ended up causing him so much trouble bothered The Sculptor greatly.
In the two weeks since his second exhibit-in the two weeks since he had been almost caught-The Sculptor followed attentively every single story about him in the media. Yes, he saw many times the still photographs of him that had been taken from the police dash-cam, the ludicrous FBI composite sketch of what he might look like under his ski mask, the details of his height and weight, the pictures of the make and model of his van-all that blahdy-blah-blah.
In the end, however, such details did not worry The Sculptor, for in the end The Sculptor knew such details would not hurt him. No, what really got under The Sculptor’s skin was his understanding that-although he wasn’t quite sure how-the police and the FBI had one way or another figured out where he was going to exhibit his Pietà. And even though it had quickly become obvious to him that the authorities had made their discovery only at the last minute, The Sculptor-putting two and two together from the media reports-nonetheless had a good idea who might have tipped them off.
Dr. Hildy. It had to have been Dr. Hildy.
The Sculptor threw the weight bar back onto the rack with a loud clang. He had benched more than ever today-was well aware that he was channeling his frustration into his workouts in a way that was unusual for him. The Sculptor’s workouts in the cellar were normally quite methodical-steady, calm, and unemotional. But today, The Sculptor felt restless, felt helpless-like he needed to be working. Everything was all ready for his David-the video, the base and frame, the epinephrine, the formaldehyde, the chemicals for the Plastination process. He had even repainted the van-had disposed of the phony satellite dish-and would start working on switching it out for something else once he got his new material. All he really needed now was the right material. But because The Sculptor could not figure out exactly how Dr. Hildy and the FBI had managed to guess the location for his Pietà, instinctively The Sculptor felt it was too dangerous to go shopping just yet.
And just where would he go shopping? Not on the streets of South Providence anymore; not on the Internet, or up in Boston where the FBI now knew the RounDaWay17 material had come from. No, the FBI would be looking for that. Besides, The Sculptor had understood from the beginning that, with the unveiling of his Pietà, he would no longer be able to use that kind of material anyway; he understood that he would have to go back to shopping for material as had done for his Bacchus.
True, the news reports erroneously claimed that The Sculptor had found his material for the Christ figure on Arlington Street in Boston. And if the FBI did in fact know about RounDaWay17’s Craigslist account, they most certainly hadn’t revealed it to the press. No, The Sculptor was not worried about that-knew that it would be impossible for them to trace RounDaWay17’s online activity now that The Sculptor had hacked into, changed, and deleted the young man’s account.
No, it was the gnawing not-knowing of exactly how Dr. Hildy and the FBI had figured out the location of his Pietà that worried him the most.
At least everything is ready, he said to himself. That’s some comfort.
In the beginning, when he first began experimenting with the pieces of the women, The Sculptor would travel all over New England picking the locks at the backs of funeral homes and stealing just enough formaldehyde to get him by-just enough so it would not be missed. But The Sculptor observed in his travels that many of the funeral homes produced their own formaldehyde, and later, after he accidentally stumbled upon a picture of Rhode Island native Tommy Campbell on the Internet-when he saw the resemblance to Michelangelo’s Bacchus, when he understood that it was his destiny to have the wide receiver for his first exhibit-in addition to putting his Pietà on hold, The Sculptor decided to start producing his own twenty-nine percent formaldehyde solution in the small lab he had set up off the wine cellar to manufacture his epinephrine and his high-powered tranquilizers. Using a technique of methanol conversion that he learned on the Internet, there in the cool damp bowels of his family home he could prepare and store not just his formaldehyde, but all his chemicals; and when he was ready, he could transfer them to barrels and wheel them up and out of the back hatchway door for use in the carriage house.
It was a very efficient system.
However, as was the case with the Plastination process in the carriage house, more than the actual acquisition of his chemicals-the majority of which had been either distilled from common household products or stolen barrel by barrel from warehouses that weren’t even locked-the biggest problem for The Sculptor in his cellar lab was always the ventilation. And despite the numerous exhaust vents that he had installed, despite the gas mask that he always wore, after working for long hours in his cramped laboratory The Sculptor would sometimes begin to feel dizzy. And on those rare occasions when he would accidentally touch the epinephrine-highly concentrated synthetic epinephrine that he had also learned to manufacture from his hours of study on the Internet-he would start to sweat, would feel his heart speed up and his head go all loopy. The Sculptor, however, did not mind such temporary changes within his body-the dizziness, the speedy heartbeat-as in a way, he thought, it helped him connect to his creations.
But The Sculptor did not like the change he felt within his body today; nor did he like the emotions bubbling up inside of him when he thought of Dr. Hildy. And as he slid two more plates onto his weight bar, The Sculptor could not help but feel as if the pretty art history professor had betrayed him.
The Sculptor had been smart enough to know from the beginning that Dr. Catherine Hildebrant would be at the very least an unwilling accomplice in his plan. But after all he had done for her, after he had specifically used her ex-husband for the body of his Virgin as a favor to her-that same man who had betrayed her, that same poopy-head who The Sculptor had followed for years, who he knew was having sexual relations behind the good doctor’s back-yes, Dr. Hildy could have at least held off on telling the FBI about his Pietà until it was in place.
The Sculptor blasted out six more reps on his bench, and when he returned the bar to the rack, it was as if his mind at once had cleared. And in a flash of insight, The Sculptor suddenly understood the brutal but simple reality that, if indeed it had been Dr. Hildy who had led the FBI to his Pietà, then there was a good chance that Dr. Hildy might do the same with his David. Hence, although it had never been part of his original plan, The Sculptor understood all at once that the best thing to do in order to guarantee a smooth exhibit of his David was to get rid of Dr. Catherine Hildebrant.
And much to his surprise, The Sculptor suddenly felt a lot better.
“I want to go back to Providence,” said Cathy Hildebrant. She and Sam Markham stood before Burrell’s desk like a pair of high school delinquents in the principal’s office-contrite, fearful, yet defiant.
“I can’t allow it,” said Burrell. “That would be like throwing you to the wolves.”
“I don’t care. I can be more help to you working with Sam on the street.”
“But Cathy, you’ve been watching the television these last couple of weeks-been reading the papers and the news reports online. You know the press is looking for you, is dying to pick your bones.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’ll keep a low profile.”
“But with the murder of your ex, don’t you see that they all blame you? We can’t protect you from them anymore. It’s an entirely different situation now-they don’t want to just talk to you about The Michelangelo Killer, they want to get closer to him through you. I know you’ve been following the news. The press and the public are just waiting for The Sculptor’s next exhibit. They all know what it’s going to be-the goddamn statue of David. Christ, it’s only a matter of time before every young male with muscles in Rhode Island starts going into a panic, starts going into hiding.”
“I understand that but-”
“I can’t guarantee your safety down there, Cathy,” Burrell said, rising. “Hell, I shouldn’t even have you as a consultant on the case anymore.”
“She’ll be fine with me, Bill,” said Markham. “We can set her up in a room in my building-I’ll be personally responsible for her, twenty-four-seven.”
“Both of you were at the teleconference today, Sam. Both of you understand now what this guy is all about. We can tie him to at least nine murders, including Gabriel Banford and the two policemen. That’s at least nine. Who knows how many of Rachel’s missing prostitutes are his. Who knows how many more there are that we don’t know about-prostitutes, young men, women, children. He doesn’t hunt in one demographic, Sam. He chooses his victims according to some sick plan that parallels the artistic output of Michelangelo. I mean, Christ, what’s to say he won’t come after Cathy next?”
“I can’t stay in hiding all my life,” Cathy said.
“No, but you can goddamn well stay there a little longer.”
An awkward silence fell over the office as the SAC turned his back on them-staring absently out his window to the Boston skyline.
“I understand what you’ve been going through, Cathy. I understand that you’ve been cooped up with us for almost two weeks now. I know it must make you feel isolated, helpless, and a little stir crazy-being away from the people and the places you love. That’s to be expected. But at least there’s the buffer of distance between you and the killer; at least the press doesn’t know where you are. If you go back to Providence, if you start working the streets with Markham again, someone might spot you, might notify the press. And if the media finds out where you are, then The Sculptor might find out, too.” Burrell turned to face her. “Look, Cathy, if you can just hold out a little longer, if you can just sit tight until we get something solid-”
“You can’t hold me here against my will.”
“You’re right,” said Burrell. “But I can fire you from the case if you choose to leave protective custody. Is that what you want me to do?”
Both Cathy and Markham knew the SAC was bluffing, but it was the FBI agent who called him on it.
“If she goes, I go.”
Burrell looked at him incredulously.
“I mean it,” Markham said. “I’m done-I’m through with the Bureau for good. You can’t fire me, Bill, but I can quit. I can fly back to Quantico and hand in my resignation first thing in the morning.”
Bulldog’s cheeks flushed red.
“Leave us alone,” he said.
Cathy looked uncomfortably to Markham. He nodded, and she quietly left the room.
“Bill, I know what you’re going-”
“You don’t know shit,” Bulldog bellowed, his fists clenching. “You think you can scare me with ultimatums? You think I give a fuck if you resign?”
“Yes I do,” Markham said calmly. “I think you know how bad it would look if word got out that your obstinacy got in the way of this investigation. And I think you know how bad it would look if I let it be known how close we were to catching this guy, and that you of all people let him get away.”
“Close, my fucking ass-”
“I can catch this guy,” said Markham, leaning on the SAC’s desk. “But I can do it only with your full support and that means Cathy’s support, too. I can’t do it without her.”
The bulldog just stood there-fuming.
“It’s in her book, Bill. The answer is in her book. I know it. It was Cathy who got me close to him that night-Cathy who figured out it was the lighting, the key to the parallel between the environments that was so important for The Sculptor’s exhibition. Don’t you see, Bill? Together we can catch him. You just have to trust me on this.”
“I’m not an idiot, Markham. I know you two have been playing patty cake these last few weeks. And girlfriend or no girlfriend, I’m telling you now that if anything happens to her, you’re done. Meaning, I’ll see to it personally that you’re demoted to the fucking mail room. You understand me?”
“Yes, I do.”
Burrell turned his back to him-his eyes once again falling to the Boston skyline.
“We’ll set her up in your building for two weeks-change her hair color and give her contacts. At the end of those two weeks we’ll reassess the situation. Understand, however, that if at any time I decide it’s too risky-if the press finds out about her, if the location of the safe house is blown, whatever the fuck the reason-if I don’t like the way things are playing out and you two balk, then she’s out and you can do whatever the fuck you want.”
“I understand.”
“But let me be perfectly clear on this, Sam. No matter what happens, you are the one who’s responsible for her. You got me?”
“Yes. Thank you, Bill.”
“Now get the fuck out of my office.”
The FBI safe house was the only one of its kind left in Rhode Island; it had been initially set up as a surveillance unit after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, and was located on the second and third floors of a commercial building in downtown Providence, directly across the street from the former law offices of a suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizer who was eventually prosecuted. Its original purpose now abandoned, the FBI had since re-outfitted the property into an operations suite with separate apartments, and only in the last year had begun using it as temporary housing for its itinerant agents. The phony placards in and around the building indicated that the second and third floors were occupied by an import/export business, but the private access of the underground parking lot, as well as the building’s card-key security system to the elevator and each floor, made it a doubly safe location for all types of FBI operations.
In an odd way it all felt so normal to Cathy Hildebrant. It looked almost identical to her former digs in Boston, but that she should be staying there with Sam Markham gave Cathy a sense of being home-a feeling of being a newlywed, like when she was first setting up house with Steve Rogers.
Steve Rogers.
Cathy tried not to think of her ex-husband-tried not to think about the images from The Sculptor’s DVD that had been branded into her brain. She knew deep down that it was not her fault and that The Michelangelo Killer had begun hunting victims even before he’d ever heard of Dr. Catherine Hildebrant. But more than the degree of her culpability in her ex-husband’s death, Cathy tried not to think about the mixed feelings she had now that he was gone. No, she would never have wished what The Michelangelo Killer had done to him even on her worst enemy; but what chewed away at Cathy’s guts was the feeling that she had lost him twice, and that, as much as she hated to admit it, the first time around had been harder than the second.
There’ll be time to sort it out later was her mantra-the same one she had repeated to herself over and over during her mother’s battle with breast cancer. Yet instead of following up with encouraging words to stay focused, to finish her book and secure tenure, Cathy now had a new tagline: after I catch The Michelangelo Killer.
Cathy stood before the bathroom mirror and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She did not like how she looked with blond highlights. They made her look cheap, she thought, like a porn star. But it had to be done as part of the deal with Burrell and Boston. What would take more getting used to would be the contact lenses-she had never liked those; they always felt dry and made her eyes look puffy. Again, another necessity, but she would take along her black-rimmed glasses with her just in case. The worst, however, was when she donned her sunglasses. She thought she looked silly. Like a porno-Asian La Femme Nikita.
“You ready?” asked Markham, his head poking through the bathroom door. His presence calmed her, grounded her, but at the same time made her feel ashamed. Yes, despite everything that had happened since she met him, Cathy actually felt happy to finally be alone with him again.
“Yes,” she said. “If you don’t mind being seen with me.”
Markham kissed her neck and left her at the sink. They had spent the night in each other’s arms-made love like a pair of adulterers into the wee hours of the morning-and Cathy’s nostrils were still filled with the strange scent of her hair coloring and Sam Markham’s cologne.
As Cathy brushed her teeth, she suddenly had the impulse to call Janet Polk-to open her cell phone and leave her surrogate mother a quick message saying she was okay. But that’s a no-no, Cathy thought. Yes, Cathy knew damn well that she was not supposed to talk with anyone other than the FBI until Bill Burrell gave the go ahead-another part of her agreement with Burrell which, like her hair, she regretted. Cathy had not spoken to Janet and Dan since she left the hospital; she had gotten messages to them through Rachel Sullivan, but still she felt guilty, for Cathy knew how worried Janet was since learning about the murder of Steve Rogers.
There’ll be time to sort it out later.
Cathy emerged from the bathroom to find Markham standing in the middle of the common area-his copy of Slumbering in the Stone open before him as if he were an actor about to give a reading.
“What is it?” Cathy asked.
“Nothing, really. Just trying to gather myself before we go-overtired, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, ever since the teleconference with Quantico yesterday, there’s a quote in your chapter on the Pietà that’s been bothering me-a quote attributed to Michelangelo himself, and related by his contemporary biographer, Ascanio Condivi.”
“You mean the quote regarding the Madonna’s youthful appearance?”
“Yes. In your discussion of the various reasons as to why Michelangelo might have sculpted his Pietà with the Virgin Mary as a young woman, you say that the artist himself told Condivi, ‘Don’t you know that chaste women stay fresh much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more so then with the Virgin, who never had even the slightest lascivious desire that might alter her appearance?’”
“Why should that bother you?”
“Well, as we saw with his Bacchus, The Sculptor is well aware of the baggage the contemporary context of his Pietà would carry along with it-that is, how our knowledge of where the pieces came from would affect our perception of it. As we learned with Bacchus-where we, the viewer, see both the mythology of the Roman god and the satyr wound up into the lives of Tommy Campbell and Michael Wenick-when we look at The Sculptor’s Pietà, we see the story of the Virgin and Christ, but we also see the stories of the prostitutes-the lascivious desires of their lives. Our minds see the contradiction of the holy and the impure all at once.”
“So you think the message in this case is ultimately one of blasphemy?”
“I don’t know, but I just can’t help thinking there’s something I’m missing-something that connects your chapter in Slumbering in the Stone to The Sculptor’s use of prostitutes for his Pietà-something that goes beyond just the convenience of readily available material.”
“He didn’t only use prostitutes,” Cathy said blandly.
“I’m sorry, Cathy. I know that. But-and you’ll have to forgive me-but I’m thinking it goes beyond the victims’ professions, if you will, to the concept of sin, of sexual impurity. In The Sculptor’s eyes, you see, all of the victims he used for his Pietà were sinners with regard to sex-which brings me to something else you wrote when you spoke of Michelangelo’s influences for his Pietà. You say, ‘Another possible explanation as to why Michelangelo chose to portray his Virgin as a young mother is that he was heavily influenced by Dante’s Divine Comedy. We know that the artist was not only an admirer, but also a scholar of Dante’s work, and therefore must have been familiar with Saint Bernard’s prayer in Canto 33 of Paradiso, which begins, “Virgin mother, daughter of your son.” Here we see the relationship of the Virgin and her Son played out against the inherent contradiction of the Holy Trinity, wherein God exists in three forms: the Father, the Son (God incarnate as Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Thus, when taken in this undeniably “incestuous” context, if God is both the Father and Son, then the Virgin Mary is both Christ’s mother and His daughter, as well as his wife. One can then argue that Michelangelo is embodying this contradicting but parallel trinity in terms of the figures’ similar ages-a contradiction wherein the father-daughter/ mother-son/husband-wife relationship is skewed, existing in a spiritual realm outside of time, wherein physical age is only a “relative,” earthly index.’”
“So you think then that the Pietà might represent to The Sculptor some kind of warped, confused relationship between a mother and son?”
“I don’t know, Cathy,” Markham sighed. “Maybe I’m just overtired. Maybe I’m looking too deeply into it all. But when you think about how much trouble The Sculptor went through to get the Gambardelli Pietà, it might indicate that we were wrong about its relationship to his victims. Don’t misunderstand me, Cathy. I still think the killer wanted the marble of the statue to connect his victims to his sculptures. And although that plan might have changed, might have evolved into something else when he began focusing on his Bacchus, we now know that we were correct in our theory that The Sculptor had experimented with women before he moved on to males and full figures. However, even though The Sculptor wanted to use a male for the body of his Virgin to get the proportions and the breast placement correct, as well as to embody Michelangelo’s point of view on the female figure in general, I just can’t ignore the differences between how The Michelangelo Killer constructed his Pietà and his Bacchus. When you look at the fact that he used three separate human entities for the Virgin herself, and when you take into account that you discuss in your chapter on the Pietà the relationship between the Virgin and Christ as a contradicting yet parallel trinity to the traditional Christian Holy Trinity-well, it’s a bizarre coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Never mind all the metaphorical and moral implications that go along with such a reading of this parallel, incestuous, impure trinity.”
“Is that why we’re going to see the Reverend Bonetti again today?”
“Yes,” said Sam Markham. “I honestly haven’t a clue exactly what or why, but something tells me that there’s more to The Sculptor’s theft of the Gambardelli Pietà than we first realized.”
The Reverend Robert Bonetti watched them from his office window-had requested on the telephone that they enter at the back of the church so as not to disturb his parishioners, who would be coming and going all day for confession. When he saw them emerge from the Trailblazer, at first the old priest did not recognize the blond woman with the sunglasses who accompanied the FBI agent named Markham. Only when they passed outside his window did Father Bonetti realize the pretty art history professor from Brown University had finally decided to come out of hiding.
Although Reverend Bonetti rarely watched television or sat in front of a computer screen, and although he preferred to read or watch his tiny collection of old black-and-white movies on the rectory’s ancient VCR, even he knew what had happened to Catherine Hildebrant-to her ex-husband, yes, but also to her. Bonetti knew that the media was claiming it was her book, Slumbering in the Stone, that had inspired The Michelangelo Killer to commit his atrocities; he knew that, since the death of her husband, she had withdrawn from the public eye-probably had gone into protective custody, the papers said. Oh yes, he had read the news stories, had seen Hildebrant’s picture many times on Meghan O’Neill’s Special Report: The Michelangelo Killer series on Channel 9. And now there were the rumors that the first statue-the one with the football player and that poor little boy from Cranston -had originally been dedicated to her, too.
When he heard the outside door slam, Father Bonetti’s heart went out to Catherine Hildebrant as it had so many times over the last couple of weeks. But he needed to move quickly, and just as the knock came at his office door, the old priest slipped the copy of Slumbering in the Stone that he had picked up a week earlier into his desk drawer.
“Come in.”
Cathy entered first, followed by Markham.
“Dr. Hildebrant,” said Reverend Bonetti, offering his hand. “Despite the circumstances, it truly is a pleasure to see you again. I won’t pretend that I don’t know what’s happened to you over the last few weeks. But let me first offer my condolences for your loss, and second, my support in this difficult time. If there’s anything I can do, you’ll tell me?”
“Thank you, Father.”
Another round of pleasantries, and the three of them took their seats around Father Bonetti’s desk.
“Now,” said the priest. “To what do I owe this return visit?”
“I’d like to ask you a few more questions, Father,” said Markham. “Specifically with regard to your Gambardelli Pietà.”
“I’m not sure what else I can tell you. I’ve seen the police photos, the composite sketches of your man. There’s no one I know who fits that bill, and certainly no one that could afford twenty-five thousand dollars for a statue.”
“I understand that, Father. But I was hoping you could perhaps tell us a little more about the statue itself. You said that there was originally a picture of it on your Web site?”
“Yes. It was a photograph of the votive chapel-the one off the main church that I showed you-the one that currently houses our replacement Pietà.”
“Was there anything on the Web site, however-a caption or an accompanying description-that identified the statue specifically as a Gambardelli Pietà?”
“Not that I recall, no.”
“The picture then-was it a close-up of the statue, or taken at a distance?”
“I guess you could say it was taken at a distance. It has been a tradition at St. Bart’s for many years to move the pyramid of votive candles into the main church after Thanksgiving in order to accommodate the three life-size Nativity statues that occupy the chapel during the Christmas holiday. I believe it was around that time that the photograph was taken. There is no manger to house the Nativity-just the architecture of the chapel itself-so the Gambardelli Pietà would have been visible against the wall behind the statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“The family who donated the Pietà,” Markham continued. “What was their name?”
“Well, now,” said the priest, leaning back in his leather chair. “For the life of me, I can’t remember. If you’ll recall, our original Pietà was donated a few years before I arrived. There was a plaque engraved with the family’s name at its base, but of course that was stolen along with the statue. I’m ashamed to admit, Agent Markham, that-for all the time I’ve spent in this church-I’m not sure I ever knew the family’s name. Strange isn’t it? How you can pass by something every day and not really see it?”
“And you never had the plaque replaced?”
“No. The family who donated the statue moved away many years ago. Matter of fact, if my memory serves me, they hadn’t lived here for decades before I arrived-moved to a wealthier neighborhood-the gift of the Pietà being a bit of sentimentality on the part of one of their old matriarchs, I take it. However, our deacon at the time of the theft, a Scalabrini who has since moved on, took it upon himself to track them down. He did find someone-a daughter I think-but the person to whom he spoke said not to bother having another plaque made, as the family did not want to be associated with our church anymore.”
Markham and Cathy exchanged a look.
“This deacon,” said the FBI agent. “Do you know how he discovered the family’s name? Are there records of donations and things of the like in your files?”
“I assume that’s where he found it, yes-perhaps also from asking around the congregation.”
“And these records, these files-do you still have them?”
“I would think so. But to be honest, Agent Markham, I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for them. Any records older than five years we move to the basement, where they’re stacked in a dead files pile along with all the documents that were transferred from the old church after its renovation in the late 1960s-stuff going back almost a hundred years. Ironically, it was the deacon’s search for that family’s name that was our motivation to start cleaning house down there. However, even if you did find the actual record of the donation, Agent Markham, you might still have to track down the surviving family members like our man did three years ago. If you’d like, I can find out from the Scalabrini Fathers where the deacon is stationed-can ask him if he remembers the last name, where the family is living now, and can get back to you early next week.”
“Under normal circumstances, that would be fine, Father. But, with the murder of Cathy’s ex-husband, with the discovery of the Pietà two weeks ago in Exeter, there is every indication that The Michelangelo Killer is going to kill again-and soon. Hence, we need to follow up on every lead as quickly as possible.”
“Yes,” said the priest. “I read about it in the papers. The authorities, the media seems to think his next public exhibition will be the statue of David. Indeed, I’m willing to bet that sales of your book, Dr. Hildebrant, have skyrocketed with amateur sleuths looking for a way to prevent the crime, to solve the case before the FBI does.”
Cathy was silent.
“You’re probably right, Father Bonetti,” said Markham. “So you see why it’s extremely important that we get that family’s name as soon as possible.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, Agent Markham, why would the FBI be interested in a family who donated a statue over thirty years ago? What does any of this have to do with The Michelangelo Killer, other than you think that he stole our Pietà?”
“I know he stole it, Father Bonetti. And to be quite frank with you, I’m not exactly sure what I might find on the other side of this-that is, if and when I’m able contact the family in question. And to be even more frank, your stolen statue is the only solid lead I have to go on at the moment, the only place for sure I know The Michelangelo Killer was other than the scenes of the murders and the exhibitions of his statues. However, one thing I do know, Father, is that the theft was not random-meaning, I don’t think the killer saw your Pietà on the Internet. No, I think The Michelangelo Killer had known about the statue from the beginning. He may have sat in this church many times over the years-perhaps became fascinated with it as a child. After all, the last time we met, you yourself said that everything was connected.”
“Yes I did, didn’t I,” said the priest, his thoughts far away.
“So please, Father, would you be so kind as to let us look through your records?”
Reverend Bonetti smiled and nodded his consent. He led Cathy and Markham to a stack of boxes in the basement-three deep against a wall, and piled almost to the ceiling in some places.
“You have quite a task ahead of you,” said the priest. “The deacon began organizing the files himself with the intention of throwing most of them out. Fortunately for you, as you can see from the labels on the newer boxes, he got only as far as 1994 before he was called to move on. The boxes in the back are from the old church, so you needn’t bother with those. I can’t guarantee you’ll find what you’re looking for, Agent Markham, but if the document is still here, and if the deacon did in fact return it to the box in which he found it, I would assume it’s in one of these boxes toward the front.”
“Thank you, Father,” said Markham.
“You’ll have to excuse me now, as I must get upstairs for confession. I’ll be back down to check on you in an hour. If you find what you’re looking for before then, please let yourselves out the back door. I only ask that you leave the original document behind.”
“Will do.”
“I’ll say my farewells to you now in the event I miss you.” The old priest took Cathy’s hand. “Dr. Hildebrant, may God give you strength and courage in this difficult time.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Reverend Bonetti smiled and disappeared up the stairs.
Cathy and Markham began in earnest-did not bother with the files that the nameless deacon had already organized. What made their search even more difficult, however, was that many of the boxes contained files mixed from different years-some, from different decades, as if they had been moved to the basement gradually and at random over a long period of time. It was tedious work, and about an hour into their search, Cathy’s mind wandered to a bizarre flashback of a game show she used to watch with her mother when she was a child. The New Treasure Hunt it was called. She could not exactly remember its premise-just vague images of women looking through presents in search of money-but it starred a guy named Geoff Edwards-that she knew for sure. Cathy could recall her mother saying that he was handsome-had not thought of the show or its host in decades. Indeed, she was so taken by this unexpected trip down memory lane that she almost dismissed the document lying limply in her lap.
Cathy found herself sitting on the floor, staring down absently at a long list of names dated for the fiscal year of 1976-1977. On the last page, under the heading, “MISCELLANEOUS DONATIONS,” the following entry had been circled:
Marble reproduction of Michelangelo’s Pietà.
Artist, Antonio Gambardelli.
Donated in memory of Filomena Manzera.
Insurance value: $10,000.
But even more telling was the name and telephone number scrawled at the top of the page:
Shirley Manzera, 401-555-6641 (E.G.)
E.G., Cathy thought. East Greenwich .
“I found it,” she exclaimed, handing Markham the paper.
The FBI agent scanned it hungrily.
“We got lucky,” he said finally. “The phone number-Father Bonetti and our mystery deacon have come through for us.”
The Manzeras’ home occupied the corner lot on a street named Love Lane. Cathy recognized it as having been built in the 1950s-a sprawling, L-shaped ranch, with a two-car garage connected to the house via a narrow breezeway. At the rear of the house-behind a high, perforated stone wall-Cathy could also make out an Olympic-size pool, as well as a tennis court. Yes, from the looks of things, there was no doubt in Cathy’s mind that the Manzeras, whoever they were, could afford a Gambardelli Pietà.
Sam Markham whipped the Trailblazer around the grassy median that separated the north and south sides of the street and pulled up under the shade of a large oak tree.
“Remember, Cathy,” he said, “sit tight and keep the doors locked. This woman was extremely uncooperative on the telephone-very defensive. I don’t want to risk her clamming up if she recognizes you. Only reason she agreed to talk to me is because she thinks the theft of her family’s statue is part of some stolen art ring-thinks there might be a reward in it for her.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be back in a flash,” Markham said, and kissed her on the cheek.
Cathy’s eyes followed the FBI agent as he made his way up the flagstone walkway and rang the doorbell. She could not see the woman behind the screen door, could not see to whom Markham spoke as he raised his ID-just as he had done for her in another lifetime. And when Special Agent Sam Markham disappeared into the house, Cathy closed her eyes behind her dark sunglasses and waited.
Even if her mind had not begun to wander, even if she had not drifted off into a light afternoon sleep, Cathy most likely would not have noticed the ’99 Porsche 911 cruise past on the cross street straight ahead of her-would not have given it a second look even if she had. Not in this neighborhood anyway.
The Sculptor, on the other hand, spotted the Trailblazer immediately; he recognized it as not only out of place in front of the Manzeras’ house-the house which he drove by every single day on route to his own-but also instantly pegged it as FBI from his countless viewings of the news clips from Watch Hill and Exeter. And although he did not dare drive by it a second time, and although he did not dare take a closer look to see if perhaps Dr. Hildy herself was inside, The Sculptor knew nonetheless why the Trailblazer was there.
Yes, not only did The Sculptor finally understand how Dr. Hildy and the FBI had figured out where he was going to exhibit his Pietà, but he also understood that he had made a crucial mistake early on in his plan. However, the simple fact that the FBI had gone to the Manzeras first told The Sculptor that they had not yet made the connection to him.
Not yet.
But they were close.
And even though he was unsettled by his discovery, even though he thought himself foolish for his silly, silly mistake, as The Sculptor drove back to his home less than a mile away, he took comfort in the knowledge that fate had given him the opportunity to correct it.
“Sorry I took so long,” said Markham, hopping into the Trailblazer. “But we’ve got some work ahead of us.”
Cathy awoke from her nap disoriented. It was as if time had suddenly leaped forward, and she could not be sure how long the FBI agent had been gone.
“What did you find?”
“Quite a lot. But who knows if any of it is going to help us. Best thing to do now is to get back to the computer-or better yet, get to the library before it closes.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Markham began, driving off, “first thing I found out is that Shirley Manzera’s late husband is the connection to St. Bart’s-the Gambardelli Pietà was donated in memory of his mother. Mr. Manzera’s family was originally from the Silver Lake area of Providence, where St. Bart’s is located. I don’t know the details, but Shirley Manzera said her husband used to own some kind of construction business. Don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that he made quite a killing back in the 1950s, and moved his whole family out of Providence and into upscale East Greenwich. I didn’t want to ask how Mrs. Manzera met her husband, but she was adamant about wanting nothing to do with the Catholic Church-particularly St. Bart’s and her ‘husband’s old neighborhood,’ as she put it. She’s a bit of a snob, quite frankly.”
“How did her husband die?”
“Not what you think. I saw some pictures of him on the mantle and asked. Emphysema, the old woman told me. Four years ago.”
“I see.”
“But hang on. The Manzeras had four children-three daughters and a son named Damon. Damon was the youngest, and judging from the family photos, probably about a ten- to twelve-year spread between him and his oldest sister. All the daughters are married.”
“Wait. You said Damon was the youngest? Did something happen?”
“I couldn’t ask, Cathy. Couldn’t pry because of the reason I was there-the stolen art ring. But, did you see the swimming pool, the tennis court out back?”
“Yes.”
“Again, I don’t know the exact details-but Mrs. Manzera told me that her son Damon drowned in that swimming pool ten years ago.”
“And you think his death is somehow connected to The Michelangelo Killer?”
“I don’t know, Cathy. But we should look for something in the newspapers first-an article about the drowning, the young man’s obituary. If anything seems out of whack, I can get Sullivan on the police and coroner’s reports for Damon Manzera next. I may be totally barking up the wrong tree. It may all be just a bizarre coincidence-”
“You don’t really think that, do you, Sam?”
The FBI agent gave only a weak shrug of his shoulders as the black Trailblazer emerged from the leafy canopy that was the Manzeras’ neighborhood. The silence was long and awkward, but by the time Markham reached Route 95 they were talking again-trading theories as to what to do in the event of a dead end.
Neither one of them noticed the blue Toyota Camry that had entered onto the highway a short distance behind them.
The Sculptor was careful not to get too close-made sure he left at least six or seven car lengths between him and the FBI vehicle. He had taken a gamble driving back to his house in order to exchange the Porsche for the Camry-did not want to be too conspicuous in case whoever was inside the black Trailblazer spotted him as they exited the neighborhood and made for the highway. It was a gamble that paid off. And now that The Sculptor was onto them, he did not want to ruin this golden opportunity to find out exactly what the FBI was up to-did not want to throw away the stellar hand that fate had finally dealt him.
The Sculptor had spent that Saturday morning in disguise-a moustache, glasses, and a baseball cap-driving around aimlessly in his Porsche, searching for a sign-of Dr. Hildy, maybe, or perhaps where he might later go shopping for some material for his David. And although he had found neither and was about to return home frustrated, just like the day when he unexpectedly spied his satyr walking home from the Cranston Pool, The Sculptor understood that fate had also directed him to drive by the Manzeras’ house just in time.
Yes, perhaps more than anything The Sculptor understood the delicate workings of fate-understood how to recognize the signs of divine providence and negotiate that razor-thin line between predestination and free will. Such insight, such sensitivity was a gift that had been bestowed upon him as a boy-when he was still called Christian-when he first laid eyes upon the Pietà in St. Bartholomew’s, the church of his mother.
It was there, back in her old neighborhood, that she used to take him on Sundays when his father was away on business. And it was there, in the small chapel off of the main church, that the boy named Christian would often stand for what seemed like hours staring at the marble statue of the Virgin and Her Son.
“A mother’s love is the greatest gift a boy can have,” Christian’s mother would often tell him. “It’s why I named you Christian.”
“And your name is Mary,” the little boy would reply. “Just like in the statue.”
“That’s right,” said his mother. “And I love you more than anything in the whole wide world. Just like in the statue.”
Oh yes. Even as a boy The Sculptor understood.
And for years on those Sundays at St. Bartholomew’s it was only just the two of them-Mary and Christian, mother and son-listening to Father Bonetti read the Mass, and then lingering in the votive chapel to stare at the marble statues long afterward. Mother and son always agreed: the Pietà was their favorite.
But when the boy named Christian grew a little older-oh, six or seven The Sculptor supposed-his mother began to rest her hand in his groin when she drove him home from the bakery after church-the smell of fresh Italian bread filling the car as his Sunday khakis grew tight beneath the warmth of her hand. It was a strange sensation, the boy named Christian thought, but one that was pleasing to him nonetheless. What was even better was when she would sit next to him that way on the sofa. She would let him stay up late on Fridays to watch Victoria Principal-that woman on Dallas who was so pretty, and who the boy named Christian thought looked just like his mother. On one such Friday, when the boy named Christian asked his mother why she did not sit with him that way when his father was home, his mother explained that it was a secret: a special secret from God that was to be kept only between mother and son; a secret that if anyone else knew, not only would the boy’s father kill himself, but God would kill her-would turn her into a statue just like Mary in the church.
And so the boy named Christian never understood why, all of a sudden one day when he was nine, mother and son stopped going to church. But it wasn’t too long afterward that the beatings began, and later, worst of all, the cold baths. Even though he did not like the beatings, the boy named Christian always understood why his mother knocked him on the head; he always understood why she slapped him then locked him in the bathroom with the spilled bleach. That only happened when he was bad-like the time he drank some of her wine, or the time he tore out some pictures from her old college history books.
But always-when he was super naughty as his mother used to call it-when the boy named Christian went down face first into the tub of icy water, he had no idea what he had done to set his mother off. The cold baths came only once every month or so; they were always late at night when his mother had been drinking. “Out!” she would say, bursting into his bedroom-her breath foul with the smell of wine and cigarettes as she yanked him by the hair into the bathroom. The baths were always the same, but the boy named Christian never got used to them. He was sure that every time he went under that this time would be the last; he was sure that, as he began to choke, as she pushed him under once more he would never see his beloved father again.
But always, just as he felt that icy tingle down in his chest, his mother would pull him out of the tub. And later, as he lay shivering naked in his bed in the dark, she would crawl under the covers with him-one hand stroking between his legs while she pleasured herself with her other-the warmth of her bare breasts against his skin indescribably magical in its consolation to him.
“A mother’s love,” she would whisper over and over. “A mother’s love.”
This too was a secret just between them-a secret with dire consequences for their whole family if revealed.
When he was a little older the baths and the beatings stopped, but his mother would still crawl naked into bed with him at night. She would stroke his penis longer, until the boy named Christian “blew his load” as his friends at school called it. And when he was older still, just before his father sent him off to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Christian’s mother began putting his penis between her legs, instructing him with her hands and her body how to make love to her.
“A mother’s love,” was all she would say. “A mother’s love.”
And so the boy named Christian wrestled with his mother’s love for a long time-never told his father, never told anyone. What made it even more difficult for him was that he was so very bright. He understood what it meant when his counselor in elementary school said he tested at the “genius” level. He understood every single thing his teachers at Phillips threw at him, even the technology behind the patents his father had developed for his booming software company. Yes, all that kind of stuff came easily to the boy, to the young man named Christian. But the one thing he could never wrap his mind around was his mother’s love.
That is until he read Slumbering in the Stone.
The Sculptor, however, would argue that it all began with his return to St. Bartholomew’s. It was a week after his mother’s funeral, on the very same day the eighteen-year-old Christian spoke with his father’s lawyer-a kind old gentleman who would facilitate the sale of his father’s software company and make The Sculptor a millionaire many times over. It was then that the lawyer explained to him the details of the accident and about his mother’s affair at the country club with a tennis pro named Damon Manzera-a once promising young player whose career was cut short by injury, and who the lawyer said was only a few years older than Christian himself. Thus, it was after his meeting with the lawyer that the young man named Christian wandered without thinking back to St. Bartholomew’s, searching like a zombie in the fog for something to guide him.
And so it was that-even though he was nowhere near to understanding the bigger picture of it all quite yet-the young man who would one day become The Sculptor had his first awakening before the Pietà, standing there gazing down at Michelangelo’s masterpiece as he had done in his mother’s arms so many times, so many years ago. However, it was not the statue itself, but the plaque at its base that-like a chisel to a block of marble-cracked Christian’s mind with the understanding of why fate had brought him there that day.
Dedicated in memory of Filomena Manzera
Manzera. Damon Manzera.
Yes, how many times had the boy named Christian sat in that very same church with his mother, listening to Father Bonetti assure the congregation that our time in this world served some greater purpose of which together we all played a part, that all of mankind’s lives were intertwined, that “Everything was connected.” And after some poking around, the young man named Christian learned that the family who had bestowed upon St. Bartholomew’s their gift of the Pietà was in fact the same family who had bestowed upon the world the tennis pro Damon Manzera-the tennis pro who had killed his mother and turned his father into a vegetable.
And just as the young man named Christian understood that fate had brought his mother and the tennis pro together at the country club in some divine connection to the Pietà-a divine connection that had to do with him, with a mother’s love for her son-the young man named Christian also understood that fate had now brought him and the tennis pro together, too.
Oh yes. Christian understood all too well what he had to do next.
And so, after he finished up at Phillips Exeter, between visiting his father at the care facility and going full time to nursing school, the young man named Christian began building up his body-first at the gym, then in the cellar of his parents’ home-all the while his mind focused clearly on the duality of his purpose: the caring for his father and his revenge on Damon Manzera. And after the former was safely back at home, for years Christian followed the latter, learning his movements and waiting patiently for a sign from fate that it was time.
Ironically, it all came together so quickly in the end. Damon Manzera, who was still teaching tennis at the country club-and who himself had become quite the drinker after a failed marriage-had moved back temporarily with his parents on Love Lane, where he spent many a warm summer evening in the backyard drinking beer and swimming in the Manzera’s in-ground pool. If Damon Manzera ever thought about his former mistress, if he ever felt guilty about the part he played in her death, he gave no sign of it to Christian, who for four years had spied on him nearly every day with his binoculars.
And so, with the permission of fate, the young man named Christian snuck into the Manzeras’ backyard through the woods, hopping the high stone wall just after dark and waiting among the trees until Damon Manzera was good and drunk. He did not yet have the night vision goggles or the tranquilizer rifle that he would later use on Tommy Campbell; he did not even have to wrestle the tennis pro under control as he had done when he dragged poor Michael Wenick down the drainpipe. No, for the young man who would soon become The Sculptor, his first murder was somewhat anticlimactic; and in the end he simply lifted the unconscious Manzera off his lounge chair and drowned him with no more effort than it would have taken him to wash the dishes.
Christian was able to hop from the diving board and into the woods without leaving even a single footprint on the cement. When in the weeks that followed it became apparent that he had actually gotten away with his murder of Damon Manzera, the young man named Christian began to feel empty. Yes, the man who was to become The Sculptor wanted to kill again; he wanted to kill more Damon Manzeras-so much so that he actually got an erection when he thought about it.
Indeed, for all his intellect, for all his self-awareness, the young man named Christian never quite understood why-when he was younger, when he was away at Phillips Exeter-he had never shown much interest in girls. He would not get hard when he looked at them in class and would certainly not “jerk off” like his classmates did to the pornographic pictures that were so often passed around. True, sometimes he found his hands absently wandering to his groin late at night when he thought about his mother, but the only time he really got hard was when he thought about his male classmates, when he would see them with their shirts off or coming out of the shower stalls, upon which Christian would quickly avert his eyes so as not to become aroused in front of them.
There was only one other boy at Phillips that Christian knew felt the same way-an “experienced” boy who took Christian under his wing, and with whom he would sometimes sneak away to places hidden; places where they could kiss and be naked against each other; places where they could take each other’s penises in their mouths, or insert them in each other’s behinds. With the death of Christian’s mother, however, all that stopped; and long after Christian moved back to Rhode Island, the young man struggled with his desire for male company and the guilt that somehow his homosexuality had contributed to both his mother’s death and his father’s vegetative state.
Yet with the murder of Damon Manzera, Christian found himself getting hard when he thought about that, too; and thus he understood that fate had directed him to channel his desire into something much more productive. He began fantasizing, began researching and experimenting with different methods. The idea of epinephrine had appealed to him from the beginning because he knew it would mimic his heart-pounding revelation before the Pietà at St. Bartholomew’s. And when he was ready, when he finally succeeded in producing a highly concentrated solution of the drug himself, the young man named Christian set about finding a proper candidate.
Gabriel Banford was always to have been the first victim of this new method. Christian had followed him for weeks after spotting him at Series X and planned on waiting for him in the dark of his bedroom. But on the evening that he should have killed him, when he stumbled upon Banford’s copy of Slumbering in the Stone, when fate directed him right then and there to flip to the chapter on the Pietà, the man who would from that day forward call himself The Sculptor wept under the weight of his divine revelation-a revelation that surpassed the one at St. Bartholomew’s. Yes, through this woman Catherine Hildebrant’s analysis of Michelangelo’s Holy Mother and Son-her brilliant articulation of what she called that “parallel trinity” as embodied in the artist’s portrayal of the Virgin herself-the boy, the young man named Christian not only finally understood his love of the Pietà, but also his mother’s love for him.
So overcome was The Sculptor by his revelation that he left Banford’s apartment in shock. He left the young man alive only to return a week later-after he had purchased his own copy of Slumbering in the Stone and read it cover to cover ten times, after he finally understood the totality of his purpose-that is, why fate had led him to Banford, to Dr. Catherine Hildebrant, and to Michelangelo, that man whose work was to become a template for The Sculptor’s destiny.
Everything is connected.
And now, six years later, as he followed the black Trailblazer on Route 95 toward downtown Providence, The Sculptor grinned widely beneath his fake moustache. Yes, even though the FBI was getting close to him, even though they had made the connection between the stolen Pietà and the Manzera family, The Sculptor knew deep down that fate had once again interceded on his behalf. And although he dared not get too close, The Sculptor also had a feeling that behind the tinted windows of the black Trailblazer sat the person for whom he had been searching all morning.
Yes, something deep down told The Sculptor that he had finally found Dr. Hildy.
It was just after 5:00 P.M. when Markham and Cathy emerged from the Providence Public Library-their heads hung low, their faces drawn. They had spent over an hour searching the periodical databases for information on the death of Damon Manzera. There wasn’t much-the obligatory newspaper blurbs, the obituaries-but nothing that listed the death as suspicious, no evidence of foul play. Indeed, a spokesperson for the medical examiner was quoted many times as being very clear to the contrary, and stated that, at the time of Manzera’s death, the young man’s blood alcohol level was found to have been “dangerously high.” And thus, the coroner had concluded that most likely Manzera either fell asleep in the pool or somehow staggered off its edge into the water. Either way, the official cause of death was listed as accidental drowning; either way, end of story.
“We’ve now got two options on this end, Cathy,” said Markham, sliding into the Trailblazer. “Either I go back and tell Mrs. Manzera the real reason why I was there, see if I can find out anything else about her son, or we start poking around Manzera’s circle of acquaintances to see if they know anything-maybe start with his ex-wife, or at the country club, the one in East Greenwich where the newspaper articles said he worked.”
“But Sam, this all happened over ten years ago. Wouldn’t the police have done that already?”
“I assume so, yes. When we get the police records, we’ll be able to see who they questioned. I can only hope they missed something.” Markham closed his eyes, rested his head back, and sighed. “I don’t know what else to do, Cathy-starting to think this whole Manzera connection to the stolen Pietà was a bad idea. I’m starting to think I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.”
“It’s in the book, Sam,” Cathy said, taking his hand. “You’re right about that. I know it. Everything we need to catch him is right there in Slumbering in the Stone. You’re just tired, is all. We both are. Why don’t we get some takeout Chinese or something-grab a bottle of wine and call it a day. Tomorrow’s Sunday. We can sleep in for a bit, maybe take a ride down to the coast-official business, of course. After a good night’s rest we’ll both be able to think more clearly. What do you say, Special Agent Markham? Is it a date?”
Markham smiled, kissed her deeply, and drove off.
Neither one of them noticed the blue Toyota Camry that had been parked diagonally across the street about a block away.
It pulled out again behind them.
The Camry followed the Trailblazer first to a Chinese restaurant in Cranston, then to a nearby liquor store, and finally back to downtown Providence, where the Trailblazer disappeared underneath an office building via a private driveway. And after about five minutes the blue Toyota Camry passed by-did not turn down the driveway like the Trailblazer. No, the driver of the blue Camry could not miss the two big PRIVATE ACCESS ONLY signs; he could clearly see the video cameras and the steel, card-access security gate-thought there might even be a guard or two prowling around as well.
“So that’s where they’re keeping her,” The Sculptor said out loud.
Despite her new hair color, despite her Jackie Onassis sunglasses, The Sculptor had recognized Dr. Hildy outside the library as soon as she stepped out from the Trailblazer. And while he had waited for her and the unknown FBI agent to finish their research inside-research he knew had to do with the tennis pro, Damon Manzera-The Sculptor concluded he needed to put his David on hold.
It was all right. He had done that before with his Pietà, when he finally understood the scope, the message of his work as something beyond himself, when he finally understood that, in order to really wake the world from its slumber, no material other than Tommy Campbell would be worthy of his Bacchus.
Yes, The Sculptor did not mind adapting; he did not resist changing his plans if he felt the hand of fate leading him someplace else.
But exactly where did fate want him to go next?
The Sculptor needed time to think and figure out how he would dispose of Dr. Hildy-perhaps this FBI agent, too. But unlike before, when he could take his time, when his work was still unknown to the world, The Sculptor knew now that the clock was ticking. Yes, he had to move quickly-had to get to Hildebrant and the FBI agent before they got to him. But how? It was much too risky under the present circumstances to try to take them at that fortress in downtown Providence-especially since The Sculptor had no idea what it looked like inside.
And so, as The Sculptor drove away from Providence, he resigned himself to wait for the right opportunity to take them on the outside.
The Sculptor smiled, for he knew deep down that fate would bring him and Dr. Hildy together very soon.
After all, fate had never let him down before.
“I thought we agreed we were going to take a break today,” said Cathy.
She stood in the doorway to their bedroom-naked, save for the button-down shirt of Markham ’s which she wore drawn tightly around her. They had spent that Sunday together driving along the coast-had ended up in Newport and strolled along the cliff-walk before taking in a late lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. Upon their return to the safe house, the fax from Rachel Sullivan had already arrived: the coroner’s report, as well as a list of names taken from the East Greenwich Police investigation on the death of Damon Manzera-both requested by Sam Markham the evening before. Cathy had made the FBI agent promise to let them wait-convinced him that nothing could be done with the information until the following morning. And after another evening of wine and lovemaking, the once shy art history professor could not help but feel a certain amount of pride that her feminine wiles had won out yet again.
“It’s 12:15,” said Markham. “Ante meridiem. Technically it’s now tomorrow-haven’t broken my promise to you, have I?”
“I guess not. But you woke me up.”
“Sorry.”
Dressed in only his underwear, the FBI agent lay on the sofa in the common area-which also consisted of two recliners and a television, two desks complete with computers and printers, a copier and a fax machine, as well as an entire wall dedicated to the twelve video monitors that continually displayed surveillance from the building’s exterior, its second and third floor corridors, as well as its parking garage.
Sullivan’s fax lay scattered about on the floor-cast aside by Markham in deference to his copy of Slumbering in the Stone. Cathy sat down beside him.
“What’s got your attention now?” she asked.
“Wasn’t able to learn much from the fax, so I started reading again about David.”
“And?”
“I guess the thing that keeps jumping out at me is how tall the statue is-seventeen feet, you say?”
“Yes. You can’t really grasp its size, its magnificence until you see it in person.”
“But the way it was sculpted-the head and the upper torso, the hands slightly out of proportion to the lower half of the body-you say in your book you think this was intentional on Michelangelo’s part?”
“Yes. There are a number of theories about this. As I’m sure you’ve read, the enormous block of Carrara marble from which David was originally sculpted had already been worked by a couple of other artists-one of them being a student of Donatello-and then ended up being neglected in a courtyard for almost thirty years before the twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo was commissioned to finish the project in 1501. Some scholars believe that Michelangelo had to work from a figure that had been blocked out earlier. However, I believe that the marble wasn’t nearly that far along when Michelangelo got to it. And as the guild that originally commissioned the statue had intended for it to sit atop the buttress of a cathedral-a plan that was later abandoned-when viewed from below, the proportions of David would be correct.”
“It took him a little over three years,” said Markham, reading. “And the statue ended up being installed outside the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.”
“Yes. A representation of the biblical David whose defeat of Goliath and the Philistines came to symbolize the triumph of the Florentine Republic over its rival city-states, Michelangelo’s David was initially placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio-a fortresslike palace that served as the old seat of civic government in Florence. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Hard to believe nowadays that the Florentines would have allowed what has become the most famous statue in the world to be subjected to wind and weather and pigeon poop before moving it indoors to the Galleria dell’ Accademia almost four hundred years later.”
Markham was silent-his eyes fixed on a photographic detail of David’s waist.
“You’re thinking about where he’s going to display it, aren’t you?” said Cathy. “You’re thinking about what to do in case we don’t catch The Michelangelo Killer before he creates his David.”
“Actually, I’m thinking about where he’s going to get his material.”
“What do you mean?”
“We know from our investigation thus far that no young males with a physique resembling the statue of David have been reported missing-a physique one can assume the killer will have a hard time finding among the population of male prostitutes from which we now know he’s drawn.”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I mentioned earlier, there’s the unusual proportions-the relationship of the torso to the statue’s lower half. The Sculptor would not be able to accommodate for that the same way he did with his Pietà-that is, by using more than one body, piecing it together, and then hiding the joints underneath the figure’s clothing. No, like Bacchus, the statue is nude, and thus theoretically the killer would have to use only one person-would have to be very selective in choosing his material. And so, ironically, what on the surface would seem like the simplest of the three statues in actuality will be the most difficult for him to achieve.”
“Unless he is planning on correcting Michelangelo’s intended forced perspective. Meaning, the killer intends to adapt the proportional ratios to be viewed straight on.”
“Yes. But the physique, the musculature of David is so well known. That in and of itself will take a lot of searching. Much more difficult to come across another famous Rhode Islander on the Internet-the way he most surely saw the figure of his Bacchus in the photographs of Tommy Campbell. You saw them, didn’t you? The pictures of Campbell taken on that beach in Rio a couple of years ago with his model ex-girlfriend?”
“Yes,” said Cathy. “So you’re thinking The Sculptor may go looking for his David at a local beach? A swimming pool, perhaps-someplace where he would be able to get a good look at his material?”
“Perhaps for the body, yes-but for the other part, most likely no.”
“What other part?”
“As I said, one would think that, theoretically, The Sculptor would have to acquire a single body that resembled the statue of David. However, what about the statue’s penis?”
“What about it?”
“It’s uncircumcised.”
Cathy was silent. She understood.
“As you state in your book,” said Markham, “whereas the historical David, being a Jew, would have most certainly been circumcised, Michelangelo was consciously sculpting his David in line with the classical Greek aesthetic, which would have seen a circumcised penis as mutilated. Such a detail will thus be of supreme importance to The Sculptor-something he will have to account for. So you see, it’s clear that it is going to be exponentially more difficult for The Sculptor to acquire a body that both looks like David and also has an uncircumcised penis. Hence, I’m willing to bet that the killer will be searching for the latter separately, and thus plans on attaching it to his David afterward-perhaps beneath an epoxy-sculpted line of pubic hair.”
“So you’re suggesting then that we try to beat him to his material? That we focus on finding out not only where he’s going to find a body like David’s, but also a penis like his as well?”
“Yes. Either that, or we try to bring him to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“From what we know about this guy-his intelligence, the solitary sort that he is, and the fact that he now knows the public is on to him-where would be the safest place for him to go shopping for his David?”
“The Internet.”
“Yes-a place where he can browse and study his material like he most certainly did with the images of Tommy Campbell.”
“So you’re saying we might be able to lay a trap for him?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Cathy. It’s a long shot but-in addition to all the other leads we’ve been following, including the new Manzera connection-we can post an ad on Craigslist and some of the other Web sites known to be used by gay men. Put a picture up of a guy with a physique like David’s, and advertise our John Doe as a local uncircumcised male seeking companionship. I’ve looked into these sites myself when we were pursuing the male prostitute angle. Some of these men-many of whom are undoubtedly prostitutes themselves-are not shy about advertising the details of their privates, including whether or not they are circumcised. If we make our John Doe such an irresistible target-that is, create a profile for someone who looks like David and has the uncircumcised penis to boot-The Sculptor might not be able to resist killing two birds with one stone.”
“But how do you know The Sculptor hasn’t already acquired his penis?”
“Because, in order to get the proportions right he’ll have to find his David first. I made that mistake with the Bacchus, Cathy-when I thought The Sculptor would have experimented with the goat before acquiring the top half of his satyr. I’m not going to make that mistake again. Of course, it’s obvious The Michelangelo Killer won’t be able to find a seventeen-foot-tall man. However, if he finds someone with the right proportions, regardless of his height, he’ll have a better idea of what size penis to look for in order to retain the aesthetic proportions of the original. If we can save the killer all that trouble with an ad on the Internet, we might just be able to catch him.”
“But do you think The Sculptor would fall for something like that?”
“I don’t know, Cathy. But right now, it’s the only thing I can believe in.”
The Sculptor followed the black Trailblazer as he had done for the past two days-at a distance, always just out of sight behind a buffer of six or seven cars. Unbeknown to Sam and Cathy, the blue Toyota Camry had been with them almost the entire time since they left the Manzeras in East Greenwich-had followed them the next morning all along the coast, had waited for them to come back from their stroll together in Newport, had accompanied them everywhere they went on their romantic Sunday sojourn. Yes, The Sculptor could tell Dr. Hildy and the FBI agent were an item by the way they touched each other-the way they held hands at the restaurant, the way the good doctor snuggled up to her male companion by the cement wall overlooking the ocean. This was good; this meant it would be easier for The Sculptor to catch them off guard. Indeed, had it been nighttime, had there not been so many people around that day in Newport, The Sculptor would have disposed of the happy couple right there on the cliff-walk.
But to do so in broad daylight would have been too risky.
Yes, The Sculptor would have to wait for fate to give him a better opportunity.
And so, early Monday morning, when The Sculptor saw the black Trailblazer emerge from the private underground parking garage in downtown Providence and then head for the FBI Resident Agency a few blocks away, The Sculptor knew that today was a day for business, not pleasure. The good doctor and her male companion were inside the FBI building for almost two hours. And when they emerged again, The Sculptor’s hand automatically went to his Sig Sauer.45, which lay next to him under his jacket on the passenger seat.
He had resigned himself to taking them today, but the timing must be just right-he had to tread ever so carefully along the fine line between fate and free will.
The Sculptor followed the Trailblazer all over Rhode Island, but only when he saw it pull into the East Greenwich Country Club did he understand just how close they were to finding him.
They’re following the old police report, The Sculptor concluded.
Oh yes, the FBI would most certainly want to question him about Manzera-just like the East Greenwich Police did ten years ago, when the tennis pro’s parents insisted their son could not have drowned by his own accord. However, luckily for the young man named Christian, the philandering Manzera had made a lot of enemies in his time at the country club. He had banged more than his share of married women, and thus the young man named Christian was only one of a slew of people, including Manzera’s ex-wife, who had openly admitted they were happy to see the tennis pro dead. And so, despite Mr. and Mrs. Manzera’s insistence to the contrary, with nothing more for the police to go on their son’s death was quickly ruled an accident.
But now things were different; now the FBI was on the case. They had video of The Sculptor himself and would make the connection between the figure in black at Echo Point Cemetery and his own physique as soon as they laid eyes on him. And unlike ten years ago-when the young man named Christian had yet to become The Sculptor, when the young man named Christian had yet to even begin remodeling the carriage house-now there was evidence everywhere: the van, the equipment, the lab-not to mention all the excess material scattered about.
No. There was no way of getting around it all now. Once the FBI set foot on his property, it would not take them long to put two and two together.
The Sculptor began to panic-felt his heart beating fast in his chest; he felt the urge to race home, gather up his things, and make a run for it before the FBI arrived. But a short time later, when he saw the black Trailblazer pull out of the country club and head off in the direction of his house, an inner voice calmly whispered to him of the opportunity that had just presented itself. That the black Trailblazer was driving slowly meant that the man formerly known as Christian was just one of many people the FBI had planned on questioning that day-just a name on a list.
That was good.
That meant there was still time.
And so The Sculptor sped off in the opposite direction-took the shortcut on a dirt road through the woods that he knew would bring him to his house well before the black Trailblazer arrived. Unless The Sculptor was mistaken, fate would deliver Dr. Hildy and her FBI boyfriend straight to his doorstep.
Oh yes. The Sculptor wanted to make sure he was there to welcome them.
After Markham’s conversation that morning with Bill Burrell-and after the SAC’s lukewarm reception and then reluctant acceptance of his Internet idea-while Rachel Sullivan and her team began putting together a profile for Craigslist and a handful of other Web sites popular in the gay community, a crestfallen and unenthusiastic Sam Markham began knocking off the names listed on the East Greenwich Police report-names of people who had been questioned in connection to Damon Manzera’s death ten years earlier, names that Markham was beginning to think were a waste of time.
Not revealing the true nature of their visit, Markham and Cathy first spoke with Manzera’s ex-wife, and then with the ex-husband of the woman with whom Manzera had been cheating prior to his divorce. Neither one of them recognized Cathy Hildebrant; neither one of them had anything to offer other than “what they already told the police ten years ago.” However, both suggested that Markham and his partner try their luck with the general manager at the East Greenwich Country Club.
“There’s still hope, Sam,” Cathy had said en route. “The Manzeras suspected all along that their son had been murdered. Just because the police were unable to find anything doesn’t mean that we won’t.”
“Look at the addresses on that list, Cathy-probably a ‘who’s who’ of Rhode Island high society. You saw how cold, how suspicious, and tight-lipped Manzera’s ex and that other guy were-just like Manzera’s own mother. Yes, like our friends down at Watch Hill, the one thing these people fear even more than The Michelangelo Killer is a good scandal.”
Although the general manager of the East Greenwich Country Club explained to Sam Markham that he had in fact heard of Damon Manzera, he also explained to them that-having been in his position for only a year-he felt uncomfortable speaking about rumors regarding his club’s members.
“The Manzeras are one of East Greenwich ’s most respected families,” he said. “In addition to his aging mother, Damon Manzera leaves behind three sisters-all of whom have been members of our club since they were little girls. Thus, you will understand, Agent Markham, if out of respect for the family I decline to comment on what is to me nothing more than gossip and hearsay.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Markham, sliding the list of names across the general manager’s desk. “And I hope you understand, sir, that I could make things very difficult for you and your little club if I thought even for a second that you were hindering this investigation. Meaning, I wouldn’t think twice about getting a subpoena for your records and having it delivered to your office under full police escort-complete with lights and sirens, of course, and perhaps some television cameras, too.”
The general manager was silent.
“Now why don’t you take a look at that list of names and see if you’ve changed your mind about helping me.”
“Other than the two names you’ve already crossed off,” said the GM after a quick scan, “the only other name that I can connect for sure to the period of time in which Manzera was employed here is the Bach family. From what I gather, they were members up until about fifteen years ago-some kind of personal tragedy if my memory serves me, although I’m not sure I ever knew the details. But at least they’d have been members when Manzera was employed. You might want to try them. Other than that, I do recollect hearing rumors about Manzera’s flings with married women, but as for names, I can’t tell you if anybody on this list is a match. And that’s the truth, Agent Markham. You have my word on that, for as I’ve already explained to you, I’ve only been in my current position for about a year now. However, if you’d like, I can try to telephone my predecessor for you. I’m sure he’d be happy to cooperate, to report on his own firsthand knowledge of the goings on at the club around the time of Manzera’s death.”
“That’d be fine. Thank you.”
While Markham and Cathy waited, the general manager tried repeatedly to contact his predecessor. However, when the latter proved unreachable by phone, the general manager gave Markham the man’s Florida address and telephone number and asked to be excused. And for the time being, the FBI agent let him off the hook, added the information to his list, and left the general manager’s office in a huff.
“Who’s next?” Cathy asked once they were back inside the Trailblazer.
“Just so happens it’s the Bach family,” said Sam Markham, scanning his list. “The one the general manager mentioned. Specifically, Edward and Christian Bach.”
“Any notes on them?”
“Nothing really. Like the others, names have an X next to them-just lists them with the same ‘persons of interest’ blurb that the cops wrote down for Manzera’s ex and that other guy. Looks like they dismissed them as suspects early on in their investigation. Does say, however, that Edward is the father, and Christian the son. Mother listed as deceased. GPS shows their last known address isn’t too far from here. Best hit them next and then grab some lunch. What do you say?”
“Sounds good. It’s almost two o’clock. I’m starving.”
Within ten minutes the Trailblazer’s GPS system led them down a winding wooded road, through a pillared fieldstone wall, and up a long driveway to a large, three-story house. On the other side of the driveway, behind a waterless fountain, Cathy could make out a black Porsche 911 and a blue Toyota Camry.
“You must hate these slum assignments,” she said, and Markham smiled. Had he noticed the overgrown second driveway, had he been able to see through the trees and the thick underbrush to the carriage house at the rear of the property, Supervisory Special Agent Sam Markham might not have been smiling.
Markham and Cathy exited the Trailblazer and climbed a set of four wide flagstone steps. They followed the path along the side of the house and then climbed up another four steps to the side door-a door that stood curiously propped open as if the owner of the house had been expecting them. Markham looked inside. He could see into what looked like a mud room, and into the kitchen beyond.
“Hello?” he called, knocking on the open storm door.
Turning, Markham was about to speak when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement-then the flash of a bright red dot reflected off the glass.
“Get down!” he shouted, pushing Cathy away from the red dot and inside the house. But the silenced bullet found him anyway-grazed the back of his head and took off a chunk of his right ear as he tackled Cathy onto the mud room floor, the warmth of his blood spattering her face.
The sound of a loud pop on the door frame-then another bullet tore into Markham ’s thigh. The FBI agent shrieked in pain.
“Move, Cathy, move!” he shouted, rolling off of her and fumbling for his gun. Cathy, her ears buzzing, her muscles tense with fear, scrambled to her feet just in time to see a shadowy figure in the doorway-the sunlight streaming in behind him; tall, bald, and naked as a marble Hercules.
Yes. They had found The Sculptor.
A flash of red light passed across Cathy’s eyes. She froze-did not see Markham rise to his feet and grab The Sculptor’s arm-only heard the bullet whizzing past her ear. Her vision spotted from The Sculptor’s laser sight, Cathy backed away into the kitchen, watching in red blotchy horror as Markham tried to wrestle The Sculptor’s gun away from him. Their grunting figures crashed against the walls of the mud room as The Sculptor fired off two silenced bullets into the floor.
Then, with a roar, The Sculptor seemed to explode-his arms flailing outward in a burst of power. Sam Markham went sailing across the room-his back slamming into the darkened door frame behind him.
Only then did Cathy notice the open cellar door.
“Sam!” she cried-but it was too late. As Markham recovered, as he finally drew his gun from his shoulder holster, the red dot again flashed across Cathy’s eyes.
Thhhwhip! Thhhwhip!
And then Sam Markham disappeared into a black abyss-the muffled sound of his body thumping down the cellar stairs sucking Cathy’s breath from her lungs.
Firing again down into the darkness, The Sculptor moved to the cellar door in a blur. Then he flicked on the light at the top of the stairs. Cathy had not seen where The Sculptor’s bullets had hit Markham, but in the light cast from the cellar stairwell, she could see on The Sculptor’s face that he was satisfied with his shots. Cathy tried to scream, but her fear held her breath tight in her throat.
The Sculptor whirled his eyes on her-eyes that, in the shadow cast from the cellar, looked to Cathy to be carved from ice.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Dr. Hildy,” said The Sculptor, raising his gun. “I wish the circumstances could have been different.”
Suddenly Cathy’s breath returned, and she became aware that her legs were moving, dragging her forward against the fear that so desperately wanted her to stay put. Another thhhwhip of a bullet by her left ear, and then the kitchen, the adjoining dining room flying past her in a rush. Cathy found herself at the front door, her fingers like numb hotdogs against the dead bolt-slippery and useless as the sound of footsteps thundered behind her. Cathy turned to find The Sculptor approaching from the dining room. She made a dash to her left-could see the sunlight down the hall at the back of the house; she was aware somehow that if she followed alongside the grand staircase it would lead her back to the mud room door. But the naked, hairless man who looked like a bald Arnold Schwarzenegger intercepted her. Cathy fell backward onto the stairs, The Sculptor standing over her and leveling the red dot of his gun between her eyes.
“I wasn’t expecting this, Dr. Hildy. I hope you won’t think me rude.”
There was no click like in the movies; only the look of curious disappointment on The Sculptor’s face when he noticed his Sig Sauer-its clip spent-had locked itself in the empty position.
Cathy did not wait; in a flash she kicked the heel of her sneaker hard into The Sculptor’s naked testicles. The Sculptor howled in pain-his gun dropping on the steps, his hands instinctively going to his groin as his massive frame fell forward, blocking an escape route past him. Like a crab, Cathy pinwheeled her arms and legs backward, found her footing, and scrambled up the stairs-her disorientation, her terror carrying her right past the servants’ staircase which, unbeknown to her, would have brought her back down into the kitchen.
No, with The Sculptor fast on her heels, in a haze of red wallpaper and richly stained wood, Cathy raced down the upstairs hallway in the opposite direction.
Streaking past one of the bedrooms, out of the corner of her eye she saw the silhouette of a man sitting by a large window. Instinctively, she ran to him.
“Help me!” Cathy cried, dashing into the bedroom and slamming the door behind her. “Call the police!” But when Cathy caught sight of the man’s face, when she looked into the hollow eyes of the helpless, drooling invalid that was The Sculptor’s father, her heart sank into her stomach.
“Albert?” the man croaked, his eyes staring past her.
But Cathy did not have time to lament, for a split second later The Sculptor burst into the room behind her.
“Get away from him!” he bellowed, coming for her in a blur of naked flesh. Cathy backed away against the wall-her hands grasping a stainless steel IV stand just as The Sculptor was upon her. She flung it at him, the plastic bag and its metal arm hitting The Sculptor square in the face. The Sculptor’s hands went to his eyes, buying Cathy enough time to get away from him across the four-poster bed.
Cathy made a frantic dash for the stairs-had just reached the banister when she felt the meaty slap of The Sculptor’s hand on her back. Then suddenly she was flying backward-her feet grazing the top of the railing as she left the floor and sailed through the air. She landed on the hardwood floor with a thud. The pain in her knee, in her buttocks, and in her elbow was excruciating, but Cathy bounced to her feet and ran for the darkened doorway in front of her at the far end of the hall. She made it inside just in time, slamming the door behind her and closing her fingers around the lock just as The Sculptor’s shoulder smacked into the door from the other side.
Another smack and Cathy backed away from the door. The room was pitch black, and Cathy tripped-fell to the floor as something crashed beside her. It sounded like metal, but when Cathy reached for it, her hands closed around something round and rubbery-heavy, but also spongy like a Nerf football.
Then the door exploded open-The Sculptor’s massive leg still cocked as the light streamed in from the hallway behind him. He flicked the switch by the door, and Cathy gazed down in horror at the object in her hands.
It was Steve Rogers’s head-shaved and painted white as marble.
Cathy screamed and threw her ex-husband’s severed head at The Sculptor as she backed away on the floor. Then all at once she froze, her eyes finally taking in the totality of the room into which she had entered-a room with heavily draped windows and black painted walls. Dozens upon dozens of body parts were posed and displayed on pedestals and iron frames-hands; arms and legs; severed torsos, some with a head and an appendage still attached; while other heads stood like solitary busts on pedestals of their own. All the body parts were painted white, and had Cathy not felt her ex-husband’s Plastinated head herself-had she not known who owned the house through which she was being chased-the world’s foremost scholar on the works of Michelangelo would have thought the pieces around her to be made of marble.
Yes, Cathy Hildebrant had found The Michelangelo Killer’s sculpture gallery.
Cathy rose to her feet and stumbled backward. The terror was overwhelming her-the scene eerily quiet as The Sculptor approached, a single line of blood running down his cheek like a scarlet tear. The Sculptor paused briefly to pick up the iron stand on which Steve Rogers’s head had been mounted, and as her back slammed against the wall, Cathy watched in terror as he raised the iron stand high above his head.
She closed her eyes.
But instead of the blow she was sure would follow, instead of the pain, Cathy heard the stand drop to the floor-followed by the sound of giggling.
Cathy opened her eyes.
The Sculptor stood before her smiling, his eyes penetrating her own, yet at the same time flickering with the spark of an idea-his fingers resting deviously on his lips like a child who had just played a prank.
“Of course,” he said. “How very silly of me.”
Cathy could only stare back at him in numb confusion.
“The bullets, the empty gun-fate kept you alive, Dr. Hildy. Don’t you see? You were meant to understand, you were meant to be awakened, for only the sculptor’s hand can free the figures slumbering in the stone.”
And with that The Sculptor was upon her.
Cathy awakened to the sound of humming, of fingers tapping away on a keyboard. Her vision was blurry, but she could make out something square hovering above her-the light coming from her right accentuating its edges. And her neck hurt-her back and buttocks were cold against something steel-hard.
Then Cathy remembered.
The wrestling move; the way The Sculptor had tackled her when she tried to run past him; the way he wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed her from behind-Good night Irene, Steve used to call it when they played around on the bed. The Sleeper Hold. But there was never that choking feeling with Steve, never a room clad in black with white arms and legs and heads and torsos jumbling up and turning red, then breaking into snow like a UHF channel on an old TV.
Then Cathy understood.
She was naked, on her back-her head locked staring forward at what was clearly a video monitor; her arms and legs were immobile, strapped down against what she knew to be a stainless steel mortician’s table. And then all at once Cathy understood where she was. She was lying on the very same table that she had seen on The Michelangelo Killer’s DVD; the very same table on which she had watched her husband screaming in agony before what was to become The Sculptor’s Pietà.
The Pietà.
As Cathy thought about the fate of her husband-as she thought about what she knew lay in store for her, too-her mind simultaneously raced along with all the theories, all the knowledge about The Michelangelo Killer that she and Sam Markham had culled together in the weeks since she first accompanied him to Watch Hill.
Sam, a voice cried in her head. Where’s Sam?
Ssh! replied another voice. Stay calm. There’ll be time to sort it out later.
The Pietà, Cathy repeated to herself over and over amidst her rising panic. Sam knew that the answer lay in the Pietà-in The Michelangelo Killer’s interpretation of it through Slumbering in the Stone.
Yes, Cathy needed time to think-needed to stay calm, needed to focus on the moment at hand. Although she could not turn her head, Cathy knew that The Sculptor was close. She could hear his humming, the tippity-tippity-tap of his typing only a few feet away to her right.
The Pietà. Sam was right. The Pietà was his first-everything revolved around the Pietà. Everything BEGAN with the Pietà.
Tippity-tippity-tap.
Sam was sure he was onto something-just knew he was so close to unlocking the key to The Sculptor’s mind. The secret lay in the reason why Michelangelo chose to portray his Virgin as a young mother. Dante’s Divine Comedy-Canto 33 of Paradiso. “Virgin mother, daughter of your son.” The inherent contradiction of the Holy Trinity; its “incestuous” context; the impure, almost incomprehensible parallel trinity-the father-daughter/mother-son/husband-wife relationship. That warped relationship between a mother and son.
Tippity-tippity-tap.
Mother and son, mother and son, mother and son…
Tippity-tippity-tap.
The son’s name is Christian. Christian. Christ. Oh my God. Christ.
Tippity-tippity-tap.
Could it be? Could it be that he sees himself as the Christ-that is, that he sees the relationship to his mother through the Pietà? The parallel trinity? Some kind of warped relationship between mother and son? Incestuous? Spiritual, otherworldly incest as defined in Slumbering in the Stone? Could it be?
Tippity-tippity-tap.
Sam said the mother was deceased? Was her name Mary? Is it possible? Could it all be true?
Christian! Oh, dear God, Christian!
Cathy suddenly became aware of movement to her right-saw a shadow cross the frame of the video screen above her.
Then came the smiling face of The Sculptor leaning over her.
“You’re awake, Dr. Hildy,” he said-then began to giggle. “Well, not totally awake, as I’m sure you’d agree.”
The Sculptor left her again, and Cathy could hear the squeaking of something metal-something rolling on the floor. Her heart was pounding-her mind booming with a voice that said her conclusions had to be true-a voice that at the same time told her what she must do to survive!
“However,” said The Sculptor upon his return to the table, “I need to make some proportional adjustments-need to give you some sleepy juice while I work on your boobies. Then you will awake, Dr. Hildy. Then you will come forth from the stone as fate intended.”
Cathy felt something cold and wet on her forearm-knew The Sculptor was prepping her for an injection of some sort.
“But tell me who you are first,” he said, pausing, staring deeply into her eyes. “Surely you must know deep down, surely you must already understand. Tell me who you are to become? Night or Dawn. Dawn or Night? Personally, with your bone structure, I see you unquestionably as the Dawn. However, given your mother’s history with her boobies, perhaps Night is more appealing to you. Either way, I promise I’ll leave it up to you. It’s the least I can do. Yes, after all you’ve done for me. I owe you that.”
Then, without warning, Cathy spoke.
“My dear Christian,” she said-her voice not her own, the subtle flicker of recognition in The Sculptor’s eyes giving her the strength to continue. “Oh my son, oh my dear boy-let me hold you one last time.”
The Sculptor cocked his head-curiously.
“Mary, Mary, mother of God,” Cathy said automatically, an inner force ordering her what to say. “Mother and daughter and wife of the Son. Let me hold you one more time, my Christian. Just like in our Pietà.”
The Sculptor leaned into her.
“I’m here, my Christian. Your Mary-your mother, your daughter, your wife. I knew you would understand. I knew you would find me again-my love, my only son.”
“Mother?” whispered The Sculptor-his eyes glazing over.
“Yes, my Christian,” Cathy said-at once lucid and borderline insane before the foul heat of The Sculptor’s breath. “It’s your Mary-your wife, your mother. Loosen the straps, my son. Let me make love to you again. Let me make love to you again in that special way, the way no one else understands-our secret. Yes, just like when you were a boy, my Christian. Let me take you in my arms and hold you the way I used to-just like in the Pietà.”
“Mother?” The Sculptor repeated. “Mother is that you?”
“Yes, my Christian. Let me love you again. Just like in the Pietà.”
“Just like in the statue, Mother?”
“Yes, my dear Christian. Mary and Christ. A mother loving her son. Just like in the statue.”
The Sculptor did not move his face-kept it close enough to kiss her-but Cathy felt his fingers on the straps at her wrists.
“That’s it, my son. Let me come forth from the stone. Let me touch you again from beyond the grave.”
First her right, then her left-yes, her hands were free! The Sculptor lay on top of her-his face nuzzling in her neck, the hardness of his erection pressing against her leg.
“I’m here, Mother.”
“That’s my little Christian,” Cathy groaned-a wave of nausea making her tremble. She swallowed hard and ran her nails down The Sculptor’s muscular back. “The strap on my head, my Christian-across my chest and on my feet-release me from my slumber, my son. Let your mother go. Let me make love to you again after all these years-let me sit up and hold you just like in the statue.”
Outside herself, Cathy watched the scene unfold before her as if she were sitting in a movie theatre. She gazed upon The Sculptor with detached terror as he, zombielike, his eyes locked with hers, unbuckled the straps on her head and feet. And when he sat beside her on the table, when he released the strap about her chest, Cathy watched herself in numb amazement as she sat up on the mortician’s table and took The Sculptor in her arms.
“Let me hold you, my son. Let me make love to you just like in the statue.”
The Sculptor lay across her lap-closed his eyes and suckled at Cathy’s breast as the man once called Christian moved her hand to his groin.
“This makes Mommy sorry?” mumbled The Sculptor. “This makes Mommy love me again?”
“Yes, my Christian,” Cathy sputtered-the dam that was her will, her sanity, about to break. “Mommy is so very sorry, but don’t ever forget that Mommy loves you.”
Her fear, her revulsion rushing back all at once, as Cathy’s left hand closed around The Sculptor’s shaft, the fingers of her right found the IV needle. Without thinking, without pausing, Cathy Hildebrant brought down the stubby steel barb hard into The Sculptor’s eye-heard a squirty pop and felt his penis go limp as he shrieked in pain, as his hands flew to his face and he flopped off her lap like a fish.
Cathy dropped from the table, The Sculptor writhing on the floor only inches away from her-his screams swallowed up by the spongy black walls surrounding him. Despite her panic, Cathy could not help but notice the computer screen. She did not pause, however, when she saw the figure of Michelangelo’s Dawn floating in the black like a corpse on the sea. No, instead Cathy immediately went for The Sculptor’s video camera-picked up the tripod and brought it down like a club on the back of his head as he rose to his knees. The Sculptor-a hand at his eye, the blood spurting between his fingers-braced his fall with his free arm; he just knelt there stunned for a moment staring at the floor. But as Cathy brought the tripod up again, The Sculptor unexpectedly kicked out his leg like a mule, knocking the video camera from Cathy’s hands and sending her flying into the mortician’s table. It swung on its chains-gave way to her weight as Cathy fell backward. There was a loud crack-the feeling of the floor giving way beneath her-and suddenly Cathy was falling.
In the split second that it took her to hit the cement below, Cathy understood what had happened-remembered all too well what the mortician’s table had looked like from the DVD and knew that she had fallen into a trap underneath. But unlike her intellect, her feet were not so accommodating; and Cathy slammed into the first floor of The Sculptor’s studio-her left ankle buckling and twisting in a bright burst of pain. Cathy howled and stumbled against the van-the force of her impact bouncing her backward into a pile of plastic sheeting. Yes, there was light down here cast from a small black-and-white monitor atop the drafting table.
And then there was the smell. The strong smell of-
Nail polish remover?
Cathy did not have time to think. She could hear The Sculptor scuttling above her. She screamed and staggered to the garage door-tried to lift it by its handle but it would not budge.
“Help me!” Cathy cried. “Somebody help me!” Like a caged rat, Cathy zigzagged to the rear of The Sculptor’s studio-found no exit there either and collapsed at the edge of the stainless steel hospital tub. The smell of the nail polish remover was stronger here; it was coming from inside the tub-a tub that looked to Cathy like a chrome coffin.
The Plastination chemicals, Cathy thought. The acetone.
Cathy spied a cup on the ledge of The Sculptor’s slop sink and made a limping dash for it. She was back at the tub just as The Sculptor’s feet dropped through the trap door in the ceiling. Cathy threw open the lid and plunged the cup into the cold, stingy liquid. Quickly she brought it out again, hiding it from view as she crouched by the tub, as she turned to face her attacker. Her eyes met The Sculptor’s as his feet hit the floor. He just stood there, staring at her for what seemed like forever-his one good eye blinking robotically as the blood trickled down from the other’s pulpy socket.
Then The Sculptor began to giggle.
Amidst her paralyzing fear, out of the corner of her eye Cathy spied the glow of the garage door button to her left-two of them, in fact, across the hood of the van on the opposite wall next to a door.
“All right,” Cathy hissed, gripping the cup of acetone. “You can’t get it up for anyone but your mother, so I guess you’ll have to kill me you sick son of a bitch.”
In the shadows, in the dim light cast from the TV monitor, Cathy could not see the look in The Sculptor’s remaining eye. No, all Cathy Hildebrant could make out was the clenching of The Sculptor’s fists, the cocking of his elbows and the lowering of his head.
Then, without warning, he charged.
In a flash, Cathy brought up the cup of acetone and splashed it in The Sculptor’s eyes. The Sculptor screeched like a cat, his hands flying to his face as he stumbled backward. Cathy climbed over the rim of the tub and lifted herself onto the van-her bad ankle banging painfully against the wall, her naked flesh rubbing raw as she slid across the hood. Cathy made it to the side entrance. She could not see The Sculptor as he cried out again, as something came crashing down out of sight behind the van.
“Help me!” Cathy shouted-her body sandwiched awkwardly between the van and the door as she wrestled with the knob. Then she noticed the dead bolt-one that required a key from both sides. But Cathy did not pause, did not look behind her when she heard the driver’s side door open, when she realized The Sculptor was coming for her across the front seat of the van. No, her fingers automatically went for the glowing garage door buttons.
But nothing happened.
“No!” Cathy screamed, pressing frantically; and then she began backing away between the wall and the van. Suddenly, the passenger door slammed open into the wall. The Sculptor’s massive frame was too big to get through, too big to follow her along this side of the van. But then again, it was clear to Cathy that The Sculptor had no intention of following her. No, in the dim light of The Sculptor’s studio, Cathy could see that The Sculptor had retrieved from the van a double barrel shotgun.
Yes, all The Sculptor really cared about now was his aim.
“Bad material,” he said perfunctorily.
Then The Sculptor fired.
The shot was sloppy, half-blind. It took out a chunk of Cathy’s right arm and spun her against the van, dropping her to the floor. But Cathy kept moving. Another shot, the crack of the pellets ricocheting off of the cement as Cathy rolled underneath the van. The Sculptor howled with frustration as Cathy emerged on the other side and rose to her feet-her arm bloody, her naked body scraped and soiled. Cathy began to shiver, began to weep, but did not cry out when she saw The Sculptor open the van’s sliding side door; she did not say a word when she saw him reloading his shotgun. She only backed away until she could back away no more, until her naked body crashed into The Sculptor’s drafting table.
The Sculptor did not speak either-only stood in the middle of his studio and raised his shotgun for a clear shot at Cathy’s head.
And then time seemed to slow down for Cathy Hildebrant-seemed to all but stop as a flowing black angel tumbled from the trap in the ceiling and landed directly on top of The Sculptor. The shotgun fired, wide and wild with a clang to Cathy’s left-a hiss and a pop and the instantaneous smell of sulfur. And then time resumed, rushed back to normal speed when Cathy recognized Sam Markham falling back against the van-the blood on his face, on his shirt as black as oil.
“Sam!” she cried, her legs coming to life. But they did not carry her to him. No, as Markham slumped weakly to the floor, in an instant Cathy found herself running toward The Sculptor.
Already dazed and off balance, The Sculptor received her like a domino. He gave no resistance as Cathy slammed into him, knocking him backward, knocking him directly into the stainless steel hospital tub.
The Sculptor hit the acetone with a splash, sending the chemical spraying all over the carriage house as he went under. Cathy was close behind; she fell on top of the coffinlike lid and slammed it closed-her fingers locking only one of its four latches just as The Sculptor pushed up like a vampire from the inside.
Then out of the corner of her eye Cathy saw the flames.
The Sculptor’s errant shot had set to sparking what Cathy recognized to be an arc welder, and now the spattered acetone had ignited. Cathy backed away toward the van-The Sculptor’s furious movements rocking the stainless steel tub as more acetone seeped out from underneath the partially locked lid. Whirling, the flames mating and multiplying all around her, Cathy spied the van’s keys in the ignition.
“Get up, Sam!” she shouted. “Get up into the van!”
Her strength not her own, Cathy Hildebrant lifted the semiconscious FBI agent through the van’s open side door-took the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition as The Sculptor suddenly burst up from the hospital tub in a spray of acetone. And just as she slammed the van into reverse, Cathy saw The Sculptor go up in flames. She saw him point to her and heard him scream like a fiery demon when the hospital tub exploded-its force sucking the wind from Cathy’s lungs as the van crashed backward through the garage door in a fireball. Cathy kept her foot on the gas; she slammed into a tree as she tried to back away from the sheet of flames that engulfed the acetone-soaked windshield-the sheet of flames that was eating its way around the entire van.
“Sam!” she cried, dragging him out the side door of the burning van. Cathy helped Markham to his feet and supported him on her bad ankle as they stumbled together down the overgrown dirt driveway.
They had only gotten about twenty yards when another explosion sent a wave of heat up their backs and knocked them to the ground. But Cathy did not turn around-did not care to see the carriage house go up in a plume of chemical fired flames. No, all that mattered now was Sam Markham.
“It’s over now, Sam,” she whispered, holding him in her blood-soaked arms. “It’s all over.”