The Sculptor

neck; no, not until that very moment did The Sculptor truly understand his own strength. And just as he had not needed to use his .45 on the satyr’s companions, the nylon cord and the bottle of chloroform that he had brought with him would now be unnecessary also. The Sculptor thus stuffed the boy’s body in a duffel bag and slid off the manhole cover. The coast clear, he pushed the bag onto the concrete slab and lifted himself out of the sewer.

In less than a minute The Sculptor had gathered his things and was speeding away down Shirley Boulevard —his satyr stowed safely in the duffel bag on the backseat. And although he was somewhat disappointed that his little satyr would not be able to see what lay in store for him, would not be able to awaken before the image of what he was to become, as The Sculptor drove back to his home in East Greenwich, he nonetheless felt a bit giddy that the first part of his plan had been so successful.

Yes, it had almost been too easy.

Had Laurie Wenick known at that moment exactly what had happened to her son; had she known on that cool September afternoon that her little Michael had been spared the terror, the brutality of The Sculptor’s plans for him back at the carriage house, she most likely would not have been comforted. Indeed, as she stared down at the jar of Smucker’s jelly in her hands, the pretty young nurse felt all at once as if the ordeal of the last seven months was suddenly tumbling down on her. She began to hyperventilate, to tremble, and nearly dropped the jar of jelly before she fumbled it onto the counter.

Something had happened. Something was wrong.

Laurie could feel it.

She had not turned on the television since before going to bed that morning—had been sleeping her vampire’s sleep when the news of Tommy Campbell made the headlines. And so it happened that, as she stood shivering with panic in the kitchen, Laurie Wenick was entirely unaware that the star Rebel’s corpse had been discovered down at Watch Hill. Even if she had been watching TV when the story broke; even if she had learned that another body had been found along with Campbell’s, Laurie would not have made the connection with her son—for the state police, the FBI had long ago ruled out any link between the disappearance of Tommy Campbell and that of little Michael Wenick. In fact, the authorities had insisted on just the opposite, and even though she was more than willing to believe them, in the months following the wide receiver’s disappearance Laurie began to resent the constant media attention given to the case —a case that completely overshadowed her own. Indeed, the Campbell case made Laurie feel as if her son had been abducted all over again—even if it was only from the minds of her fellow Rhode Islanders.

On any other day, had Laurie Wenick not reached for the jar of jelly, had she gone instead for her coffee and settled herself in front of the television as she usually did before work, the press conference that was beginning on the steps of the Westerly Police station might have actually come as a relief to her—for now, with the discovery of Tommy Campbell, the authorities and the media would once again focus on the search for her son. Today, however, in the wake of her panic, in the wake of her premonition, had she had time to get to the remote before the doorbell rang—despite what the authorities had told her in the past, despite all the assurances that the disappearances of Tommy Campbell and her son were not related—Laurie Wenick would have understood at once that the unidentified body of which the FBI Agent was speaking was her son Michael.

Instead, Laurie stood frozen before the refrigerator as the doorbell dinged a second time—the chimes from the other room clanging in her ears like church bells. And like an egg, Laurie’s mind suddenly cracked with the numb realization that it could not be her father—that it was too early for him to have returned from hunting crows in Connecticut with her uncle.

Here again was the zombie—her movements not her own, watching herself as she made her way to the front door. Through the peephole, she saw two men—serious looking men with short hair and blue jackets. Laurie did not recognize them—had never met them before—but knew them nonetheless; had seen many others like them in the last seven months. A voice somewhere in the back of her mind assured her that the storm door was locked just in case (for her father taught her always to lock the storm door) and Laurie watched herself—that woman in the bathrobe, that woman who looks so tired and hollow—turn the dead bolt.

“Yes?”

The man on the front steps held up his ID. His lips were moving but Laurie could not hear him through the glass; for upon the sight of those three little letters—FBI—Laurie Wenick went deaf with the overwhelming terror of understanding.

No, little Michael Wenick’s mother did not need the FBI, the press conference in Westerly to tell her why she had reached for the jar of jelly. She would have been unable to hear them anyway; for just as her fragile eggshell mind cracked again under the weight of her anguish, the once pretty young nurse watched herself collapse into the black.

Yes, all at once Laurie Wenick fainted, for all at once she knew that her son was dead.

Chapter 12

Bill Burrell sat with Thomas Campbell Sr. in his den, their coffee long gone cold. Neither of them had drunk much, for their cups were only props in a scene they had played many times over the last three months. The set was the same—the comfy leather chairs, the bookcases, the warm paneled walls peppered with family photographs. Today, however, the mood, the color of the scene was different, for today the wealthy businessman had finally learned what had become of his only son. And as Special Agent Rachel Sullivan concluded her press conference on the television in the corner, as if on cue a thud was heard above Burrell’s head.

“She’ll be fine,” said Campbell, clicking the remote. “Her sister is up there with her. Probably dropped something is all.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Burrell took a sip of his cold coffee. Instant. Bitter. Maggie Campbell did not make it for him today; did not brew her special blend of Sumatra as she usually did on the SAC’s visits. No, Burrell had learned from Agent Sullivan that, upon identifying her son, upon seeing him frozen white in the horror that was Bacchus, Maggie Campbell had gone first into shock, then into a fit of inconsolable hysteria—so much so that by the time Burrell arrived at the house on Foster Cove later that afternoon, Tommy Campbell’s mother had since collapsed into her bed upstairs, exhausted from her bout with borderline madness. And save for the handful of reporters that still lingered at the end of the driveway, the house in which Rhode Island’s favorite son grew up was as quiet as a tomb.

“Someone was found dead on this property, too,” Campbell said. “Did you know that, Bill?”

Burrell looked up from his coffee. Thomas Campbell was staring back at him blankly—his eyes like slits, red from weeping; a haggard shell of the man standing with his son in the photograph on the bookshelf behind him.

“In the summer of 1940,” Campbell continued. “Out on the front lawn, a caretaker for the family who owned the house before us. Story goes he was attacking their boy, and a couple of strangers just happened to be passing by. Stabbed the guy dead and then took off. The boy was there the whole time—saw the whole thing. Went on to become a famous movie director—made all those horror pictures in the sixties and seventies. Died last year. Remember him?”

Burrell nodded vaguely.

“Saw a bunch of his movies when I was a kid—scared the hell out of me. We bought the house from his uncle—gosh, going on almost thirty years ago now. Nice old fella—his uncle, I mean. A lot of those old-timers around here still remember all that—the story about the murder and all. Tommy had heard that story, too. When he was a kid. And for years he used to swear that there was a ghost in this house. You know how kids are. But you know what, Bill? I remember him telling me, even when he was little, that he wasn’t afraid—that he hoped they could be friends someday, he and the ghost. Isn’t that something? A little kid not being afraid of ghosts?”

Burrell nodded, looking down again at his cup.

“That’s the kind of boy my Tommy was,” Campbell said, his voice beginning to break. “A good friend to everybody. Not afraid to love even a ghost.”

“I know, Tom. He was a good kid. The best.”

“It’s why they took advantage of him out there in that world of his—those people, that slut model he asked to