The Sculptor

Cathy and Markham exchanged an uneasy silence.

It was starting to rain.

“Everything is connected,” said the priest finally. “Remember that, you two. Everything is connected.”

And with that the Reverend Robert Bonetti disappeared back into the darkness of St. Bartholomew’s.

Chapter 26

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Cathy once she and Markham were on their way.

“I’m thinking a lot of things.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars for a statue that he planned on destroying. It wasn’t just the marble, Sam. The Michelangelo Killer wanted a flawless replica of the Rome Pieta itself—a Gambardelli Pieta specifically—and was willing to pay above market value for it when he could have just stolen it. Why?”

“Because money is no object for him. The only reason The Michelangelo Killer didn’t buy one directly from Gambardelli himself is so the statue couldn’t be traced back to him. And besides, to have simply stolen the statue would have been rude—self-centered and crass—just one of the many aspects of our culture that I suspect The Michelangelo Killer is trying to change.”

“But it’s the Rome Pieta, Sam. If we stick to the premise that The Michelangelo Killer used Carrara marble dust for his Bacchus because he had originally planned on using it for something else, that he should have stolen the Rome Pieta would indicate it was the re-creation of that statue—not Michelangelo’s David— that had originally been the killer’s goal.”

“And the Carrara marble from which that statue was carved, the specificity of that form, would help him—in an undoubtedly spiritual, even magical way—achieve the same kind of likeness, the same kind of proportional fidelity for his Pieta that we saw in his Bacchus. Hence, there would also be a connection between his material—the human bodies that would comprise his work—and the material that comprised Michelangelo’s work both in form and substance.”

“But, since he used the dust from the Pieta for his Bacchus, that means then that his plan did in fact change.”

“Yes. Perhaps he figured out another, even more intimate way for his victims to connect with the statue that they were about to become. Perhaps he scrapped his initial idea of the magic being in the marble itself. Perhaps he gained a deeper understanding of the opening quote to your book—that the magic lies only in the sculptor’s hand.”

“But, Sam, then that means—”

“Yes, Cathy,” said Markham, swerving onto the highway. “I was wrong about the profile for this killer. I had an inkling of this when I was back at Quantico, when I was going over the information on the Plastination industry, but couldn’t put my finger on it. There’s little if any self-gratification for The Michelangelo Killer in the actual act of murdering victims. Murder is only incidental for him—a means to an end in acquiring material for his sculptures. However, as we saw with Gabriel Banford, and as was surely the case with Tommy Campbell and his severed penis, it is crucial that The Michelangelo Killer’s victims, his material, become aware of their fate themselves—to awaken from their slumber, if you will, in order to truly become one of his creations. And I suspect that any self-gratification on the killer’s part would come from that. Yes, there may be a sexual component to this, but I suspect it arises out of a more intellectually and spiritually complex connection with his creations than simple, base-level sexual gratification—a connection that the killer would see as akin to Michelangelo’s connection with his creations. I’ve suspected from the beginning that The Michelangelo Killer is not seeking only some kind of self-gratification—sexual, spiritual, or otherwise—and always thought of him more in the context of a mission killer, that is, a killer with a specific goal. However, I see now that I made a crucial mistake with regard to his victims.”

“It’s why Sullivan and her team have been unable to establish a pattern,” Cathy said. “Why they’ve been unable to find any murders or disappearances of young men in Rhode Island that fit the profile of Banford or Campbell or Wenick. We’ve been looking in the wrong place, Sam. We’ve been looking only at men.”

“Yes, Cathy. Humans are The Michelangelo Killer’s material—both men and women. The killer has both a reverence for his material and the understanding that some of it has to be wasted. And just as I am sure he considers the male of the species as aesthetically superior, I am also sure now that, if he had to waste material in the experimentation with and development of his Plastination technique, he would focus solely on females. I suspect that if we start looking into the disappearance of female prostitutes in the last six years, we might come up with something.”

“So he had planned in the beginning on using a female for his Pieta?”

“It looks that way, yes.”

“And then for some reason he abandoned that project and began focusing on Michelangelo’s Bacchus? Perhaps because he saw the similarity between Bacchus and Tommy Campbell? Perhaps because he also found a better way of getting his message across to the public?”

“Perhaps.”

“But the breasts…” Cathy said absently.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure, Sam. Something’s been bothering me for almost two weeks now—something, like you, I can’t quite sort out.”

As Cathy and Markham sped across town toward the East Side of Providence, a brown paper wrapped package—bundled neatly with the rest of her mail into a folded Pottery Barn catalog—sat waiting patiently in Cathy’s mailbox.

Even the postman had thought it a curious-looking parcel—felt bubble wrapped, about the size of a DVD case—but with no return address, and covered with far too many stamps—of various denominations, ten dollars worth in all—as if the sender did not want to go to the post office, but wanted to make sure it arrived at its destination. But what was even more curious to the postman was the way in which the sender saluted its recipient—a neatly written phrase above the street address which read simply:

Especially for Dr. Hildebrant.

Chapter 27

Miles away, The Sculptor wiped the spittle from his father’s chin. Instead of seating him as he usually did in the big chair by the window, The Sculptor had served his father his supper in bed that evening. He had played a few episodes of The Shadow on the CD player inside the old Philco and thought he saw the left corner of his father’s mouth curl up ever so slightly during the introduction.

Then again, The Sculptor could not be sure. His mind might be playing tricks on him, for he was tired— very tired. And he had been working very, very hard lately. His Pieta was completed—had come together in just over two weeks from the afternoon he picked up RounDaWay17 at Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence. Then again, in a way he had cheated, for The Sculptor had finished off many components of his Pieta over a year ago—the metal frame, the rock of Golgotha on which the Virgin would be seated, the contours of her flowing robes. And of course, the most important parts of the Virgin herself—her head, her hands, her breasts—had been preserved, articulated, and painted long before Bacchus and his satyr went into the pressurized tub of chemicals.

Back then, when he first started experimenting with pieces of the women, the Plastination process took much longer than it did now—just as long as it still took von Hagens and his team over in Heidelberg, Germany. But The Sculptor had made improvements on von Hagens’s methods; he found that he could speed up the process