The Sculptor

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.

Chapter 37

The plan from the beginning had always been David, but it was the Pieta that had inspired him to actually start working—yes, the Pieta around which the development of his skills had evolved. And so, that it should have been the Pieta 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 Pieta. 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 Pieta, 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 Pieta, 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 Pieta 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 Pieta 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